UC Davis

Why do some civil conflicts receive external intervention and others do not? What explains the variation in intervention type across different civil conflicts and why are some interventions more involved than others? Are some interventions more effective than others? Does intervention effectiveness vary across different types of interventions and different types of conflicts? In addressing some of these important, policy relevant questions, this dissertation project puts forth a new explanation for why there is such variation in external intervention and its effectiveness across civil conflicts: rebel group branding. In this project rebel group branding is defined as the overarching identifier of a rebel group, often rooted in grievances, that frames internal and external perceptions about why a rebel group is fighting. A rebel group’s brand creates a conflict narrative that is often an oversimplification of a rebel groups motivations and becomes a heuristic utilized by both internal and external actors to determine quickly what a conflict is about. This dissertation is therefore made up of three separate article projects that examine how rebel group branding affects external intervention in civil conflicts.In chapter one, this first article project argues that perceptions of a rebel group’s brand can influence whether an external intervener decides to support a rebel group in question. Drawing upon concepts from business such as brand awareness, brand loyalty, and anti-brand behavior, this article demonstrates that different brands generate different types of intervention support. Using a multi-variate probit model to disaggregate various forms of external support and take into account the fact that different intervention types are not independent from one another, this article finds that religious rebel brands attract more committed forms of external support, whereas other rebel groups with ethnic and leftist brands attract less committed, more symbolic forms of external support. Conversely, rebel groups that do not engage in any branding behavior are the least likely to attract external support. In chapter two, this second article project then explores how the subsequent effects of external intervention on conflict outcomes can vary depending on the rebel group’s brand, showcasing the interaction effect between rebel group branding and external intervention. Using a conditional mixed process (CMP) model, this paper not only demonstrates that external military interventions are non-random, but that they have a more deleterious effect in some civil conflicts over others. In particular, rebel groups with a religious brand (as opposed to an ethnic or ideological brand or rebel groups with no brand) are not only more likely to elicit external intervention, but intervention in these conflicts is also more likely to have a negative effect on the ability of the government and rebels to come to a negotiated settlement. The article project then uses a case study of Yemen to further explore the theoretical mechanisms of interest. Finally, in chapter three, this third article project examines how rebel group branding can affect public opinion in an external state and how individual preferences for external intervention can also be manipulated by branding a rebel group in particular way. Using an original survey experiment conducted on UC Davis students, this paper finds that variation in rebel group brand awareness and brand loyalty can affect the type of interventions supported as well as the overall level of intervention support among survey respondents. In doing so, this article demonstrates that public support for external intervention is not uniform across all rebel groups and can be manipulated depending on the identity cleavage that gets emphasized.