Conceptualization of internationalized intrastate conflict: moving beyond the role of external state-based actors

The paper addresses the issue of the scientific reconceptualization of the phenomenon of intrastate armed conflict internationalization. The author gives an overview of the contemporary conceptual landscape of studying this phenomenon which is limited to factoring the role of external actors into the dynamics of internal conflict. Such rudimentary framework proves sufficient for revealing the variety of forms, strategies, motivations, and consequences of external intervention but omits a number of significant international, transnational, and cross-border manifestations of intrastate organized violence that are indispensable for understanding thereof. The author argues for incorporating a spatial dimension (a study of the physical spread of violence and its spillovers) and a systemic dimension (interplay between the violence dynamics at the subnational level and international processes at the systemic level) into the conceptual and methodological framework of conflict internationalization. Such reconceptualization and consequently re-operationalization of the phenomenon will allow one to review the conventional set of factors that can determine the probability of internationalization of armed conflicts.