All rebel organizations need resources. They must not only survive as fighting forces, but the stronger they are, the better the political bargain they can negotiate with the state. In the absence of lootable resources, rebels acquire resources either through symbiotic exchange with civilian supporters or coercive extraction from civilian populations. How and why rebels structure their relations with civilians differently is not well understood.
In this model, rebels are treated as policy-seeking organizations that optimize over their ideological goals and organizational needs. In this, they face many of the same challenges as states, and how rebels meet this challenge has ramifications for rebel-civilian relations. Rebels can appeal to external parties -- foreign powers, diasporas, transnational religious movements -- or local citizens for resources.
Balancing goals and needs is a difficult political reality. Rebels may be forced to compromise some of their goals in order to increase their resources. The closer these resultant goals are to civilian preferences, the better governors rebels will be. Good governance can comprise political/ideological representation, as well as some public services -- including protection, and up to and including the full range of social services normally provided by states. Overall, rebel groups with domestic sponsorship are expected to provide the best governance, those with religious/ethnic diasporic support to be next-best, followed by foreign state sponsors, and finally extreme transnational movements.
Leveraging the comparative power of a natural quasi-experiment in Mindanao (in the south of the Philippines), this project outlines how rebels forge relational contracts at home and abroad, and how they shape the pattern of rebel governance on the ground. This project uses qualitative and quantitative data to compare how Mindanao's three separatist movements respond to different strategic environments, as well as how rebels' behavior shifts over time, and from village to village. The study utilizes an extensive survey of Mindanao's conflict-affected areas, as well as extensive qualitative interviews to compare and outline how rebel groups provide governance.
Existing studies of rebel governance fail to adequately explain variation among groups, and/or limit the role of either international or civilian actors. This project contributes theoretically to the study of insurgency by developing a model that includes the preferences and actions of both domestic and international actors. Empirically, this project uses within-case variation in one of the longest-running and most under-studied rebellions in the world. Leveraging within-case variation holds constant a range of socioeconomic and cultural variables that often bedevil cross-national comparisons of rebels' local behavior.
A better understanding of how rebels build and establish governance not only can inform more appropriate security and humanitarian programs, but also can suggest ways that political settlements might incorporate and make more transparent existing infrastructures--making peace more likely to last on the ground. Historically, many peace agreements have failed to percolate to the ground. Identifying parallel forms of governance, how they work, what benefits they provide, and why they vary can allow more effective integration into post-conflict stabilization efforts.
This project entailed a series of profiles of villages in areas influenced by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Mindanao (southern Philippines). Villages were chosen because they represented a different series of governance challenges to the rebels. Building each village’s profile comprised a set of in-depth interviews with local elites and residents familiar with the area’s history and the interaction between rebels, villagers, and local powerbrokers. Preliminary results suggest several broad findings. First, the study clearly indicates that MILF governance does exist. Second, the project highlights several variations in local political topography that present rebels with governance challenges and outlines how rebels respond to them. In cases where local elites are weak, the balance of power favors the rebels, who then more fully implement their governance plan. Even when the balance of power is in their favor, the MILF still invests significantly in relationships with local elites. In other areas, however, elites may be empowered by partnerships with powerful allies, who limit the degree to which the MILF may operate in the village. First are elites empowered through backing from the incumbent regime, which uses local leaders to extend its indirect rule. In such cases, MILF governance operates through a dynamic détente. Often, rebels will seek to integrate members of the elites’ families into their own political structures—conceding some power in exchange for greater stability and longer-term political gains—and engage in a series of negotiations over troop placement and patrols. Often, these détentes entail substantial qui pro quo arrangements. This modus vivendi is highly sensitive to the interests of elites’ government backers, and terms are continually re-negotiated as government demands on their proxy rulers shift. Second, some elites are empowered through ties to commercial farming interests, who leverage elites as middlemen in creating and maintaining large plantations. These alliances can prove disadvantageous for small farmers. In such areas, the MILF’s power is constrained by the counterweight of corporate wealth (and concomitant political and militia connections), but the rebels often seek to function as a buffer between farmers and corporate-backed elites—both bargaining for better financial deals for local farmers, and serving as a sort of guarantor for businesses that the farmers will deliver as promised. In all areas, MILF governance appears to display a savvy sensibility to the nature of local powerbrokers, as well as local ethnic composition and political/religious sentiment.
