Capitals under Siege: Why Some Rebel Groups Achieve Victory While Others Fail

• In Event: Counterinsurgency Warfare

Abstract

Why do some rebel groups defeat the government while so many others fail? Scholars of civil wars note that rebels must often reach the capital to defeat the government. Yet, history is replete with rebels who have lost the war, despite reaching the capital. Connecting literatures on rebel formation to the spread of war, I offer a theory of rebel strategy that helps explain why only some groups are victorious. Introducing novel data on rebel strategies, I demonstrate that strategy is only partially dependent on group strength. Controlling for strength, I find that groups which can lay siege to the capital are more likely to achieve victory than those that either blitz the capital from the periphery or form in the city and attempt to divide the government’s power from within. These findings underscore that both mechanisms of opportunity and information provision are important to the outcome of war.

Author

• Gary Uzonyi, University of Strathclyde