Participatory Rebel Governance and Public Opinion on Civil War Interventions

• In Event: Advances in the Study of Rebel Governance

Abstract

What shapes public opinion on interventions in civil wars? Existing literature has primarily focused on the government's regime type, arguing that citizens in democratic societies are more likely to support intervention and back rebel groups when these groups are in conflict with an autocratic government. This paper redirects scholarly attention from the democratic status of the government to that of a rebel group. Over the past decades, rebel combatants have increasingly adopted governance structures that encourage the political participation of ordinary people, such as conducting elections and establishing local councils in areas under their control. We argue that participatory governance by rebel groups, which can legitimize the policy goal of changing the country's regime into a democracy, may lead to more favorable public opinion towards interventions in civil conflicts and enhance support for these rebel groups. We test our theoretical claims by fielding a survey experiment in the United States. Our survey utilizes a two-by-two factorial design format, in which we randomize two elements within a specific news article scenario: (1) the government's regime type and (2) the rebel group's governance type. This paper makes an important contribution as the first scholarly effort to examine the impact of rebel governance on domestic motivations for intervening in civil wars.

Authors

• Hyunjung Park, University of Pittsburgh

• Jungmin Han