Brothers or others in arms? Civilian constituencies and rebel fragmentation in civil war
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| Author | Eric S Mosinger |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343316675907 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Brothers or others in arms? Civilian
constituencies and rebel fragmentation
in civil war
Eric S Mosinger
Department of Political Science, University of California, Irvine
Abstract
Why do united rebel fronts emerge in some insurgencies, while in other insurgencies multiple rebel groups mobilize
independently to challenge the state, and often, each other? I develop a diffusion model of rebel fragmentation in
which participation in rebellion spreads, completely or incompletely, through networks of civilians and dissidents.
Using this theoretical framework I hypothesize that two factors jointly determine whether a rebel movement remains
unified or fragments: the rebels’ investment in civilian mobilization, and the overall level of civilian grievances. The
theory predicts that widely shared grievances motivate the formation of many small dissident groups willing to
challenge the regime. Given the difficulty of collective action between disparate opposition actors, an emerging rebel
movement will tend towards fragmentation when popular grievances are high. Yet extremely high civilian grievances
can also help rebels activate broad, overlapping civilian social networks that serve to bridge together dissident groups.
Mass-mobilizing rebel groups, benefiting from the participation of broad civilian networks, are most likely to forge
and maintain a unified rebel front. I test this theory alongside several alternatives drawn from cross-national studies of
conflict using regression analysis. The quantitative evidence lends considerable credence to the role of rebel con-
stituencies in preventing or fomenting rebel fragmentation.
Keywords
civil war, civilian constituencies, conflict dynamics, grievances, rebel fragmentation
Introduction
Why do united rebel fronts emerge in some insurgencies,
while in others multiple rebel groups mobilize to chal-
lenge the state, and often, each other? Fragmented civil
wars are increasingly common and are more intractable
than ‘traditional’ civil wars waged by a single insurgent
group (Stedman, 1997). According to the UCDP Dya-
dic Dataset (Themne
´r & Wallensteen, 2015), between
the years 1947 and 2013 a government fought multiple
rebel groups simultaneously at some point in 26.4% of
all internal conflicts, a number that should be regarded as
conservative.
1
The difference between single-rebel and
multiparty civil war is critical for both conflict
scholarship and peacebuilding efforts, as multiparty civil
wars are more severe by nearly every measure than
‘traditional’ civil wars waged by a single insurgent group.
Scholars have found evidence that, compared with con-
flicts between a government and a single rebel group,
multiparty civil wars last longer because they possess
fewer equilibrium bargaining solutions than dyadic con-
tests (Cunningham, 2006: 877), are more violent
because each rebel group fights a ‘dual contest’ against
both the state and other rebel groups (Cunningham,
Bakke & Seymour, 2012: 69), and are more likely to
recur after settlement, because wartime alliances of
convenience between rebel groups are vulnerable to
Corresponding author:
emosinge@uci.edu
1
This is almost certainly an undercount due to th e censoring of
smaller groups from the data.
Journal of Peace Research
2018, Vol. 55(1) 62–77
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343316675907
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postwar power-sharing disputes (Stedman, 1997: 5;
Atlas & Licklider, 1999).
The common thread in this literature is that inter-
rebel rivalries, absent in wars with only one major rebel
group, exacerbate the threat to civilians associated with
civil war. Despite this grim distinction, very little empiri-
cal research has been conducted on how multiparty
insurgencies begin and why the many violent groups that
fight them mobilize.
2
Fortunately, emerging scholarship
on the fragmentation of individual rebel groups (Stani-
land, 2014), violent mobilization processes (McDoom,
2013; Parkinson, 2013; Sarbahi, 2014), and the link
between civilian grievances and rebellion (Cederman,
Gleditsch & Buhaug, 2013), provides significant lever-
age for explaining rebel fragmentation.
Taking these studies as a point of departure, this arti-
cle advances a diffusion model of rebel fragmentation in
which participation in rebellion spreads, completely or
incompletely, through networks of civilians and dissi-
dents. Using this theoretical framework I hypothesize
that two factors jointly determine whether a rebel move-
ment unifies or fragments over time: the insurgents’
investment in civilian mobilization, and the overall level
of civilian grievances. Specifically, my ‘civilian constitu-
ency’ theory contends that unified rebel movements
occur when a single rebel gro up monopolizes civilian
support to the greatest extent possible. I argue that ‘sta-
tionary’ rebel groups, which use public goods provision,
social ties, and ideological persuasion to foster consensual
rather than coercive relationships with civilians, are more
likely to build unified rebel movements than predatory
‘roving’ rebel groups. Meanwhile, civilian grievances,
whether caused by economic inequality (or vulnerabil-
ity), political exclusion, ethnic resentments, or shocks to
regime legitimacy, can render rebel unity more difficult
to achieve and retain. This is because widespread grie-
vances motivate the formation of many dissident groups
willing to challenge the regime. Given the difficulty of
collective action between disparate opposition actors,
many dissident groups may in turn provide materiel and
recruits to many different armed groups. Yet particularly
acute grievances can also help rebels mobilize broad,
overlapping civilian social networks that serve to bridge
together rebel and dissident groups. In sum, mass-
mobilizing ‘stationary’ rebel groups, benefiting from the
participation of broad civilian networks, are most likely
to forge and maintain a unified rebel front.
This article is situated at the confluence of two
research agendas. First, by testing factors leading to rebel
fragmentation, I join a growing chorus of scholars intent
on challenging the long-held simplifying assumption
that civil wars entail a coherent rebel group and state
dyad (Bakke, Cunningham & Seymour, 2012; Cun-
ningham, Bakke & Seymour, 2012; McLauchlin &
Pearlman, 2012; Warren & Troy, 2014; Driscoll,
2015). Second, by examining the roles of social and
political processes in which rebel groups are embedded,
rather than underperforming structural variables, this
article contributes to the ‘organizational turn’ in conflict
research (Sanı
´n & Wood, 2014: 223). Specifically, I test
how social-organizational theories of rebellion, associated
with authors such as Staniland (2014), Sarbahi (2014),
and Sanı
´n & Wood (2014), can be adapted to a higher
level of analysis, namely, rebel movements and conflicts
as a whole.
The article proceeds as follows. First, I describe a
novel theory of rebel fragmentation and unity, based
on threshold models of political mobilization, followed
by a qualitative description of the theory’s two main
independent variables: Rebel type and Civilian grievances.
Second, I present my quantitative research design and
regression analysis. I conclude with a brief discussion of
the potential implications of my findings for future
research in conflict studies.
Explaining rebel fragmentation: Civilian
constituency theory
What is rebel fragmentation? In an influential article,
Cunningham, Bakke & Seymour (2012: 266) define
rebel fragmentation as consisting of ‘three dimensions
along which movements fragment or cohere: (1) the
number of organizations in a movement; (2) the degree
of institutionalization across these organizations; and (3)
the distribution of power among them’. I adopt this
definition, although my analysis focuses primarily on the
first and third of these dimensions. I also follow Cun-
ningham, Bakke & Seymour (2012: 266) in defining a
rebel movement as a set of active rebel organizations (or,
interchangeably, rebel groups) ‘mobilized around a collec-
tive identity in pursuit of particular interests related to
this identity in a fundamental way’.
Below, I present a stylized account of how different
types of rebel groups mobilize civilian constituencies of
differing sizes, how widespread grievances can either
complicate or contribute to rebel mobilization efforts,
and how different configurations of civilianconstituencies
ultimately determine whether an initial rebel group will
2
Seymour, Bakke & Cunningham (2015) is a notable exception.
Mosinger 63
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