Doctoral Dissertation, The Australian National University, May 2024. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/317367

How rebel groups consolidate their coercive capacities shapes the conflict bargaining process with states and their ability to influence decisive or non-decisive civil war outcomes. To assess how varying degrees of coercive strength, or weakness, among rebels affect conflict outcomes, I developed a composite rebel coercive capacity index (RCCI). The index combines a rebel group’s relative strength to governments, third-party sponsorship, mobilisation capacity for people and weapons, the existence of extraterritorial bases, control of territory, and a clear central command. Using binary and multinomial logistic regression, I analyse how the RCCI influences civil conflict outcomes from 1946-2013. Findings demonstrate that rebel groups with high coercive strength are 30 times more likely to be victorious than reach non-decisive outcomes, and are 4.35 times more likely to achieve peace agreements over non-decisive outcomes. Rebel groups with weak coercive capacities are shown to experience reduced chances of achieving either peace agreements or victories and are far more likely to reach non-decisive outcomes of conflict. While results for government victories are not statistically significant, analysis of descriptive statistics shows that governments are more likely to commit resources to fight battles with medium to strong rebel contenders while letting conflict between weaker groups fizzle out. Results demonstrate a strong predictive quality of the rebel coercive capacity index; the coercive strength of rebel organizations predicts decisive or non-decisive outcomes of wars with 76 percent accuracy, and predicts 92 percent of rebel group victories in the time period studied.

What effect does rebel group splintering have on conflict outcomes? The rise, split, and fall of rebel contenders shape cycles of armed conflict, creating new fronts for violence and challenges for political negotiations. Employing logistic regression and inverse probability weighting (IPW), I analyze 372 intrastate conflict outcomes from 1946 to 2013 and the effects of rebel group splintering. Countering the logic that weakening rebel groups through divisions make them easier to defeat, this study shows that the chances of government military victories over splintered rebels in armed conflict decrease by 11.4 percent. Rebel group victories over governments decline by 9.8 percent when groups have splintered, while the likelihood of non-decisive conflict outcomes increases by 18.9 percent. Why rebel groups splinter has received far more empirical attention than its effects, and this study fills an important gap in the literature linking rebel splintering with the outcomes of war. I theorize that results demonstrate how splintered rebels and their original organizations potentially become less threatening through fragmentation while increasing the costs for governments to hunt down more rebel contenders.

Conflict outcome and termination studies fail to grapple with non-decisive outcomes of civil wars despite being more frequent than decisive war outcomes. Scholars often exclude non-decisive outcomes from conflict studies, instead framing the bargaining process between states and rebels around victories or peace agreements; “win, lose, or draw.” This paper brings theoretical and empirical attention to the neglected non-decisive outcomes of civil conflicts and proposes a broader understanding of conflict bargains and rational choices by conflict actors. Not all deadlocks and stalemates bring about a ‘ripe moment’ for negotiations; indeed, most conflicts never reach political negotiations. I argue that non-decisive outcomes emerge in different scenarios, including as rebels avoid outright defeat and states avoid committing to concessions. Non-decisive outcomes can be temporary – a low-intensity conflict that fizzles out and reoccurs at a later stage – or may involve considerable transformations of conflict parties and result in the gradual termination of the conflict. Conflict actors, most often the rebel groups, may cease to exist in their original form at the start of the conflict. This may involve institutional collapse, merging with other entities to form a new group, or disbanding over time as military and political stalemates evolve and insurgents seek other economic opportunities. This paper fills an important gap in the literature by conceptualizing and describing non-decisive conflict outcomes.