Rebel Territorial Control and Civilian Collective Action in Civil War: Evidence from the Communist Insurgency in the Philippines

Abstract

Under what conditions do rebel organizations control territory during civil war? How do civilians influence the distribution of territorial control? This article introduces a civilian agency theory, emphasizing community collective action capacity (CAC) defined by underlying social network structure, to complement existing explanations of territorial control. I argue communities with greater CAC mobilize information and resources more efficiently, increasing belligerents’ incentives to control territory. However, CAC also increases community bargaining power to demand costly investments in governance, partially offsetting these gains. CAC increases rebel control in areas of state neglect. But, as state service provision increases, communities leverage CAC to demand prohibitively costly rebel governance, deterring rebel control. This article tests the theory in the context of the communist insurgency in the Philippines, using military intelligence reports from 2011 to 2014 to measure village-level communist insurgent territorial control and a household-level census (2008–2010) to measure village CAC. Interviews with village elders in Eastern Mindanao illustrate causal mechanisms and explore alternative explanations.

The Social Terrain of Rebel Held Territory

“…One of the main reasons rebels seek to control territory is to gain access to population-based resources (Rubin 2020), which include civilians' provision of food, financial contributions, shelter, and perhaps most importantly, information. 4 Rebels can access these population-based resources through violent coercion, but they can also use institutions, which reduce the need to rely on coercion to control the civilian population, which is not costless for rebel groups.…”

Social Cohesion and Community Displacement in Armed Conflict: Evidence from Palestinian Villages in the 1948 War

“…In areas in which belligerent forces are more reliant on local collaboration, the civilian population may leverage its (limited) power to shape the local political order under belligerent presence (Arjona 2016;Kaplan 2017;Rubin 2020). Even where communities lack capacity to influence belligerent behavior, civilians may (rationally) choose to remain in their homes despite violence (Engel and Ibáñez 2007;Melander and Öberg 2006;Steele 2009).…”

“…;Jackson, Rodriguez-Barraquer, and Tan 2012;Siegel 2009), including in conflict settings(Arjona 2016;Dorff 2017;Gade 2020;Kaplan 2017;Krause 2018;Parkinson 2013;Petersen 2001;Rubin 2020) Kaplan (2017). argues that communities with greater "organizational capacity" are more successful in retaining autonomy from belligerent control and escaping violence during civil war and, though left unexplored suggests that organizational capacity may facilitate collective exodus from conflict zones (pg.…”

Civilian Contention in Civil War: How Ideational Factors Shape Community Responses to Armed Groups

“…Although recent studies have explored the conditions under which these types of community level responses to violent actors are more likely to emerge, and their potential effects on armed groups' behavior (Arjona, 2016;Kaplan, 2017;Masullo, 2017;Rubin, 2019), we still know little about why they take different forms when they emerge. Grassroots responses range from everyday forms of resistance (Scott, 1985) and disguised collective action (Fu, 2017) to the creation of zones of peace (Hancock & Mitchell, 2007) and the formation of community-initiated militias (Jentzsch, 2014;Schubiger, 2019).…”

“…This omission is problematic: not only is noncooperation common enough to be important in its own right, but it also has the power to shape war trajectories and outcomes in consequential ways. Recent studies have shown that it can affect the level of violence that armed groups inflict on civilians (Kaplan, 2017), the distribution of territorial control and the establishment of rebel governance (Arjona, 2016;Rubin, 2019), communities' resilience to communal violence (Krause, 2018), and communities' capacity to engage in postconflict reconstruction (Masullo, 2018).…”