3 - Rebel Goals Determine Governance Strategies

Summary

This chapter argues that rebel groups’ long-term goals determine rebels’ governance strategies. Rebel goals are defined on a spectrum of transformativity, bookended by more transformative goals of revolution at one end and personal enrichment at the other. After rebel leaders determine their organizations’ goals, they are uncertain about how to pursue them and look to examples for guidance. Because of the CCP’s propaganda campaigns, almost all rebel leaders are familiar with the CCP and its intensive and extensive governance, but not all rebel groups decide to learn from and imitate the group. Rebel leaders learn from and decide to imitate the CCP’s governance almost exactly when they share revolutionary goals similar to the CCP’s, even if they do not share an ideology. As more rebel groups with revolutionary goals imitated the CCP’s governance, global expectations converged upon the CCP’s governance model as the appropriate strategy for revolutionary rebel groups, creating material and ideational incentives for revolutionary rebel groups to conform to the CCP’s governance. The less transformative rebel groups' goals become, the degree of compatibility with the groups’ goals and the CCP’s objectives declines, so the extent to which rebel leaders decide to imitate the CCP's governance also declines.