Rebel Strategies and the Prospects for Peace

Abstract

Prominent formal theories of conflict provide considerable insight into how civil wars begin and end, but offer little understanding of how they proceed during wartime. One prevalent pattern is that rebel strategies vary significantly within conflicts over time, from guerrilla to conventional tactics. Why do rebels switch between different fighting strategies? How does the transition affect civil war negotiations? I develop a model of rebel–government negotiation in which rebels choose fighting strategies throughout a multiperiod war. The analysis shows that rebels switch from guerrilla to conventional tactics after gaining strength, and the expectation of growth delays rebels' transition to conventional fighting. The potential switch between different fighting strategies hurts the prospects for peace and prolongs civil wars. I identify the generic conditions under which peace is infeasible, no matter how belligerents negotiate. These conditions characterize the incipient stages of many rebellions, thereby explaining the lack of serious negotiations early on.

The Fortification Dilemma: Border Control and Rebel Violence

“…To this end, this article offers the first plausibly causal evidence on how border fortification shapes rebel violence. Extending political economy theories of conflict (Bueno de Mesquita, 2013;Qiu, 2022), I argue that counterinsurgent border fortification generates discrete trade-offs for combatants. By raising the price of obtaining foreign support, border control reduces transna-tional rebels' resources.…”

“…This paper also provides new empirical evidence for political economy models of conflict, which emphasize how rebels' resources affect their technologies of rebellion (Kalyvas and Balcells, 2010;Bueno de Mesquita, 2013;Qiu, 2022). Back-end conflict processes, including logistics (Parkinson, 2013;Zhukov, 2017) and tactics (Wright, 2020;Biddle, 2021) remain a crucial, understudied field.…”

The Fortification Dilemma: Border Control and Rebel Violence

“…4 Wellresourced rebels with access to external support-whether sanctuary, fighters, or materiel-can afford to produce more conventional violence (Bueno de Mesquita, 2013). Ceteris paribus, rebels prefer conventional operations, despite the greater risks involved, because these tactics are more effective for seizing territory and dealing governments decisive defeats (Biddle, 2021;Qiu, 2022).…”

“…This paper also provides new empirical evidence for political economy models of conflict, which emphasize how rebels' resources affect their technologies of rebellion (Kalyvas and Balcells, 2010;Bueno de Mesquita, 2013;Qiu, 2022). Back-end conflict processes, including logistics (Parkinson, 2013;Zhukov, 2017) and tactics (Wright, 2020;Biddle, 2021), remain a crucial, understudied field.…”

“…To this end, this article offers the first plausibly causal evidence on how border fortification shapes rebel violence. Extending political economy theories of conflict (Bueno de Mesquita, 2013;Wright, 2020;Qiu, 2022), I argue that border control generates discrete trade-offs for combatants. By raising the price of foreign support, fortification reduces transnational rebels' resources (a negative endowment shock).…”