Rebels with a Cause: Does Ideology Make Armed Conflicts Longer and Bloodier?

2022/06/24 by Matthias Basedau, Mora Deitch, Ariel Zellman · 1 voice · 4 citations
Social Sciences · #Political Conflict and Governance #Religion and Society Interactions #Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

paper · doi:10.1177/00220027221108222

openalex publication_date 2022/06/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

Ideology may directly provide motive and indirectly capacity for collective violence, thus making armed conflicts longer and bloodier. We investigate these propositions by drawing on an innovative global dataset which codes ideological claims by rebel groups and governments in intrastate armed conflicts since 1946. Results demonstrate that although ideology increases conflict duration, these effects vary by type and timing. Whereas secular ideological conflicts tended to be more protracted during the Cold War, religious ideology has become increasingly important since. We, however, find little evidence that ideology increases conflict intensity. Rather, rebel criminality best accounts for intensity. So, while immaterial resources like ideology sustain willingness to fight, ideology’s influence upon conflict intensity is limited, especially after the Cold War. Future studies need to take ideology seriously and need to investigate its characteristics more in-depth and in conjunction with material, identity related and international variables.

Citations

• Armed Conflict 1946-2001: A New Dataset
• Rationalist explanations for war
• Ideology in civil war
• Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes
• Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others?
• International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict
• On the regression analysis of multivariate failure time data
• Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War
• Organized violence, 1989–2018 and peace agreements
• “To Halve and to Hold”: Conflicts over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility
• Battle Losses and Rebel Violence: Raising the Costs for Fighting
• Non-state actors in civil wars: A new dataset

Cited by

• From Ideology to Goals: A New Conceptualization and Measurement of Political Alignment in Rebel Alliances
• Ideology and Revolution in Civil Wars: The “Marxist Paradox”
• Rebels With Too Many Causes: Diverse Recruitment Appeals and the Intractability of Civil Conflicts
• Is There a Rebel Resource Curse? Ideological Appeals, Material Incentives, and the Success of Rebel Organizations

Discussions

• This article is also a very neat counterpoint to a piece I wrote with Matthias Basedau and Mora Deitch that argued ideological rebel groups get into more protracted (but not more lethal!) conflicts b/ [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]

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• Ideology in civil war
• Ideology and Revolution in Civil Wars: The “Marxist Paradox”
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