Sources of Conventional and Guerrilla Strategies in Ethno-Territorial Civil Wars

Shale Horowitz

Terrorism and Political Violence, 2023, vol. 35, issue 7, 1451-1467

Abstract: In ethno-territorial civil wars, which factors influence whether rebels choose and retain conventional warfare as their primary military strategy throughout the conflict, or whether they use guerrilla warfare as a primary strategy during periods judged to be less advantageous to conventional warfare? The existing literature almost exclusively emphasizes relative power as the determining factor: rebels use guerrilla warfare because they typically lack the capability to fight conventional wars effectively against states. I find some support for this hypothesis: ethno-territorial rebels are much more likely to fight exclusively conventional wars when external states intervene conventionally on the rebel side. I also find that rebel leaders with more intense, far-reaching nationalist goals are more likely to employ guerrilla warfare as a primary war strategy. For such leaders, the higher costs of using guerrilla methods pending an eventual transition to conventional warfare are made more acceptable by a higher valuation of the far-reaching gains delivered by military victory—gains expected to be made more likely by interim periods in which guerrilla warfare is the primary strategy. Turning to other factors, I do not find that status quo conditions or a high level of state democracy have a significant influence.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09546553.2022.2054338 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ftpvxx:v:35:y:2023:i:7:p:1451-1467

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ftpv20

DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2022.2054338

Access Statistics for this article

Terrorism and Political Violence is currently edited by James Forest

More articles in Terrorism and Political Violence from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().