IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ginixx/v45y2019i1p1-27.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Explaining the number of rebel groups in civil wars

Author

Listed:
  • Barbara F. Walter

Abstract

Why do multiple rebel groups form in some civil wars but not others? Since 1946, only half of all civil wars were fought by a single rebel group; the rest were fought by multiple groups. This article argues that this variation is determined by the incentives political entrepreneurs have to enter a war. The higher the demand for political change and the lower the costs of fighting, the more incentives entrepreneurs have to form their own group. Analyzing UCDP data for all civil wars between 1946 and 2015 I find that the two measures of demand – the number of identifiable ethnic or religious groups in a country and the size of the disgruntled population – have the most consistent effects, but that key measures of costs such as the size of the government military also matter. A detailed analysis of the Ethiopian case further reveals the influence of external intervention on the formation of rebel groups. These results suggest that rebel groups emerge in civil wars in rational, predictable ways related to the ease by which rebel elites can mobilize separate groups for fighting.

Suggested Citation

  • Barbara F. Walter, 2019. "Explaining the number of rebel groups in civil wars," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(1), pages 1-27, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ginixx:v:45:y:2019:i:1:p:1-27
    DOI: 10.1080/03050629.2019.1554573
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03050629.2019.1554573
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03050629.2019.1554573?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl, 2020. "On-Side fighting in civil war: The logic of mortal alignment in Syria," Rationality and Society, , vol. 32(4), pages 402-460, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ginixx:v:45:y:2019:i:1:p:1-27. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GINI20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.