Rebel constituencies and rebel violence against civilians in civil conflicts

Abstract

This article examines how the civilian constituencies of rebel groups affect their use of violence
 against civilians. While past research has acknowledged the importance of rebel constituencies,
 they are primarily seen as only having an indirect effect on rebel behavior. In this study, I conceptualize
 rebel constituencies as central political opportunity structures for rebel groups providing
 incentives and imposing restraints on their use of strategic violence and the violent behavior of
 individual rebel fighters. In particular, I hypothesize that a constituency overlap between rebels
 and the government of a state acts as a restraint making large-scale violence against civilians less
 likely. In contrast, high levels of constituency fractionalization and polarization induce strategic violence
 and predatory behavior, increasing the chances of large-scale civilian victimization. I conduct
 a statistical analysis of rebel one-sided violence in sub-Saharan Africa using newly collected data
 on rebel constituencies to test these hypotheses. The results only provide limited empirical support
 for the hypothesized relationship between constituency overlap and rebel violence against
 civilians. There is clear empirical evidence, however, that heavily fractionalized and polarized rebel
 constituencies are associated with higher levels of violence against civilians.