Replication Data for: Leader Incentives and Civil War Outcomes

This paper examines the influence that rebel and state leaders have on civil war outcomes, arguing that incentives to avoid punishment influence their strategic decision-making during war. Leaders in civil war face punishment from two sources: internal audiences and opponents. I hypothesize that leaders who bear responsibility for involvement in the war have a higher expectation of punishment from both sources following unfavorable war performance, and thus have incentives to continue the fight in the hope of turning the tide and avoiding the negative consequences of defeat. These incentives, in turn, make leaders who bear responsibility more likely to fight to an extreme outcome and less likely to make concessions to end the war. These propositions are tested on an original dataset identifying all rebel and state leaders in all civil conflict dyads ongoing between 1980 and 2011. Results support the hypothesized relationships between leader responsibility and war outcomes.

本文考察了叛乱组织领导人与国家领导人对内战结局的影响，提出规避惩罚的动机是左右其战争期间战略决策的关键因素。内战中的领导人面临两类来源的惩罚：内部受众与敌方。本文提出如下假设：因参与内战而负有责任的领导人，在战争表现失利后，预期将从两类来源处遭受更严厉的惩罚，因此其战略动机将转向持续作战，以期扭转战局、规避战败带来的负面后果。此类动机进一步使得负有责任的领导人更倾向于以极端结局结束战争，而更不愿做出妥协以终结战事。本文基于原创数据集对上述命题进行检验，该数据集涵盖了1980年至2011年间所有持续内战冲突双边配对中的全部叛乱组织与国家领导人。研究结果验证了领导人责任与战争结局之间的假设关联。