Existing research suggests that rebel groups with aspirations for international legitimacy avoid practices that harm their reputation. This study asserts that this logic does not necessarily apply to forced recruitment of fighters. Unlike other coercive practices, recruitment is not a mere tactical choice but a foundational requirement for organizational survival. The indispensable need for fighters compels rebels to weigh recruitment needs against aspirations for legitimacy and balance the imperative for survival against the potential for international backlash. I argue that pre-war social origins condition the recruitment practices of legitimacy-aspiring rebels by boosting both voluntary and materially-motivated recruitment. Pre-war ties to civilian-led organizations provide groups with networks for disseminating ideological appeals, fostering trust, and cultivating collective convictions favoring violent mobilization, thereby enhancing the ability to attract voluntary recruits. The boost in voluntary recruitment demonstrate rebels’ organizational capacity and serve as humanitarian justifications for external supporters. External support, which can be used for monetary incentives, attracts recruits motivated by tangible benefits, further reducing the need for forced recruitment. Thus, rebel organizations best positioned to refrain from forced recruitment are those with both aspirations for international legitimacy and pre-war ties to civilian-led organizations. Using cross-national data on 115 rebel organizations, I find strong empirical support for this hypothesis. My work builds on the growing body of research on rebels’ engagement with international audiences, highlights the role of social origins in shaping future behavior, and suggests that the constraints they face in galvanizing domestic support limit legitimacy-aspiring rebel groups’ adherence to international humanitarian laws.

How and when do rebels that govern civilian populations engage in diplomacy abroad? While prior research suggests that governance-oriented rebels are more likely to engage in diplomacy due to their legitimacy aspirations, we argue that the relationship between rebel governance and diplomacy is contingent on the resource constraints that rebels face. Providing governance and conducting diplomacy are both financially and administratively demanding, requiring rebels to balance these competing demands. Using a novel dataset on rebel lobbying via private firms—which is an exceptionally costly form of diplomacy—combined with existing data on conventional rebel diplomacy, we examine 230 rebel groups across 70 countries from 1945 to 2012. Our findings challenge the assumption of a straightforward governance-diplomacy link. Consistent with our argument, only rebels with strong institutional capacity engage in both governance and diplomacy, while organizationally weak governance-providing rebels are no more likely to engage in diplomacy. Moreover, social-service-providing rebels are significantly less likely to engage in diplomacy during active conflict than in periods of relative peace, highlighting the constraining effects of resource strain. Our study contributes to the international relations scholarship on non-state actors by demonstrating how resource deficiencies and the lack of international recognition fundamentally constrain rebels’ ability to mimic sovereign state behavior, even when they aspire to do so.

Why do some militant groups that appeal to the same constituency cooperate, while others descend into violent rivalry? I develop a theoretical framework that distinguishes between shared constituencies-the broader social groups on whose behalf militants claim to fight and shared recruitment pools-the specific social networks from which they draw members. I argue that shared constituencies facilitate cooperation only when groups recruit from distinct social bases, whereas overlapping recruitment pools pose existential threats, fueling infighting. I test these expectations using Temporal Exponential Random Graph Models (TERGMs) on an original temporal network dataset of 53 militant organizations active in India between 1981-2021. To operationalize recruitment pool overlap, I introduce a novel behavioral proxy based on documented cases of rank-and-file defections across groups. The results are consistent with the proposed theory. These findings advance our understanding of militant behavior and speak to broader debates on representation and competition in contentious politics.

Rebel groups often engage in performative governance acts that mimic the symbolic repertoires of sovereign states (e.g., printing currency, holding funeral rites, or building mausoleums). How do these acts shape rebel-constituency ties and civilian participation in rebellion? Extending constituency-centric theories of conflict, I conceptualize performative rebel governance as a legibility-oriented strategy for mapping civilian loyalties in harder-to-reach communities---those beyond the rebels’ immediate networks. By observing voluntary participation in these symbolic acts, rebels can identify potential supporters who would otherwise be unlikely to mobilize, such as women, non-activists, and individuals without familial ties to the rebel movement. Yet, these same acts also increase the legibility of rebellion to the state, exposing pro-rebel civilians to surveillance and repression, raising the personal costs of radicalization and deterring individuals who might have otherwise mobilized in a lower-risk environment. Thus, performative rebel governance paradoxically trades off the ability to expand rebels' mobilization base beyond their traditional networks for an overall decline in mobilization due to heightened state repression. I provide evidence for this theory using a difference-in-differences framework, combining original spatial event data on the funeral rites of PKK fighters in Southeast Turkey with microdata on PKK recruitment. The findings substantiate the dual effect of symbolic governing acts on recruitment. While funeral rites increase the recruitment of women and individuals with no history of political activism or family ties to the rebel movement, overall recruitment declines, indicating that the suppressive effects of state surveillance and repression outweigh the mobilizing impact of symbolic governance. These results reveal an inherent dilemma in rebel governance in contested spaces: while governance helps insurgents overcome informational deficiencies by eliciting civilian agency to reveal allegiances, it simultaneously renders the social landscape of war more legible to the enemy.

Conventional scholarly wisdom suggests that armed groups claim credit for violent acts to send costly signals of resolve. However, many armed groups instead issue explicit denials of responsibility for attacks, posing a challenge to prevailing theories. If violence functions as a costly signal that builds reputation for resolve, why would armed groups disavow violence? Drawing on political psychology, we argue that denials are deliberate tools for narrative manipulation—crafted to create uncertainty, erode trust in government, and temper public outrage by activating cognitive processes, such as motivated reasoning and reappraisal, that allow individuals to reinterpret events in ways that reduce discomfort. To test this argument, we conducted a pre-registered survey experiment with a national sample of 1,616 U.S. adults. Participants were presented with a fictional attack attributed to an armed group by the government and randomly assigned to conditions in which the group denied, claimed, or remained silent about the attack. Our findings reveal that denials significantly reduce perceived culpability, undermine trust in government, and dampen outrage—demonstrating their effectiveness as psychological and strategic communication tools. This study refines theories of armed actors’ political communication and offers insights for countering misinformation and strengthening public resilience in contested information environments.

What sorts of counterterrorism policies do populist individuals in the United States prefer in the wake of terrorist attacks? We theorize that populists’ preferences about counterterrorism are informed by their attitudes on liberal democratic governance, social outgroups, and conspiracy theories. To test this, we conducted an original survey of 1,940 subjects living in the United States. We found that subjects exhibiting populist attitudes were more likely to support unilateral, militarized counterterrorism policies but were less supportive of cooperative, multilateral, and liberal counterterrorism policies. We also found that populists were more likely to endorse domestic crackdowns on immigration, the border, and civil liberties as domestic counterterrorism responses. To understand more about these patterns, we also conducted mediation tests and found that strongman illiberalism, perception of social outgroup threat, and conspiratorial thinking patterns are strong and substantive mediators for the relationship between populism and counterterrorism preferences.

Numerous jihadist organizations competing with local armed groups for resources in conflicts worldwide have pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda (AQ) or the Islamic State (IS). How do transnational jihadist rivals (AQ/IS affiliates) shape the behavior of local groups? Scholars argue that heightened competition in violent political markets encourages armed groups to escalate violence against civilians--known as outbidding--to distinguish their "brand." However, existing research has largely overlooked how the type of actor involved in conflicts, rather than the quantity of groups, shapes competitive dynamics. We argue that transnational jihadists, with their legacy of brutality and high levels of international scrutiny, reshape militant competition, making escalatory violence ineffective and counterproductive for local groups seeking brand differentiation. Instead, we propose a theory of restrained competition, where local groups moderate civilian harm to distinguish themselves, thereby bolstering their local support and international appeal. We posit that this reputational calculus intensifies when groups maintain greater ideological distance from transnational jihadists and have credible prospects for enhancing their international standing through restrained behavior. Using original data on pledges to AQ and IS, and leveraging their sudden emergence as a quasi-experimental treatment, we apply a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) analysis. Aligning with our restrained competition theory, we find that armed groups---particularly those with non-religious ideologies and that are not designated as terrorist organizations by the United States---reduce violence against civilians in response to transnational jihadist competitors. Our findings challenge assumptions about escalation in fragmented conflicts, offering new insights into armed group behavior.

This study develops a principal-agent theory of why/how armed groups engage in high-end cooperation involving training, intelligence, and logistical support among each other. While such cooperation enhances operational capacity, it also redistributes power and creates downstream military/strategic and political risks. Principals mitigate these risks by selecting agents that are skill-wise complementary, but militarily subordinate, and politically non-substitutable. Using original temporal network data on 53 groups in Northeast India (1981-2021) and Temporal Exponential Random Graph Models (TERGMs), I show that high-end cooperation is more likely in asymmetric dyads that do not share civilian constituencies. The findings recast militant alliances as products of competitive threat perception and carry broader implications for multiparty conflicts and the delegation of violence in civil wars.

This paper investigates the learning processes in militant groups and how different alliances shape these processes. By examining the relatively understudied aspect of tactical choices in civil wars, this study highlights the mechanisms through which armed groups adopt new tactics from allies. Challenging the conventional view that tactical diffusion is a straightforward outcome of alliances, I argue that alliances offering joint training are more effective in facilitating inter-group learning compared to those limited to arms, funds, or rhetorical support. This effectiveness stems from joint training enabling not only elite-level interactions but also socialization among fighters across groups, fostering shared norms, understandings, and practices. The study tests this theory using cross-sectional time series data on militant alliances among 53 militant groups in Northeast India between 1980-2021, focusing on their use of kidnapping tactics. The findings reveal that alliances involving joint training with groups proficient in kidnapping significantly increase the likelihood of a group adopting kidnapping, whereas alliances limited to arms, funds, or rhetorical support do not. Once kidnapping is adopted, its persistent use suggests that what is learned from allies becomes entrenched within the group's practices, indicative of a contagion process where norms and practices are socially reinforced within a community. By shedding light on how alliances influence tactical diffusion, this study contributes to the broader understanding of armed groups’ decision-making and the tactical conduct of civil wars. The results also highlight how specific inter-group interactions can facilitate complex organizational learning, opening new research avenues into how militant groups learn about practices beyond violence, such as rebel governance, public relations, diplomacy, or transnational campaigning.

Recent political violence research has explored how militant leaders’ backgrounds influence their decision-making while in power. However, existing scholarship primarily analyzes the biographical attributes of individuals in command of rebel organizations. This focus on rebel organizations excludes leaders of smaller yet highly lethal and influential armed groups in civil wars as well as commanders of militant organizations operating outside of civil war contexts. To help bridge this gap, we developed the Jihadist Leaders Dataset (JLD). The JLD contains novel information on 180 leaders of jihadist groups operating across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East between 1976 and 2023. Examining Arabic, English, French, German, Turkish, and Urdu language sources, we collected biographical data on numerous variables surrounding jihadist leaders’ backgrounds and life experiences. In addition to outlining our research methodology and descriptive statistics on the characteristics of jihadist leaders, we demonstrate the dataset’s practical value through a quantitative analysis of suicide bombings. This dataset contributes to research on militant leaders, individuals involved in conflict processes, and a prominent subset of armed groups that continue to influence conflict dynamics across multiple regions.

Why do armed groups use extreme forms of violence such as beheadings, despite their significant costs? This study argues that leadership transitions create authority crises that incentivize successors to adopt extra-lethal violence as a tool of internal consolidation and external signaling. These pressures are particularly acute for successors with prior leadership experience in other armed groups: having previously lost power, these leaders face additional reputational deficits and are especially likely to view extra-lethal violence as a useful instrument of authority consolidation. Drawing on an original dataset of 206 leaders from 108 jihadist groups active between 1976 and 2023, we find that organizations are significantly more likely to use beheadings under successor leaders than under founders. This effect is most pronounced among those with prior rebel leadership experience. We also find that these patterns are more consistent with successors’ strategic use of beheadings to address short-term authority deficits than with alternative explanations such as ideological extremism, technical skill, transnational network ties, or unsanctioned violence by subordinates. By shifting attention from organizational incentives to leader-level dynamics, this study contributes to research on militant leadership, succession in armed groups, and the strategic logic of extra-lethal violence.