Rivalry or Repression? Rethinking the Logic of Violence against Civilians in Conventional Civil Wars

What explains the perpetration of violence against civilians in the context of conventional civil wars? In contrast to the argument made by Balcells (2010), in this paper we argue that patterns of violence towards civilians are not determined by prewar levels of political competition or rivalry but are rather largely driven by a logic of repression. Civilians are more likely to be executed in localities with widespread support for the enemy. However, because identifying, rounding up, and killing targeted individuals requires organization and information, this repression is only observed when supporters of the side in control of the territory possess a minimum level of political organization. Reanalyzing Balcells' (2010) data on executions in 1,062 Catalonian municipalities during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), we demonstrate that a logic of repression, not rivalry, best explains the patterns of leftist violence towards civilians.