Building Mosques and Bombing Churches: A Structured Focused Comparison of Negotiation Willingness in Thailand and Myanmar Separatist Conflicts

Sammanfattning

This study examines why some separatist insurgencies negotiate while others continue armed struggle, focusing on BRN-C in Southern Thailand and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) in Myanmar. Despite similar ethnoreligious, peripheral, and long-standing conflicts, BRN-C entered negotiations with the Thai state in 2025, while KIO continued its insurgency. Using a Most Similar Different Outcome design and a Structured Focused Comparison grounded in Azar’s Protracted Social Conflict theory and complemented by natural resource theories, the study analyzes five variables: communal content, human needs, state governance, natural resources, and international linkages. The findings suggest that negotiation outcomes are primarily shaped by the interaction of state capacity, resource endowments, and external involvement. BRN-C’s negotiations are linked to relatively stronger state capacity, limited rebel resource autonomy, and facilitating external mediation, while KIO’s continued conflict reflects weak state legitimacy, resource-financed resilience, and sustaining external support from China. The study concludes that separatist negotiation behavior is best explained by structural interactions rather than single factors, while identity and grievances primarily explain conflict persistence rather than divergence in outcomes.