Why do rebel organizations splinter into competing factions during civil war? To explain this outcome, I leverage variation in rebel leadership. I argue that rebel leaders draw on their pre-war experiences—i.e., their military and political experiences—to manage their organizations during conflict. These experiences bear unique patterns of rebel management and, thus, corresponding risks of fragmentation. Empirical evidence comes from a two-stage research design and original data featuring over 200 rebel leaders from 1989 to 2014. In the first stage, I estimate the probability of group fragmentation with a series of logistic regression models. In the second stage, I use Cox proportional-hazards models to estimate leadership effects on the rate of group fragmentation. Results indicate that variation in rebel leadership corresponds with unique risks of fragmentation. In particular, the results suggest that leaders with real military experience are best equipped to maintain group cohesion. This study offers insight into the processes by which rebel groups splinter into armed factions. In addition, it makes an important contribution to the broader discussion on the roles of structure and agency in shaping the dynamics of civil war.
The recruitment and use of children in armed conflict remains a prevalent feature of modern civil war. But which conflict actors are more likely to recruit children? We argue that the process by which rebel groups form shapes their recruitment strategies. Specifically, we contend that rebels that form as splinter factions from the ranks of pre-existing rebel organizations are more likely to recruit child soldiers than other rebel groups. Splinter groups face unique constraints as they materialize in the midst of an active conflict environment, necessitating that they mobilize a sufficient force to contend with existing competitors. As a result, rebel factions are more likely to pursue recruitment strategies that are low cost vis-à-vis alternatives, focusing on their immediate survival. Under such conditions, children become especially attractive recruits. Leveraging the Foundations of Rebel Group Emergence Dataset, our cross-national investigation of 237 rebel groups active between 1989 and 2011 provides robust support for our hypothesis that splinter factions are strongly associated with the recruitment of children.
While the social and political consequences of electoral violence are widely discussed in the literature, less is known about the economic repercussions of electoral violence. Our study investigates this dynamic, asking how episodes of electoral violence affect existing levels of foreign direct investment. We argue that, when managing their investments in foreign markets, multinational firms weigh the expected gains of the investment with the probability that the host country experiences significant lapses in political stability. Electoral violence signals a greater risk of this undesirable outcome and, thus, increases the probability that firms divest in favor of more favorable investment environments. Using firm-level data, we investigate the investment behavior of seventy-seven multinational firms in twenty-five Sub-Saharan African countries from 1995 to 2008 with a series of logistic regression models. Directly modeling the choices that firms make with respect to yearly changes in investment, we demonstrate that firms are more likely to divest following events of electoral violence in a host country. This study carries important implications for our understanding of how electoral violence may undermine the economic stability of emerging economies.
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