Replication Data for: Partners in Crime: Comparative Advantage and Kidnapping Cooperation

What explains cooperation between armed groups? Challenging existing literature that assumes armed groups must be similar or not cooperate at all, I argue that explicit differences are key to some cooperation. Comparative advantage explains why rebels and criminals--organizations that typically eschew collaboration--cooperate to produce violence. This article introduces "black market white labeling"--cooperation that emerges when one actor buys an illicit good or service from another and re-brands it as their own. To demonstrate this phenomenon and the conditions under which it occurs, I focus on kidnapping, an underexplored but common form of armed group violence. Drawing on 113 interviews with Colombian kidnappers and hostage recovery personnel from Colombia and the United States, I theorize the conditions under which rebels "outsource" violence to criminal gangs or produce it "in house." This article explains the organizational dynamics of rebel-criminal cooperation that perpetuate violence against civilians. This document serves as the Comparative Political Studies Dataverse file for "Partners in Crime: Comparative Advantage and Kidnapping Cooperation," providing research documentation and data that support the findings of this study.