To Which Victor Go the Spoils? Regime Capture after Regime Change

• In Event: Unconventional Victories: Origins, Consequences, and Resilience of Rebel Success

Abstract

A growing body of research has examined when and why insurgencies and national movements achieve victory in the form of regime change and new states, but we know little about which groups within these insurgencies and movements gain and maintain power thereafter. Is the group who initiated the first protests or executed the first attack most likely to lead the new regime in the years to come? Or is it the political party with the most extreme or moderate ideology, or the one with the strongest foreign patron? And what impact do the presence or absence of elections and civil wars in the aftermath of regime change have on the distribution of political and economic spoils? I argue that the actions of rebel groups before regime change are driven by the desire to position themselves to assume the throne after, public proclamations of rebel solidarity notwithstanding. Organizational strength is the key to capturing the spoils of victory, because strong groups perform better amidst the anarchical uncertainty after regime change. Strong rebel organizations can best shape the nature and timing of post-insurgency political competition to their advantage—whether negotiations, elections, and/or civil war. This project tests this theory of regime capture using the new Insurgent Spoils dataset, which codes the performance of over 600 organizations both during and after the 170 insurgencies they are a part of from 1916-2023. The findings from this study will help policymakers pursue smarter foreign policy by avoiding costly interventions based on wishful thinking about the composition of a new regime (e.g., Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen).

Author

• Peter Krause, Boston College