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201302Rebel Tactics.pdf
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Rebel Tactics
Ethan Bueno de Mesquita
University of Chicago
I study a model of mobilization and rebel tactical choice. Rebel lead-
ers choose between conventional tactics that are heavily reliant on mo-
bilization, irregular tactics that are less so, and withdrawal from con-
flict. The model yields the following results, among others. Increased
nonviolent opportunity has a nonmonotone effect on the use of ir-
regular tactics. Conflict has option value, so irregular campaigns last
longer than the rebels’ short-term interest dictates, especially in vola-
tile military environments. By demonstrating lack of rebel capacity
and diminishing mobilization, successful counterinsurgencies may in-
crease irregular violence. Conflict begets conflict by eroding outside
options, thereby increasing mobilization.
Rebel tactics vary in important ways from conflict to conflict. For in-
stance, Kalyvas and Balcells ð2010Þ report that since the end of World
War II, rebels focused on conventional war fighting in about one-third
of civil wars while employing various irregular tactics in about two-thirds
of civil wars. Surprisingly, both the empirical and theoretical conflict lit-
eratures have tended to treat each rebel tactic in isolation, developing
separate explanations and models of terrorism, guerrilla warfare, insur-
gency, conventional war fighting, and so on ðthough see Kalyvas ½2004,
Laitin and Shapiro ½2008, and Sambanis ½2008 for exceptionsÞ. This is
unfortunate because rebels choose tactics strategically in response to po-
I have benefited from the comments of Scott Ashworth, Ron Francisco, Nick Grossman,
Michael Horowitz, Mark Fey, Esteban Klor, Andy Kydd, Nolan McCarty, Matthew Ste-
phenson, and seminar audiences at Caltech, Chicago, Essex, Harvard, London School of
Economics, Maryland, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton, and Yale. This
research was supported by the Office of Naval Research under grant N00014-10-1-0130. Any
opinions, findings, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research.
[ Journal of Political Economy, 2013, vol. 121, no. 2]
© 2013 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-3808/2013/12102-0003$10.00
323
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All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
litical, economic, geographic, demographic, and military constraints. If
changes in the economic, political, or strategic environment alter the at-
tractiveness of one tactic or another, then studying the tactics in isola-
tion may lead us to miss important substitutabilities or complementari-
ties between them, to have incorrect or incomplete intuitions about their
causes, and to make invalid inferences from data on their correlates.
As such, I present a model of endogenous mobilization and dynamic
tactical choice by a rebel organization. The rebels have two tactics avail-
able to them, which I refer to as conventional and irregular. For the pur-
poses of this analysis, the key difference between the two tactics is that
conventional tactics are most effective when the rebels can field a large
number of fighters, whereas irregular tactics—such as terrorism or guer-
rilla attacks—can be used effectively even by a small group of extremists.
The model yields six results. First, the quality of the ðeconomic or
politicalÞ outside option has different effects on the likelihood of con-
ventional and irregular conflict. A decrease in opportunity increases mo-
bilization and , thus, increases the use of conventional tactics. More
surprisingly, the effect of opportunity on the use of irregular tactics is
nonmonotone. Irregular tactics are used by rebel groups that believe
they are capable of fighting the government but lack high levels of mo-
bilization. When opportunity is poor, if the population perceives the reb-
els to be capable of fighting the government, enough people will mobi-
lize such that the rebels will use conventional tactics. When opportunity
is very good, then not only will the population not mobilize in the short
run but the rebel leaders will withdraw from conflict. Thus, all else equal,
the use of irregular tactics is highest in societies in which nonviolent op-
portunity is at moderate levels, such that mobilization is low, but extrem-
ists are still willing to fight.
This nonmonotonicity in the use of irregular tactics highlights the
importance of jointly studying the causes of terrorism, insurgency, and
civil war, not only in theoretical models but empirically. A standard in-
tuition, which informs much empirical work on all forms of political
violence, is that conflict should increase as opportunity diminishes.
1
My
model suggests that this intuition is incorrect for irregular tactics, such
as terrorism. The expectation that there will be a monotone relation-
ship between opportunity costs and the use of, say, terrorism is an arti-
1
This intuition is the same as that articulated by Becker ð1968Þ in his seminal work on
the economics of crime. For empirical research examining this intuition for civil wars, see,
among many others, Collier and Hoeffler ð2004Þ, Miguel, Satyanath, and Sergenti ð2004Þ,
and Bazzi and Blattman ð2011Þ. For empirical research examining this intuition for terror-
ism, see, among many others, Krueger and Maleckova ð2003Þ, Blomberg, Hess, and Wee-
rapana ð2004Þ,Papeð2005Þ,DrakosandGofasð2006Þ, Krueger and Laitin ð2008Þ, and Ben-
melech, Berrebi, and Klor ð2012Þ. For empirical work suggesting that the relationship
between opportunity and mobilization may be more complicated, see Berman et al. ð2011Þ
and Dube and Vargas ð2013Þ.
324 journal of political economy
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All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
fact of considering terrorism in isolation from other forms of conflict.
When we consider the possibility of an endogenous choice among rebel
tactics, we find that the use of terrorism and other irregular tactics is
expected to be maximized at some interim level of outside opportunity
rather than having a monotone relationship with opportunity. This sug-
gests that standard empirical attempts to identify an effect of oppor-
tunity on the occurrence or amount of irregular conflict may be mis-
specified.
Second, engaging in conflict has option value for the rebel leaders
in the sense that it allows the rebel organization to survive to fight an-
other day. When the rebel organization is close to defeat, the rebel lead-
ers hold out hope that economic or military circumstances might change
in a way that is more favorable to attracting mobilization. Hence, rather
than withdraw from conflict and give up, during the last gasps of conflict,
rebel leaders continue to engage in irregular conflict longer than is in
their short-term interests. This is especially true when the military envi-
ronment is highly volatile, so that large shocks to rebel capacity ðin either
directionÞ are likely. These facts speak to two substantive debates in the
conflict literature: one on “gambling for resurrection” and the other on
the duration of civil conflicts.
Third, successful counterinsurgencies demonstrate a lack of capac-
ity in the rebel organization. This leads to an endogenous decrease in
public mobilization. In the case of a moderately successful counterin-
surgency, the rebel leaders transition from conventional to irregular tac-
tics. Hence the model suggests that successful government operations
against rebel groups engaged in conventional war fighting can lead to in-
creases in urban terrorism, guerrilla attacks , or other forms of irregu-
lar war fighting. Even more successful counterinsurgency may lead the
rebels to withdraw from conflict entirely.
The finding that successful counterinsurgency can lead to an increase
in the use of irregular tactics offers a theoretical interpretation of events
such as the 2010 suicide bombings in the Moscow subway. Such attacks
can be seen as a sign of the success of the Russian counterinsurgency
in Chechnya. As a result of Russian efforts, the rebels lost enough popu-
lar support that the most effective tactic available to them was terror. ðSee
Lyall ½2009, 2010 on the Russian counterinsurgency.Þ A similar argument
might account for shifts away from conventional warfare and toward guer-
rilla and terrorist attacks by the North Vietnamese following the Tet Of-
fensive, by the Sunni insurgency in Iraq following the 2007 “Surge,” or
by the Irish Republican Army in the 1920s following its civil war defeat ða
pattern that has been repeated throughout the IRA’s historyÞ.
2
2
For related discussions, see Douglass ð2012Þ on Vietnam; Biddle, Friedman, and Shapiro
ð2012Þ on Iraq; and English ð2003, esp. chaps. 2, 3Þ on the IRA.
rebel tactics 325
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Fourth, successful irregular campaigns demonstrate to the popula-
tion that rebel capacity is relatively high. Consequently, such campaigns
lead to an increase in mobilization that intensifies conflict and may
ultimately allow rebel leaders to shift from irregular to conventional tac-
tics. Hence, the model is consistent with a variety of historical examples
in which successful terrorist or guerrilla campaigns helped spark a larger
insurgency or civil war.
3
Fifth, the model predicts that conflict begets conflict. Fighting dam-
ages the economy. Hence, the more intense fighting is in one period,
the worse the outside option is expected to be in future periods. As such,
periods of intense conflict are likely to be followed by periods of even
more intense conflict, since, on average, intense conflict in one period
lowers the opportunity costs of mobilization in future periods.
Finally, the model predicts that the ideological extremism or social
isolation of rebel leaders will be positively correlated with irregular con-
flict, but not with conventional conflict. When the rebel leaders are very
extreme or isolated, it is more likely that a scenario will arise in which
the population is not willing to mobilize, but the rebel leaders will still
engage in conflict. In the absence of strong mobilization by the popu-
lation, the best tactical choice available to the rebel leaders is irregular
conflict. Thus, extremism or isolation on the part of the rebel leaders in-
creases the risk of irregular conflict. Such a relationship does not exist
with respect to conventional conflict because conventional tactics are
attractive only when mobilization is high.
I. The Model
There are two kinds of players: the rebel leaders ða unitary actorÞ and
a continuum of population members of unit mass. Each population
member is described by a parameter h. It is common knowledge that
the h’s are distributed uniformly on ½
h; h.
There are two kinds of periods: conflict periods and peace periods.
The time line for a conflict period, t , is as follows:
1. The rebel organization has a capacity k
t21
.
2. Each member of the population, h, separately decides whether
to mobilize, a
h
t
∈ f0; 1g, where a
h
t
5 1 is interpreted as population
member h mobilizing.
3
Examples include the Algerian War of Independence ðKalyvas 1999Þ, the Russian
Revolution ðDeNardo 1985Þ, the Sunni insurgency in Iraq in 2003–4, the M-19 in Colombia
in the 1970s and 1980s, or the Second Palestinian Intifada. For other models of “van-
guard violence” leading to larger insurrections, see, among others, Olson ð1965Þ,Tullock
ð1971Þ, Popkin ð1979Þ,DeNardoð1985Þ, Finkel, Muller, and Opp ð1989Þ,Kuranð1989Þ,Loh-
mann ð1994Þ, Lichbach ð1995Þ,Chweð1999Þ, Ginkel and Smith ð1999Þ, Bueno de Mesquita
ð2010Þ, and Baliga and Sjo
¨
stro
¨
m ð2012Þ.
326 journal of political economy
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All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
3. The rebel leaders observe the measure of population members
who mobilized, l
t
, and choose a tactic a
R
t
∈ fI ; C; W g, with I rep-
resenting irregular tactics, C representing conventional tactics,
and W representing withdrawal from confl ict. Withdrawing is al-
lowed only if l
t
5 0.
4. If a
R
t
∈ fI ; Cg, there is conflict. During the fighting, a new capac-
ity, k
t
, is determined. If a
I
t
5 W, there is no conflict.
During a peace period, there is no mobilization decision nor is there
any conflict. The game starts in a conflict period. It transitions to a
peace period if the rebel leaders withdraw from conflict. Withdrawing
from conflict is an absorbing state: the game cannot transition from a
peace period to a conflict period. As noted above, rebel leaders can with-
draw from conflict only if there is not a positive measure of population
members who have mobilized to fight. The game lasts two periods.
Rebel capacity, k
t
, is the realization of a random variable distributed
according to an absolutely continuous cumulative distribution function,
F
k
t21
, with mean k
t21
and support ð0, `Þ. The associated dens ity is f
k
t21
.
These distributions are ordered by first-order stochastic dominance.
That is, F
k
first-order stochastically dominates F
k
0
if k
>
k
0
. The distribu-
tions and k
0
are common knowledge.
In each period, the outside option has a common component, u
t
,
which is the realization of a random variable distributed according to
an absolutely continuous cumulative distribution function, G
u
t21
;l
t21
, with
support ½
u; u. The associated density is g
u
t21
;l
t21
. These distributions are
ordered by first-order stochastic dominance in both u
t21
and 2l
t21
. The
first of these implies that the better the outside option today, the better
the expected outside option tomorrow. The idea behind the second is
that the more people who mobilize for conflict today, the more intense
the fighting is, and so more damage is done to tomorrow’s expected
outside option. The distributions, l
0
,andu
0
are common knowledge. The
realization of u
t
is observed by all players.
A. Technology of Conflict
In a period t, the returns to conventional conflict are
B
C
t
5 k
t
v
C
l
t
and the returns to irregular conflict are
B
I
t
5 k
t
v
I
l
t
1 tðÞ:
The parameters v
C
, v
I
>
0 capture facts about the society that determine
how responsive the effectiveness of conventional and irregular tactics is
rebel tactics 327
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