Target State Behavior Against External State Supporters of Rebel Groups: Introducing the Response to Sponsorship Dataset (RSD)

How do target states respond to state support of rebel groups? Which factors are influential when target states react to state sponsors? Although previous literature explored the reasons for state support of rebels, the consequences of the support in terms of target state behavior are understudied. The studies of state support of rebels mostly adopt a narrow definition of state sponsorship that reflects poorly to the study of responses. By adopting a comprehensive definition of state sponsorship I build an original Response to Sponsorship Dataset (RSD) to explore the responses of target states against sponsor states to eliminate their illegal support. I show that there are coercive and non-coercive responses in a generic sense. In specific terms, there are diplomatic, economic, militarized, domestic, covert and no response types. The RSD focuses on the rebel groups that received intentional and/or de facto support between 1991 and 2010, at least for 1 year and starting from the years when 25 battle deaths occurred. It is interesting that 51% of the cases, there is no response. Diplomatic responses are the most often used responses by target states. Coercive responses are nine times less than non-coercive responses even though the previous works have ignored the non-coercive responses. The Response dataset demonstrates the toolkit of target states when they face with external support of rebels regarding response coerciveness and response types. The RSD includes state-level and group-level variables concerning target states, supporter states and rebel groups. It seems that rival sponsors, intentional supporters, and neighbor sponsors are more likely to receive coercive responses from target states while de facto supporters and formally allied sponsors are more likely to encounter non-coercive responses. Implications from this study could help policymakers see the patterns of target state responses against sponsorship. This dataset builds on the literatures of state sponsorship of rebels, interstate disputes and crises, and conflict management.