Where The Insurgents Aren’T: Rurality, Information, And Nonterritorial Insurgency

Keywords

civil wars; rebellion; terrorism; war

Abstract

Scholars often find that highlands and rural areas foster insurgencies. However, others have argued that cities can also be centers of insurgent activity and that nonterritorial insurgencies are different from territorial guerilla wars. We expect that in a nonterritorial insurgency, the high quality of local knowledge makes populated rural areas inhospitable to nonterritorial insurgent activity. Using data from a random sample of about 750 Médaille de la Résistance Française recipients, we find that departments with more residents in cities and large towns had more medal recipients than rural departments. Analyses of repression patterns (finding that insurgent arrests are less likely in cities than rural areas) and the historical record provide further evidence for the information mechanism.

Publication Date

7-1-2018

Publication Title

Journal of Conflict Resolution

Volume

62

Issue

6

Number of Pages

1262-1283

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002716678985

Socpus ID

85048535140 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85048535140

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