Negotiating with Rebel Governments: The Effect of Service Provision on ConflictNegotiations

By

Lindsay HegerOne Earth Future Foundationlheger@oneearthfuture.org

Danielle F. JungPrinceton University

dfjung@princeton.edu

PRELIMINARY DRAFT: PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR CITE WITHOUTPERMISSION

Abstract

When rebels provide social services, do they have more leverage negotiating terms of a peacedeal? The literature suggests that service-providing groups may, on average, have a wider base ofsupport and a more centralized organizational structure. We argue that these features deterpotential spoilers from breaking away from the organization during negotiation processes. This,in turn, makes governments more willing to engage in negotiations since the threat from spoilersis smaller. Thus, service providing rebels are more likely to engage in stable negotiationprocesses compared to non-providers. This paper analyzes these propositions by gatheringservice provision data on nearly 400 terrorist andgroups and their involvement in and behaviorduring peace talks. It also serves as an introduction to a larger project about the implications ofrebel service provision on conflict outcomes.

A December 2012 Guardian report on a meeting between rebel leaders in Aleppo described the proceedings asfollows:

…First on the agenda was the task of reintroducing the men to each other, as many had switched battalionssince their last meeting in the endless game of musical chairs of the Syrian revolution.

A who's who of the revolution followed, each commander stating his name and his unit. Some battalionswere huge, with hundreds of men, artillery pieces and tanks. Others consisted of fewer than 50 fighters.

"Haji, I thought you were with Halab al-Shaba'a brigade," Haji Marea said to one of the men. "No, wehave reformed. We are a new battalion," the man said.

"Brothers, we have a grave situation ahead of us," interjected Abdul-Jabbar Akidi, a defected colonel wholeads the military council of Aleppo. Formed to channel supplies to the rebels, the council was supposed tobe the overarching command structure for the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo. Instead, it soon became onemore faction among many competing for influence…1

Introduction

There is no place that exemplifies better the strategic pitfalls of organizational

mismanagement than the rebel movement in Syria. The relative disorganization of the Syrian

opposition, particularly the non-Islamic groups,is proving fundamentally untenable. Competition

between groups, ineffective attacks, few defenses, and very little international assistance plagues

the opposition’s progress. We view these pitfalls as largely symptomatic of a managerial

problem:specifically, the rebels have none. And the implications of such disarray are stark when

considering the government’s strategic choice to negotiate a political end to the violence or

continue fighting. In a speech in January 2013 Bashar al-Assad stated, “We never rejected a

political solution…but with whom should we talk?” Despite the Assad’s central role in the

horrific conflict, his point is not without merit. With very little in the way of an organized

opposition, negotiating a political solution to the conflict is an unattractive option. In this paper

we explore why this is the case and test how relatively unorganized rebels fare when

governments consider negotiations as a possible solution to conflict.

1See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/27/syrian-rebels-scramble-spoils-war, accessed January 2013

Here we ask two fundamental questions. First, why do rebels and governments meet at

the negotiation tableonly sometimes and, second,why are some negotiationsstable while others

fall prey to spoilers?2Hamas, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Palestinian Liberation

Organization (PLO), and the Free Ache Movement (GAM) have all engaged in negotiations and

often these have been remarkably stable interactions. In contrast al-Mansoorain (a Kashmiri

separatist group), the Jenin Martyr’s Brigade (a nationalist Palestinian group), and the Real Irish

Republican Army have never negotiated with officials of their respective adversaries. Is it simply

the case that groups in this latter set are more resolved or more capable of holding out? Or are

these groupsmore extreme and, therefore, less open to negotiations? Are there strategic reasons

why some adversaries never talk and only fight?

Weexamine this issue in the context of spoiling behavior and its relationship to a rebel

group’s provision of goods and services. We argue when rebel organizations provide services

they are less likely to be affected by one of the factors that often derails negotiations: spoilers.

Service provision bolsters a group’s organizational coherence by increasing support, legitimacy

and organizational capacity associated with service provision. Taken together, greater

organizational coherence can work to deter potential extremist factions within rebels’ ranks from

breaking away. Therefore, service-providing groups are more capable of credibly committing to

negotiation processes, and governments are more interested in negotiating with groups capable

of controlling potential extremists. Negotiations are, therefore, both more likely to occur and

more likely to be stable when they involve groups that provide non-violent services within their

communities.

This analysis makes two major contributions. First, we generate a novel measure of

service provision. To generate this measure we collect and analyze data on service provision by

2 We use the term rebels interchangeably with terrorist and insurgent throughout this paper.

almost 400 terrorist groups. Todate, similar data have only existed for a handful of non-

representative organizations. Our approach uses both a larger and less biased sample, and our

data provide a richer indicator of a group’s governance activities: both the extent and type of

service provision are captured. Secondly, our approach represents a departure from much of the

literature on negotiations, service provision, and conflict outcomes. Prior literature has focused

largely on the odds of a stable peace under negotiated settlement and how the international

community should identify and deal with potential spoilers (Greenhill 2006 and Stedman 1997).

Instead, we focus on a selection issue that occurs prior to negotiations, when parties evaluate the

relative utility of negotiations. If the odds of spoiling are high, negotiations may never occur.

With the exception of Kydd and Walter (2002), the conditions under which this occurs are

relatively unknown. This project explores how rebel groups’ activities shape both rebel and

government expectations about the likelihood of spoiling, and thus, whether negotiations are

possible.

This article is part of a larger effort todevelopan organizational assessment of conflict.

There is growing consensus that when rebels provide services they engage in

measurablydifferent forms of violence, organizational techniques, and are capable of building a

larger baseof support vis-à-vis the legitimacy gained as pseudo-governments. As a first step in

this larger project we have developed a methodology for systematically coding the service

provision activities of more than 400 rebel organizations. Current data on service provision

arelimited largely to anecdotal evidence, case studies, and small-N research focusing on groups

designated as terrorist organizations by a limited number of states in the international system.

The US, UK, Russia, the EU, the UN, Australia, Canada, and India are, to the best of our

knowledge, the suppliers of such lists. While data for groups on these lists offera promising

start—and we takemany of the lessons learned from these projectsusing these lists to heart—they

are problematic because of the bias inherent in limiting the population to several dozen high

profile groups on any one country’s watch list. Ourdata, covering hundreds of groups worldwide,

are the most inclusive to date. Additionally, our data are suitable for developing number of

indicators of goods provision, including confidence measures and a service provision profile.

Both are intellectually appealing in a wide array of contexts, particularly as they give us a sense

of how violent non-state actors engage in governance over populations they purport to fight on

the behalf of.

In this analysis, we look to apply our measures of service provision to the project’s

general claim that service-providing rebel organizations are unique. In this article we focus

ondifference manifested in the conflict negotiation processes. When rebels and terrorist

organizations provide services to the communities in which they operate, they deter potential

defections and generate social capitaland grassroots support. This capital increases the ability of

groups to negotiate without fracturing and, simultaneously, that governments see them as

credible at the negotiation table, making them morewilling to enter into talks. We believe this

credibility extends to make the likelihood of stable talks greater whenservice-providing groups

are negotiating rather than non-service-providing groups.

We develop this argument in five parts below. First, to motivate the project wereview the

literature on the effects of service provision as it relates to rebel behavior. In the second section

we develop our argument and presentcompeting hypotheses about conflict negotiations and

service-providing rebels. In section three we describe our measure of service provision and the

data we use to test the effect of service provision on negotiation (stability). In section four we

estimate the relationship between service provision and both negotiations and stable negotiations,

finding support for our hypotheses: service-providing groups are more likely to enter

negotiations, and negotiations with service-providing groups are morelikely to be stable. The

final section concludes.

I. Toward a Better Understanding of Service Provision

Recent literature examining rebel behavior and conflict processes highlights the role

social service provision plays in how conflictsunfold, organizations cohere, andthe odds of rebel

success. Here, we examine the range of service provision and the state of our collective

knowledge about its effects. We conclude this section discussing the literature we use tomotivate

our study as applied to spoiling and organizational cohesion duringnegotiations.

Service provision in conflict zones takes a range of forms. Some groups provide welfare,

food, medical services, education, orreligious services. Anecdotal evidence suggests Hezbollah

and Hamas both provide an extensive amount of welfare, education, and medical services to their

constituents, but they are not outliers. For example, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) in

Colombia supplymedical services, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka maintained mail delivery

(among other services), and the Communist Party of the Philippines (New People’s Army)

supports literacy programs and performs marriage ceremonies for their supporters. The IRA

provided transportation services within Republican neighborhoods during the Troubles and even

smaller Loyalist groups delivered milk for new mothers living in their communities. Amongst

service-providing violent groups, Hezbollahis one of the most famous.

While Hezbollah’s military wing, Al Moqawama al Islamia (The Islamic Resistance) hasattracted much of world’s attention, the various other community activities of Hezbollahare of equal if not greater importance at home. It runs a range of philanthropic andcommercial activities including hospitals, medical centers, schools, orphanages,rehabilitation centers for the handicapped, supermarkets, gas stations, constructioncompanies, a radio station (Nur) and public service television station (Al Manar). Up

until the middle 1990s Hezbollah was also responsible for public services and utilities inthe southern suburbs of Beirut.3

Hamas’ service sector is similarly sophisticated, covering a rangeof charitable operations

and not-for-profit community resources. Only occasionally does Hamas’ leadership divulge

information about the organization’s community links, but one particularly informative

presentation suggested that the group participates in a wide array of activities. Speaking at a

meeting of Hamas leaders from North America held in Philadelphia in 1993, visiting Hamas

operative Muim Shabib offered a presentation on “the situation in Palestine” and the status of

“Islamic works” tied to Hamas. According to the FBI transcript, Shabib described the institutions

tied to Hamas as falling under the following classifications: educational (schools, universities),

social and charitable (refugees, orphans, relief), cultural, health institutions (clinics, medical

centers), public syndicates, technical institutions, sports clubs, media, religious institutions, and

women’s institutions.4The list of services provided by Shabib includes activities in both Gaza

and the West Bank. Organizational growth in intervening years has almost certainly led to an

increase in the variety of services provided, although to the best of our knowledge an equivalent

open-source assessment of the precise nature of Hamas’ current operations isnot available.5

Not all rebels have as extensivenon-violent wings dedicated to service provision. One

service many groups do provide is dispute adjudication and resolution services through

something akin to a local police force (Asalet al. 2010). These operations are less capital

intensive than Hezbollah’s hospitals or Hamas’ educational institutions, but they do provide

rebels with strategically important information about communities. Services are frequently

3Hezbollah Website: http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/300/320/324/324.2/hizballah/. Accessed 1/23/20084Levitt 2006.Page 81.5Author communiqué’ with Matthew Levitt. For a more current list gathered from open-source data, see the SimonWeisenhall Center Snider Social Action Institute Report (2003) athttp://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7BDFD2AAC1-2ADE-428A-9263-35234229D8D8%7D/hydraofterror.pdf.

provided in territorieswhere groups operate through unofficial community centers. If the group

has a political wing, these centers often serve a dual purpose as distribution centers and party

headquarters.

Early literature on rebel organizations suggested non-state groups provide goods and

services when state institutions are inadequate or nonexistent. In doing so, non-state actors gain

power, legitimacy, and influence over the communities they served (Tuijl 1999; Hasenfeld

1987). Only very recently has the literature concretely identified the specific causal mechanisms

linking service provision to power and identified and tested the implications of service provision

for alternative forms of rebel behavior (seeGrynkewich 2008 and Flanigan 2006). Workin this

areafocuses most extensively on the relationship between service provision and violence, noting

robust relationships between services and particular forms of violence. Specifically, service

provision is linked to suicide bombing, attacks on civilian targets, and highly lethal attacks

(Heger 2010; Berman 2009;Hegeret al.2012). Recent work also explores the relationship

between service provision and rebel organization. Flanigan (2008) looks at the link between

services andrebel recruitment while Berman and Laitin (2008) find that services support “club”

forms of organization in which rebels distribute goods to counter problems associated with

defection. Berman et al. (2011) find counterinsurgent-provided services increase the inclination

of noncombatants to share information with authorities about rebels and Mampilly (2011)

examines the link between rebel service provision and international legitimacy.

Several points of empirical consensusabout service-providing rebel organizationsare

apparent. First, service-providing groups likely have a greater base of support. Service provision,

particularly when substituting for poor governance on the part of the state, makes recruitment

easier, reduces information shared with counterinsurgents, and increases perceptions of

legitimacy. All of these outcomes strongly suggest that service providers likely have a stronger

base of civilian support. Second, service provision implies a rebel organization is functionally

differentiated. Functionally differentiated groupsshould be more adept at fighting (Hegeret al.

2012)and at negotiating largely because they have clear lines of command and control, implying

a significant degree of control from the top of the organization to the operatives working on the

ground. Alternatively, these cohesive groups can be characterized as having fewer veto players,

reducing the duration of conflict (Cunningham 2006). Finally, consistent with the points above,

services are associated with greater severity of violence and more extreme tactics.The literature

linking suicide terrorism and civilian targeting to services rests largely on the argument that these

forms of violence are only possible when groups are internally strong and have a significant

degree of support from the population.

II. Spoiling, Services, and Negotiations

Together, the lessons paint a picture of service providing rebel organizations as

hierarchical, in which leadership retains a high degree of operational command and control. The

organization is relatively immune to defection problems while also enjoying support from a

relatively large swath of the population and is capable of conducting highly lethal violent

campaigns. In this section we outline our argument: that the conditions above suggest service

providers are less likely to suffer from spoiler problems during negotiations. The literature on

spoiling has focused on categorizing spoilers and offered recommendations about how best to

avert losses associated with spoiling. We argue services are associated with greater

organizational coherence and cohesion, and this is the critical link between services and

negotiations.

There are several types of spoilers (Stedman 1997). Our argument focuses on spoilers

that emerge during the negotiation process when the negotiating rebel group fractures and

extremists attempt to derail the process. These spoilers are a type of “inside spoiler,”

reflectingtheir position at the bargaining table. Spoilers distinct from the negotiating parties,

“outside spoilers,” exist when actors feel wrongly excluded from the peace process or if outside

entities have a stake in continued fighting. Our argument does not address explicitly outside

spoilers, although we suspect that when a group delivers services, resultingsupport from vast

sections of the community may also deter some outside spoiling.6 Breakaway dissent groups

have plagued negotiations and ceasefires in many prominent conflicts including those involving

Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in Spain and various Palestinian nationalist groups.

The Decision to Talk and Stability of Negotiations

In early work on the subject, Stedman (1997) argues that spoilers emerge when actors,

“believe that peace emerging from negotiations threatens their power, worldview, and interests,

and use violence to undermine attempts to achieve it”(5).Stable negotiations are unaffected by

spoiling violence. Successful stable negotiations result in peace. Unstable negotiations frequently

break down because violence ruins trust between principals, affecting the ability of the parties to

negotiate an enforceable agreement (Kydd and Walter 2002).

Stedman and others have explored the ways in which third parties can serve as custodians

of the peace, ensuring that spoiler activity is effectively deterred through costly signaling, local

legitimacy-enhancing measures, and coherent strategy (Stedman 1997; Walter 2001; and Barnett

and Zürcher 2009; Khatib nd). Some focus on the efficacy of negotiations and strategies of those

6We see little reason to suspect that service delivery will encourage outside spoiling, thus, mitigating any empiricaleffect in our analysis. Theoretically, however, our principal focus is on internal spoilers that emerge when extremistsbreakaway from an organization.

involved. Downes (2004), for instance, examines the reasons why negotiations are less likely to

work in certain contexts, especially in the wake of ethnic civil wars. Beardsley, Quinn, Biswas,

and Wilkenfeld (2006) examine how different mediation styles affect the bargaining

environment and conflict settlement outcomes. Buhaug, Gates and Lujala (2009) suggest that

rebel groups on par with their adversaries may be more likely to engage in negotiations with a

government because the prospects of either side winning are small.

When parties enter negotiations they evaluate the relative costs. Zahar (2003) explains

potential spoilers consider the costs associated with returning to fighting and the loss of peace

dividends when assessing whether to act. We argue that a similar calculus occurs prior to talks

when adversaries are considering the negotiation option. Negotiating can be a costly option,

especially if talks fail. Failed negotiations can leave parties less likely to trust each other in the

future. Failed negotiations also transmit information about the relative resolve and constraints

that parties’ face, information parties would rather keep close to the vest and have only revealed

because they miscalculated the odds of a peaceful resolution.

Thus, when parties consider whether to enter negotiations they evaluate the probability

spoilers will hamper negotiations. How do parties evaluate this possibility? Governments

concerned about spoilers assess the group’s coherence, internal structure, community appeal, and

leadership’s commitment to negotiations and/or peace. To the extent that a group maintains

control over its ranks and control dissent, governments are less likely to be worried about

potential rebel spoilers. Newman and Richmond (2006), in analyzing the role of foreign

mediators, suggest a similar logic that emphasizes the importance of insider loyalty to successful

negotiation processes. They write that “[i]n order to secure the sustainability of peace, custodians

must not only ‘neutralize’ the environment in such a way as to prevent actors from accessing

resources that could reignite war, they must also steer peace in such a way as to consolidate

insider loyalty to the process.”7

We argue organizations that service providershave a larger array of tools to contain

potential spoilers. Work by Heger (2010) and Berman (2009) suggestsservices can be used to

generate a stronger organization, less vulnerable to defections and with a more stable cadre of

community supporters. By providing services to its operatives and community supporters, the

group can threaten potential spoilers from within the organization or the community whose

tactics may undermine the group with loss of access to benefits. This deters those who pursue

such actions. There are observable implications of this argument. Foremost is that governments

ought to be less likely to enter negotiations with groups they perceive as susceptible to

fracturing. Negotiations in such a situation will be more likely to be costly, and less likely to end

the conflict successfully. Conversely, governments should be more likely to negotiate with

service providers who are able to control their organization. This leads to our first hypothesis:

H1: Governments are more likely to enter negotiations with service providing groups.

In effect this means service providers are more likely to be involved in negotiation

processes than non-providers. We acknowledge that service providers may be more likely to be

involved in negotiations for any number of reasons. These groups may be substantially larger

than non-providers, they may be much more established groups, operating for longer, they may

be the primary representative of a larger movement, or they may be the only option for a

government seeking to negotiate with a legitimate authority of the rebellion and view service

provision to be an indicator of legitimacy.8 Our argument, although a newtheoretical

contribution, is observationally equivalent to these. Thus, identifying a unique implication of our

7 Newman and Richmond, 2006, page 10.8 Lake (2010) details the links between legitimacy and service delivery in his discussion of contemporary phases ofcounterinsurgency practice.

argument is important to substantiate our claims. To this end we focus a large portion of our

analysis on the implications of our argument on the stability of negotiations, once started.

Specifically, our argument implies negotiations with service providers, ceteris paribus, ought to

be more stable than those with non-providers. We see service provision, as opposed to group size

or legitimacy, as having a more direct effect on negotiation stability. Thus we will test the

following second hypothesis to assess the robustness of our theory.

H2: Negotiations involving rebel groups that provide goods and services are more likely to be

stable than negotiations that involve non-providers.

A potential counterargument is that service provision has the opposite effect on both

negotiation possibility and stability. Service provision may exacerbatetensions and lead to

factionalization. These problems result from inadequate distribution issues. If service distribution

favors one subsetof the organization’s membership over another, or is directed toward one sub-

population within the community, spoilers may be encouraged to derail negotiations as a

demonstration of their strength within the organization.

Service provision may also create conditions that favor unstable negotiations as a

consequence of the associated capital burdens placed on the organization to maintain service

delivery in the wake of fighting. Rebel groups (and governments) involved in fighting may use

negotiations as a way to gain information about the resolve of their opponent, buy time to rearm

or reassess strategic plans. Service-providing rebels may enter negotiations in order to create the

peaceful conditions necessary to build non-violent capital and networks. Negotiations to buy

time are inherently unstable as at least one party at the table is not dedicated to finding a

sustainable solution. To the extent that service providers have incentives to create periods of

peace to sustain their non-violent activities, negotiations with service providers are likely to fall

apart. When this occurs, governments are less likely to engage in negotiations with service

providers and, if they meet at the negotiating table, talks are less likely to be stable. The two

counter-hypotheses to our argument are:

H3: Governments are less likely to enter negotiations with service providers

H4: Negotiations involving rebel groups that provide goods and services are more likely to beunstable than negotiations that involve non-providers.

III. Assessing Service Provision and Negotiations

In this section, we assess the relationship between service provision and negotiations. As

previously mentioned, this article is part of a lager project examining the empirical differences

between service providers and non-providers in both the context of conflict and post-conflict

outcomes. To date the project has been principally concerned with data challenges, most

specifically identifying and collecting systematic measures of service provision by terrorist

groups. Here, we outline our strategy to collect this data and, in doing so, identify and describe

the major independent variable used for this analysis.

Identifying and Measuring Service Provision

Binary indicators of service provision are available for a variety of groups. Heger 2010

describes a dataset generated for approximately 50 groups designated by the US as Foreign

Terrorist Organizations. The MAROB dataset provides an ordinal measure of service provision

for groups in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from 1980-2004. To capture service

provision, we gathered data designed to capture the presence, type, and extent of rebel-provided

services. Starting with the universe of over 400 terrorist groups identified by Cronin (2011), we

search all related news reports associated with each organization for indicators of service

provision activities.9To create our measure of services, we first identified and collected all news

items for all available dates (coverage is complete from 1980 on) available on Lexis-Nexis

relating to each group. We captured any news report mentioning the specified group’s name,

erring on the side of over-collection.10 The range of coverage available for groups varied widely.

The group with the least coverage returned only 235 words of news coverage text while the

group with the most coverage returned 3,061,421words. The average group returned nearly

380,000 words in related stories. We will refine this subset of documents in the future and

expend the document pool for each group searching for group acronyms, aliases, and variations

on spelling.

We generated a list of service provision terms (see Table 1A in the appendix) through an

extensive examination of anecdotal evidence, similar small-N studies, and expert interviews. We

then compared each group’s news reports to our list of service provision terms. Following this

comparison, we generated frequencies of words and phrases (up to two-word phrases) related to

service provision in each group’s news coverage using the text analysis program Wordscores.11

Our fundamental underlying assumption is that news coverage for groups that provide services is

more likely to mention words associated with service provision than those groups who provide

fewer services, or do not provide them at all.

The raw, coded reports allow us to create several measures of service provision.

9 We use Cronin’s universe of cases because it represents one of the largest empirical investigations of rebel groupsto date. She identifies the set of groups that do not exclusively target military or property and show sustainedorganizational capabilities. To search for the group, we used the precise spelling and wording identified by Cronin,and required those words needed to be contained in a single phrase. Future collections will account for the variety ofaliases used by many groups.10 If it is likely to bias our measure of service provision, it will do so by biasing us against service provision if themeasure is constructed as a proportion of the total coverage. In raw counts, this strategy will not have a significanteffect.11Wordscores is text analysis software available at http://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/wordscores/software.html.

First, we have a raw count of all words and phrases related to service provision (total

service mentions).

Second, we compare this count to the size of the coverage for that group, creating an

indicator of the relative frequency of service provision within the scope of its activities

(total coverage).

Third, we combine search terms into broad categories of service provision: Education,

Youth and Recreation; Health and Emergency; Security and Justice; Financial, Jobs,

Welfare, Subsidies; Natural Disaster; Public Services; Religious (the detailed sub-

categories are listed in Table 1A in the Appendix). This allows us to understand both the

larger trends of service provision across terrorist groups—something that we have been

unable to test to this point—and to address questions about how service provision will

impact the success of a group and its performance in negotiations using service profiles.

Table 1 reports summary statistics for these service provision measures. Services falling

under the public services category are most prevalent in the dataset, followed by

mentions of financial and educational services. Least frequent are mentions about

services related to natural disasters and healthcare.

We foresee several potential problems with our measures. First, news coverage of

terrorist groups is likely to be non-random. Older groups, for instance, likely have more

coverage. Groups operating in democracies where press reporting is relatively free are also likely

to have more coverage. To the best of our abilities, we attempted to include controls in our

models whenever we perceive coverage to be unbalanced trough an assessment of total coverage

quartiles.

Second, what is released and reported in the subset of newspapers available is likely to

under-report service provision. This may significantly diminish our population of service

providers identified in the universe. This will make it more difficult for us to find the relationship

between service provision and negotiations that we expect. This issue would be problematic if

the bias were in the other direction.

Third, we need to be very careful about assessing context of any service mentions to

ensure they are services attributed to the group, rather than the state, or even a mention of the

group not providing that particular service. To understand better the extent to which our

methodology is biasedby incorrect or ambiguous attribution of services to actors other than the

terrorist group, weconducted an attribution analysis in which coders scrutinized a significant

segment of the reports for a randomly selected subset of groups to assess any attribution biases

that may exist.12Coders overwhelmingly found that mentions of service provision were

attributable to the terrorist group, giving us confidence the measure is capturing the concept we

want to measure.

Normalizing the Service Measure

The distribution of mentions of service words is heavily weighted to very few mentions.

Frequency distributions of all mentions of service words across groups (left panel) and the public

service words (chosen for the sake of example) sub-category (right panel) are shown in Figure 1.

To address this problem we think about measuring service by any given group in two ways:

groups’ weighted service provision created by dividing the total number of service words for any

given group by the total number of service mentions across all groups (weighted service) and the

group’s rank based on service provision measured against all other groups (rank service). In both

cases, the higher the number, the more likely the group is providing services. We created similar

12We randomly selected 10 percent of groups for a backcheck.

measures for each sub-category. The weighted service measure is more likely to be influenced by

outliers (although the analysis in the subsequent section shows the results for both are similar),

thus, we prefer the ranked service indicator. For the sake of transparency, we show the results

from both indicators. Table 2A in the appendix shows the descriptive statistics across service

sub-categories for the weighted service measure.

Looking at the relative service profiles of groups helps to illustrate the variety in service

profiles these data are able to capture. In Figure 2 we display the relative service provision of

four groups, chosen to demonstrate service distribution for amongst large, medium, small, and

very small providers based on our ranking of their overall service provision. The first, Hezbollah,

is amongst the top overall service providers. Consistent with most descriptions of this group,

Hezbollah is heavily engaged in public services, disaster relief (probably mostly from the post

2006 Israeli-Lebanon war), and welfare. The IRA and Baloch Liberation Army are both second-

tier providers, while the May 15 Organization for the Liberation of Palestine is amongst the

lesser providers (note the change in the scale of the Y-axis). Reports for both the IRA and the

May 15 Organization emphasize security services, while the Baloch Liberation Army appears to

focus more on financial welfare.

IV. Analysis

Measuring Negotiation and Negotiation Stability

We draw measures of negotiation occurrence and stability from Cronin’s data on terrorist

organizations worldwide.13 To test Hypothesis 1, that governments are more likely to enter

negotiations with service providers, we use her dichotomous measure “Talks.” “Talks” is a

dichotomous measure indicating whether a group has had any negotiations with a government.

Negotiations count as occurring whether they are stable, succeed, or fail. Simply put, this

13See http://howterrorismends.com/ for more information and access to the data.

indicator captures any attempts at negotiations. To measure Hypothesis 2, thatnegotiations

involving rebel groups that provide goods and services are more likely to be stable than

negotiations that involve non-providers, we use Cronin’s measure “talksstable” indicating

whether the talks were either stable/conflict-ending or were unstable and failed. For both talks

and talksstable, the unit of observation is the terrorist group and not an individual instance of

negotiation (see our discussion about future project refinements below for more on this).

Controls

We included a host of control variables, all drawn from the Terrorist Organization

Profiles (TOPS) database hosted by the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the

Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.14 Some are motivatedby the literature on

terrorism and negotiations and others are the result of our balance tests discussed above. The

controls can generally be divided into two categories: group-specific and country-specific. There

are five group-specific controls. First, based on others’ research, religious groups tend to be

significantly different in both lethality and tactical strategies utilized (Asal and Rethemeyer 2008

and Berman 2009). For reasons related to their extreme tactics, governments may be less inclined

to negotiate with religious groups, thus, we control for this group ideology. Second, we control

for an organization’s age on the assumption that both service coverage and a group’s strength

will positively correlate with age.15 As conflicts persist and the rebels prove themselves strong

enough to maintain a threat across a long period of time, negotiations may be more attractive

solutions in the context of hurting stalemates, something widely acknowledged as a pivotal

moment for negotiations (see, for instance, Sisk 2009). Third, we control for the number of a

group’s allies, factions, and enemies in group’s home country. We suspect this is appropriate for

14 See http://www.start.umd.edu/start/data_collections/tops/ for data and a more detailed description.15 This is the only group-level control variable that comes from Cronin’s 2011 dataset. We utilized Cronin’s “year”variable here, which is an estimate of the age of the group in years.

two reasons. First, to the extent that more groups may create disincentives for a government to

enter negotiations, this is an important control. Second, if there is a highly competitive

environment resulting from the presence of multiple rebel groups, insurgent outbidding may

occur. In this case groups may see negotiations as a signal of weakness and decline any and all

attempts at talks. We also added controls indicating whether there was evidence that the terrorist

group had a political party and whether it had bases in multiple countries. Political participation

may make groups likely to negotiate and governments likely to approach them to negotiate. We

code this as a binary indicator and use TOPS’ text description of the group as the data source.

Additionally, we add a binary control for multiple bases because it may proxy for groups that are

more likely to fracture due to multiple veto points.

We view country specific controls as necessary indicators of environmental conditions

affecting both rebel and government likelihood of engaging in negotiations. Because our unit of

observation is a terrorist group, the country-specific variables require some explanation. The

majority of terrorist attacks are domestic in nature, meaning that both the group’s home base and

where it uses violence are located in the same state. As a result all country-level variables

reference the group’s home base. For most groups, we expect this estimation to be accurate.

However, there are two exceptions. First, some groups (e.g. al-Qaeda Central) focus exclusively

on international terrorism. In these cases, the country-level indicators will not reflect

environmental conditions related to negotiations between adversaries. However, we expect that

this is largely the exception and without attack data that differentiate between domestic and

international attackers we are unable to empirically control for these anomalies. We remain

confident in our approach and don’t see any reason this should bias our findings. The second set

of groups for which country-controls may not be entirely appropriate are groups that have bases

in multiple countries. When TOPS reports multiple bases for a country, we assume the first base

listed is primary and is used to generate all controls. However, a group may split itself in ways

that make reporting on country characteristics where all bases are located as necessary to explain

a group’s behavior. For instance, Palestinian groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad have

moved around the Middle East utilizing various countries as bases until they are pressured to

leave. While these groups are ultimately geared toward changing Israeli policy, the pressures

they face to move between bases most certainly influences their strength, abilities, and probably

willingness to negotiate. Outside of controlling for the presence of multiple bases, the country-

level controls we include do little to account for these pressures. We see few reasons to suspect

bias from this issue, although we acknowledge its presence.

We include three country controls. First, we include a variable for any given country’s

Composite Index of National Capabilities (CINC) score (logged and averaged over the time

period 1980-2001). We expect that the more capable a country, the less likely it will engage in

negotiations with a terrorist group. We also include controls for the countries log average total

population (1980-2001) and regime type. Because this is not a temporal dataset, controlling for a

country’s regime type is problematic. We decided to use a binary democracy variable indicating

whether the average POLITY2 (Marshall, Jaggers, and Gurr 2011) score from all years 1980-

2010 was above a 6. We also attempted to include controls indicating major regime changes or

any democratic regimes during the time period. None of these significantly impacted our results

and for the sake of parsimony we only report the findings from the average POLITY2 variable.

Table 2 reports the descriptive statistics for all controls.

Analysis

We estimatethe relationships using logisticregressions. We begin with an analysis of the

relationship between negations occurrence (“talks”) and service provision. Table 3 reports the

results. Model 1 reports the simple relationship between our weighted service provision indicator

and the occurrence of talks. Model 2 incorporates group-level controls and Model 3 incorporates

country-level controls. Model 4 includes country fixed-effects (omitting the previous country

controls). Models 5-8 are similarly specified using the ranked service provision indicator rather

than the weighted measure.

The results indicate a strong, positive relationship between service provision and the

probability of negotiations taking place (hypothesis 1). The models in Table 3 above show that

the general relationship between high levels of service provision of any kind and entering into

talks is robust to controlling for the group’s age, type, political participation, and strategic

environment. Moreover, the effects are substantial. For instance, estimating first differences

using model 6 specifications (see Tomz, Wittenberg, and King 2003 for information about the

CLARIFY program used in this estimation), there is nearly a 10% increase in the odds that

negotiations will occur between the 100th and 300th ranked groups. (Table 3A in the appendix

lists all the predicted probabilities for this estimation.)

Table 3 shows a number of other interesting results. Religious groups are significantly

less likelyto be engaged in negotiations. Above we theorized that may be due to their use of more

extreme tactics. These findings lend support to our suspicions. Also consistent with our

preliminary thoughts, older groups are more likely to be engaged in negotiations, as are groups

with political parties. Interestingly, neither the number of related groups nor democratic

opponents has a significant impact on the likelihood of negotiations. When a group is based in a

country with higher capabilities (i.e. higher CINC scores) negotiations are much less likely. This

may reflect a government’s ability to withstand the costs imposed through internecine violence

or its ability to achieve a military defeat (or the belief that this is likely and the consequent

unwillingness to negotiate).

We now turn to estimating the relationship between service provision and stable

negotiations (“talksstable”), Table 4 lists our logit results. The model specifications are similar to

Table 3. The results from these models strongly suggest that service providers are uniquely able

to engage in stable negotiations, confirming hypothesis 2. The substantive effect, again using

CLARIFY to estimate predicted probabilities, show negotiations are approximately 6% less

likely to be stable for lower-tiered organizations (100th rank versus 300th rank). The results are

consistent for both the weighted and ranked indicators of service provision.

There are a few major differences between the results for talks and stable talks. The odds

of stable talks are relatively unaffected by groups’ ages. In addition, democracy becomes

marginally significant, suggesting that when negotiations involve a democratic government they

are more likely to be stable.

Service Subcategories

Thus far we have focused on aggregate measures of service provision. We now turn our

attention to a discussion of service subcategories. Recall the subcategories of services include:

Education, Youth and Recreation; Health and Emergency; Security and Justice; Financial, Jobs,

Welfare, Subsidies; Natural Disaster; Public Services; Religious Services. Tables 5 and 6 below

show our findings, for negotiation occurrence (“talks”) and negotiation stability (“talksstable”)

respectively. Using the specifications from model 4 (8, 12, and 16), we estimated logit models

using the ranked service provision indicator for groups across each service category.

For both the likelihood of negotiations occurring (Table 5) and the stability of

negotiations (Table 6), three major service sectors appear to be most impactful: educational

services, disaster relief, and public services. There are a number of ways to interpret these

findings. In all cases, distribution is likely key. If these sectors are those more influential at

deterring spoiling attacks, which is what the data suggests, they may also be the sectors

associated with goods that are more easily distributed in a targeted manner. To the extent that the

group can control access to education, disaster relief, and public services, it may be able to more

easily target potential spoilers in order to deter them. Alternatively, or perhaps in addition to,

these sectors may have the most influence on people’s lives and are consequently the most

effective at maintaining group loyalty. Services under these sectors may also be the most easily

branded, allowing groups to take credit for their delivery more easily. At present we have neither

the space nor data to discern between these effects, however it is an issue that merits greater

understanding especially for counterinsurgents creating policies to counter violent service

providers.

IV. Discussion and Future Steps

The findings strongly support hypotheses 1 and 2, indicating that service providers are

both more likely to be involved in negotiations and those negotiations are likely to be stable. We

find no evidence to suggest that either hypothesis 3 or 4 is accurate. We are intrigued by the

strong positive findings in the specific service categories as well. Our analysis suggests that the

impact of all services is not equal. Educational services appear to have a different effect on

negotiations compared to either security or religious services. Theoretically these differences are

entirely underdeveloped. These issues merit further investigation, particularly if our attribution

analysis does not reveal any significantly different biases between service categories.

Several prominent features of this analysis are currently lacking. The first and most

glaring omission here is the lack of certain controls present in the analysis. To this end, there are

two major omissions. First is the lack of a control for the presence or willingness of a third party

to credibly guarantee any commitments made at the negotiation table. This omission is

something we hope to address in future iterations when we gather the data necessary to do a

cross-temporal analysis. To do so we intend to re-code service provision for groups incorporating

the date of the news report so we can generate a yearly measure of service provision.Temporal

data will allow us to account for specific periods of negotiations (we have already gathered data

on negotiations dates for all relevant groups in this sample) and the presence of third parties at

the negotiating table. We consider the work by Fortna (2004) and Walter (2001) as particularly

informative in this regard.

The next major data omission is a set of attack-specific group controls. In this regard, we

are provoked by our findings for religious groups. The literature suggests these groups are

largely more violent and use more extreme tactics yet our present analysis does not allow us to

truly assess the independent effects of religious identity and violent tactics. Thus, we view this as

a major addition to the future iterations of this project.

Finally, we plan to run the same analysis focusing on the issue of rebel success at

soliciting concessions from the government. If rebels do in fact gain more legitimacy for their

cause and more support from their communities by providing public goods and services,

governments may be more likely to capitulate to rebel demands. Insofar as a government’s key

allies consider the rebel group a dissenting voice in politics, service provision may serve to

increase the legitimacy of rebel claims. It can also grow the group’s base of support. As a

consequence of increased legitimacy or support base size (or both), international pressure may

encourage a government to concede to rebel demands. Internal pressure may be even more

effective. If service provision does increase rebel support, capitulation may become more likely

as the number of rebel supporters grows. On the other hand, there are reasons to suspect that

service providers may in fact be less likely to achieve their demands. Evidence suggests that

rebels are likely to use more horrific forms of violence as service providers. These include the

use of suicide attacks and attacks that intentionally target civilians with lethal force. While these

groups may be more coherent (and less likely to be plagued by spoilers), there may be a

significant downside related to their violent methods. As Abrahams (2006) argues, groups that

employ the most extreme violent methods are likely to be perceived as having maximalist

demands (despite the true relative nature of their demands). Populations and politicians are

unlikely to give in when they perceive their opponent in this manner. Thus, the correlation

between service delivery and extreme violence also implies that service providers are unlikely to

achieve their strategic goals. We plan on conducting this analysis in the near future using, again,

Cronin (2011) data on rebel success.

This paper demonstrates the power of service provision as influential on a state’s

interaction with violent non-state actors, and prospects for peace. When non-state actors such as

rebel groups or terrorists act like pseudo-governments by providing services to their constituents

they are much more likely to be involved in stable negotiation processes. Our results suggest that

service provision is in fact strongly tied to hierarchy and a wide base of support; these factors

discourage potential extremist factions from breaking away during negotiations. For

policymakers our findings suggestcounterinsurgency strategy should takethe structure and type

of violent threat into account. Non-state actors that actively provide governance may be much

more attractive as partners to a political settlement than non-state actors that use violence and do

little to provide for their communities. However, this also suggests a note of caution.

Governments engaging service providing rebels may have a more formidable opponent on their

hands. This analysis and argument suggests that these groups are less amenable to divide and

conquer tactics. This, coupled with other research confirming that service providing rebels are

more lethal (Heger et al. 2012) and less prone to defection (Berman 2009), suggests that

governments may have to give in to these rebel demands in order to avoid a costly violent

conflict.

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TABLES AND FIGURES

Figure 1: Distribution of service mentions (total and public services) across groups

Variable Observations Mean Std. Dev Min MaxEducation,Youth,Recreation

396 272 581 0 6942

Health,Emergency

396 158 338 0 3640

Security,Justice

396 257 511 0 4159

Financial,Jobs, Welfare,Subsidies

396 238 393 0 2384

NaturalDisaster

396 147 425 0 3677

PublicServices

396 1072 1463 0 7535

Religious 396 169 369 0 3868Table 1. Summary statistics of Service Mentions across categories

Variable Observations Mean Std. Dev Min Max

Talks 392 0.19 0.36 0 1

StableTalks

392 0.10 0.31 0 1

ReligiousGroup

390 0.31 0.46 0 1

Group Age 388 13.78 14.25 1 140

NumberOtherRebels

390 1.45 2.65 0 34

PoliticalParty

392 0.09 0.29 0 1

MultipleBases

394 0.26 0.44 0 1

Democracy 383 0.47 0.50 0 1

TotalPopulation

383 10.42 1.62 6.35 13.70

CINCScore

383 -5.16 1.57 -9.27 -1.96

Table 2: Descriptive Statistics for negotiations and controls

Variables Model 1(std.error)

Model2

Model3

Model4

Model5

Model6

Model7

Model8

WeightedService

Provision

3.70***(0.85)

3.07***(0.99)

4.52***(0.93)

4.48**(01.73)

RankedService

Provision

2.01***(0.48)

1.37**(0.56)

2.31***(0.51)

1.48*(0.88)

ReligiousGroup

-1.26***(0.38)

-1.81***(0.60)

-1.17***(0.37)

-1.61***(0.57)

Group Age 0.03***(0.01)

0.04***(0.01)

0.02***(0.01)

0.03**(0.01)

NumberOther

Rebels

0.02(0.05)

0.006(0.07)

0.02(0.04)

0.03(0.06)

PoliticalParty

1.29***(0.38)

1.70**(0.07)

1.34***(0.38)

1.87***(0.70)

MultipleBases

-0.01(0.32)

-0.96(0.62)

-0.03(0.31)

-0.95(0.61)

Democracy 0.41(0.31)

0.44(0.31)

TotalPopulation

0.95***(0.21)

0.91***(0.21)

CINC -1.11***(0.24)

-1.07***(0.23)

CountryFixed

Effects

No No No Yes No No No Yes

Constant -1.92(0.18)

-2.21(0.25)

-18.10(3.60)

-25.46(1.86)

-2.54(0.31)

-2.56(0.34)

-18.13(3.57)

-25.08(1.85)

Log-likelihood

-183.04 -158.61 -166.11 82.61 -183.25 -160.09 -167.14 -85.06

N 392 381 381 213 392 381 381 213

Pseudo X² 0.05 0.16 0.12 0.36 0.05 0.15 0.11 0.34

Table 3: Testing Negotiations Occurrence (“talks) using logit models. ***significant at 0.01, **significant at0.05, *significant at 0.10

Variables Model 9(std.error)

Model10

Model11

Model12

Model13(std.error)

Model14

Model15

Model16

WeightedService

Provision

3.27***(0.98)

3.03**(1.19)

4.20***(1.08)

5.09**(2.23)

RankedService

Provision

1.76***(0.60)

1.28*(0.70)

2.09***(0.63)

1.86(1.18)

ReligiousGroup

-1.33***(0.50)

-1.40*(0.82)

-1.23**(0.48)

-1.35*(0.79)

Group Age 0.01(0.01)

0.02(0.01)

0.01(0.01)

0.01(0.01)

NumberOther

Rebels

-0.02(0.07)

-0.10(0.13)

-0.003(0.06)

-0.43(0.12)

PoliticalParty

1.47***(0.41)

2.08**(0.84)

1.52***(0.41)

2.23***(0.83)

MultipleBases

-0.01(0.39)

-2.35**(1.03)

-0.04(0.39)

-2.49**(1.03)

Democracy 0.69*(0.39)

0.68*(0.39)

TotalPopulation

1.15***(0.29)

1.09***(0.29)

CINC -1.44***(0.33)

-1.38***(0.32)

CountryFixed

Effects

No No No Yes No No No Yes

Constant -2.55(0.23)

-2.68(0.31)

-22.80(5.00)

-22.35(1.60)

-3.08(0.40)

-3.00(0.42)

-22.40(4.93)

-22.24(2.37)

Log-likelihood

-130.16 -115.52 -114.46 -52.39 -130.94 -116.76 -116.06 -54.27

N 392 381 381 168 392 381 381 168

Pseudo X² 0.04 0.13 0.13 0.38 0.03 0.13 0.12 0.35

Table 4: Testing Negotiation Stability using logit models. ***significant at 0.01, **significant at 0.05,*significant at 0.10

36

Variable Model 17(Educate)

Model 18(Health)

Model 19(Security)

Model 20(Finance)

Model 21(Disaster)

Model 22(Pub Serv)

Model 23(Religion)

RankedService

Provision

2.69**(0.94)

0.15(0.80)

0.15(0.80)

0.56(0.88)

2.49***(0.89)

1.73**(0.87)

0.73(0.82)

GroupControls

Included?

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

CountryFixed

EffectsIncluded ?

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Constant -25.50(1.88)

-24.81(2.72)

-24.812.72)

-24.80(1.75)

-24.87(3.01)

-25.12(1.89)

-24.76(1.82)

Log-likelihood

-82.06 -86.49 -86.49 -86.30 -82.35 -84.43 -86.10

N 213 213 213 213 213 213 213Pseudo X² 0.37 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.36 0.35 0.34

Table 5: Testing Negotiation Occurrence (“talks”) using logit models. ***significant at 0.01, **significant at0.05, *significant at 0.10

Variable Model 24(Educate)

Model 25(Health)

Model 26(Security)

Model 27(Finance)

Model 28(Disaster)

Model 29(Pub Serv)

Model 30(Religion)

RankedService

Provision

2.04**(1.19)

0.31(1.13)

0.31(1.13)

0.46(1.19)

2.15*(1.15)

2.06*(1.12)

0.84(1.13)

GroupControls

Included?

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

CountryFixed

EffectsIncluded?

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Constant -22.37(2.29)

-21.55(1.74)

-21.55(1.74)

-21.61(2.20)

-22.18(1.76)

-22.40(1.77)

-21.62(1.72)

Log-likelihood

-54.00 -55.51 -55.51 -55.47 -53.70 -53.77 -55.27

N 168 168 168 168 168 168 168Pseudo X² 0.36 0.34 0.34 0.34 0.36 0.36 0.34

Table 6: Testing Negotiation Stability (“talksstable”) using logit models. ***significant at 0.01, **significant at0.05, *significant at 0.10

37

APPENDIX

Table 1A: Service Terms and Sub-Categories

Education/Youth/Recreationamusement

Amusement park

child

childcare

clinics

education

educational

festival

football

fotball

futball

literacy

Primary education

school

secondary

Secondary education

soccer

sport

training

tuition

vocational

Vocational training

youthYouth camp

Health/Emergency

ambulance

ambulance_mobile

antibiotic

blanket

blood

Blood bank

care

clinic

crescent

elderly

Elderly care

healthcare

hospital

immunization

Mobile clinics

rehabilitation

soup

Soup kitchen

Security/Justice

adjudication

court

Court mediation

defense

dispute

Dispute adjudication

Dispute resolution

justice

legal

Legal fees

mediation

militia

police

protection

reprisal

resolution

safety

Jobs/Welfare/Security

bank

benefits

cash

charity

crop

Crop assistance

Development assistance

fertilizer

harambee

insurance

Kitchen

Martyr’s fundSocial insurance

Social welfare

subsidy

unemployment

Unemployment benefits

welfare

widow

zakat

Natural Disaster

disaster

Disaster relief

Disaster services

earthquake

relief

tsunami

Tsunami relief

Public Services

center

collection

Community center

Community centre

Community services

development

food

Food bank

foodbank

garbage

generator

haram

infrastructure

library

light

mail

Mail service

media

38

minister

news

orphanage

park

political

Political wing

postal

Postal service

Public goods

Public safety

Public works

radio

rebuild

reconstruction

Reconstruction subsidy

removal

representation

rubbish

Rubbish collection

sanitation

Sanitation protection

septic

service

services

sewage

Sewage removal

shadow

Social mission

Social service

Social services

street

Street light

taxi

Taxi service

trash

visa

waste

Waste removal

Water

Water access

Water sanitation

Religiouschristian

church

cleric

hadith

islamic

Islamic institutions

mosque

religious

Religious institution

seminaries

madrassa

madrassas

39

Variable Observations Mean Std. Dev Min MaxTotal Services 396 0.11 0.14 0 1

Education,Youth,Recreation

396 0.03 0.08 0 1

Health,Emergency

396 0.04 0.09 0 1

Security,Justice

396 0.06 0.12 0 1

Financial,Jobs, Welfare,Subsidies

396 0.10 0.16 0 1

NaturalDisaster

396 0.04 0.11 0 1

PublicServices

396 0.14 0.19 0 1

Religious 396 0.04 0.09 0 1

Table 2A. Summary statistics of Weighted Service indicator across groups

Moving from…changes the probability of Y by

X%

Model A6: Y=Talks

(CI Bounds)

Model A14: Y=StableTalks

100th ranked service providerto 300th ranked

9.9%**(0.01, 0.18)

5.7%*(-0.005, 0.13)

From Non-Religious Group toReligious Group

-10.9%***(-0.16, -0.04)

-6.5%**(-0.11, 0.01)

From 4 years to 20 years (25th

to 75th percentile)6.7%***

(0.02, 0.11)2.1%

(-0.005, 0.05)From 0 groups to 2 other

groups (25th to 75th percentile)0.06%

(-0.01, 0.03)-0.08%

(-0.02, 0.02)

From no political party topolitical party

27.2%***(0.09, 0.46)

24.4%***(0.09, 0.42)

From 1 base of operations tomultiple bases

-0.3%(-0.08, 0.09)

-0.1%(-0.06, 0.07)

Table 3A: Predicted Probabilities, models 6 and 14, holding all variables at their median values. ***significant at0.01, **significant at 0.05, *significant at 0.10