Competition and Civilian Victimization

• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/00220027211070621
• Author: Brenton Kenkel,Miguel R. Rueda,Michael Gibilisco
• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2022, Vol. 66(4-5) 809–835

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027211070621

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Competition and Civilian

Victimization

Michael Gibilisco

1

, Brenton Kenkel

2

and Miguel R. Rueda

3

Abstract

Violence against civilians in civil war is widely thought of as a strategic choice by

combatant groups. We argue that a common strategic logic of competition underlies

diverse theories of civilian victimization. We develop a theory of strategic comple-

ments in victimization, hypothesizing that an armed group’s propensity to victimize

civilians will increase with its expectation that its competitors will act likewise. We test

this argument by structurally estimating a formal model of strategic interdependence

between armed groups using data from the Colombian civil war. Our f‌indings indicate

that strategic expectations are responsible for a substantial amount of violence aga inst

civilians: the two major combatant groups would have systematically victimized civi lians

in at least 9% fewer municipalities if they had expected no violence by their rival.

Examining causal mechanisms, we also f‌ind that victimization in the Colombian case was

more likely aimed at controlling civilians than at inf‌luencing peace negotiations.

Keywords

Colombia, game theory, civilian casualties, civil wars, structural estimation

Why do rebel groups and organizations commit violence against civilians during civil

wars? To understand these atrocities, conf‌lict scholars have found evidence that they

result from a process of competition among civil war actors. Violence against civilians,

1

California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

2

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

3

Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Michael Gibilisco, Division of Humanities and Social Science, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E.

California Blvd, MC 228-77, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.

Email: michael.gibilisco@caltech.edu

according to these theories, is a strategic choice in a contest for valuable information

(Kalyvas 2006), for positioning in postwar bargaining (Wood and Kathman 2014), or

for material resources held by civilians (Bagozzi, Koren, and Mukherjee 2017).

Although these theories advance distinct explanations about the benef‌its that armed

groups expect to yield from violence against civilians, they conceptualize victimization

as a strategic tool of competition among armed groups. In this article, we study

previously unexplored implications of the logic underlying these diverse theories. If

civilian victimization advantages the perpetrator when its own violence surpasses that

of its rival, then an armed group’s incentive to engage in violence should be greater if it

expects its competitors to employ similar tactics. Specif‌ically, we theorize that civil war

actors’decisions to victimize civilians exhibit strategic complements.

1

In other words,

the expectation of violence by one group may cause violence by other groups. We

provide a theoretical foundation for this strategic process as a cause of civilian vic-

timization and present evidence that it was a substantial factor in the Colombian

civil war.

Our theory of strategic complements in civilian victimization is built on two

premises. First, violence against civilians is costly, not valued in itself by the armed

groups. Second, the benef‌its that groups gain from violence against civilians are

primarily relative—what matters is to get more than one’s competitors. For example, in

competition over information, having better information than one’s competitors is more

important than the raw quantity of information one has. With absolute costs and relative

benef‌its, each group’s expectation of violence by others will be mutually reinforcing:

the more one group expects its competitors to victimize civilians, the greater its in-

centive to do the same, so as not to fall behind in the competition among groups.

To evaluate this theory, we quantify the extent of civilian victimization due to

strategic complements in the Colombian conf‌lict between 1998 and 2005 using a

structural model of strategic interdependence between armed combatant groups. We

analyze municipality-level data on violence against civilians by the left-wing guerrilla

group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the right-wing

paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) during this period.

Colombia is a particularly good case for studying competitive victimization. During

our period of analysis, multiple armed actors fought for territorial control and held

peace or disarmament talks with the government. Relative benef‌its, such as contention

for territorial control or leverage during negotiations, are important scope conditions for

our theory. Moreover, research design and data quality considerations also make the

Colombian case appealing. Strategic incentives to victimize civilians vary at the local

level, making a within-country design ideal for assessing our theory. Due to recent

efforts by the Colombian government and non-governmental organizations, there is

high quality sub-national data on the timing, location, nature, and perpetrator of

victimization events. Although we focus on the Colombian case, our methodology

could be used to study strategic interdependence and its underlying mechanisms in

other civil wars with civilian victimization, assuming appropriate data are available.

810 Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution 66(4-5)