Rebel purges and leader survival: maintaining power through purges in rebel organizations

Abstract How do rebel leaders maintain power? In rebel groups, leaders face threats to their survival in office from dissatisfied subordinates, internal rivals, and possible informants. A large body of literature studies the effects of leadership decapitations in civil war, but no work theorizes on how leaders might act to manage threats to their removal by internal or external actors. I develop a new theory that argues that, just as autocrats employ purging to “coup-proof” their regimes, a rebel leader can purge group members who may attempt to overthrow, assassinate, or otherwise undermine him. I expect that purges help rebel leaders prolong their time in office by making them more difficult to remove. I test this argument with an original dataset on purging and leader change in rebel groups in Asia. I find evidence that rebel leaders who purge survive in power longer than leaders who do not. This paper provides one of the first theoretical and empirical accounts of purging and different forms of leader exit in rebel groups. Its findings have important implications for how scholars should conceptualize and study leader change during civil war.