Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Cav,

Merely some suggestions, but I would also suggest you look at the role physical land and territory in your thesis.

The IRA was aiming at a unified Ireland.
The PFLP and PLO wanted land and territory - still do.
The South Thailand Insurgency wants the states with a Muslim majority to be part of Malaysia, or secede from Thailand, in some form.

Insurgencies are generally about the control of terrain. I might add that pure terrorist groups on the other hand, generally aims at a change of policy, rather than terrain, but that needs to be held to rigour.
I have found the same so far - most post-cold war "insurgencies" seek separatism of some form - not regime change or overthrow.

The definitions are imprecise and have overlap between political terror, civil war, and insurgency, which makes the inclusion/exclusion of certain cases somewhat subjective - my key is not to introduce bias by excluding a case which potentially undercuts the theory and can reasonably be called and insurgency.

I have other quibble issues across the dataset, but the inclusion of my quibbles doesn't change the empirical observation. (For example, including Chechnya II, Iraq, or Afghanistan as an insurgency against a democracy doesn't change that democracies don't outright lose (yet))