How leaders’ experiences and rebellion shape military recruitment during civil war

2020 ◽  
pp. 002234332095938
Author(s):  
Suparna Chaudhry ◽  
Sabrina Karim ◽  
Matt K Scroggs
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Recruitment Strategies ◽  
Military Effectiveness ◽  
Combat Experience ◽  
Security Sector ◽  
Military Recruitment ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Risk Takers

The use of forced recruitment strategies during war can adversely affect military effectiveness and human rights. Given these costs, under what conditions do state leaders adopt coercive recruitment during civil wars? We find that between 1980 and 2009, states changed their recruitment practices 140 times during civil wars – half of which were towards coercive recruitment. Since structuralist explanations focus on factors that remain more or less constant over time, they cannot explain the frequency of these changes. Instead, we focus on individual-level factors and argue that leaders’ dispositions as risk-takers determine their beliefs about using force to solve collective action dilemmas during civil wars. Further, conflict context matters for leaders’ recruitment decisions – when rebel groups engage in coercive recruitment, leaders may also feel more justified in using such strategies. Using the LEAD Dataset and data on recruitment, we find that risk-tolerant leaders, including those who have had careers in the security sector, as well as those who have prior experience as a rebel or revolutionary leader, are more likely to use force to increase recruitment. While we theorize that this effect may be mitigated by combat experience, the evidence is mixed. Lastly, we find that rebels’ use of forced recruitment makes state leaders less likely to use voluntary recruitment.

Private Militaries and the Security Industry in Civil Wars

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seden Akcinaroglu ◽  
Elizabeth Radziszewski
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Military Effectiveness ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Security Industry ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Conflict Termination ◽  
Military Services

Whether they train police forces in Afghanistan or provide military assistance to governments in Africa that are battling rebel groups, private military and security companies (PMSCs), or corporations that provide security and military services for profit, have been present in numerous conflicts around the globe. In 1984 only one international PMSC intervened in a civil war; in 1989 there were 15 international PMSCs present in conflict zones, while from 2003 to 2019 over 120 of such companies provided services during the Iraq war. Why do international PMSCs sometimes help with conflict termination while in other cases their intervention is associated with prolonged wars? And in what ways does market competition affect PMSCs’ military effectiveness? Relying on quantitative analysis of original data on international PMSCs’ involvement in civil wars from 1990 to 2008 and PMSCs’ human rights and fraud violations in Iraq from 2003 to 2019, the book investigates how local and global competition impacts accountability of these non-state actors and their contribution to the termination of major and minor wars.

Stick Then Carrot: When Do Governments Give Amnesty during Civil War?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley-Ann Daniels
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Policy Choice ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
The Government

Abstract Governments grant amnesties to rebel groups during civil wars and this is a puzzle. Why would the government offer an amnesty, which can be interpreted as a signal of weakness? In certain circumstances, offering amnesty is a rational policy choice. Governments should give amnesties when they are winning: the risk of misinterpreted signals is lessened, costs are low, rebel groups are weakened, and so amnesty can be used instrumentally to encourage defection or division among foot soldiers or as an incentive to leaders. Therefore, the government capitalizes on its military advantage and offers amnesty in a “stick then carrot” tactic. Using a database of amnesties during conflicts from 1990 to 2011, the article shows that governments are more likely to give amnesties following high rebel deaths. The use of amnesty during conflict is nuanced and context is important when understanding strategic choices.

scholarly journals Coup-Proofing and Civil War

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Koga Sudduth
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
The Other ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
The Future ◽  
Face Threats ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

Political leaders face threats to their power from within and outside the regime. Leaders can be removed via a coup d’état undertaken by militaries that are part of the state apparatus. At the same time, leaders can lose power when they confront excluded opposition groups in civil wars. The difficulty for leaders, though, is that efforts to address one threat might leave them vulnerable to the other threat due to the role of the military as an institution of violence capable of exercising coercive power. On one hand, leaders need to protect their regimes from rebels by maintaining strong militaries. Yet, militaries that are strong enough to prevail against rebel forces are also strong enough to execute a coup successfully. On the other hand, leaders who cope with coup threats by weakening their militaries’ capabilities to organize a coup also diminish the very capabilities that they need to defeat their rebel challengers. This unfortunate trade-off between protection by the military and protection from the military has been the long-standing theme in studies of civil-military relations and coup-proofing. Though most research on this subject has focused primarily on rulers’ maneuvers to balance the threats posed by the military and the threats coming from foreign adversaries, more recent scholarship has begun to explore how leaders’ efforts to cope with coup threats will influence the regime’s abilities to address the domestic threats coming from rebel groups, and vice versa. This new wave of research focuses on two related vectors. First, scholars address whether leaders who pursue coup-proofing strategies that weaken their militaries’ capabilities also increase the regime’s vulnerability to rebel threats and the future probability of civil war. Second, scholars examine how the magnitude of threats posed by rebel groups will determine leaders’ strategies toward the militaries, and how these strategies affect both the militaries’ influence over government policy and the future probability of coup onsets. These lines of research contribute to the conflict literature by examining the causal mechanisms through which civil conflict influences coup propensity and vice versa. The literatures on civil war and coups have developed independently without much consideration of each other, and systematic analyses of the linkage between them have only just began.

scholarly journals Do Terrorists Win? Rebels' Use of Terrorism and Civil War Outcomes

2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Page Fortna
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
War Outcomes ◽  
Better Than

AbstractHow effective is terrorism? This question has generated lively scholarly debate and is of obvious importance to policy-makers. However, most existing studies of terrorism are not well equipped to answer this question because they lack an appropriate comparison. This article compares the outcomes of civil wars to assess whether rebel groups that use terrorism fare better than those who eschew this tactic. I evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of terrorism relative to other tactics used in civil war. Because terrorism is not a tactic employed at random, I first briefly explore empirically which groups use terrorism. Controlling for factors that may affect both the use of terrorism and war outcomes, I find that although civil wars involving terrorism last longer than other wars, terrorist rebel groups are generally less likely to achieve their larger political objectives than are nonterrorist groups. Terrorism may be less ineffective against democracies, but even in this context, terrorists do not win.

International Recognition, Compliance Costs, and the Formalities of War

Wars of Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 38-71
Author(s):  
Tanisha M. Fazal
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
International Community ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Compliance Costs ◽  
Interstate War ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
International Recognition ◽  
Peace Treaties

This chapter develops the main arguments of the book, focusing on how belligerents in interstate and civil war have reacted to the development of the laws of war detailed in Chapter 2. States involved in interstate war are perversely incentivized to evade the laws of war as these laws have proliferated. Thus, they are decreasingly likely to engage the formalities of war, specifically declarations of war and peace treaties. Secessionist rebel groups fighting civil wars aim to please the international community, and therefore are decreasingly likely to declare independence formally, generally likely to avoid targeting civilians, and increasingly likely to conclude peace treaties.

Local Competition and PMSCs’ Behavior in Civil Wars

2020 ◽  
pp. 79-102
Author(s):  
Seden Akcinaroglu ◽  
Elizabeth Radziszewski
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Military Effectiveness ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Local Competition ◽  
Peer Monitoring ◽  
Safety Concerns ◽  
Competitive Edge ◽  
Conflict Zone ◽  
Contractual Obligations

What is the significance of local or conflict-level competition on PMSCs’ military effectiveness? And what is the mechanism through which such competition improves PMSCs’ accountability? This chapter argues that variation in local competition, the number of PMSCs that operate in a given conflict zone, affects the level of accountability to the client. With the presence of multiple PMSCs, companies can anticipate the existence of informal peer monitoring. Whether gaining a competitive edge or safety concerns motivate companies’ monitoring of each other in the field, this puts pressure on PMSCs to fulfill contractual obligations and become more militarily effective or risk losing future contracts. The chapter argues that a greater level of local competition pushes companies to improve their skills and to limit fraud and human rights abuses, factors that contribute to quicker termination of war.

scholarly journals Fueling rebellion: Maritime piracy and the duration of civil war

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-147
Author(s):  
Brandon Prins ◽  
Anup Phayal ◽  
Ursula E Daxecker
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Causal Process ◽  
Maritime Piracy ◽  
Fighting Ability ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Conflict Duration ◽  
Resource Wealth

Extant research shows that the presence of natural resources can prolong civil wars. But research also indicates that as rebel groups become stronger, conflicts tend to shorten. These studies suggest an unclear association among the three variables—resources, rebel strength, and conflict duration. If resources increase the fighting ability of rebels, then why do they not shorten conflicts? To understand this relationship, we examine incidents of maritime piracy, which unlike other resources are more clearly exploited by rebel groups rather than states and offer new insight on how this might affect the persistence of civil war. The findings suggest that the use of piracy by weaker rebel groups shortens conflict but prolongs it when exploited by stronger rebel groups. We think our conditional analyses allow us to discern insurgencies driven at least in part by greedy rebels and therefore better illuminate the causal process by which resource wealth prolongs civil war.

Civil War and Terrorism: A Call for Further Theory Building

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charity Butcher
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
The Media ◽  
September 11 Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Terrorist Acts ◽  
External Actors

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, terrorism has gained increased prominence in both scholarship and the media. While international terrorist acts are quite visible and highly publicized, such attacks represent only one type of terrorism within the international system. In fact, a very large number of acts of terrorism take place within the context of civil wars. Given the great disparity in power in most civil wars, it is not surprising that terrorism might be seen as a tactic that is often used by insurgent groups, who may have few resources at their disposal to fight a much stronger opponent. There is a clear linkage between the concepts of terrorism and civil war, yet until recently scholars have largely approached civil war and terrorism separately. Recent literature has attempted to specifically map the intersection of terrorism and civil war, recognizing the extent to which the two overlap. As expected, the findings suggest that civil war and terrorism are highly linked. Other scholars have endeavoured to explain why rebel groups in some civil wars use terrorism, while others do not. Further research focuses on how governments respond to terrorism during civil war or on how the decisions of external actors to intervene in civil wars are affected by the use of terrorism by insurgent groups. These studies show that there is too little theorizing on the relationship between civil war and terrorism; while scholars are finally considering these concepts collectively, the full nature of their relationship remains unexplored. Additional research is needed to better understand the various ways that terrorism and civil war overlap, interact, and mutually affect other important international and domestic political processes.

When Organizations Rebel: Introducing the Foundations of Rebel Group Emergence (FORGE) Dataset

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Maves Braithwaite ◽  
Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Comparable Data ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
New Information ◽  
Intrastate Conflicts ◽  
Rebel Group ◽  
The Government ◽  
National Perspective ◽  
Cross National

Abstract Scholars have spent decades investigating various sources of rebellion, from societal and institutional explanations to individual motivations to take up arms against one's government. One element of the civil war process that has gone largely unstudied from a cross-national perspective is the role preexisting organizations in society play in the formation of rebel groups, principally due to a lack of comparable data on the origins of these armed actors across conflicts. In an effort to fill this gap, we present the Foundations of Rebel Group Emergence (FORGE) dataset, which offers information on the “parent” organizations and the founding processes that gave rise to rebel groups active between 1946 and 2011 in intrastate conflicts included in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program's Armed Conflict Database. The new information on rebel foundations introduced in this research note should help scholars to reconsider and newly explore a variety of conditions before, during, and after civil wars including rebel-civilian interactions, structures of rebel organizations, bargaining processes with the government, participation in postwar governance, and more.

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