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

• Author: Matthias Basedau,Mora Deitch,Ariel Zellman
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00220027221108222
• Published date: 01 November 2022
• Date: 01 November 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2022, Vol. 66(10) 1826–1853

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027221108222

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Rebels with a Cause: Does

Ideology Make Armed

Conf‌licts Longer and

Bloodier?

Matthias Basedau

1

, Mora Deitch

1,2

, and Ariel Zellman

2

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’sinf‌luence 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 relate d and

international variables.

Keywords

ideology, duration, intensity, armed conf‌licts

1

German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg, Germany

2

Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

Corresponding Author:

Mora Deitch, Department of Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 5290002, Israel.

Email: mora.de@biu.ac.il

Introduction

Scholars disagree on the relevance of ideology for armed conf‌lict (Leader Maynard

2019, 637-638). Some argue that ideology is often shallow or ubiquitous and hence

does not make a difference. Yet, many theoretical reasons suggest that ideology does

affect armed conf‌lict, especially duration and intensity. Ideology may directly provide

motive and indirectly increase capacity for violence: Ideological beliefs form “just

causes”that can motivate actors to continue f‌ighting even under adverse circumstances

(Walter 2017). Ideology may increase readiness for mortal sacrif‌ice and contribute to

greater mutual hostility and distrust between ideologically incompatible groups (ibid.;

Toft 2007). Ideology can also boost necessary capacity by attracting support from

sympathetic outside actors (Sanin and Wood 2014;Keels and Wiegand 2020).

Longstanding Communist insurgencies in Columbia and India provide anecdotal

evidence that ideology drives conf‌lict protraction, while bloody Jihadist insurgencies in

Iraq, Syria, and Nigeria have been sustained and arguably intensif‌ied by external

patronage (Toft 2021). During the Cold War, proxy wars in countries like Afghanistan

and Vietnam were prolonged and intensif‌ied by the massive support for ideologically

aligned armed groups by rival superpowers and their allies.

Despite theoretical reasons and anecdotal evidence, few global empirical studies

have investigated whether ideological claims by rebels or ideological incompatibilities

between warring factions increase the duration and intensity of armed conf‌licts. Most

works focus on non-ideological factors such as ethnic identities or economic variables

such as natural resource exploitation (Fearon 2004;Lacina 2006,Wucherpfennig et al.

2012;Conrad et al. 2019). While scholars have recently paid more attention to the topic

(Leader Maynard 2019), cross-country studies are rare and tend to concentrate on

religious armed conf‌lict (Nilsson and Svensson 2021;Deitch 2020) or rather examine

terrorism and protest (Asal and Rethemeyer 2008). A recent study f‌inds that increasing

levels of ideological incompatibility indeed prolong armed conf‌licts (Keels and

Wiegand 2020), however, it does not specif‌ically consider how historical eras have

shaped these trends

1

nor whether ideology also inf‌luences conf‌lict intensity.

This paper f‌ills the gap by investigating the effects of ideology on intrastate armed

conf‌lict durationand intensity since the SecondWorld War. Our study uses an innovative

global dataset compatible with UCDP/PRIO data, coding global ideological claims by

government and rebels and corresponding ideological incompatibilities from 1946 to

2017. Conceptualizing armed conf‌lict as a special form of collective action, we expect

ideology to directly create motive and indirectly provide material capacity. We hy-

pothesize that illiberal ideologies like Communism and Jihadism are violence-prone and

should increase both conf‌lict duration and intensity. We argue that the end of the Cold

War marks a signif‌icant shift, with conf‌lict duration and intensity associated with secular

ideological rebelsgiving way to more theologicallymotivated conf‌lict in the current era.

Regression results conf‌irm that ideology does matter but is not independent of

material resources and historical periods. First, corroborating recent results (Keels and

Wiegand 2020), we show that ideological claims by rebels and incompatibilities therein

Basedau et al. 1827