1. Rebel Legitimacy and Wartime Sexual Violence
Katherine Sawyer
University of Maryland
Kathleen Cunningham
University of Maryland and Peace Research Institute Oslo
Kanisha Bond

2. Explaining Wartime SV Civil conflict and sexual violence
Why and how?
Our focus: Rebel legitimacy
Existing lit emphasized goals of rebels, the need to generate cohesion, inequality, wartimes cleavages such as ethnicity, lack of control of soldier, greed, gender inequality

3. Rebel Legitimacy Rebel SV:
Incentives to constrain SV to retain benefits of legitimacy:
Support in population
Support of international actors

4. Hypothesis
Rebels with greater legitimacy are less likely to commit acts of sexual violence during the conflict.

5. Measuring Legitimacy Difficult to measure directly Multiple sources
Our measure:
How rebel leaders achieve power
Information about connection to population and to group members

6. Rebel Leader Data Categories of ascension types: Election Founder
Inherited/Non-democratic
Split
Merged
Third party
Rebel officer

7. Rebel Leader Data (2)
Figure 1. Distribution of Rebel Leadership Ascension by Type

8. Methods Logistic model Dependent Variables: Measures of Legitimacy:
Rebel acts of sexual violence
Measures of Legitimacy:
Quasi-democratically elected leader (compared to all other types)
Legal political wing
Covariates:
Territorial control, troop strength, coercion, abduction, external support, external intervention, ethnic fractionalization, population, GDPpc

9. Empirical Results – Rebel SV
Figure 2. Marginal Effects: Probability of Rebel Acts of Sexual Violence

10. Concluding Remarks Rebel legitimacy differs Thanks!
Impacts battle tactics:
Rebel – Acts of sexual violence
Thanks!