| Summary: | Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited === What are the effects of individual disengagement on an insurgency campaign? Current research does not articulate the consequences experienced, more broadly, when an individual fighter departs from violence. Because of this shortcoming, disengagement programs are often poorly timed and make inefficient use of resources. That being said, disengagement has the potential to be an influential component of comprehensive counterinsurgency efforts when it is properly used to inhibit an insurgency campaign's ability to operate efficiently. This thesis considers the manner in which individual disengagement accomplishes this by affecting the psychological and social processes of the fighters that remain, and having extensive impacts on the campaign's human and social capital, as well as its ability to conduct operations. Finally, it considers the extent to which the insurgency's lifecycle stage, its leadership, and its ideology influence these phenomena. This analysis concludes by suggesting that disengagement behavior will spread through expressive networks by way of social contagion. Furthermore, while disengagement programs will have certain impacts as an insurgency grows, they will most effectively catalyze the demise of a campaign during stages of decline.
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