Is There a Rebel Resource Curse? Ideological Appeals, Material Incentives, and the Success of Rebel Organizations

Abstract How do recruitment tactics affect the success of rebel groups? Scholars posit that recruitment strategies that rely more on ideological appeals, relative to material incentives, attract highly committed recruits who are more invested in the success of their groups than their materially motivated counterparts. An implication of this is that rebel organizations should be more successful when they rely more on ideological appeals than material incentives for recruitment. However, I argue that ideologically based recruitment strategies provide rebels with a double-edged sword. While ideological appeals help attract committed recruits, they are also associated with factors that introduce a variety of problems into the bargaining process, undermining the ability of rebels to earn negotiated settlements. Furthermore, ideological-based recruitment strategies often fail to build sufficiently powerful fighting forces, making it difficult for rebels to achieve outright victory. Thus, I expect that ideologically based recruitment strategies do not help rebels achieve long-term success. I test this claim with novel data on the recruitment practices of rebel organizations that were active across the world between 1989 and 2011. I do not find evidence that greater reliance on ideological recruitment appeals, relative to material incentives, increases or decreases the probability that rebels achieve favorable outcomes.