Battle losses and rebel violence: Raising the costs for fighting

Terrorism and Political Violence

Volumn 19, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 205-222

  Hultman, Lisa ^a,b  

^a UPPSALA UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

^b Box 514 ^*  (Sweden)

Author keywords

Battle outcome; Conflict strategy; Internal conflict; Rebel groups; Violence against civilians

Indexed keywords

EID: 34147164607     PISSN: 09546553     EISSN: 15561836     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09546550701246866     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Kristine Eck and Lisa Hultman, "One-Sided Violence Against Civilians in War: Insights from New Fatality Data," Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 2 (forthcoming in 2007).
2. Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
3. Marie-Joëlle Zahar, "Protégés, Clients, Cannon Fodder: Civilians in the Calculus of Militias," in Adekeye Adebajo and Chandra Lekha Sriram, eds., Managing Armed Conflicts in the 21st Century (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 117.
4. Ibid., 112.
5. Stathis N. Kalyvas, "Wanton and Senseless? The Logic of Massacres in Algeria," Rationality and Society 11, no. 3 (1999): 243-285; Kalyvas (see note 2 above).
6. Thandika Mkandawire, "The Terrible Toll of Post-Colonial 'Rebel Movements' in Africa: Towards an Explanation of the Violence Against the Peasantry," Journal of Modern African Studies 40, no. 2 (2002): 181-215.
7. Jeremy M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006);
8. Macartan Humphreys and Jeremy M. Weinstein, "Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War: Determinants of the Strategies of Warring Factions," American Political Science Review 100, no. 3 (2006): 429-447; Zahar (see note 3 above).
9. Jean-Paul Azam, "Looting and Conflict between Ethnoregional Groups: Lessons for State Formation in Africa," Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 1 (2002): 131-153. Azam models such violent behavior in ethnoregional intergroup conflicts, based on the assumption that the warlord wants the soldiers to engage in fighting only-which increases the prospects of winning-while the soldiers may choose to shirk and instead engage in looting.
10. Human Rights Watch, "Burundi: The Gatumba Massacre. War Crimes and Political Agendas," Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper (September 2004): 4-6.
11. United Nations, "Joint Report of the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations Operation in Burundi and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights into the Gatumba Massacre" (5 October 2004), §16.
12. Human Rights Watch (see note 9 above): 1-2.
13. I. William Zartman, "Dynamics and Constraints in Negotiation in Internal Conflict," in I. W. Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace: Negotiating an End to Civil Wars (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995), 7.
14. In the bargaining literature on interstate wars, it is recognized that fighting continuously influences the parties' expectations a bout the outcome of the war. See, for example, Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966);
15. Harrison R. Wagner, "Bargaining and War," American Journal of Political Science 44, no. 3 (2000): 469-484;
16. Darren Filson and Suzanne Werner, "A Bargaining Model of War and Peace: Anticipating the Onset, Duration, and Outcome of War," American Journal of Political Science 46, no. 4 (2002): 819-837;
17. Branislav L. Slantchev, "The Principle of Convergence in Wartime Negotiations," American Political Science Review 97, no. 4 (2003): 621-632;
18. Robert Powell, "Bargaining and Learning While Fighting," American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 2 (2004): 344-361. Even though many rebel groups are so weak that the government's probability of winning is close to 1, this is not always the case. Especially in weak states, some groups can pose a real threat to the state power. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that relative capabilities play an important role also in internal conflicts.
19. Dan Reiter, "Exploring the Bargaining Model of War," Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 1 (2003): 33.
20. Mark Irving Lichbach, The Rebel's Dilemma (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1995), 66.
21. This is similar to Suzanne Werner and Amy Yuen, "Making and Keeping Peace," International Organization 59, no. 2 (2005): 261-292. They present a model about interstate wars, but the underlying theoretical idea is the same: battle outcome affects the parties' expectations about the outcome of continued fighting, thereby determining whether or not the parties can agree on a contract zone, i.e., a bargaining range.
22. M. L. R. Smith, "Strategy in an Age of Low-Intensity' Warfare: Why Clausewitz Is Still More Relevant Than His Critics," in Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jan Angstrom, eds., Rethinking the Nature of War (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 49.
23. James D. Fearon, "Threats to Use Force: Costly Signals and Bargaining in International Crises," Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley (1994), 22. This particular statement concerns interstate relations, but a similar argument has been made regarding intrastate conflicts: see Magnus Öberg, "The Onset of Ethnic War as a Bargaining Process: Testing a Costly Signalling Model," Ph.D. Dissertation, Report no. 65, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University (2002).
24. As a consequence of rebel losses, we can expect a process of separation of types. Those groups that are too weak to win battles, but at the same time not resolved enough to continue fighting, will self-select themselves out of the conflict: either by striking an explicit agreement with the government or by ceasing their activity, which will eventually lead to an implicit settlement of the conflict.
25. Schelling (see note 13 above), 2.
26. See Harvey E. Lapan and Todd Sandier, "Terrorism and Signalling," European Journal of Political Economy 9 (1993): 383-397. They also propose that terrorist groups employ violent strategies to affect the government's perceived future costs. Interesting to note is that in their model, the government has incomplete information about the terrorist group's resources, and attacks are used to signal capabilities. During conflict, however, a rebel group's resources are revealed through fighting. What I argue is that violence can still be used to impose costs on the government and thereby alter the government's cost calculus as to whether it is worth fighting to the end or whether it is cheaper to make concessions.
27. Danny Hoffman, "The Civilian Target in Sierra Leone and Liberia: Political Power, Military Strategy, and Humanitarian Intervention," African Affairs 103 (2004): 222.
28. Mia M. Bloom, "Palestinian Suicide Bombing: Public Support, Market Share, and Outbidding," Political Science Quarterly 119, no. 1 (2004): 83.
29. Martha Crenshaw, "The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Strategic Choice," in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind (Washington, D.C.; Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1998), 18.
30. Anthony Vinci, "The Strategic Use of Fear by the Lord's Resistance Army," Small Wars and Insurgencies 16, no. 3 (2005): 360-381.
31. Lotta Harbom, ed., "States in Armed Conflict 2004," Report no. 71, Department of Peace & Conflict Research, Uppsala University (2005). More information about the program is also available on http://www.ucdp.uu.se.
32. In cases when a conflict begins during the period, the group is included from the first month of observed battle death. In cases where there is a clear termination of a conflict, e.g., when there is a peace agreement ending the conflict or when one party is clearly defeated or dissolved, the group exits the dataset.
33. UCDP only reports annual figures, so these monthly data points are based on the author's own readings of the events coding sheets that constitute the foundation for the annual aggregate numbers. The figures are thus my own interpretation of the information provided and not the official figures of UCDP. The same applies to the independent variables on battle deaths.
34. For a full explanation of the one-sided coding, see Eck and Hultman (see note 1 above).
35. For example, Azam (see note 8 above) proposes that an increased level of looting, including violence against civilians, by one party increases the adversary's incentives for doing the same.
36. In the cases where this date is missing, another onset date was used: preferably "first use of armed force." When only a year, and not the actual month, is indicated as the conflict start by UCDP, I have by default started counting from July that year.
37. Stathis N. Kalyvas, "Warfare in Civil Wars," in Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jan Angstrom, eds., Rethinking the Nature of War (London: Frank Cass, 2005): 88-108.
38. Desirée Nilsson, "In the Shadow of Settlement: Multiple Rebel Groups and Precarious Peace," Ph.D. Dissertation, Report no. 73, Department of Peace & Conflict Research, Uppsala University (2006).
39. Mia Bloom (see note 23 above): 61-88.
40. Scott J. Long, Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997), 230-238;
41. Gary King, "Event Count Models for International Relations: Generalizations and Applications," International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 2 (1989): 129.
42. Long (see note 35 above), 242; Christopher J. W. Zorn, "An Analytic and Empirical Examination of Zero-Inflated and Hurdle Poisson Specifications," Sociological Methods & Research 26, no. 3 (1998): 375.
43. To ensure the correct choice of estimator, a Vuong-test will be carried out to compare the statistical fit of the ZINB to the negative binomial regression model, which does not assume this dual process.
44. Rick L. Williams, "A Note on Robust Variance Estimation for Cluster-Correlated Data," Biometrics 56, no. 2 (2000): 645.
45. Scott J. Long and Jeremy Freese, Regression Models for Categorical Dependent Variables Using Stata, updated for Stata 8 (College Station, TX: Stata Press, 2003), 270-271. Note that the percent change is calculated based on the negative binomial function, and not on those cases that have a probability of 1 of being a zero.
46. Ivan Arreguín-Toft, "How the Weak Win Wars," International Security 26, no. 3 (2001): 93-128.
47. See, e.g., Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, "Greed and Grievance in Civil War," Oxford Economic Papers 56 (2004): 569;
48. Clayton L. Thyne, "ABC's, 123's, and the Golden Rule: The Pacifying Effect of Education on Civil War, 1980-1999," International Studies Quarterly 50 (2006): 733-754.
49. World Development Indicators (WDI), The World Bank Group, accessed online (14 December 2006) on http://devdata.worldbank.org/dataonline/.
50. Alexander B. Downes, "Targeting Civilians in War," Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago (2004); Benjamin Valentino, Paul Huth and Dylan Balch-Lindsay, "Draining the Sea: Mass Killing and Guerrilla Warfare," International Organization 58, no. 2 (2004): pp.375-407. While Downes studies only interstate wars, Valentino et al. include both inter- and intrastate wars in their dataset.
51. Kalyvas (see note 2 above).
52. It should be noted that the empirical focus on territorial control in Kalyvas's study helps us to identify where violence takes place, whereas an examination of battle outcome answers the question when we can expect a group to target civilians.
53. See for example David A. Lake, "Rational Extremism: Understanding Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century," Dialogue International Organization (Spring 2002): 15-29;
54. Martha Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism," Comparative Politics 13, no. 4 (1981): 379-399.
55. Crenshaw (see note 46 above), 387.
56. Brian Crozier, The Rebels: A Study of Post-War Insurrections (London: Chatto and Windus, 1960), 159.