Voting for Militants: Rebel Elections in Civil War

What are the different political institutions rebels create to engage captive civilian populations, and how do they arrive at distinct political arrangements? Rebel-controlled territories host a diversity of political institutions ranging from structures designed to promote democratic decision-making to martial law. Although previous research has focused on rebel social service provision and other aspects of rebel governance, few have investigated variation in the institutional arrangements rebels adopt. In this article, we identify a set of four dimensions along which rebel political institutions vary leading to six ideal–typical forms of political arrangements. We argue that an iterative and dynamic stepwise process, determined by rebel group strategies and local conditions, produces one of these political institutional outcomes. Importantly, the type of rebel political institutions within one location can change throughout the war, and variation sometimes emerges across territories the same rebel group controls. We demonstrate the plausibility of our arguments through a series of illustrative case studies that correspond to the formation processes of our six ideal–typical political arrangements. We conclude with recommendations for future research.

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Conceptualizing and Comparing Rebel Political Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Typology of Rebel Political Institutional Arrangements

Mampilly

Stewart

2020

“…For example, in Colombia, civilian resistance to rebel governance was less likely in areas where pre-existing institutions were both legitimate and effective (Arjona 2016, 71). Additionally, new research in this special issue has found that rebel governance is shaped by the legacy of pre-existing political institutions (Mampilly and Stewart 2021), that some rebel groups have created parallel judicial systems in contexts where state legal systems are viewed as corrupt (Loyle 2021), and that some rebel groups conduct elections as a strategy to differentiate themselves from incumbent states (Cunningham, Huang, and Sawwyer 2021). I build upon these findings to argue that civilian perceptions of the quality of governance provided by an incumbent state affects the displacement decisions of civilians living in territory captured by a rebel group that offers them a competing political order.…”

Section: A Theory Of Competitive Governance and Displacement Decisionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competitive Governance and Displacement Decisions Under Rebel Rule: Evidence from the Islamic State in Iraq

Revkin

2020

When rebel groups with state-building ambitions capture territory, who stays and why? Through semi-structured interviews and an original household survey in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which was controlled by the Islamic State for more than three years, I conduct a multi-method descriptive comparison of the characteristics of “stayers” against “leavers.” I test and find some quantitative and qualitative support for a theory of competitive governance: Civilians who perceived improvements in the quality of governance under IS rule—relative to the Iraqi state—were more likely to stay under IS rule than those who perceived no change or a deterioration, but displacement decisions are multi-causal, influenced by many factors including economic resources, social networks and family structures, information, threat perceptions, and ideology. These findings suggest that historical experiences with weak rule of law and bad governance by states may affect the attitudes and actions of civilians living under rebel governance.

“…In “Voting for Militants,” Cunningham, Huang, and Sawyer argue that rebel elections play a key role in eliciting external support by “cultivating legitimacy among international audiences” (Cunningham, Huang, and Sawyer 2021, 89). In addition to any localized benefits, observable (and often publicized) elections provide information to the international community and signal an openness to democratic practice and accountability toward civilians regardless of the rebels’ actual commitment to such principles.…”

Section: Dynamic Processes Of Rebel Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to the Special Feature on Dynamic Processes of Rebel Governance

Cunningham

Loyle

2020

Self Cite

Research on conflict processes has recently highlighted the myriad of tactics rebels use which are not violent in nature (cf. Petrova 2019 ; Ryckman 2019 ; Cunningham, Dahl, and Frugé 2017 ). Concurrently, rebel governance has drawn increasing attention from scholars and peacebuilding practitioners. In-depth historical studies of rebel groups highlight the activities and behaviors that rebels engage in beyond making war—such as providing social services and building local political institutions ( Mampilly 2011 ; Arjona 2016a ; Arjona, Kasfir, and Mampilly 2015 ). Complementing these works, studies have sought to provide cross-national examination of trends in these governance behaviors ( Huang 2016 ; Heger and Jung 2017 ; Stewart 2018 ). Despite this work, quantitative and formal research in conflict processes often ignores the insights that the rebel governance literature has generated, frequently focusing exclusively on violent tactics or considering governance issues primarily as part of conflict settlement processes. In this special feature, we work to integrate the study of rebel governance with the conflict processes literature, providing a conceptual link between the two while offering novel contributions to advance our understanding of the dynamic processes of rebel governance.