Facilitating Conflict: The Effect of Non-state Material Aid to Insurgencies

This thesis studies how different providers of material aid affect insurgency capabilities. Sources discussed here are non-state actors, specifically the narcotics trade, another non-state violent group, and a diaspora. I generate three hypotheses about the effects of material aid provided by each source. These hypotheses are then tested prior to, during, and following the application of this aid by following the progress of two case studies: the FARC and the LTTE. An analysis of these case studies prompts future research and suggestions for policy direction based on the overall conclusion that different non-state providers of material aid do influence the capabilities of an insurgency in different ways

The Rebels' Resource Curse

This dissertation challenges the conventional assumption that rebel groups become stronger and present a greater threat to the state when they gain access to lucrative natural resources. I argue that militants' ability to first profit from primary commodities and then translate this profit into military and political gains should not be taken as given. I propose that, instead, rebels' success is conditional on both group structure and groups' connection with key actors in the commodity's supply chain. I consider the steps needed for rebel groups to build and maintain commodity markets in order to profit. The first chapter explores the tension between the theoretical gains rebels should make from operating in areas with natural resources and the empirical reality that groups experience much greater variation in their conflict outcomes. I argue that a group's ability to translate primary commodity profit into political gains is conditioned on whether or not the group is centrally controlled. I apply a competing risks model to a new dataset that pairs militant group characteristics with geo-referenced access to natural resources such as petroleum, diamonds, drugs and gold. I find that for groups without strong central organization, increasing access to resource-rich territory decreases the group's chances of survival. I further find that regardless of group structure, primary commodity access decreases the probability that groups will negotiate with the state. To elaborate on this finding, I consider militant groups' relationships with the individuals necessary to produce, transport, and sell primary commodities - their `local investors'. I develop a game theoretic model of negotiation between the state and rebel groups in intrastate conflict when lucrative resources are present, highlighting the importance of rebel partnerships with local investors on this bargaining process. The model's implications suggest that states will seek to undermine relationships between rebels and their local investors by incentivizing local investors to defect from rebel partnerships. I conclude this chapter with a municipal-level test of the effect of the Colombian state's agricultural credit program to coca farmers, demonstrating that this intervention minimized the number of hectares of coca to which the FARC had access. Finally, I consider how exogenous economic conditions such as commodity price shocks affect agreements between militant groups and their relationships with local investors - specifically, their commodity suppliers. I explore the case of coca farmers and the FARC in Colombia in detail, hypothesizing that increased victimization of coca farmers from either the FARC or competing paramilitary groups is the result of volatility in cocaine price. I test these hypotheses with municipal-level Colombian data, aggregated event data about each actors' attacks on civilians, and quarterly U.S. cocaine price data. This evidence from the Colombian case suggests that as militants' increasingly invest in and rely on their primary commodity markets, disruptions to their expected profit can lead groups to engage in costly victimization of suppliers. With these three chapters, I demonstrate that militant groups, like states, can be subject to the resource curse due to institutional weakness or changes to their relationship with the local investors on whom they rely.Doctor of Philosoph

Rebels, Resources and Repression

This paper addresses the question of how natural resources affect rebel and state strategic behavior toward noncombatants at the municipal level. Extant research demonstrates the importance of natural resources for conflict onset, severity, and duration but an analysis of how rebel groups capitalize on resource wealth and how the state minimizes resulting rebel capacity remains lacking. I suggest that the labor needed for the state or rebels to profit from certain resources is the missing mechanism for understanding this interaction. I propose a 3-player sequential game between the state, rebels, and civilians to evaluate when rebels form economic relationships with civilians and when the state preempts this cooperation with indiscriminate violence. Initial conclusions from the model suggest that the state's provision of public goods and the value of the natural resource in question have important implications for when highly local state repression occurs in intrastate conflicts.Master of Art

Public Perception of Dissent and Repressive Response

Online survey experiment examining public opinion on police responses to protester

Civilian Self-Defense Militias in Civil War

To mitigate the costs associated with suppressing rebellion, states may rely on civilian self-defense militias to protect their territory from rebel groups. However, this decision is also costly, given that these self-defense groups may undermine control of its territory. This raises the question: why do governments cultivate self-defense militias when doing so risks that these militias will undermine their territorial control? Using a game theoretic model, we argue that states take this risk in order to prevent rebels from co-opting local populations, which in turn may shift power away from the government and toward the rebels. Governments strategically use civilian militias to raise the price rebels must pay for civilian cooperation, prevent rebels from harnessing a territory’s resources, and/or to deter rebels from challenging government control in key areas. Empirically, the model suggests states are likely to support the formation of self-defense militias in territory that may moderately improve the power of rebel groups, but not in areas that are either less valuable or areas that are critical to the government’s survival. These hypotheses are tested using data from the Colombian civil war from 1996 to 2008