Rebels without a Territory

Abstract

The large-n literature on political violence has paid little attention to the distinction between insurgencies that control territory and those that do not. Territorial control has consequences for the lethality of the group, its pattern of recruitment and bargaining power. The main determinant of territorial control, we argue, is state capacity: while territorial insurgencies are more frequent in poor countries, nonterritorial ones tend to occur in countries with intermediate levels of development (rich countries are free of internal violence). The authors show that the relationship between development and nonterritorial violence is a concave one, using a panel for the period 1970–1997 that combines existing data sets on civil wars and the Global Terrorism Database 1. The authors also find that nonterritorial violence is more likely in democratic, old states. Population, rough terrain, and inequality have a similar impact on both types of conflict. The authors discuss to what extent territorial conflicts correspond to civil wars and nonterritorial ones to terrorism.