In a previous post, I discussed the theory of Jeremy Weinstein on why some rebel groups act in a relatively restrained manner towards civilians, while other groups engage in indiscriminate violence. He argued that much of the difference stemmed from the initial resources available to the group, and how that affected the incentives of people to join the rebels. Poor groups were forced by circumstance to become “activist” groups, that is, to appeal to a base of civilian support and to recruit personnel who were “investors,” i.e. willing to endure short-term sacrifices for the sake of the group’s long-term goals. In order to do that, activist groups were forced to maintain strong discipline to convince the civilian populace that it would protect them from abuses by its soldiers. Poor groups that failed to do so soon withered away from lack of recruits or food.

By contrast, groups that began with access to money and guns from external sponsors, or from control over valuable resources such as drugs or gems, lacked the strategic imperative to seek civilian support. Moreover, they had a strong incentive to expand their membership by offering high pay or other benefits, and therefore attracted “consumer” members, those seeking short-term benefits that flowed from their membership in the rebel group. Groups largely made up of consumers had a much harder time preventing abuse of civilians, since their members were prone to looting or to abducting civilian women or murdering people they disliked for personal reasons. And such groups also had fewer reasons to impose strong discipline: because they had independent resources, they suffered few (initial) disadvantages from tolerating abuses of civilians.

In this post, we will continue Weinstein’s argument and examine the consequences of the previous paragraphs for rebel groups’ governance of civilian areas.

As rebel groups gain control over territory, they have to decide how to handle the civilians living there. Civilians can provide useful resources to rebel groups: information about government activity, new recruits, food, and tax revenue. However, civilians are strategic actors: they can choose to support the rebels or the government, and if neither option seems attractive they will try to flee the area entirely or to resist both sides.

Rebel groups have options in how to build governance structures in response. These can be said to vary on two factors: inclusiveness (AKA participation) and the extent of power sharing. (This is true of regime governments as well, which is not surprising since a rebel group administering territory is basically a kind of government.) A participatory governance regime tries to address the preferences and needs of the populace, while a non-participatory regime treats civilians with indifference at best, as targets of predation at worst. But even participatory governments need not actually share power over decision making, a tempting option in wartime. However, the more that a rebel group shares real power with civilians, the more that civilians will trust the group (or the government in similar circumstances) to uphold its bargains in the future. And in response, rebel groups that build participatory structures of true power sharing are likely to elicit more cooperation from civilian populaces.

Why then doesn’t everybody build such structures? Weinstein argues that the difference hinges on three factors (though he subdivides the factors somewhat differently on pages 171 and 196 of his book without tying the differences to his findings—tsk tsk, Cambridge University Press editors!):

1. The degree to which the rebel group needs support from the populace;
2. The extent to which extracting resources from the populace is dependent on civilian productivity; and
3. The time horizons of the group’s members (i.e. whether they are predominantly “investors” or “consumers”), and the resulting ability of the group to make credible commitments to the populace.

A group that has significant starting resources needs the support of the populace less if at all, and will tend as a result to build non-participatory structures that do not share power. This tendency is exacerbated by the short-term orientation of its members, who want to plunder the populace and seize loot. Even the need to get food from the populace will not moderate this tendency much, since civilians cannot simply stop growing food and will therefore usually have food available to seize.

One complicating wrinkle occurs when the group can extract valuable resources from the populace, but only if the people commit their work to generating such resources. For example, the Shining Path in the Upper Huallaga Valley gained most of their revenue from the drug trade, but they therefore depended on civilians to grow coca. Out of self-interest, then, the rebels built structures that were responsive to civilian interest in having a predictable market for coca leaves, charging fixed taxes and administering public markets. (We would describe the resulting governance structure as inclusive but not featuring true power sharing.) 

A rebel group in this situation could instead choose to enslave civilians en masse, and some try, but this tends to result in civilians fleeing the area or throwing their support to the government in response. Still, the short-term orientation of group members tends to cause the breakdown of the inclusive structures over time, as individual members steal opportunistically. As a result, even non-activist groups that try to take the interests of civilians into account for selfish purposes often fall back on control by force.

An activist rebel group, on the other hand, is dependent on the support of the civilian populace for its very survival. As a result, it will prize the cooperation of civilians, and will tend to create governance structures that both are participatory and share true power, so that civilians will trust them to uphold their bargains. Because activist groups are largely made up of members with longer time horizons (i.e. patient “investors”), the members will submit to such checks on their power for the sake of the group’s strategic goals.

In later posts, we will discuss rebel groups’ strategic use of violence against civilians, and their ability to sustain their membership over time.

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(This post is part of Politics for Worldbuilders, an occasional series. Many of the previous posts in this series eventually became grist for my handbook for authors and game designers, Beyond Kings and Princesses: Governments for Worldbuilders. The topic of this post belongs in the planned fourth book in this series, working title War for Worldbuilders. No idea when it will be finished, but it should be fun!)