A network approach to rebel fighting durations in civil wars

Abstract

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 actorcentric 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 multiactor 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.Date: February 25, 2020 Version 2.01. We are indebted to Jude Hays for initial hints and inspiration on the setup of the statistical model. We thank Lars-