I think the Jones model is an excellent tool for understanding what might be called "classic insurgency", where a populace or portion thereof rises up against its government. One limitation is that the term "insurgency" (and again I feel the discussion suffers for want of a definition) is widely used to describe other circumstances. For example, many here use the term "insurgency" to describe irregular resistance to foreign occupation, a circumstance in which the quality of governance is not the core issue driving the conflict.

A similar situation might arise in a diverse populace in which government is dominated by one subset (ethnic, religious, whatever), and another subset is resisting domination by that government. An observer working from the Jones model might be tempted to interpret the core narrative of the conflict as "they are governing us badly", when in fact it is "we refuse to be governed by them".

Another limitation is that no matter how often we repeat that it is the populace's perception of governance, not ours, that matters, we will always evaluate governance according to our own standards, and we will always project our own preferences onto our assumptions of what the populace is thinking. We are, after all, human.

That tendency is evident in our preference for central government, and in our assumption that effective governance is a desirable thing. In many cases it may not be. If a group of people is accustomed to governing themselves, with nominal allegiance to a distant and abstract national entity, the prospect of an effective government - of a government that actually proposes to govern them - might be regarded as a direct assault on a treasured autonomy. We might see a police force and a courthouse as "delivering justice", the populace might see it as an attempt to impose a foreign system of justice.

Models are useful, but they can also create assumptions that color and distort our ability to interpret core narratives. On the local level, a commander trained with the Jones model might be inclined to look to quality of governance as the core narrative of the local insurgent, and overlook issues with the source of governance.

On the macro strategy level there's a greater risk. The 1970s and 80s taught us that we can no longer go around installing dictators to run other countries for us. The current engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan should be teaching us a similar lesson, and I'm concerned that the model in question might lead us to look past it. In short, we might be inclined to assume that it's ok for us to go around removing governments and installing new ones, as long as the governments we install are "good". If we make that assumption we end up asking ourselves how we can provide others with good governance, instead of asking the rather more important question of whether or not we should be trying to establish governments in other countries at all. Under certain interpretations the Jones model could be used to justify intervention in places where intervention can have serious unintended and undesirable consequences.

I also feel like the Jones model overlooks two key factors, one an important vulnerability in many insurgencies, the other an important weakness common among governments facing insurgents.

The common insurgent weakness revolves around the relationship between insurgent leaders and their followers, both the rank-and-file fighters and the supporting populace. It's not universal, but where it exists it provides a key strategic target. If we look at "the insurgency" as a monolithic entity driven solely by resistance to bad governance, we can overlook this vulnerability.

Insurgent leaders are typically ideologically driven, and fighting for a particular desired end state, generally one in which they take political power. Insurgent followers are more typically driven by local issues that threaten them: they fight against an unacceptable status quo. The ideology of the leader is frequently less that significant (and often less than comprehensible) to the follower. The key to success for the insurgent leadership is in understanding those local grievances (which will vary widely from one locale to the next) and in presenting themselves as a solution or as an ally.

That dynamic presents an interesting challenge. The leadership may be diffuse and difficult to target; even when some of them are killed or captured new leaders emerge from the ideological core. If we target the followers, we end up punishing people who see themselves fighting for their own rights or their own survival, often exacerbating the issues that the core insurgent propagandists exploit. For me, the key to resolving a situation like this is to understand the core narrative of the followers in any given locale, identify the divergences between the narratives of leader and follower, and act to address the issues that motivate the followers. The idea is to drive a wedge between leader and follower, less a question of decapitation than disembodiment. We will never persuade the core ideologues, but if we can isolate them from their followers we can render them irrelevant.

The key weakness I see in our COIN/FID efforts lies in our relationship with host governments, and in the reasons why bad governance exists in the first place. We don't fight insurgents in our own country, we haven't any. We fight them in other countries, often countries with traditions of governance that don't exactly appeal to us or to the populace being governed. In these cases we can talk all we want about good governance, but we have to recognize that the governing elites we're dealing with cannot implement our recommendations without compromising their own power and prerogatives, which they will not do. Bad governance exists because somebody finds it very profitable, generally somebody in power... and that somebody is going to do all in their power to resist changes to the status quo. Recommending change in such circumstances is like talking at a wall. Of course we have the option to withdraw support, but that can mean sacrificing the strategic objectives that brought us into the picture in the first place. A bit of a quandary, and there's no good solution, but to manage those situations we have to first acknowledge that they exist, and that in many of the cases we seek to influence our capacity to influence may be very limited.

All meant as constructive comment; this post is already way too long to be discussing areas of agreement.