Transnational Rebels: Neighboring States as Sanctuary for Rebel Groups

Salehyan, Idean.
World Politics, Volume 59, Number 2, January 2007, pp. 217-242 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/wp.2007.0024

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TRANSNATIONAL REBELS Neighboring States as Sanctuary for Rebel Groups

By IDEAN SALEHYAN*

ESPITE differences in political institutions and policies, all states claim a monopoly on the domestic use of legitimate force and all seek to prevent armed challenges to their rule. While such a monopoly is rarely absolute, states generally enjoy a preponderance of military capabilities and organization relative to domestic opponents. Yet despite this apparent strength as compared with nascent rebel groups, civil wars are quite commonindeed, they are much more common than international warsand societies marred by such violence suffer devastating effects. This presents an apparent puzzle for social scientists: Why are relatively weak rebels undeterred by much stronger states? Why does the state fail to maintain domestic order within its territory and among its people? These questions are especially perplexing given that many long-lived rebel organizations remain vastly weaker than their government opponents. Quite small insurgent groups in Myanmar and northeast India, for example, have evaded state repression for decades. Civil wars and insurgencies have usually been attributed to domestic factors. Income inequality, ethnic divisions, state instability and weakness, and natural resource dependenceamong other issueshave been offered as factors motivating rebels or enabling conict to emerge.1 Statistical analyses, moreover, frequently treat country observations as independent of one another. However, decades ago Theda Skocpol re* I would like to thank Kristian S. Gleditsch, Barbara F. Walter, David Lake, Wayne Cornelius, Gordon Hanson, Will H. Moore, Scott Gates, and David Cunningham for their comments and suggestions. I also thank the three anonymous reviewers and the editors at World Politics. A previous version of this article received the 2005 Carl Beck Award from the International Studies Association. 1 See Paul Collier and Anke Hoefer, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, Oxford Economic Papers 56, no. 4 (2004); James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War, American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003); Hvard Hegre, Tanja Ellingsen, Scott Gates, and Nils Petter Gleditsch, Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 18161992, American Political Science Review 95 (2001); Marta Reynal-Querol, Ethnicity, Political Systems and Civil Wars, Journal of Conict Resolution 46, no. 1 (2002); Barry Posen, The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conict, Survival 35, no. 1 (1993).

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marked, Transnational relations have contributed to the emergence of all social-revolutionary crises and have invariably helped to shape revolutionary struggles and outcomes.2 Even a cursory look at several regions of conictfor example, West Africa, the Caucasus, and Central Americareveals that international factors and external linkages are indeed important, validating Skocpols assertion. This article argues that the use of external sanctuaries is one of the most common strategies employed by rebel groups to evade state repression. Extensive data collection on rebel groups since 1945 indicates that a majority (55 percent) have used external bases to some extent. This nding alone casts considerable doubt upon analyses that treat states as self-contained units of analysis, ignoring their broader regional context. This article contributes to a growing literature on the international politics of civil war. In recent years scholars have been paying much more attention to the international dimensions of civil conict.3 External interventions, peacekeeping, and war externalities have come to the fore as the study of conict has permeated the traditional eld division between comparative and international politics. Yet scholars have largely ignored the possibility that rebel groups, unlike their government counterparts, are often unconstrained by national boundaries.4 In this article I argue that external sanctuaries in neighboring countries provide an important opportunity for rebel mobilization. Further, they complicate the underlying bargain between states and rebels by exacerbating informational problems and introducing new actors into the bargaining environment. I therefore integrate political opportunity
2 Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 3 See, for example, Dylan Balch-Lindsay and Andrew J. Enterline, Killing Time: The World Politics of Civil War Duration, 18201992, International Studies Quarterly 44, no. 4 (2000); Daniel Byman, Deadly Connections: States That Sponsor Terrorism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Daniel Byman, Peter Chalk, Bruce Hoffman, William Rosenan, and David Brannon, Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 2001); Ibrahim Elbadawi and Nicholas Sambanis, How Much War Will We See? Explaining the Prevalence of Civil War, Journal of Conict Resolution 46, no. 3 (2002); David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, Containing Fear: The Origins and Management of Ethnic Conict, International Security 21, no. 2 (1998); Kristian S. Gleditsch, All International Politics Is Local: The Diffusion of Conict, Integration, and Democratization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002); Manus Midlarsky, ed., The Internationalization of Communal Strife (New York: Routledge, 1992); Patrick M. Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers: Interventions and Intrastate Conict (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Stephen M. Saideman, The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy, and International Conict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Idean Salehyan and Kristian S. Gleditsch, Refugees and the Spread of Civil War, International Organization 60, no. 2 (2006); Barbara F. Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Resolution of Civil Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 4 But see Byman (fn. 3); Navin Bapat, State Support for Insurgency and International Conict (Manuscript, Pennsylvania State University, 2007); idem, State Bargaining with Transnational Terrorist Groups, International Studies Quarterly 50, no. 2 (2006).

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theories of civil war5 with a bargaining framework.6 While states enjoy a relative advantage in the internal use of force, their power is largely conned to their own security jurisdiction, or sovereign territory. If rebel groups can use other territories as a base of operations, thereby escaping the jurisdiction and repressive capabilities of the state, they can signicantly lower their own costs of ghting and gain bargaining leverage. Yet as a result, bargains between transnational rebels and the government are hampered because external resources are difcult for the state to observe, credible commitments are harder to secure, and host countries complicate negotiations. These theoretical arguments will be developed in Section I. In Section II, I describe the methods and variables used in the empirical analysis. Specically, I employ a time-series cross-sectional analysis of civil conicts during the period 195199. Section III presents the results of this empirical analysis and assesses their substantive impact on conict behavior. Results support the claim that regional factors and external bases signicantly contribute to conict. Section IV concludes. I. STATE BOUNDARIES AND TRANSNATIONAL REBELS State boundaries are perhaps the most fundamental international institutions in the modern state system.7 Borders dene where the authority of one state ends and where that of another state begins. According to Max Weber, the state is an entity that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory.8 Thus, territoriality is an inherent property of modern states. Internally, states have the power and authority to establish rules of the political game, regulate opposition activities, and suppress challengers to its dominance. States may also regulate which types of owsnances, goods, people, and so onmay cross their borders. In short, international boundaries dene the sovereign jurisdiction and geographic territory of modern states.
5 For example, Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978). 6 James Fearon, Rational Explanations for War, International Organization 49, no. 3 (1995). 7 Christopher K. Ansell and Giuseppe Di Palma, Restructuring Territoriality: Europe and the United States Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Miles Kahler and Barbara Walter, eds., Territoriality and Conict in an Era of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Friedrich Kratochwil, Of Systems, Boundaries, and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the State System, World Politics 39 (October 1986); John Gerard Ruggie, Territorality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations, International Organization 47, no. 1 (1993); Harvey Starr and Benjamin Most, The Substance and Study of Borders in International Relations Research, International Studies Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1976). 8 Max Weber, From Max Weber, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (New York: Galaxy, 1958), emphasis added.

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There has been considerable debate as to how effective the norm of state sovereignty is, with some arguing that sovereignty places important constraints on state behavior9 and others arguing that sovereignty is given no more than lip service.10 With respect to state capacity to regulate ows across boundaries, some have claimed that in an increasingly globalized world the state is becoming less effective at maintaining control over its borders,11 while others doubt that there is a diminished role for states in regulating international economic activity.12 Much of the debate about globalization and the erosion of national boundaries focuses on economic ows while neglecting the politico-military function of borders. As international institutions, state boundaries are agreed upon or de facto lines of defense against foreign aggression and geographic demarcations of political authority. Modern states have insisted upon clearly dened borders and have fortied their frontiers against the intrusion of foreign state agents.13 While global ows of goods, capital, information, and people have been more or less open depending on the period in question, the police and military forces of the state have always been relatively limited in their mobility; indeed, some have argued that respect for the territorial integrity norm has increased in recent decades.14 In short, as no state welcomes military incursions across its borders, governments are likely to respond forcefully to such violations of their sovereignty. Respect for territorial integrity has also been afrmed through global institutions such as the United Nations system and regional agreements. This is to
9 Jeffery Herbst, The Creation and Maintenance of National Boundaries in Africa, International Organization 43, no. 4 (1989); Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-states, Dual Regimes, and Neoclassical Theory: International Jurisprudence and the Third World, International Organization 41, no. 4 (1987). 10 Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 11 Joseph Camilleri and Jim Falk, The End of Sovereignty? The Politics of a Shrinking and Fragmenting World (Brookeld, Vt.: Elgar, 1992); Wayne Cornelius, A. Takeyuki Tsuda, Philip Martin, and James Hollield, eds., Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004); David J. Elkins, Beyond Sovereignty: Territory and Political Economy in the Twenty-rst Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995); Kenichi Ohmae, The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy (New York: Harper Business, 1990). 12 Edward Cohen, Globalization and the Boundaries of the State: A Framework for Analyzing the Changing Practice of Sovereignty, Governance 14, no. 1 (2001); Peter Evans, The Eclipse of the State: Reections on Stateness in an Era of Globalization, World Politics 50 (October 1997); John F. Helliwell, How Much Do National Borders Matter? (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1998). 13 Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 14 Peter Andreas, Redrawing the Line: Borders and Security in the Twenty-rst Century, International Security 28, no. 2 (1998); Mark Zacher, The Territorial Integrity Norm: International Boundaries and the Use of Force, International Organization 55, no. 2 (2001).

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imply not that military violations of sovereignty never occur, but rather that engaging in them can be very costlyoften prohibitively so. Although powerful states do at times infringe upon the sovereignty of others militarily,15 such actions are certainly costly for the initiator as well as for the target, and most states do not have the ability to impose their will on others. This limitation on the coercive power of the state has important implications for the study of civil war. States respond to dissent through a variety of means, including imprisonment, torture, and mass killings aimed at eliminating and/or deterring subversive groups. For the most part, however, government agents are caged by international borders. They cannot easily exercise force outside of their national boundaries, as doing so would necessarily violate the sovereignty of others. States jealously guard their exclusive right to police their own security jurisdiction, and they are likely to challenge cross-border incursions by the police and military forces of other states. Nevertheless, most prominent studies of civil war have ignored the role that state boundaries play in limiting government force. Political opportunity theories of rebellion emphasize state coercion as a critical element in the decision to rebel. Charles Tilly writes that governmental repression is uniquely important because governments specialize in the control of mobilization and collective action . . . to keep potential actors visible and tame.16 While group grievances may be an important motivation for conict, fear of repression limits collective action. Thus, many have argued that semirepressive regimes, difcult terrain, regime instability, and poor infrastructure limit the governments coercive control over society and allow dissatised groups to launch an insurgency.17 Scholars have recently begun to analyze civil and international conict under a common framework that emphasizes bargaining among actors.18 These scholars argue that since armed conict is costly, acSee Krasner (fn. 10). Tilly (fn. 5), 101. Fearon and Laitin (fn. 1); Hegre (fn. 1); Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); idem, African Militaries and Rebellion: The Political Economy of Threat and Combat Effectiveness, Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004); Edward N. Muller and Erich Weede; Cross-National Variation in Political Violence: A Rational Action Approach, Journal of Conict Resolution 34, no. 4 (1990). 18 Fearon (fn. 6); James D. Fearon Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others? Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004); David Lake, International Relations Theory and Internal Conict: Insights from the Interstices, International Studies Review 5, no. 4 (2003); Robert Powell, In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Monica Toft, The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity, Interests, and the Indivisibility of Territory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Walter (fn. 3).
15 16 17

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tors should prefer a negotiated settlement over beginning or prolonging a war. Bargaining failure is more likely when poor information about actors capabilities and resolve make it difcult to nd a suitable distribution of benets; when credible commitments to a peace deal are hard to make; and/or when issue indivisibilities exist. Civil wars are different from international wars in a fundamental way, however: states have standing armies and can credibly threaten to use force, whereas would-be rebels lack preexisting military capabilities. In short, rebels must mobilize a sufcient threat in order to extract a deal.19 This suggests that a political opportunity framework can complement bargaining theories of conict. Opportunities to mobilize a rebel army open up a bargaining space by providing rebels bargaining power and by reducing the probability of government victory. There is no reason to believe, however, that political opportunities for rebellion are entirely determined by domestic factors. Although the state is constrained by international borders, social actorsincluding migrant diasporas and opposition groupsoften organize transnationally. This incongruence between territorial nation-states and mobile citizens suggests that transnational opposition groups can engage in activities that would normally be proscribed domestically.20 If rebel groups can use other territories as a base of operations, thereby escaping the jurisdiction of their own state, they can signicantly lower the costs of insurgency and improve bargaining outcomes. Access to neighboring territory will be especially important for rebels, as proximity facilitates attacking the target state.21 Finding a host state is not without costs, as rebel groups dependent on foreign hosts sacrice some decision-making autonomy for security. Nonetheless, by mobilizing abroad, rebels who lack sufcient domestic opportunities can secure a better bargain than they otherwise could.22 However, as will be argued later, external mobilization complicates the bargaining environment in important ways.
19 Rebel mobilization may itself be violent, as insurgent groups use force to capture resources, intimidate civilian populations, and/or signal their strength and viability to constituents. 20 Transnational organizations have received a good deal of scholarly attention, although much of this research has neglected violent groups. See, for example, Donatella Della Porta and Sidney G. Tarrow, Transnational Protest and Global Activism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littleeld, 2005); Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998); Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, eds., Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972); Thomas Risse-Kappen, ed., Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures, and International Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 21 Empirically, others have found a statistical relationship between the location of civil wars within countries and international borders. See Halvard Buhaug and Scott Gates, The Geography of Civil War, Journal of Peace Research 39, no. 4 (2002). 22 Navin Bapat, The Internationalization of Terrorist Campaigns, Conict Management and Peace Science (forthcoming).

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External bases are tactically desirable for rebels because the state is better able to conduct counterinsurgency operations at home than abroad. When transnational rebels (TNRs) operate from extraterritorial bases, the states costs for repressing them increase signicantly. First, neighboring governments will not tolerate extensive cross-border forays, and thus rebels are not exposed to the full brunt of repression efforts. Limited strikes can and do occur across national boundariesfor example, Cambodian troops shelled Khmer Rouge positions in Thailand and Ugandan forces entered Sudan in pursuit of the Lords Resistance Army. In each of these examples, however, the government whose sovereignty had been violated strongly objected and responded by hardening its borders. Thus, crossing the border is costly because it risks a military confrontation with another staterebel hosts enter into the bargain.23 Second, even if a state could extensively enter anothers territory and attempt to permanently rid it of TNRs, it would still bear signicant governance costs in doing so.24 The invading state would have to take, hold, and police part (or all) of the other states soil. Two instances where this occurred demonstrate the signicant costs of this strategy. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 after repeated PLO attacks across the border and held on to Lebanese territory for almost two decades, becoming embattled with Lebanese resistance groups. Similarly, Rwanda, which invaded Eastern Congo after Hutu militias began to reorganize in refugee camps, became embroiled in a protracted conict there. Both of these endeavors were extremely costly for the invading governments, which is why such examples are rare and were pursued by states that perceived a threat to their existence. Third, states are less familiar with the population and terrain in other countries than at home. Counterinsurgency operations are more difcult to conduct when state agents lack local knowledge. The ability to gather reliable information on opposition activities is critical to successfully combating such groups.25 Finally, although it is unclear to what extent international norms factor into the foreign policies of
23 Several recent studies have begun to explore the relationship between external support for insurgencies and conict between states. In this regard, see Bapat (fn. 4, 2006); Kenneth Schultz, War as an Enforcement Problem: Interstate Conict over Rebel Support in Civil Wars (Manuscript, Stanford University, 2007); Idean Salehyan, No Shelter Here: Rebel Sanctuaries and International Conict, Journal of Politics ( January 2008) 24 On governance costs, see David A. Lake. Anarchy, Hierarchy, and the Variety of International Relations, International Organization 50, no. 1 (1996).. 25 Nathan Leites and Charles Wolf, Jr., Rebellion and Authority: An Analytic Essay on Insurgent Conicts (Chicago: Markham, 1970).

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governments,26 international norms and laws enshrine the principles of national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Violations of territorial sovereignty have been condemned in numerous UN Security Council resolutions. For instance, both Rwanda and Israel faced several UN resolutions condemning border violations when pursuing TNRs. Clearly, in these examples the invading states did not comply with the UN, but international opprobrium is not costless and may have some effect on state behavior, especially when coupled with concrete sanctions. Thus, although the extreme claim that borders are sacrosanct should be avoided, national boundaries signicantly constrain state capacity to repress challengers and raise the costs of counterinsurgency.27 Sovereignty grants states an advantage in the domestic use of force, but it also connes that force to a given geographic area. Transnational rebels can therefore mobilize in relative safety and escape across the border to avoid the bulk of state security forces. NEIGHBORING COUNTRY CONDITIONS Under what conditions are rebels likely to nd sanctuaries in other states? First, international migration and diaspora communities imply that not all politically relevant populations reside within the borders of the state.28 Refugees often play signicant roles in opposition movements, and refugee camps in neighbors frequently provide shelter, recruits, and resources to insurgents. Oppressive governments and political violence are likely to cause substantial migration outows, particularly to neighbors.29 Refugees exit the state because of a direct experience of persecution or political violence and therefore have strong motivations to oppose their home regime.30 Refugees living in squalid
26 See Peter J. Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). 27 Indeed, Leites and Wolf (fn. 25) argue that cutting off external support approaches a necessary condition for counterinsurgency (p. 40). 28 Fiona Adamson, Crossing Borders: International Migration and National Security, International Security 31, no. 1 (2006); Terrence Lyons, Diasporas and Homeland Conict, in M. Kahler and B. F. Walter, eds., Territoriality and Conict in an Era of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Yossi Shain and Aharon Barth, Diasporas and International Relations Theory, International Organization 57, no. 3 (2003). 29 Christian Davenport, Will Moore, and Steven Poe, Sometimes You Just Have to Leave: Domestic Threats and Refugee Movements, 19641989, International Interactions 29, no. 1 (2003); Will Moore and Stephen Shellman, Fear of Persecution: Forced Migration, 19521995, Journal of Conict Resolution 40, no. 5 (2004); Susanne Schmeidl, Exploring the Causes of Forced Migration: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis, 19711990, Social Science Quarterly 78, no. 2 (1997); Myron Weiner, Bad Neighbors, Bad Neighborhoods: An Inquiry into the Causes of Refugee Flows, International Security 21, no. 1 (1996). 30 Not all refugees ee because of government persecution. Situational refugees ee general conditions of violence in a country and do not necessarily have a stake in the conict; see Sarah

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camp conditions, moreover, have very low opportunity costs for joining rebel organizations; doing so may offer a better quality of life and sense of purpose. Refugee communities may continue to be active in their opposition to their home country even after having ed the state, as demonstrated in the large literature on refugee warriors.31 Second, rebels from a State A may use the territory of State B if State B is incapable of stopping them due to institutional weaknesses. It is often argued that weak and/or failed states are ready havens for violent transnational actors.32 Weak states simply lack the resources and capacity to rid their territory of what is viewed as another states problem. They face high opportunity costsincluding the diversion of resources away from domestic policingfor combating foreign insurgents. These host governments may or may not sympathize with the TNR and may even cooperate with the target government in policing efforts. However, security cooperation creates transaction costs and even weak states will strongly object to incursions by the military and police forces of others, increasing the costs of counterinsurgency. Finally, the territory of State B may be used by insurgents from State A if States A and B are hostile to one another. States may foment rebellion and instability in their neighbors in order to undermine rival governments. In these cases, not only are TNRs tolerated on the host states territory but they may even be actively encouraged and assisted. Furthermore, when two states view each other as rivals, borders are likely to be hardened, such that even minor incursions by neighbors will be seen as provocative. Hosting rebel groups may provoke reprisal attacks, but rival hosts are often willing to bear such costs given the benets of promoting instability in their enemies.33 As examples, after the Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988, both countries continued to provide safe haven and support to the others opposition groups, with Iran supporting the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Iraq backing the Mujahedin-e-Khalq.
Kenyon Lischer, Dangerous Sanctuaries: Refugee Camps, Civil War, and the Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005). However, a signicant subset of any refugee outow is likely to include people who have a direct grievance against the state. 31 Byman et al. (fn. 3); Lischer (fn. 30); Stephen J. Stedman and Fred Tanner, Refugee Manipulation: War, Politics, and the Abuse of Human Suffering (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2003); Myron Weiner, Security, Stability, and International Migration, International Security 17, no. 3 (199293); Weiner (fn. 29); Aristide Zolberg, Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo, Escape from Violence: Conict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 32 Bapat (fn. 4, 2007); Robert H. Dorff, Failed States after 9/11: What Did We Know and What Have We Learned, International Studies Perspectives 6, no. 1 (2005). 33 See Bapat (fn. 4, 2007); Byman (fn. 3), 26062.

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Thus, when states preserve good relations with their neighbors and can limit TNRs, opposition groups lack an important opportunity to mobilize. Furthermore, friendly and capable governments should also be able to effectively prevent the inltration of refugee camps by militants. Therefore, the effect of refugees on conict may depend on where refugees are located: camps are more likely to become militarized when hosts are unable or unwilling to prevent rebel activities.34 Thus, refugees in weak and/or rival states will be more likely to contribute to rebellion. THE BARGAINING ENVIRONMENT Bargaining theories of conict emphasize the inability of actors to nd suitable agreements short of war, particularly since ghting is costly. I have argued that political opportunities to mobilize an insurgency open up a bargaining space by providing rebels a credible threat and by making it more difcult for the government to prevail. External sanctuaries are a signicant source of mobilization potential. Weak neighbors, rival neighbors, and refugee communities35 in which to mobilize can improve bargaining outcomes for rebels, but these factors are common knowledge to both parties. Actors should simply update their beliefs about the probability of victory and adjust their demands accordingly. Commonly known information should not lead to war, and once information has been revealed on the battleeld after the outbreak of conict, negotiations are more likely.36 Transnational rebellions complicate the negotiating environment, making it more difcult for actors to reach an acceptable settlement. First, TNRs introduce an important source of uncertainty because external rebel operations are beyond the scrutiny of the state. States devote signicant resources to establishing domestic intelligence capabilities to monitor dissident activities. However, external rebel operations are difcult for states to monitor and verify because they are at a relative
Lischer (fn. 30). It is argued here that refugee camps are a source of recruits and bases for rebels. However, refugees may themselves complicate the bargaining environment, and that may lead to longer conicts. States must offer credible commitments to allow refugees to repatriate and reintegrate back in the home country. They must also promise not to violate human rights again in the future, which may be difcult. Special bargaining problems posed by refugee communities are not addressed in depth here but are left for future work. On strategic issues involving refugee repatriation, see Lester Zeager and Johnathan Bascom, Strategic Behavior in Refugee Repatriation: A Game Theoretic Analysis, Journal of Conict Resolution 40, no. 3 (1996). 36 Darren Filson and Suzanne Werner, A Bargaining Model of War and Peace: Anticipating the Onset, Duration, and Outcome of War, American Journal of Political Science 46, no. 4 (2002); R. Harrison Wagner, Bargaining and War, American Journal of Political Science 44, no. 3 (2000).
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disadvantage in gathering information in unfamiliar areas outside of their jurisdiction.37 This inability to gather information has typically been seen as an obstacle to effective counterinsurgency rather than as an impediment to bargaining. Yet extraterritorial mobilization may lead to divergent expectations about the likely outcome of conict because states cannot reliably gauge the rebels strength and make appropriate offers. Rebels may try to signal their strength to the government, but because they have an incentive to overstate their capabilities in order to win greater concessions, such information is unreliable.38 Thus, external mobilization leads to an information-poor environment that exacerbates information problems and makes negotiating difcult. Second, external mobilization exacerbates commitment problems. For civil wars to end, combatants must credibly promise to lay down their arms and forgo future violence.39 Yet, just as it is difcult for states to gather reliable information about rebel mobilization, it is also difcult to monitor and verify full compliance with demobilization efforts. After a peace agreement rebels can hide resources across the border and regroup in external sanctuaries so long as permissive conditions in other states persist; this allows rebels the opportunity to renege on a deal in the future. Offering concessions without being condent that the rebels will abide by their part of the bargain would leave the state worse off than continuing to ght. Thus, states may doubt the credibility of rebel promises to comply fully with demobilization agreements when external sanctuaries are available. Third, transnational mobilization complicates the bargaining environment by introducing new actors: the rebel host state(s). Cunningham argues that additional parties to a conict make bargaining more difcult by introducing a new set of preferences that must be satised. Bapat argues that insurgent (or terrorist) groups face difculties in making credible commitments because of incentives to renege on a deal.40 He formally demonstrates that for negotiations to hold, insurgent hosts must offer credible commitments of their own to rein in rebels on their territory but may be unwilling or unable to provide necessary guarantees to target governments. These studies suggest that the bargaining environment becomes more complicated when additional
Byman (fn. 3), 70. Fearon (fn. 6). 39 Walter (fn. 3). 40 David Cunningham, Veto Players and Civil War Duration, American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 4 (2006); Bapat (fn. 4, 2006).
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actors are included; rebel hosts can block negotiations between combatants and make bargaining more difcult. For empirical analyses, however, the information available to actors and the beliefs that they hold are nearly impossible to observe. This makes testing propositions about bargaining difcult. We are therefore left with observing background conditions rather than private information or beliefs about credibility. External conditions such as weak states, rivals, refugees, and foreign sanctuaries make bargaining failure more likely, and so when these conditions exist, the probability of observing war should be higher. Anecdotally, ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia, who operated across the border in Kosovo, claimed a rebel force of sixteen thousand, although this number was impossible to substantiate and other estimates were much lower,41 making it difcult to strike an appropriate deal. Nonetheless, a direct test of this assumption is unfortunately beyond the present analysis. HYPOTHESES As already noted, rather than observing the information available to actors, we can observe broader environmental conditions that make conict more likely. I argued that refugees, interstate rivalries, and weak neighboring states were important for external rebel mobilization. I also argued that the effect of refugees on civil war may be conditional on their presence in weak and/or rival states. All of these conditions should affect both the probability of conict onset and the duration of the conict. Therefore, rather than treating conict onset and continuation as separate research questions, following ElBadawi and Sambanis,42 I look at the incidence of conict. I postulate the following hypotheses:
H1 (rivalry). Rebellion is more likely to occur when the state is bordered by a rival state. H2 (weak state). Rebellion is more likely to occur when the state is bordered by a weak state. H3a (refugee diasporas). Rebellion is more likely to occur when there are refugees in neighboring states. H3b (refugee location). Refugees are more likely to contribute to rebellion if they are located in weak and/or rival states.

41 Julie Kim, Macedonia: Country Background and Recent Conict, (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2001). 42 Elbadawi and Sambanis (fn. 3).

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Additionally, a more direct way of estimating the effect of external rebel bases is to include data on their presence; these data are now available.43 But because external bases are clandestine in nature, we can only observe their use once ghting is under way rather than prior to the onset of conict. I therefore include a fourth hypothesis that is specic to conict duration.
H4 (extraterritorial bases). Conicts will endure longer if rebels have access to extraterritorial bases.

It is important to note that weak states, rival states, and refugee communities operate through the mechanism of providing fertile grounds for TNRs to emerge. Therefore, direct measures of extraterritorial bases are expected to outperform these factors in combined models of conict duration. II. DATA AND METHODS DEPENDENT VARIABLE The data are a time-series cross-section of country-year observations from 1951 to 1999the years for which reliable data were available. Rather than looking exclusively at onset or duration, this study examines conict incidence.44 The initial conditions that lead to war may also be associated with how long a war lasts; but if onset and continuation are driven by different processes, we want to know this as well. Therefore, the dependent variable in this study is conict incidence, or spells of conict, which is dichotomous and coded 1 for years in which a country experienced a civil war or internal violence and 0 otherwise. Much of the literature has looked at the phenomenon of civil war, which is normally dened by a somewhat arbitrary classication of conicts based upon the number of battle deaths (usually one thousand or more). This threshold is not based on any theoretical criteria and poses methodological problems.45 Rather than looking exclusively

43 David Cunningham, Kristian Gleditsch, and Idean Salehyan, Dyadic Data on Civil War, Data Project (Colchester, U.K., and Denton, Tex.: University of Essex and the University of North Texas, 2007). 44 Elbadawi and Sambanis (fn.3). 45 A high threshold for classifying binary events has important methodological limitations when using either a lagged dependent variable or counts of years at peace. With a threshold of one thousand deaths, an event that falls just short of the cutoff point would not be counted as a conict and would be assumed to have no impact on the subsequent probability of violence. In practice, however, low-intensity conicts are likely to be systematically associated with a higher likelihood of future large-scale conict.

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at war, which is an imprecisely dened concept, this study examines smaller insurgencies along with full-blown civil war. There are no good theoretical reasons to expect low- and high-intensity conicts to be driven by entirely different factors. The list of civil conicts used here is drawn from the Uppsala/PRIO Armed Conicts Dataset (hereafter U/PACD), developed by the Department of Peace and Conict Research at Uppsala University and the International Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO).46 Because of data limitations on the independent variables, the start date of the analysis is 1951, rather than the U/PACD start date of 1945. From these data, I eliminate all cases of coups or instances in which a faction of the military was listed as the opposition, because these are conceptually distinct from rebellions emerging from popular forces. I also consolidate spells of conict in which there are three or fewer interim years of peace between parties ghting over the same incompatibility.47 In reality, although active ghting may have ceased, the underlying conict has not been resolved. INDEPENDENT VARIABLES The rst hypothesis is that countries which border rival states are more likely to experience internal armed conict. To test this claim, a variable for interstate rivalry, created by William R. Thompson, was included.48 These data are based upon qualitative accounts, foreign policy histories, belligerent public statements, and acts of aggression between countries. The Thompson data set differs from other rivalry data sets in not requiring a minimum dispute duration; nor does it rely upon counts of open armed hostilities.49 The Rival NB indicator used here is a dichotomous variable coded 1 for country-years in which the state in question neighbors at least one state that is considered a rival (and 0 otherwise). This indicator is lagged because issues arising from the conict itself may lead to international rivalries.50 Neighbors are dened as states
46 Nils Peter Gleditsch, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg, and Hvard Strand, Armed Conict 19462001: A New Dataset, Journal of Peace Research 39, no. 5 (2002). I include all intrastate and internationalized intrastate disputes (type 3 and type 4 conicts in U/PACD) that occur on a states territory. 47 Alternative approaches (ve-year intervals and no consolidation) were also considered, but results do not vary signicantly. 48 Thompson, Identifying Rivals and Rivalries in World Politics, International Studies Quarterly 45, no. 4 (2001). 49 See Thompson (fn. 48) for details. I thank William Thompson for providing me with an electronic version of this data set. 50 I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out. Results do not change substantially when using contemporaneous values.

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located within one hundred kilometers of the borders of the country in question, including strict contiguity based on the Gleditsch and Ward Minimum Distance Dataset.51 This practice ensures the inclusion of neighboring states that are not strictly contiguous but that are separated by short spans of water. The second hypothesis is that weak neighboring countries are more likely to be used as cover for transnational rebel groups. I use two measures for state weakness. First, I include a dummy variable coded as 1 if the country in question borders (within one hundred kilometers) at least one state that is experiencing armed conict as dened by the U/PACD and 0 otherwise (Civil war NB). When a neighboring country is undergoing a civil war, its government does not have full control over its territory and is institutionally weak. While others have found a relationship between neighboring and local war, the explanation for conict clustering offered here is that civil wars in neighboring countries expose security weaknesses and divert resources toward combating domestic insurgents, a situation that provides TNRs with opportunities to take up extraterritorial bases.52 As an alternative measure of state weakness, I use data on the neighboring countries GDP per capita from Gleditschs expanded GDP data.53 Countries that are wealthier overall are expected to have better communications, administration, police resources, and infrastructure that may in part be captured by GDP per capita.54 A dummy variable (Low GDP per capita NB) was included if the state in question borders at least one country that falls below the 10th percentile for GDP per capita for that year.55 Finally, this study will assess the role that refugees in neighboring states play in facilitating conict in their home country. To do so, I include data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Population Data Unit.56 These data contain dyadic entries for annual refugee stocks, listed by origin and destination countries. I take the sum
51 Kristian S. Gleditsch, and Michael D. Ward, Measuring Space: A Minimum Distance Database, Journal of Peace Research 38, no.6 (2001). 52 For an additional discussion of clustering, see Salehyan and Gleditsch (fn. 3). 53 Kristian Gleditsch, Expanded Dyadic Trade and GDP Data, 194692, Journal of Conict Resolution 46, no. 5 (2002). 54 Fearon and Laitin (fn. 1). 55 Alternative measures indicating the GDP per capita of the poorest neighbor and the mean neighborhood GDP were also used, but this did not signicantly change the results. 56 I thank Bela Hovy of the UNHCR for providing me with these data. However, the UNHCR does not keep track of gures for Palestinian refugees. Therefore, these data are supplemented with gures from the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Palestinian refugees are counted as originating from the state of Israel.

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of all refugees from the country of observation in all neighboring states (Refugees in NB). The distribution of this variable is highly skewed as the vast majority of country-years have no refugees in neighbors, and the data have a long right tail, with countries such as Afghanistan and Mozambique having more than one million refugees in neighboring states. Furthermore, the effect of refugees is not expected to be strictly linear but diminishing with size. Therefore, the natural log of refugees is used. Clearly, there is endogeneity in the refugee indicator. Several statistical studies have conrmed that refugees are a consequence of civil war,57 whereas the argument here is that refugees may also cause or exacerbate conict. The refugee warrior phenomenon is documented in a large number of case studies, supporting the notion that conict and refugees are mutually reinforcing. Yet for statistical analysis, this presents methodological challenges, as current refugees may be a consequence of conict and the causal arrow may run in both directions. I correct for this by taking into account once-lagged values of the DV and lagging the refugee variable. This way, the effect of refugees at t-1 is estimated while controlling for the effect of conict at t-1. Taking into account conict at t-1 may not be sufcient. A conict may cause a signicant number of refugees, ghting may cease for a few years, and it may then resume again for reasons unrelated to refugees but as a result of attributes of the past conict. One solution to this problem relates to how the dependent variable was coded, with lulls in ghting of three or fewer years being subsumed under the larger conict. During these brief interim periods, there may be refugees in neighboring states at t-1 but no actual ghting during this period, which would show up as a positive hit in the regression if these years were coded as peaceful. In addition, a variable for Peace yearsthe number of years the country has been at peace58is included. If there was a recent war that led to a signicant number of refugees, this is accounted for. This method also corrects for duration-dependence in the dependent variable, as discussed below.59
57 Davenport, Moore, and Poe (fn. 29); Eric Neumayer, Bogus Refugees? The Determinants of Asylum Migration to Western Europe, International Studies Quarterly 49, no. 3 (2005); Schmeidl (fn. 29). 58 Because conict data are available from 1945, the count of peace years since 1945 is taken. 59 Lagging refugees one year and including a peace years indicator presents a high hurdle and may understate the effect of refugees if conict and refugee militarization occur simultaneously or unfold quickly. In addition, civilian populations may anticipate future conict and ee before ghting begins. Endogenous relationships are difcult to disentangle and will require ner temporal units and alternative methodologies. This will be left for additional research.

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Refugees are also expected to have a larger impact in certain countries relative to others. Hypothesis 3b holds that refugees are most likely to contribute to conict if they are located in weak and/or rival states. To test this possibility, I include a variable that distinguishes between (1) refugees in neighbors that are rivals and/or at civil war and (2) refugees in all other neighbors.60 One nal variable, the presence of extraterritorial rebel bases, will be discussed below. CONTROL VARIABLES A number of domestic variables found to be important in other studies of conict are included as controls. These factors include wealth, population, regime type, and ethnic relations. To begin with, a variable is included for the countrys GDP per capita (logged), which has been shown to be a robust predictor of conict.61 GDP data are taken from Gleditsch62 and are lagged one year. Second, a control for total Population (logged and lagged one year) is included. It may be the case that countries with larger populations are more difcult to govern because state security forces are stretched thin when they must monitor dissent among a large population. Third, some studies have demonstrated that regime type is an important predictor of civil conict. Democracies encourage nonviolent means of dissent while the most authoritarian regimes can effectively deter opposition; regimes falling in between (anocracies) are most violence prone.63 It is argued that there is a parabolic relationship between continuous measures of democracy and conict. Regime data come from the combined democracy-autocracy score from the Polity IV project.64 These widely used data are a 21-point scale ranging from most autocratic (10) to the most democratic (+10) regimes.65 Because conict is likely to affect regime type, I use lagged values of the Polity score. To test for the curvilinear effect of democracy, I include a squared Polity term. Finally, it has been argued that the ethnic composition of the country may be an important predictor of conict, although there
60 In alternative models separate variables were created for refugees in rival states, civil war states, and all others. This analysis does not yield signicant results, although there is a high degree of collinearity among the variables. 61 Collier and Hoefer (fn. 1); Fearon and Laitin (fn. 1). 62 See Gleditsch (fn. 53). 63 Hegre (fn. 1); Muller and Weede (fn. 17). 64 Monty Marshall and Keith Jaggers, Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 18002002 (College Park, Md.: Integrated Network for Societal Conict Research, Center for International Development and Conict Management, 2002), www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity. 65 Countries with special indeterminate codes ( -88, -77, -66) are assigned a value of zero, according to the standard practice in the literature and the recommendation of the Polity project.

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is little agreement as to which measure is most appropriate. I will not engage in this debate at length here, although I include as a control the ethnolinguistic fractionalization (Ethnic Frac) index used by Fearon and Laitin.66 METHODS The data are in time-series cross-sectional format with country-years as the units of observation and a binary dependent variable (BTSCS) indicating the presence or absence of conict. Because observations are collected over time, it is important to correct for temporal dependence among units. To begin with, I employ a logit model with a lagged dependent variable (Conict t-1) to account for serial autocorrelation and include country random effects to account for additional nonindependence.67 Additionally, Beck et al. propose a model for analyzing this data structure: the transition model.68 We can think of spells of conict as two different transitions in the data. The rst is the transition from peace to conict, and the second is the transition from conict to peace. More formally, the transition model is given as a pair of logit equations taking on different lagged values of the dependent variable: P(yi,t = 1|yi,t 1 = 0) = 1 1+exp(Xi,t +dy=0) 1 1+exp(Xi,t +dy=1) (1)

P(yi,t = 1|yi,t 1 = 1) =

(2)

Where X is a vector of independent variables, are the parameters for conict onset, are the parameters for continuation, and d is the number of periods for which the dependent variable has taken the value of 0 or 1 up to the current period. In practice, two logit models are run with the sample being split into groups based upon the value of the lagged DV. The rst model estimates the probability of a new conict onset given that there was peace in the previous year; the second model estimates the probability of conict
Fearon and Laitin (fn. 1). Elbadawi and Sambanis (fn. 3). 68 Nathaniel Beck, David Epstein, Simon Jackman, and Sharyn OHalloran, Alternative Models of Dynamics in Binary Time-Series Cross-Section Models: The Example of State Failure (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Political Methodology, Emory University, July 2001).
66 67

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continuation given that there was conict in the previous year. The transition model allows for differences in the effect of the right-hand side variables based on whether onset or continuation is being estimated.69 The transition model also allows us to easily correct for duration dependence by including a count of war years and peace years, d, for the split sample (Peace [war] years).70 III. RESULTS Table 1 reports the results from the empirical models. The random effects logit model (model 1) and both cuts of the transition model are given side by side. First, hypothesis 1 regarding interstate rivalries is supported in the random effects model, which displays a positive and signicant coefcient. However, in the transition model, Rival NB is sensitive to whether onset or continuation is being estimated. 71 For the onset cut, although the coefcient is positive, high p-values indicate that rivalry may not have a consistent effect on onset across the sample. For duration, the effect is also in the expected direction, and the pvalue is somewhat lower, reaching signicance at the .1 level. Thus, there is modest evidence that rivalry has an inuence on conict continuation, with the results for onset being more indeterminate. International rivals may choose to confront their enemies directly rather than support rebel groups. Therefore, there may not be a regular relationship between rivalries and conict onset if states can substitute strategies. However, once a civil war has begun, international rivals may attempt to use the conict to their advantage and hinder a settlement.
69 This approach is analogous to the dynamic probit used by Elbadawi and Sambanis (fn. 3), among others. In the dynamic probit model, a lagged dependent variable and interaction terms between each IV and the lagged DV are included on the right-hand side. A major advantage of the transition model is presentational. It is easier to interpret a sample broken into two different sets than it is to compare coefcients between interacted and noninteracted variables. 70 Nathaniel Beck, Jonathan N. Katz, and Richard M. Tucker, Taking Time Seriously: TimeSeries Cross-Section Analysis with a Binary Dependent Variable, American Journal of Political Science 42, no. 4 (1998). 71 There is a debate in the statistics literature on the utility of using tests of statistical signicance for apparent populations. Normally, signicance testing is used to give a measure of how condent the analyst or reader can be that the relationship in the sample holds true for the population to which one is generalizing. In the current study nearly all country-years since 1945 are analyzed, so the sample size approaches the entire universe of cases that the theory addresses. In this case, then, standard errors are not used to understand true population parameters but rather are used to determine the consistency of the statistical relationship in the observed data. They reveal how often the expected (probabilistic) relationship between the DV and IV occurs in practice. For a discussion, see Richard A. Berk, Bruce Western, and Robert E. Weiss, Statistical Inference for Apparent Populations, Sociological Methodology 25 (1995); and Kenneth A. Bollen, Apparent and Nonapparent Signicance Tests, Sociological Methodology 25 (1995).

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TABLE 1 REGRESSION RESULTS, NEIGHBORING COUNTRY CONDITIONS, AND CIVIL CONFLICT

1. Random Effects Logit Coef. (Std. Err.) Rival NB (t1) Low GDP per cap. NB Civil War NB Refugees in NB (t1) Population (t1)
GDP

2. Transition Model Coef. () p-value 0.345 0.294 0.002 0.449 0.000 0.128 0.200 0.002 0.002 0.153 (Std. Err.) 0.348 (0.249) 0.151 (0.289) 0.221 (0.270) 0.047 (0.022) 0.013 (0.098) 0.291 (0.182) 0.036 (0.019) 0.002 (0.004) 0.135 (0.435) p-value 0.081 0.301 0.207 0.019 0.446 0.055 0.028 0.304 0.378

Coef. () p-value 0.037 0.426 0.001 0.024 0.002 0.070 0.065 0.002 0.020 0.000 (Std. Err.) 0.090 (0.227) 0.150 (0.276) 0.645 (0.217) 0.004 (0.029) 0.244 (0.068) 0.180 (0.158) 0.015 (0.018) 0.011 (0.004) 1.172 (0.403)

per cap. (t1)

Polity (t1) Polity Squared Ethnic Fractionalization Conict (t1) Peace (war) years Constant N Wald Chi Squared P> Chi Squared Rho

0.359 (0.201) 0.046 (0.244) 0.605 (0.192) 0.040 (0.020) 0.219 (0.077) 0.205 (0.138) 0.022 (0.015) 0.009 (0.003) 0.846 (0.412) 5.317 (0.182) 4.665 (1.333) 5896 1072.83 0.000 0.155*

0.009 (0.009) 0.000 4.717 (1.366) 4920 71.50 0.000

0.071 (0.024) 0.001 3.587 (1.804) 976 24.55 0.006

0.001 0.024

* indicates .05 signicance for Rho Robust standard errors reported

P-values are of one-tailed signicance tests

As for hypothesis 2, Low GDP NBone indicator for a weak state is not shown to have an important effect on conict in either model. The other weak state indicatorcivil war in a neighboris positive and signicant in the random effects model. By contrast, the transition model shows that civil wars in neighbors may be more related to conict onset than to continuation, judging by p-values. Perhaps once ghting is under way, governments that face TNRs in a weak neighbor-

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ing country are better able to develop strategies for containing these groups, thereby shortening the conict. In some cases, target governments and neighboring countries may develop common responses to their security problems and buildups of military forces along the border may not be as threatening. The possibility of security cooperation deserves further research. Nonetheless, there is evidence to suggest that weak neighboring states do contribute to war. Finally, the random effects model demonstrates support for the refugee hypothesis (H3). In comparison, the transition model suggests that refugees have a positive and signicant effect on conict continuation and a less consistent effect on conict onset. The lack of a signicant result for the onset model is perhaps not surprising, given that in many cases conict precedes large refugee ows and that steps to limit endogeneity present a hard test. Refugees may be associated with new conicts, but it is difcult to disentangle the independent effect of refugees over prior war, which is accounted for by the peace years variable. However, in support of hypothesis 3, refugees have an important impact on the prolongation of conict. Of the controls, population has a strong effect on conict onset but does not explain conict continuation very well. Furthermore, higher GDP per capita is associated with a lower incidence of conict across the models. When tested jointly (in likelihood ratio tests), the models nd a parabolic relationship between conict and the Polity index, with the most authoritarian and the most democratic countries experiencing less conict. Ethnic fractionalization, however, appears to have a strong impact on conict onset only. Table 2 looks in depth at the effect of refugees and analyzes hypothesis 3b regarding the importance of refugee location. The results of the random effects logit are reported along with the continuation cut of the transition model (as refugees were shown to be a better predictor of conict duration). As expected, model 3, the random effects model, demonstrates a positive and signicant effect for refugees in rival and/ or civil war neighbors. However, refugees in all other neighbors are also shown to have a signicant effect on conict incidence. The transition model (model 4) also demonstrates a signicant effect for refugees in rival/weak neighbors while the variable for refugees in all other states loses its signicance. Thus, there is evidence to suggest that while refugees exacerbate conict, their effect may depend on their being present in unstable and hostile states. To interpret the results, predicted probabilities were computed using hypothetical values of the independent variables, using the estimation results from model 2. Only the results for the main variables

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TABLE 2 THE IMPORTANCE OF REFUGEE LOCATION

3. Random Effects Logit Coef. (Std. Err.) Ref. in Rival/CW NB (t1) Ref in non-Rival/CW NB (t1) Rival NB (t1) Civil War NB Population (t1)
GDP

4. Transition Model Coef. () (Std. Err.) 0.056 (0.034) 0.023 (0.034) 0.286 (0.246) 0.169 (0.256) 0.027 (0.097) 0.231 (0.160) 0.032 (0.019) 0.002 (0.004) 0.009 (0.427) 0.064 (0.022) 2.918 (1.638) 1007 27.20 0.002 p-value 0.047 0.252 0.122 0.254 0.389 0.074 0.041 0.294 0.492 0.002 0.038

p-value 0.075 0.094 0.028 0.002 0.003 0.065 0.079 0.003 0.018 0.000 0.000

per cap. (t1)

Polity (t1) Polity Squared Ethnic Fractionalization Conict (t1) War Years Constant N Wald Chi Squared P> Chi Squared Rho
* indicates .05 signicance for Rho Robust standard errors reported

0.035 (0.024) 0.035 (0.026) 0.384 (0.201) 0.559 (0.188) 0.208 (0.075) 0.193 (0.127) 0.020 (0.015) 0.008 (0.003) 0.829 (0.396) 5.320 (0.181) 4.718 (1.256) 6049 1100.47 0.000 0.142*

P-values are of one-tailed signicance tests

that were statistically signicant at reasonable levels will be reported here. To create the baseline comparison group, all of the dichotomous IVs were set to 0, refugees and Polity were set to 0, and all of the continuous variables were set at their means. For the onset cut, the peace years variable was set to 10, while for the continuation cut, war years was set to 1. For conict onset, in the baseline hypothetical scenario a country is expected to have a 2.6 percent risk of a conict. A civil war

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in a neighboring country boosts this probability to 4.8 percent, for an 85 percent increase in the risk of violence. For conict continuation, the effects of rivalry and refugees were analyzed. The probability of conict continuation for the baseline category is 81 percent, indicating that conicts are very likely to persist for a subsequent year. Holding the other variables constant and shifting the value of rivalry from 0 to 1 raises this probability to 86 percent, or a 6.2 percent increase in probabilities. For refugees, moving from 0 to 100,000 refugees in neighbors raises the probability of conict to 88 percent, or a 9 percent increase in probabilities over the baseline. EXTRATERRITORIAL BASES AND CONFLICT DURATION Once ghting is under way, we can directly observe whether or not rebels are ghting from foreign sanctuaries. Because data are only available after ghting occurs, only conict duration can be estimated (hypothesis 4). Moreover, it is important to note that the external base variable is a direct measure of the presence of TNRs while the indicators for weak states, rivals, and refugees are indirect factors that are likely to be associated with TNRs. Therefore, since these neighborhood conditions are predictors of bases, in combined models we should see the external base variable outperform these other factors. Moreover, weak states, rivalries, civil wars, and so on may cluster geographically for a number of reasons that are not directly related to the presence of external bases; correlations may hold for reasons unrelated to the theory. This model presents a direct test of the strategic use of external bases. The conicts in the U/PACD were examined to determine whether the rebels had a presence outside of the boundaries of the target state.72 A three-part variable (External Base) was developed and coded as follows: 0 = no extraterritorial presence; 1 = limited or sporadic use of external territory; 2 = extensive and sustained use of extraterritorial bases.73 Of the 291 rebel groups listed in the U/PACD a majority (55 percent) had at least some access to neighboring territory. Values of this variable were included for each country-year observation and changes in these values, although not common, were included. Alternative codings were also estimated by combining the 0 and 1 categories as well as by combining the 1 and 2 categories, but these variations did not affect the results. To
For details, see Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan (fn. 43). For methodological reasons, this variable was lagged. Because data on extraterritorial bases were collected only for country-years where the value of the dependent variable equals 1 (that is, when there is a civil conict), the model cannot be estimated with the variable itself because there is no variation on the DV. However, including lagged values of the extraterritorial bases variable eliminates this problem, and lagged values are very highly correlated with current values: R=.95.
72 73

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TABLE 3 EXTRATERRITORIAL BASES AND CONFLICT DURATION

Model 5 Coef. () (Std. Err.) External Base Rival NB(t1) Civil War NB(t1) Refugees in NB (t1) Population (t1)
GDP

Model 6 Coef. () (Std. Err.) 0.881 (0.164) 0.291 0.177 0.029 0.073 (0.095) 0.335 (0.165) 0.039 (0.019) 0.004 (0.004) 0.355 (0.449) 0.039 (0.022) 3.060 (1.698) 1007 47.86 0.000 p-value 0.000 0.125 0.255 0.114 0.222 0.022 0.019 0.178 0.215 0.040 0.036

p-value 0.000 (0.253) (0.269) (0.024) 0.299 0.008 0.037 0.175 0.204 0.016 0.005

0.903 (0.158) 0.049 (0.093) 0.382 (0.157) 0.034 (0.019) 0.004 (0.004) 0.374 (0.452) 0.048 (0.022) 3.959 (1.524) 1007 44.69 0.000

per cap. (t1)

Polity (t1) Polity Squared Ethnic Fractionalization War Years Constant N Wald Chi Squared P> Chi Squared

* indicates .05 signicance for Rho Robust standard errors reported P-values are of one-tailed signicance tests

estimate conict duration, the continuation cut of the transition model is used. As Table 3 shows, the effect of extraterritorial bases on conict duration is positive and signicant. Substantively, the effect is large as well. Setting continuous variables at their means, war years to 1, and changing the value of extraterritorial bases from 0 to 1 is predicted to increase the probability of war continuation by 12 percent over the baseline (from 82 percent to 92 percent). Changing the value of extraterritorial

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bases from 0 to 2 increases the probability of war continuation by 17 percent (that is, up to a 96 percent predicted probability). Thus, in both statistical and substantive terms, hypothesis 4 is conrmed. In model 6 the neighborhood variables for rivals, weak states, and refugees are included along with the external base indicator. As expected, the effects of these factors are swamped by the effect of the external base variable and the magnitudes of the coefcients are reduced (compared with the models above), supporting the claim that these variables work through external bases.74 In diagnostic models not shown,75 I run bivariate regressions using bases as the DV and rivals, refugees, and weak neighbors as the IVs. Each of these variables is found to be a positive and signicant predictor of bases, conrming expectations. IV. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS This article demonstrates that regional conditions are important for understanding how civil wars unfold. Theoretically, rather than treating states in isolation, analysts should consider the neighborhood in which states are located and how international processes affect domestic politics. Moreover, interactions between states and transnational social actors play an important role in shaping not only antiregime violence but a whole array of social phenomenon. Thus, scholars should play much more attention to this incongruence between states and societies. This article argues that weak states, rival states, and refugees in neighbors contribute to the emergence of TNR organizations, bargaining failure, and civil conict. Each of these factors nds support in the regression results, and the transition model shows interesting differences between conict onset and duration. Most importantly, access to external bases was shown to have a signicant effect on the prolongation of conict. Nevertheless, the empirical analysis presented here is admittedly limited, as the proposed bargaining dynamics are not tested explicitly. Further research into bargaining processes is needed. In addition, more research should be devoted to the contagion of violence across regions and to the presence of zones of conict where civil and international wars are mutually reinforcing. This study also has important practical implications. National boundaries place fundamental limitations on the states ability to repress trans74

.15

The three coefcients fail to reach joint signicance in a likelihood ratio test: p>chi-squared = Results are available from the author.

75

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national challengers. Despite being vastly weaker, violent transnational groups can even frustrate the worlds preeminent power, the United States. Notably, U.S. counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have been hampered by the ability of opposition groups to slip across porous borders. After the invasion of Afghanistan, for instance, Taliban and al-Qaeda forces found sanctuaries in remote tribal regions of Pakistan, where the state has only limited control. Current conicts in Darfur and Chad also cross national boundaries and are clearly interdependent. Hosting rebel groups and cross-border violence threaten relations between neighbors and can escalate into international crises. This suggests that states cannot effectively counter cross-border groups through unilateral military means but must cooperate with others to develop common strategies for combating transnational violence.