Christopher K. Butler, Michele Leiby, and Joshua Morales
The Evolution of Rebellion: Social Networks and Civil War
WORKING PAPER
2015
Abstract
We conceptualize civil-conflict dynamics as part of a tug-of-war over public support between the government and an opposition. Violence such as targeted assassination may be used by either side for some larger strategic purpose but also produces shifts in public support against one group and in favor of the other. The size of these shifts are theorized to depend upon the number of friends the target has and the breadth of the political spectrum these friends cover. We use the assassination of Pedro Joaqu ́ın Chamorro Cardenal during the Nicaraguan conflict as a source of empirical inspiration in developing a simulation model. Assuming that the Nicaraguan public presumed the perpetrator of the assassination was the Somoza regime, the model demonstrates how public support would have shifted away from the government. We also uncover the following counterintuitive result: If the public presumed that the opposition- leaning target had been targeted by the opposition, then the largest shifts in public support are generated by the target having more friends who are political concentrated in the political spectrum.
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