When confronted with mass uprisings, governments deploy their security forces for crowd control or repression. However, sometimes security agencies choose to side with the opposition movement. Recent work shows that “fragmentation” contributes to defection: fragmenting the security forces into parallel units leads to oversight problems and grievances among soldiers, which raises the risk of members of the security forces defecting to the opposition movement. However, I argue that the effect on defection is strongly moderated by the circumstances under which states choose to fragment their military: fragmentation for the purpose of security specialization, called “differentiation,” even decreases its risk. Employing Bayesian multilevel modeling, the findings corroborate this distinction. The study contributes to the fundamental discussion on civil–military relations, shedding light on why some conflict situations see security defections while others do not. Understanding this phenomenon is a pivotal element to explaining how conflicts develop, escalate, and end.

中文翻译：

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随波逐流：冲突期间的分化和安全叛变

面对大规模起义时，政府会部署安全部队进行人群控制或镇压。但是，有时安全机构选择支持反对派运动。最近的工作表明，“碎片化”助长了叛逃：将安全部队分割成平行的单位会导致监督问题和士兵之间的不满，这增加了安全部队成员叛逃到反对派运动的风险。但是，我认为，国家选择分裂军队的情况在很大程度上削弱了对叛逃的影响：出于安全专门化的目的而分裂的做法，称为“分化”，甚至可以降低其风险。利用贝叶斯多级建模，该发现证实了这一区别。该研究有助于对军民关系进行基本讨论，阐明为什么某些冲突局势会出现安全缺陷，而另一些情况却不会。理解这一现象是解释冲突如何发展，升级和结束的关键要素。