ERC Consolidator Grant · Bilkent University · 2026–2031

Countering Insurgency & Terrorism: Severing the Ties between Armed Actors and Their Constituency

COUNSTER introduces a novel triadic framework to investigate how governments strategically engage with non-state armed actors’ constituents — and why some of these strategies succeed while others fail.

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Synopsis
Why COUNSTER?

Military power is neither the only, nor the most effective, tool in governments’ arsenal. Only 7–15% of terrorist groups have ever been defeated by military force alone.

Policymakers and scholars have long treated armed conflict as a military problem. Yet decades of counterinsurgency show that force alone rarely resolves root causes — it more often generates new grievances. COUNSTER asks a different question: why, how, and under what circumstances do governments fight non-state armed actors by engaging the constituents those actors claim to represent?

We call that strategy counstering. It runs from attractive measures — reforms, concessions, exemptions, recognition — to repressive ones such as curfews, travel bans, and forced displacement. Both are widespread; neither is well understood. Over five years the project builds the first global dataset of these measures, tests how constituents actually react to them across four conflict contexts, and triangulates the results through expert surveys.

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The COUNSTER triadic framework Existing versus novel approaches to fighting radicalisation, insurgency and terrorism. Counterterrorism targets the non-state armed actor directly; counterinsurgency targets the wider citizenry. COUNSTER’s third way — counstering — targets the constituency inside that citizenry in order to sever its tie to the armed actor. Strategies to fight against radicalisation, insurgency, and terrorism Constituency Citizens NSAA Government Counterterrorism (CT) Counterinsurgency (COIN) funding · recruits · legitimacy “COUNSTERING” countering NSAAs by targeting their constituency with attractive and repressive tactics Conflict is not a two-player game.
The triadic framework: COUNSTER moves the analysis beyond the government–insurgent dyad by putting the constituency — the audience whose support both sides compete for — at the centre.