Violent Rebellion Research Articles

Unpacking the Impact of External Support on Rebel Groups: Does it Fuel or Quell Violence Against Civilians?

ABSTRACT In civil conflicts, the relations of rebel groups with civilians are largely influenced by the rebels’ capabilities. Seeking external resources to enhance their military efforts and resilience, rebel groups’ access to those resources shapes their war strategies, including violence against civilians. Unlike the extant research drawing on highly aggregated designs, we argue that not every form of support affects rebels’ violent behaviour in the same direction. In this study, we test whether different forms of external support are associated with the level of rebel violence against civilians by using comprehensive data on foreign support to rebel groups in intrastate conflicts between 1989 and 2017. The findings support the need for disaggregation of foreign support to understand better the dynamics in this relationship. The results show that external support in the forms of access to infrastructure, from both state and non-state actors, and troops from non-state actors are associated with a decrease in civilian victimisation.

Katniss Everdeen’s Act of Rebellion in the Hunger Games Movie

This study is about the analysis of Katniss Everdeen’s Act of Rebellion in the Hunger Games Movie. This study aims to answer three research questions about Katniss Everdeen’s rebellious actions. The first is what are the causes of Katniss's rebellious actions? The second is what are the effects of Katniss's rebellious actions? The third is what are the types of Katniss's rebellion? In this study, the writer uses qualitative research. The writer uses the theory of Marxism by Karl Marx in Tsoulfidis (2010) and the theory of Rebellion by Kautilya (1986). The finding shows 3 (three) causes of Katniss’ Rebellion. They are resource imbalance, provocation, and social inequalities as key factors. Regarding the effects of Katniss‘ rebellion, the finding shows 2 (two) effects. They are negative and positive impacts. Regarding the types of Katniss‘ rebellion, the writer found 5 (five) types of Katniss‘ Rebellion. They are Non-violent rebellion, Violent rebellion, social rebellion, Political rebellion, and Ideological rebellion.

“If your ox does not pull, what are you going to do?”: Persistent Violence in South Africa’s Deep-Level Gold Mines and Its Contribution to the 1922 Rand Rebellion

Abstract The 1922 Rand Rebellion was the only instance of worker protest in the twentieth century in which a modern state used tanks and military airplanes, as well as mounted infantry, to suppress striking workers. These circumstances were unprecedented in their own time and for most of the century. The compressed and intensely violent rebellion of twenty thousand white mineworkers in South Africa’s gold mines had several overlapping features. Within a matter of days—from 6 to 12 March—it went from a general strike to a racial pogrom and insurrection against the government of Prime Minister Jan Smuts. Throughout all these twists and turns, the battle standard remained, “Workers of the world unite and fight for a White South Africa!” Race and violence were integral features of South Africa’s industrial history, but they do not explain the moments when discrete groups of people chose to use them as weapons or bargaining tools. At the close of the First World War, for instance, South Africa’s white mine workers demanded a more comprehensive distribution of the privileges of white supremacy, but in a manner that was both violent and contentious. Consequently, South Africa’s immediate postwar period became one of the most violent moments in its history.

(Re)Emerging disease and conflict risk in Africa, 1997-2019.

While the number of infectious zoonotic disease outbreaks has been rising, their impact on civil war and social conflict is poorly understood. This study addresses this fundamental limitation using a geolocated monthly dataset on 22 zoonotic diseases in Africa. Zoonotic disease is a key driver of new epidemics, making such pathogens a useful test case. Results suggest that over the January 1997 to December 2019 period, zoonotic disease was negatively associated with state initiation of civil conflict and positively associated with social conflict involving identity militias. Additional analyses find that the effect for identity militias is consistent with a causal interpretation. Rebel violence is not significantly associated with outbreaks. The results are robust to endogeneity concerns and additional sensitivity analyses.

Land Reform Versus Repression in Counterinsurgency: Evidence From El Salvador

Land reform has been employed as a component of counterinsurgency strategies to inoculate peasants against rebel appeals by giving peasants their own land. However, the remedial effects of land reform can be undermined by right wing violence and rebel violence intended to subvert land reform implementation. We used municipio level data on land reform and election results from El Salvador to test propositions on the competing effects of land reform and political violence - right wing and rebel - on the distribution of popular support between the regime versus the rebels versus anti-reform parties in the regime. We find consistent evidence across three elections that “land to the tiller” forms of agrarian reform do increase support for the regime while right wing violence does erode support for reformist parties.

Communal Geographies and Peasant Insurgency in Colonial Myanmar

This article makes two arguments, one theoretical and the other empirical. The first is that Ranajit Guha’s classic text, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, contains generative but overlooked spatial concepts for uncovering communal geographies. The second is that the Hsaya San peasant rebellion, which rocked British authority in Myanmar from late 1930 until 1932, fostered a new communal geography. These two arguments come together through my elaboration and utilisation of Guha’s ideas to interpret rebel violence against Chin villages.

The Urban Origins of Rebellion

The emphasis in recent decades on weak state capacity as an explanation of civil war detracts from an important fact: some of the deadliest and most protracted rebellions since WWII arose not where the state was weak, but rather in areas of significant state power. This study challenges the predominance-of-peripheral-conflict paradigm by disentangling rebel formation from civil war onset and emphasizing the urban origins of numerous rebel groups. Quantitative analyses show that three group types—military-, social interest-, and political party-based groups—are far more likely to form in large cities, especially the capital, and far less likely to form in the rural countryside. Case studies then illustrate the constraints and opportunities nascent rebel groups of each type face. This study advances the field’s understanding of a surprisingly large number of violent rebellions that current mainstream approaches and the emphasis on weak states and conflict opportunities cannot effectively explain.

The Fortification Dilemma: Border Control and Rebel Violence

AbstractWhere cross‐border sanctuaries enable rebels to marshal external support, classical theories of counterinsurgency extol the strategic value of border fortification. By sealing borders, counterinsurgents can erode transnational militants’ resources, degrading the quality of rebellion. Extending resource‐centric theories of conflict, I posit a fortification dilemma inherent in this strategy. Externally supplied rebels can afford conventional attacks and civilian victimization. When border fortifications interdict their foreign logistics, insurgents compensate by cultivating greater local support. In turn, rebels prefer more irregular attacks and cooperative relations with civilians. Hence, counterinsurgent border fortification trades off reduced rebel capabilities for greater competition over local hearts and minds. I test this theory using declassified microdata on border fortification and violence in Iraq. Results highlight the central link between border control and cross‐border militancy, and show how governments can contest the transnational dimensions of civil wars, such as external rebel sponsorship.

Descriptive representation and conflict reduction: Evidence from India’s Maoist rebellion

Can greater inclusion in democracy for historically disadvantaged groups reduce rebel violence? Democracy-building is a common tool in counterinsurgencies and post-conflict states, yet existing scholarship has faced obstacles in measuring the independent effect of democratic reforms. We evaluate whether quotas for Scheduled Tribes in local councils reduced rebel violence in Chhattisgarh, an Indian state featuring high-intensity Maoist insurgent activity. These quotas did not originate as a counterinsurgency technique, but instead as an effort to address the longstanding political marginalization of India’s Scheduled Tribes. We employ a geographic regression discontinuity design to study the wartime effects of quotas implemented in Chhattisgarh, finding that reservations reduced Maoist violence in the state. Exploratory analyses of mechanisms suggest that reservations reduced violence by bringing local elected officials closer to state security forces, providing a windfall of valuable information to counterinsurgents. Our study shows that institutional engineering, like reforms to create more inclusive representative democracy, can shape the trajectory of insurgent violence. Institutional engineering creating more inclusive representative democracy during an ongoing conflict can affect the political economy of information sharing in civil war and, ultimately, affect the trajectory of insurgent violence.

Colonial Institutions and Civil War: Indirect Rule and Maoist Insurgency in India by Shivaji Mukherjee

The rise in intrastate conflict since the end of WWII has drawn much attention to the various incentives and opportunities that underpin violent rebellion, often resulting in protracted insurgencies. In his book Colonial Institutions and Civil War, Shivaji Mukherjee explores the breakout of insurgent movements in the era of decolonization since the 1950s. In particular, Mukherjee examines the role played by historical colonial institutions in shaping local socioeconomic and political structures that make the emergence and persistence of insurgencies more likely. Much of the literature focused on exploring the causes of terrorism, insurgencies, and civil war tends to place emphasis on the proximate reasons that trigger political violence by nonstate actors—for example, poverty, ethnic grievances, and exploitable natural resources like drug cultivation. Per Mukherjee, while these factors are important, they are inadequate in providing a comprehensive explanation of the contours of insurgencies, especially their occurrence in specific locations. In his work, Mukherjee takes into account a longer time horizon to move beyond studying proximate reasons of insurgencies and instead places the spotlight on colonial-era policies that established the structural conditions conducive to violent movements.

When to Go? A Conjoint Experiment on Social Networks, Violence, and Forced Migration Decisions in Eastern and Southeastern Turkey

Abstract How do heterogeneous patterns of violence affect people's decision to flee? We provide individual-level evidence on flight decision-making in light of violence with a conjoint experiment in Turkey. The results suggest that intense indiscriminate violence nearby forces individuals into the decision to leave. In contrast to previous studies, we find that the fear of repeated violence plays a more important role in flight decision-making than the attack frequency. The survey experiment reveals that violence committed by the government makes a decision to flee abroad more likely than rebel violence. We find that individuals with support networks abroad are less responsive to patterns of violence, making flight decisions more independently and being generally more inclined to move. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on forced migration with individual-level evidence on the decision-making process underlying flight reactions to violence.

Assessing the Impacts of Rebels on Economic Development in Conflict Zone, Kiramu District in Front, Oromia Regional State

This study aims to assess the impacts of rebels on economic development in Kiramu District, Oromia Regional State, and a conflict-prone District in Ethiopia. The study utilizes qualitative research methods, including key person interviews and document analysis, to gather data from the local community, government officials, and other stakeholders. The findings indicate that rebel violence has had a significant negative impact on economic development in the district, including hindering investment, discouraging economic growth, and disrupting economic activities. The lack of security and the risk of violence have created an atmosphere of apprehension and ambiguity, resulting in a dearth of economic opportunities. The displacement of people and the closure of businesses have led to job losses and a decline in income, contributing to poverty and food insecurity in the district. The study also pinpointed the need for conflict resolution and peacebuilding efforts to improve the security situation and create an enabling environment for economic development in the region. It recommends the involvement of local communities, government, and other stakeholders in the peacebuilding process to ensure sustainability and inclusivity.

T. K. Wilson. Killing Strangers: How Political Violence Became Modern.

In Killing Strangers: How Political Violence Became Modern, T. K. Wilson observes that “one of the key features of the modern political cosmos … is that the threat of assassination has democratized radically: and in doing so become impersonal” (129). Although “powerful individuals still remain the targets of violence” in today’s world, what Wilson sets out to explain is how so-called “little people,” or “those (formerly) of no account,” are now often among those targeted by individuals who practice “political violence” (129). In this book, that rubric is formally defined as “unofficial or rebel violence” (111). But the ways in which Wilson describes such violence would seem to conform to what most people would generally recognize as acts of “terrorism.” In directing analytical focus toward this type of violence, his book departs from much of the voluminous literature produced during the past decade and a half on other forms of political violence, much of it written by social scientists, which deals with a much more wide-ranging set of violent contexts and practices, including civil war, insurgency, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, among others.

DEVELOPMENT OF BUDGET RIGHT IN TURKEY

Budget can be expressed as the estimation of income and expenses for the next period. It is known that the income and expenses mentioned in ancient times were decided by the chieftain of that community. However, as a result of the arbitrary use of this authority, there has been an economic burden on the people. As a matter of fact, the people rebelled against the situation. Thus, the first steps were taken towards realizing the use of the public budget within the framework of certain principles. These developments were called budget rights and led to violent events in some periods. In other words, it is known that the acquisition of the budget right can be achieved as a result of bloody rebellions that took place in some periods. While this is the case in the West, in Turkey, it is possible to talk about the budget right offered to the public by the rulers rather than violent rebellions. The development of the budget right in Turkey dates back to the Ottoman Empire. However, in this period, it does not seem possible to talk about the right to budget in the modern sense. As a matter of fact, it is known that the right to the budget cannot be used effectively, and the audit of the budgetary applications cannot be made. In Turkey, it is seen that the right to budget in the modern sense was gained with the Republican period. In this study, it is aimed to focus on the development of the budget right in Turkey and how the 2017 Constitutional amendment affected the budget right. It is observed that some of the arrangements on the budget brought by the Presidential Government System may negatively affect the budget right. Keywords: Budget, Auditing, Budget Right, Presidential Government System.

State formation, social unrest and cultural distance

What determines violent reaction during state formation processes? To address this question, we exploit the uprisings that occurred when southern Italy was annexed to Piedmont during Italian unification in the 1860s. We assemble a novel dataset on episodes of brigandage, a form of violent rebellion against the unitary government, and on pre-unification social and economic characteristics of southern Italian municipalities. We find that the intensity of brigandage is ceteris paribus lower in and close to settlements of Piedmontese origin. We argue that geographical distance from these communities is a proxy for cultural distance from the Piedmontese rulers. Thus, our results suggest that, in the context of state formation, cultural proximity to the new ruler reduces social unrest by local communities. After ruling out alternative mechanisms consistent with the economic literature, we provide suggestive evidence of cultural persistence and diffusion in our context, and discuss two possible culture-based drivers of our results: social identification with the Piedmontese rulers, and a clash between local values and some specific content of the new institutions.

The Importance of UN Security Council Resolutions in Peacekeeping Operations*

The influence of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping in civil conflict has received important consideration in a growing body of literature. Little research, however, has focused on UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions and their ability to determine and affect peacekeeping. New data on UNSC resolutions coded to UCDP/PRIO internal conflicts with peacekeeping operations (PKOs) is presented here. The data illustrate that resolutions vary importantly across conflicts and missions regarding their timing, sentiment toward rebel and government factions, level of action, mandates, authorized force levels, and substantive policies. Through a series of negative-binomial regressions using conflict-month replication data, we demonstrate that PKOs with both higher troops levels and a higher intensity of resolutions that condemn rebel actors experience a significant reduction one-sided rebel violence against civilians. In short, UNSC resolutions differ importantly before and during peacekeeping operations and may have an important impact on PKO effectiveness in civil conflict.

Do UN peace operations lead to more terrorism? Repertoires of rebel violence and third-party interventions

Recent research suggests that UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) reduce conventional violence. However, rebel groups have been increasingly using a combination of conventional and non-conventional violence, for example, terrorism. Little is known about whether and under which conditions PKOs shape rebels’ incentives to resort to more terrorism. At the same time, existing research on the use of terrorism in civil wars primarily focuses on domestic factors, thus overlooking the impact of external shocks such as the deployment of PKOs. We argue that PKOs can have critical unintended consequences inducing tactical adaptation in rebel violence as they alter the government-rebels balance of power. Particularly, rebel groups that are militarily strong prior to the UN arrival are incentivized to escalate terrorist violence to overcome the physical barrier imposed by PKO forces and improve their bargaining position vis-à-vis the government. Weaker groups, which in the absence of PKOs are more likely to use terrorism, have not only limited capacity but also fewer incentives to escalate terrorism when PKOs deploy. Leveraging new disaggregated data on rebel terrorist attacks during civil wars, we provide the first global actor-level analysis of the relationship between PKO deployments and changes in rebels’ tactical preferences for terrorist violence. We find that, conditional on initial government-rebels power relations, PKOs can make terrorism the weapon of the strong. Our study sheds light on the unintended effects of peacekeeping, the causes of terrorism, and offers important policy implications for several current PKOs deployed in the midst of violence.

Look who perpetrates violence and where: Explaining variation in forced migration

Are the causes of refugee and IDPs flows the same? While existing studies examine the causes of displacement in general, there is limited research on different determinants of internal and external displacement. Factors might have varying impacts on the decision to move within the country and flee abroad. Here, I argue the effect of violence on displacement as a function of perpetrator and geography (i.e., how spread it is). Increases in government violence increase the number of refugees because to escape government violence, people may have to cross an international border as governments are generally effective everywhere within their borders. On the other hand, rebel group activities are limited to a certain area and by leaving the conflict zone, civilians can be free from rebel violence. However, the spread of violence determines the decision to flee. If it is limited to a small region, people can escape from that area within the country and rebel violence increases the number of IDPs. If it is widespread, civilians may not have many opportunities within the country and have to move abroad. Therefore, the effect of rebel violence on internal displacement follows a reverse U-shape. The analysis of refugee and IDPs flows between 1989 and 2017 supports the main arguments and the results are robust to different model specifications and additional checks. This study highlights the importance of distinguishing the causes of internal and external displacement.

The Singing Poets – The Influence of Folksongs on Modern Arab Poets in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Twentieth-century Arab poets undertook a search for alternative means of poetic expression that went beyond experimentation at the stylistic and formal level. The result was a violent rebellion against the traditional qa??da form in the mid-1940s, an urgent striving for freedom and breaking free from accepted forms. One of the rebellion’s manifestations consisted of a renewed interest in folklore, especially folksongs, as a source of inspiration. Early on, folksongs became a fundamental pillar of Arab Modernism; most of the poets of the first half of the twentieth century were, in fact, affected to differing degrees by the folksong style. Ultimately the present study shows that folk literature in general, and folksongs in particular, are a critical source of inspiration for Arab poets, one which has enabled them to forge a link between their art and their public.

Delegated Rebellions as an Unwanted Byproduct of Subnational Elites’ Miscalculation: A Case Study of the Donbas

ABSTRACT The literature on delegated rebellion has treated principals (external states) and their agents (rebel groups) as the main factors in the inception of rebellion. Intriguingly, no attention has been paid to subnational elites as a separate, third actor. This article takes a novel perspective on delegated rebellion by ascribing agency to subnational elites. It introduces the theoretical concept of strategic entrapment, which shows that even subnational elites unwilling to follow the path of rebel violence may be trapped between the incipient rebel groups and a principal. As a result, subnational elites are sidelined and replaced by the principal’s rebel proxies.