Why Do Some Rebel Governments Last When Others Fall?

In Syria, “forever” is over. The regime of former President Bashar al-Assad, whose supporters once chanted “our leader forever,” has been deposed by an alliance of rebel groups after a 13-year civil war.

The rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the lightning offensive that overturned the Assad regime in less than two weeks, is now working to establish a transitional government. But chaos still reigns in much of the country, with other rebels groups fighting each other and jousting for influence, as are outside powers like Israel, Turkey and the United States.

What do previous rebellions tell us about Syria’s chances of establishing a stable government? A new study examined dozens of rebellions since 1900 to answer a question that has long puzzled researchers: Why are some rebel groups able to establish governments that last for decades, while others collapse into renewed fighting in just a few years?

The answer, the researchers concluded, comes down to a single factor — one with sobering implications for Syria.

Winning is easy; governing is harder

Killian Clarke, Anne Meng and Jack Paine — political science professors at Georgetown, the University of Virginia, and Emory University respectively — collected an exhaustive data set of every rebellion that overthrew a government since 1900.

The researchers examined a wide range of variables to figure out what could explain which of the rebel-founded governments survived: How long did the rebellion last? Did the rebels have the backing of a foreign government? What was their ideology? None of those factors ended up mattering much.