Rebel groups behave in curious ways. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) devoted substantial resources to developing a reputation as a legitimate political movement. Their multifaceted approach included providing intelligence to the Philippines Government on the operations of rival rebel groups, cultivating linkages with local politicians, and offering basic goods and services to civilians. Meanwhile, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) struggled to create a reliable civilian base despite the provision of local services such as farm collectives, in part because they focused on the labor class at the expense of their rural base. The CPP strategy was meant to fill gaps in central government service provision, but ultimately failed to secure domestic legitimacy. The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists (CPN-M) established intricate systems of mobile courts to provide access to justice and showcase their good governance. By regulating the narcotics economy that employed vast segments of the population, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) consolidated control and enhanced local legitimacy. What explains the different strategies that rebels adopt in their rule? What is the purpose and what are the consequences?

Rebel governance has been defined as “the set of actions insurgents engage in to regulate the social, political, and economic life of non-combatants during war” (Arjona et al. 2015, 3). Although attempts at rebel governance are as old as the earliest states – and probably older – the research on this topic has taken off in recent years, especially in political science (Mampilly 2011; Staniland 2014; Thomas and Bond 2015; Jo 2015; Arjona et al. 2015; Huang 2016a; 2016b; Henshaw 2016; Arjona 2016; Wood and Thomas 2017; Baczko et al. 2018; Jo and Niehaus 2018; Loyle and Bestvater 2019; Henshaw et al. 2019; Brenner 2019; Asal and Jadoon 2020; Florea 2020; Griffiths 2021; Breslawski 2021; Mampilly and Stewart 2021; Stewart 2021; Revkin 2021; Loyle 2021; Loyle et al. 2021). An assumption in the scholarship on rebel governance is that regardless of the type of rule, rebels seek to control civilian populations through a series of governance mechanisms. The ways that they do so are quite diverse and are informed by the aims of rebellion and the larger strategic setting. A key approach in the research on rebel governance is the disaggregation of the components of rebel rule. Empirically, a variety of nonstate actors (such as rebel groups, crime syndicates, and religious organizations) provide some tenets of governance and often operate in a similar manner to the modern consolidated state. Rebel groups do a variety of things that look like the state – they are involved in providing medical services, education, agricultural programs, banking services, public security, information communication, humanitarian aid, diplomacy, and infrastructural development. Knowing this, rebel groups face choices about how to prioritize their efforts. There is wide variation in the types of rule that rebels adopt and the ways that they engage with international actors. We argue here that research on rebel governance can shed light on broader governance processes such as legitimation and the control of territory and people.

The contributing authors to this special issue focus on two core themes in the study of rebel governance: legitimacy and control. Legitimacy pertains to how rebel groups are viewed by local, domestic, and international actors. According to Hurd, it “refers to the normative belief by an actor that a rule or institution ought to be obeyed” (Hurd 1999, 381). If a rebel group is seen as legitimate, it will, all else equal, fare better when attempting to rule. How do rebel groups build legitimacy? Control is different insofar as a ruler can control people but lack legitimacy. For our purposes, it is about the methods – and the degree to which – rebels establish systems of control.

The articles in this special issue advance our understandings of rebel legitimacy and rebel control by providing novel theoretical frameworks informed by previous scholarship in conflict studies and rebel governance. The arguments are tested using a variety of methodological tools and applied to a diverse set of empirical examples. Indeed, one of the strengths of the rebel governance literature is its multi-method, ecumenical approach to understanding complex phenomena. Readers will see both qualitative and quantitative work, and case studies on rebel groups that they may not be familiar with.

The articles are motivated by specific research questions related to rebel legitimacy and rebel control. At a general level, the articles will theorize the manner in which rebels attempt to build legitimacy. More specifically, they will examine the relationship between gender inclusion and legitimacy as well as the development of rebel court systems. They will bring in the international to investigate how and why rebel groups engage with foreign actors, showing that third parties can shape rebel behavior when it affects their legitimacy and/or population control. It might surprise some readers to learn that rebels often work with international aid agencies, or that they form diplomatic wings in the way that sovereign states do. Interestingly, the nature of rebel governance has surprising downstream consequences that continue to shape post-conflict governance and legitimacy. Finally, rebels manage territory and resources in ways that resemble other political forms such as states and empires. Like empires, rebels are often quite strategic about how much autonomy to give peripheral populations. Like states, they tax and they draw revenue from both licit economies and the illicit; they sell resources on the global market; they are important actors in world affairs. Finally, the purpose of the articles is not to glorify these groups or give them the apparent qualities of Robin Hood or Luke Skywalker. It is meant to be an unbiased, scientific investigation into how they govern.

This special issue developed from a workshop on rebel governance that was hosted by Syracuse University in May 2022. In addition to many of the contributing authors to this issue, participants at that workshop included Ana Arjona, Rachael Beattie, Alexis Henshaw, Margaret Hermann, Reyko Huang, Danielle Jung, Sarah Moore, Hyunjung Park, Alexandra Scrivner, Megan Stewart, and Yael Zeira. That workshop grew, in turn, out of the Sovereignty, Order, and Conflict research series, directed by Ryan Griffiths and funded by a Tenth Decade Grant, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

Summary of the articles

The articles in the special issue are organized by the relative emphasis placed on the twin themes of legitimacy and control. To be clear, these are not exclusive concepts, or goals that run contrary to one another. Indeed, a ruler will have an easier time controlling a population when they are imbued with legitimacy. Meanwhile, legitimacy typically has a positive relationship with control. But in the spirit of focused, disaggregated analysis that characterizes the research on rebel governance, the articles in this special issue have tended to emphasize one of the themes, or a blend of both. The layout of the special issue – and our summary below – begins with the articles that are most clearly trained on legitimacy and then moves by degrees to the articles that stress control.

Legitimacy is a fascinating topic that has inspired growing inquiry by scholars of rebel governance. Rebels face a legitimacy crisis. To achieve their goals, be that territorial control and/or external recognition, they must obtain a measure of domestic or international legitimacy. This special issue is particularly interested in the resulting methods and strategies. A good place to start is with the article titled “Rebel Actors and Legitimacy Building,” by McWeeney, Cunningham and Bauer. The authors argue that rebel behavior reveals their legitimacy-seeking aspirations. They quantify legitimacy-seeking tactics as the provision of public goods, participation in conflict mediation, lobbying and cooperation with external actors, conventional political mobilization, and public outreach. In doing so, they highlight the differences between domestic and international legitimacy, urging scholars to follow their lead in disaggregating legitimacy based on intended audience. They also note that legitimacy itself is a type of strategy and that to better understand it, scholars must focus attention on the behaviors rebel groups employ in building legitimacy across multiple audiences.

The next set of articles zoom in to explore more specific elements of legitimacy-seeking rebel behavior. In “Gender Inclusion and Rebel Strategy: Legitimacy Seeking Behavior in Rebel Groups,” Stallman and Hadi study the relationship between gender inclusion, legitimacy, and rebel strategy. Arguing that rebel strategy is related to women’s participation, they examine rebel commitment to international humanitarian agreements, the existence of rebel social media accounts, and the institutional arrangements of the rebel group as proxies for external legitimacy-seeking behavior. They disentangle domestic and international legitimacy by illuminating target audiences of gender inclusive strategies. They support their argument using a large N analysis and a case study of the Karen National Union (KNU).

In “Rebel Courts and Rebel Legitimacy,” Loyle shifts the focus to how rebels provide justice. She evaluates the effectiveness of rebel courts by exposing variation in rebel groups’ aims in cultivating legitimacy. In the article, legitimacy stems from the ability of an actor to mediate and adjudicate a dispute. By focusing on the core functions of rebel governance, she evaluates the effectiveness of rebel courts, and the subsequent effect of this on rebel rule. Loyle demonstrates the effects of long-term rebel governance on rebel group legitimacy. She shows that one of the core functions of rebel governance is to build support and legitimacy and describes one process by which rebels may do so.

But rebels do not operate in a domestic setting that is cut off from the international system. The world outside their state matters, not just as a source of material support, but also as a source of legitimacy. In their article, “Humanitarian Rebels? Rebel Governance and International Humanitarian Engagement,” Jo, Yi, and Barrett argue that socially based rebels adopt internationally facing types of rule. Specifically, humanitarian rebel governance, where rebels engage in humanitarian affairs with international actors, are more likely to emerge when rebels are seeking domestic legitimacy. A key factor is the level of community-relations that rebels establish over time. Their argument engages with previous scholarship regarding the material incentives established in the supply-and-demand arguments regarding civilian populations. They draw attention to the strategic-ness of humanitarian rebel governance, connecting both notions of control and legitimacy. Their article exposes the ways that rebels participate in the international system.

Similarly, rebels engage in international diplomacy much like sovereign states. In “Determined Diplomacy: Land, Law, and The Strategic Outreach of Self-determination Governments,” Huddleston argues that rebel diplomatic projects – their alliances, partnering patterns, and participation in global forums – are strategies for advancing their international legitimacy. He finds that rebels deploy extensive resources to curry international favor, and that the deployment of these resources is strategically aimed. He contends that the number of international relationships that are fostered are dependent on rebel control – so rebels with weaker territorial control will compensate through diplomatic means. In advancing his diplomatic strategy framework for rebel groups, he outlines the strategic targeting of specific audiences by rebel networks.

The nature of rebel rule also has important downstream consequences. AlMuaili’s article “The Perceived Legitimacy of Post War Rights: The Case of Kuwaiti Resistance,” explores the relationship between perceived rebel legitimacy and post-conflict outcomes. He leverages existing work in rebel governance to explain post-war democratic mobilization in Kuwait. Groups that were connected to prior rebellion, both those politically inactive and active, are affected by the perception of their earlier legitimacy. In other words, history matters. By analyzing rebel activity during the 1990/91 Iraqi occupation, and how civilian populations experienced rebel governance, AlMuaili connects past behavior with future success.

Sustaining rebellion is a costly endeavor, both economically and politically. So, how do rebels do it? One answer is provided by Gutierrez and Mampilly’s in their article “A Tax Like Any Other? Rebel Taxes on Narcotics and War Time Economic Order.” Noting that armed groups around the world are often involved with the drug trade, the authors examine the relationship between these groups and the civilian populations they control. One consequence is a form of governance and wartime order wherein rebels regulate economic activity, much like states do in other contexts. Here, proper governance not only confers control, it also builds authority and legitimacy. This control provides predictability in funding the war effort, and further regulatory mechanisms over an industry that is often riven with violence.

In “The Paperwork of Plunder: How Rebels Govern Illicit Resources,” Ahram also connects rebel governance with black, or at least gray, markets. He develops a typology of rebel strategies for resource governance in the context of the global political economy. He explores the relationship between rebel efforts to control resources (empirical sovereignty) and their claim to legal ownership over them (juridical sovereignty). Ahram outlines a theoretical framework for understanding the varieties of rebel resource governance and outlines some implications and economic effects that follow. By interrogating the acquisition of resources and sustained possession over them, Ahram melds the themes of both legitimacy and control.

The final paper is called “Rebels and the Form of Rule: Lessons from Empire.” Here, Griffiths investigates how rebel rulers choose their form of rule by making the compelling case that there is much to learn about rebel rule and order from the literature on empire. By exposing a new tension between the expansionist characteristics of both entities, he proposes that the axis for comparison is best viewed through the push and pull factors of rebel rule and empire, as well as competition and temporal scopes. He addresses the socio-political aims of each form of rule as the basis for weaving the connection between hypotheses he curates for future scholars. In exposing the shared architectures of rebel governance and empire, he outlines a research agenda.

Direction for future research

The intersection between rebel legitimacy and rebel control exposes a fruitful research agenda when studying rebel governance. The articles in this special issue alight on different facets of scholarship in conflict studies and demonstrate the many ways that rebel governance can inform broader international processes such as commitment to human rights agreements or diplomatic tactics. These articles generate a new set of theoretical frameworks and empirical findings.

There are numerous questions that emerge from the collection. For example, legitimacy, as discussed by many of the authors here, is both an outcome and a cause. Can it be more accurately modeled to account for endogeneity? Some of the articles drew attention to the challenges of measuring broad concepts like legitimacy, and some, like Loyle’s, outlined a method for doing so. How else can legitimacy be assessed? A different direction asks when and under what conditions rebel groups must navigate the tension between maintaining control and building legitimacy. What impact does the presence of competing rebel factions have on governance and legitimacy-seeking strategies? How do rebel groups adapt these strategies in response to their conflict environments?

One trend that emerged from these articles is the tendency to disaggregate the “international community” and consider the specific target audience of rebel’s method of rule. Rebellions are shaped by responses from international audiences, as AlMuaili finds in his study about post-conflict outcomes and the end of rebel control. No longer can scholars ignore the way that the international community contributes to sustaining rebellion. Whether through diplomacy or engagement with humanitarian organizations, rebel groups are interacting with a varied set of external actors in varied ways. There is an international ecosystem above the setting at which rebels operate locally. From money from external sponsors to internet engagement to international human rights bodies, further understanding of the dynamics at play in this two-level game is a fertile avenue for new research.

Building on Ahram’s arguments, future scholars might theorize how rebels’ plans and agendas evolve in relation to resource governance. Questions that arise from this work might ask how rebels navigate changing economic landscapes, climate change, and challenges in the global supply chain. Another avenue pertains to how and why rebels employ the type of governance structures that they do. Griffiths draws attention to the perhaps over stylized distinction between rebels and civilians: how are rebel governance decisions shaped by the strictness of the boundary drawn between civilian and participant? Finally, Stallman and Hadi rightly problematize the distinction between rebels and civilians and argue that women’s participation is a form of rebel strategy in rebels’ legitimacy-seeking behaviors. Clearly, more work can be done at the intersection of gender and rebel governance.

The articles in this volume advance scholarship across a wide array of conflict studies literatures, from humanitarian politics to natural resource governance. This special issue invites scholars of peace studies, conflict, and international relations writ large to address how our understandings of nonstate governance challenge the ways that we perceive states and nonstate actors’ interactions, and the forms of control that rebels employ. This issue has stressed the question of strategic-ness in the design and implementation of specific types of rule and highlighted various ways of addressing research questions regarding rebel governance more broadly.