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governments and oppositions? How do international factors enter into the cost/benefit analysis
of rebels, especially given the apparent strength and superior organization of the state?
While research on the international aspects of civil war has become a “growth industry”
within the study of International Relations, this body of work suffers from several shortcomings.
To begin with, when assessed as a whole, the literature lacks a core set of organizing principles.
Some of the literature focuses on typologies and definitions without providing clear analytic
connections behind variables; other studies focus on a narrow phenomenon without placing it in
a broader context; and yet others point to empirical regularities while offering little theoretical
substance. Additionally, much of the recent work on the international dimensions of civil conflict
neglects the older literature, particularly research on political opportunity structures (Lichbach
1995; Tarrow 1994; Tilly 1978). The political opportunity framework, which emphasizes
repression by governments and cost avoidance by rebels, provides a useful lens through which to
understand internationalized civil conflict. How do external conditions affect the state’s
repressive capabilities and the opportunities for opposition groups to mobilize, launch, and
sustain an insurgency?
Taking up these questions directly, in this paper I argue that international borders place
important constraints on state power and that the ability of opposition groups to use
extraterritorial bases in neighboring countries has an important impact on rebellion. While a state
may posses a nearly absolute monopoly on the use of force internally, its policing force is
confined to its own security jurisdiction—its sovereign territory. If rebel groups can use other
territories as a base of operations, thereby escaping the jurisdiction and repressive capabilities of
the state, they can significantly lower the costs fighting. This arguments will be developed more
fully in the following section. In section 3, I describe the methods and variables used to test a
Convention