A cause to fight
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11064949 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Scott F Abramson (0009-0003-1932-307X, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science University of Rochester Rochester New York USA), Xiaoyan Qiu (0000-0002-7817-783X, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis Missouri USA) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-05-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ajps.12985 |
| OpenAlex | W4410050301 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 57 |
Why do individuals participate in civil conflict? Materialist explanations have dominated quantitative scholarship on the causes and conduct of civil wars. Yet, a substantial body of qualitative, historical, and ethnographic evidence suggests that nonmaterial, ideological motives contribute to individuals' decision to enter combat and their battlefield performance. We bridge these two perspectives by developing a model of civil war recruitment where potential fighters trade off ideological and material incentives to enlist. More ideologically committed individuals are (i) more willing to sacrifice income to enlist, (ii) more likely to exert greater effort in combat and accordingly are assigned to riskier tasks, and (iii) less responsive to changes in enlistment costs. Using detailed biographical data on members of the British Battalion of the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War, we find support for all three implications. Individuals indeed trade off economic and ideological incentives to participate and perform in conflict
Political science · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Health and Conflict Studies · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
The Spanish Civil War
Methods and Models
Inside Rebellion
Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria
Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict, and Civil Wars
Religion, terrorism and public goods
Economic Shocks and Conflict
Robust Nonparametric Confidence Intervals for Regression-Discontinuity Designs
Foreign Fighters
Commodity Price Shocks and Civil Conflict
Inequality, Grievances, and Civil War
Greed and grievance in civil war
Impact of Rebel Group Ideology on Wartime Sexual Violence
Terrorism, Wealth, and Delegation
Ideology and Violence in Civil Wars
The Foreign Enlistment Act and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939
The Economic Origins of Conflict in Africa
Economic Shocks and Civil Conflict
Britain Divided. The Effect of the Spanish Civil War on British Political Opinion
From Byron to Bin Laden
The Membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1920–1945
Decentralization, Repression, and Gambling for Unity
Sons of the soil
Mutually Assured Distrust
Rebel Rivalry and the Strategic Nature of Rebel Group Ideology and Demands
The Relevance of Ideology to Contemporary Armed Conflicts
Horizontal Inequality, Crosscutting Cleavages, and Civil War
Recruitment and Allegiance
Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines
True Believers, Deserters, and Traitors
Who Fights? The Determinants of Participation in Civil War
The Quality of Terror
Ideology in Armed Groups
Foundations of the Vanguard
Indignation, Ideologies, and Armed Mobilization
Ethnic Defection in Civil War
Wealth, Slaveownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy
Fratricidal Rebels
Why They Join, Why They Fight, and Why They Leave
Repression and refuge
Women on the frontline
Ideology and armed conflict
Ideology in civil war
Social Identification and Ethnic Conflict
Occupation and Pay in Great Britain 1906-60
Do Commodity Price Shocks Cause Armed Conflict? A Meta-Analysis of Natural Experiments
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Risks
Rebel Motivations and Repression
Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |