Combatant Recruitment and Outcome of War

Documentos de Trabajo, No. 47, September 2008

26 Pages Posted: 14 Jan 2010

See all articles by Ahmed Saber Mahmud

Ahmed Saber Mahmud

Cornell University

Juan F. Vargas

Universidad del Rosario - Faculty of Economics

Date Written: September 1, 2008

Abstract

Why do some civil wars terminate soon, with victory of one party over the other? What determines if the winner is the incumbent or the rebel group? Why do other conflicts last longer? We propose a simple model in which the power of each armed group depends on the number of combatants it is able to recruit. This is in turn a function of the relative 'distance' between group leaderships and potential recruits. We emphasize the moral hazard problem of recruitment: fighting is costly and risky so combatants have the incentive to defect from their task. They can also desert altogether and join the enemy. This incentive is stronger the farther away the fighter is from the principal, since monitoring becomes increasingly costly. Bigger armies have more power but less monitoring capacity to prevent defection and desertion. This general framework allows a variety of interpretations of what type of proximity matters for building strong cohesive armies ranging from ethnic distance to geographic dispersion. Different assumptions about the distribution of potential fighters along the relevant dimension of conflict lead to different equilibria. We characterize these, discuss the implied outcome in terms of who wins the war, and illustrate with historical and contemporaneous case studies.

Suggested Citation

Mahmud, Ahmed Saber and Vargas, Juan F., Combatant Recruitment and Outcome of War (September 1, 2008). Documentos de Trabajo, No. 47, September 2008, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1536165 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1536165

Ahmed Saber Mahmud

Cornell University ( email )

Ithaca, NY 14853
United States

Juan F. Vargas (Contact Author)

Universidad del Rosario - Faculty of Economics ( email )

Casa Pedro Fermín
Calle 14 # 4-69
Bogota
Colombia

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