Despite the prevalence of armed groups in world politics, a prominent measurement challenge obscures understanding about many of these militant actors, especially when their activities fall below the threshold of civil war. This note addresses this gap by introducing a new dataset on the organizational characteristics of 1,202 armed groups that operated in 124 countries between 1970 and 2012. It outlines the dataset's construction and uses principal component analysis to explore organizational trends across armed groups. The results show armed groups tend to organize around three archetypes, each with different ideological goals, recruitment tactics, and areas of operation. Armed group campaigns are far more numerous than previously realized and can evolve in intensity over time. Unpacking these trends creates substantial opportunities for developing and testing new group-level theories about the causes of militant formation, escalation processes, and consequences of organizational decisions.

中文翻译：

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揭露武装分子：武装团体的组织趋势，1970-2012

尽管武装团体在世界政治中盛行，但一项突出的衡量挑战掩盖了对许多这些激进分子的理解，尤其是当他们的活动低于内战的门槛时。本说明通过引入一个关于 1970 年至 2012 年间在 124 个国家开展活动的 1202 个武装团体的组织特征的新数据集来解决这一差距。它概述了数据集的构建，并使用主成分分析来探索武装团体的组织趋势。结果表明，武装团体倾向于围绕三种原型进行组织，每种原型都有不同的意识形态目标、招募策略和行动领域。武装团体运动的数量远比以前意识到的要多，并且会随着时间的推移而演变。