Myopic Government and Strategic Rebels: Exchange and Escalation of Violence

This study presents a model in which the innate inability of a government to fully comprehend the ramifications of its actions, herein referred to as the myopia of the government, leads to underinvestment in counterinsurgency measures and examines the nature of exchange of violence between the government and rebels. While the idea that voters’ or a government’s myopia leads to myopic policies is well established in the related literature, surprisingly, it has never been incorporated into conflict studies. As far as we are aware, this is the first ever study that analyzes the effects of a government’s myopia on the exchange and eventual escalation of violence when the rebels are in their trying stages and shows situations in which the two-sided violence could be either strategic substitutes or complements. The results suggest that in case of a foresighted government, the acts of two-sided violence are strategic complements. When the government is myopic, however, the rebels’ use of violence is a strategic substitute for the government’s violence. The trade-off, according to the model, lies in exchanging higher levels of violence for lower chances of revolt.