Competitive Intervention and Sabotage in Civil Wars

• In Event: Formal Models of (Civil) War

Abstract

What causes states to make costly investments in sabotage that undermine their proxies in civil wars? This paper argues that states use sponsorship to win control over rebel groups and to deny the potential benefits of that control to rival states. I analyze a contest model where states use sponsorship to make costly bids for influence over a rebel group engaged in a civil war. I show that both positive and negative relationships between sponsors can be detrimental to rebel groups. When sponsors are rivals, they will engage in sabotage by expending effort to undermine the support of the rival state. At the same time, allied sponsors will under-supply their proxies due to free-riding effects. I demonstrate these effects in two cases: Algerian/Libyan support of Polisario and Rwandan/Ugandan support for the Rally for Congolese Democracy.

Author

• Katherine Ingram, Princeton University