Abstract
The theoretical relationship between insurgent power (or capabilities) and violence is not clear. On the one hand, more troops may lead to more death; yet on the other, as insurgents’ power within the conflict increases their incentive for violence against civilians should decline. Thus, there exists a tension between the ability and the incentive to kill. Aggregate assessments of insurgent capability are largely insufficient for explaining violence against civilians because they cannot speak to this tension. Whether groups choose to indulge in violence or not is more likely related to the manner in which specific components of power affect a group’s opportunities to engage in violence and its willingness to do so. Disaggregating insurgent power resources and examining their interplay offers new insights into the motives for civilian killing as well as providing additional empirical evidence for existing theories. I test hypotheses regarding the relationship between these disaggregated strength components and insurgent violence using a new dyadic dataset on insurgent characteristics and recent data on civilian targeting in civil war. The results reveal that groups with high levels of combat capabilities kill larger numbers of civilians. However, strong popular support dampens the effect of high combat capabilities on insurgent violence. Additionally, insurgents that enjoy effective control over territory and a relatively high degree of central control over their forces use comparatively less violence than those that do not.
Published Version
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