Strategic rebels: a spatial econometric approach to rebel fighting durations in civil wars

  • Recent research on multi-actor civil wars highlights that rebel organizations condition their conflict behavior on that of other rebel organizations, with competition and free-riding constituting the core theoretical mechanisms. We provide a new actor-centric approach to explicitly model strategic interdependence in multi-actor civil wars. We argue that rebel organizations have incentives to remain mobilized until the end of a conflict to maintain their power to negotiate, power to spoil, power to enforce, and power to protect. This induces strategic complements that dominate duration dynamics in multi-actor conflicts. Based on a network game-theoretic model, we derive a spatial econometric framework that allows for a direct test of strategic interdependence. We find that the estimated duration interdependence is positive but partially offset in secessionist conflicts where the public goods nature of the incompatibility also induces strategic substitution effects.
Metadaten
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Author(s):Nils W. Metternich, Julian WucherpfennigORCiD
Parent Title (English):International Interactions
Publication year:2020
Publishing Institution:Hertie School
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080/03050629.2020.1737800
Release Date:2020/05/13
Tag:Civil war, duration analysis; network games; spatial econometrics; strategic interaction
Volume:46
Issue:2020
Hertie School Research:Centre for International Security
Licence of document (German):Metadaten (öffentlich), Volltext (zugriffsbeschränkt)
Verstanden ✔
Diese Webseite verwendet technisch erforderliche Session-Cookies. Durch die weitere Nutzung der Webseite stimmen Sie diesem zu. Unsere Datenschutzerklärung finden Sie hier.