RECRUITMENT AND
ALLEGIANCE:
The microfoundations of rebellion
Scott Gates
Ondřej Zacha, 414739
MVZ489 Causes of PoliticalViolence
Spring 2016
MAIN RESEARCH GOAL
• How does a rebel group maintain organisational cohesion and
deter defection?
• Main concepts:
• Examining geography, ideology and ethnicity
• While featuring economic model of microfoundations
• Assumption that rebel group already formed itself and needs to manage
recruitment and prevent defection or desertion
Therefore the model is underlining conflict duration rather than
emergence of rebel groups or civil war
• Concepts and mechanisms form economics and from intra-state
organised criminal groups (e. g. mafia or organised crime)
• Generating hypothesis
MECHANISMS
• Enforcement of contracts is the root of compliance and allegiance
• Peace-time contracts enforced from the outside => Rebel groups
rely on enforcing contracts from within
• Modern rebel’s similarity to criminal groups (e. g. Collier) => Rebel groups
need army to fight the state = recruitment and allegiance are critical
• Two key distinctions within rebel groups:
1. Distance
2. Economy
1. DISTANCE
• Geographic
• Critical with connection to ensuring compliance and preventing defection
• Part of most conflicts – control over territory, secession etc.
• Ethnic
• Less measurable
• Key in sense of identity – greatly affects recruitment and allegiance
• Ideological
• Partly measurable by examining attitudes towards key topics
Study examines how these aspects affect recruitment and allegiance
2. ECONOMY
• Difference between groups by goals:
• Loot seeking groups
• Concentrate on capturing valuable assets (e. g. Natural resources, drugs…)
• Distribution of wages or benefits critical
• Justice seeking groups
• Ethnic separatism, political goals etc.
• Some say that they are only sub-sums of loot-seeking groups
All groups need at least minimal financing (for weapons and food) + all the subtypes
mingle
ENFORCEMENT WITHOUT
COMPETITION
• Examining choices of agents of the rebellion with respect to the leader
• Defection = non-compliance with the military objectives
• Nature of rewards
• Pecuniary – tangible (money, loot, drugs, alcohol etc.) – loot seeking groups
• Non-pecuniary – functional (value of the task) & solidary (camaraderie)
• Punishment for defection – from minimal to extreme (= death)
 Assuming opportunistic actors – weighing every action for benefits
and risks
HYPOTHESIS 1.
• Every agent is weighing his/hers options at all times between:
• The probability and harshness of punishment; and
• Gain from defection
• The ability of leader to punish agents for defection decreases with
(relative) geographic distance
Hypothesis 1.
For any given task and any number of agents, with all other things being
equal, the agents closer to the principal will be rewarded less than
those further away (limited by the max possible reward)
IMPLICATIONS
• The maximal payoff is associated with group’s resources => resources of
the group determine the maximal geographic stretch
• Problem can be solved with groups more oriented on either ideology or
ethnicity (with association to non-pecuniary rewards)
Key variable of the group’s homogeneity
• Ethnic expansion is strictly limited to territory inhabited by the ethnic
group
ENFORCEMENT WITH
COMPETITION FROM THE GOV’T
• Not only military competition, but also competition for recruits
• Desertion now becomes an option (defection X desertion)
• Analysis only of the rebel groups
• The probability of success comes into play = probability of success of
the particular agent as member of rebel group against the gov’t
• Distance affects ability to project force and military capabilities
• Ideological focus groups advantage – can easily lure deserters from the
gov’t – ‘Foxhole conversions’
• Ethnic focus groups advantage – have hard time luring deserters but is
also more immune to desertion
HYPOTHESIS 2
All agents for which the probability of success as part of the rebel
group exceeds 50% can be introduced to join the rebel group
thought the offer of benefits is above agent’s reservation level
Hypothesis 2.2
A rebel group will recruit only those agents, for which probability of
success is high enough to guarantee that the benefits allocated to
agents are high enough to ensure no desertion
= With increasing distance the probability of military success is decreasing
IMPLICATIONS
• Economic competition for wages can be seen
• If the rebel group is offering maximum possible benefits for distant agents
and the gov’t is not => the gov’t can increase wages to lure deserters
(and vice versa)
• Groups can react to this situation in various ways:
• Ex. By developing ideological goals – in order to switch from pecuniary to
non-pecuniary rewards (more difficult for the gov’t to react)
• It would be irrational to recruit agents for which the rebel group does
not have sufficient probability of success and benefits to prevent
defection
HYPOTHESIS 3
There exists a minimum distance between the state and rebel group,
under which no leader will be offering contracts to any agent
• Problem is not from the military conflict, but that the potential for defection is
too great to prevent the initial recruitment of members
GEOGRAPHY
Critically important in order to ensure recruitment and allegiance, and offer
rebel group a safe heaven to develop
Empirical examples
• The effect of geography can be prevented by greater appeal to ethnicity
or ideology
The more a leader can distinguish the group by ethnicity or ideology, the
less important will the geographic factor in recruitment factor will be
• the incentive compatibility has to be high enough => must increase
the level of non-pecuniary rewards
COMPETITION BETWEEN REBEL
GROUPS
• When there is no (or failing) state
• The same model can be applied
Hypothesis 4:
There exists a critical distance between a rebel group and rival rebel group that
precludes group’s ability to recruit => only when rival rebel group exist within
sufficient distance it can arise
• Distance limits the number of rebel groups that can arise in a country
• Given sufficient distance, rebel group can also splinter and form a rival rebel
movement
CRITICISM
• Assuming opportunistic rational actors weighing every step (but applying results
to child soldiers)
• The ideologically and ethnically related concepts are foggy and unclear
When in fact ethnic and ideological orientation is used to cancel out many of
the prepositions of the study
• Economic assumptions of ideal but imaginary world
• Relative failure of microfoundations application in economy (microeconomic
rational assumptions have no impact on macroeconomic implications)
THANK YOU