Rebel group branding and external intervention

Abstract

Why do some civil conflicts attract certain types of external support over others (e.g. military support, foreign aid, sanctions, and mediation)? This paper makes two main contributions: one theoretical, and one empirical. First, this paper proposes a new explanation to account for the variation in external intervention across civil conflicts: rebel group branding. It then makes its empirical contribution by utilizing a novel modelling strategy that disaggregates among various forms of external support and controls for the fact that different intervention types are not independent from one another and can occur simultaneously within a civil conflict.