Insurgency Success Factors and Rebel Legitimacy
frequency, brutality, and messaging behind acts of violence committed by an actor against
civilians. Second, civilians favor sides that commit fewer and less brutal acts of violence. Third,
in instances where both sides are prone to brutal and common acts of violence, civilians favor the
actor they relate to ideologically³³. Another interesting argument for civilian support, made by
Chowdhury and Krebs (2009), is that legitimacy will only be achieved if an actor's movement
and treatment of civilians is based in local context, tradition, and ideological values. Anna
Zelkina (1993) argues that Russia has ultimately failed to secure legitimate rule in Chechnya,
because it has not incorporated Chechen realities and identities into Chechen policy.
Studies by Fearon, Kasara, and Laitin (2007), GSDRC Report (2010), Government
Counterinsurgency Manuals, and Podder (2013), examine the impact provision of services has on
influencing civilian support. A RAND study of 89 insurgencies evaluated the strength of a
correlation between fifty values and overall levels of state legitimacy. The study found that
provision of welfare and basic services provided one of the strongest correlations to state
legitimacy for all the indicators 34. While this study examines state legitimacy, support from other
studies by suggest that this concept can also be applied to insurgent actors who are able to
provide "state-like” services. The GSDRC report also suggests that civilian support of an
insurgency increases if an insurgency provides services to populations the state is unable or
unwilling to provide³5.
Anderson and Black (2007) and Ethan Frisch (2011) provide just a few analyses that
apply theory of organizational management to insurgencies to better understand insurgent
capacity, function, and trajectories. I build on these arguments by applying literary evaluations of
how law, provision of services, and management of propaganda campaigns contribute to
insurgent legitimacy. Thomas Nachbar (2012) evaluates the relationship between insurgency,
9View entire presentation