Why are Rebel Victories so Dominant?

Last month in October, Mozambique once again went to the polls to elect a new president and parliament that will rule the country for the next five years. Since winning its independence through the 11-year Mozambican War for Independence in 1975, the ruling party—the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO)—has dominated every election.
This is despite fighting a major civil war from 1977 to 1992, and renewed violence once again from 2012 onward involving two different armed groups. The 2024 elections were no different, where FRELIMO’s Daniel Chapo secured over 70 percent of the presidential vote and the party won 195 out of 250 seats in the Assembly of the Republic. Despite allegations of fraud and voter intimidation as well as continued protests since the results were announced on 24 October, FRELIMO is poised to continue its uninterrupted rule.
Mozambique is one of the earliest cases of post-colonial rebel victory in Sub-Saharan Africa, but its experiences under rebellion-turned-incumbent party FRELIMO’s rule are reflected across various African countries ruled by parties that have won power through civil war. Just since 2020, several former rebel victors have been re-elected, including in ruling parties in Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Chad, and Rwanda.
Rebel victories’ organisational advantages
While much can be said about the role of liberation ideology and collective memory in helping to sustain the ruling parties’ dominance, there is much more at play. Many of these governments are considered competitive authoritarian regimes: although they hold elections and may look democratic on their face, deeper inspection reveals illiberal politics that help to keep the ruling party in power. The most recent allegations from the Mozambican elections—fraud and intimidation from the ruling party—are not unique to this election cycle or this country. Rather, they are mainstays of Mozambican politics in recent decades, as well as in other countries where rebel rulers dominate. Across multiple contexts, the pervasive use of coercion and fear during election campaign periods—coupled with vote-buying (exchanging votes for cash or gifts)—suggest that there are organisational reasons for why rebel victors stay in power for so long.
In my book (Governing After War: Rebel Victories and Post-war Statebuilding), I argue that, to understand these ruling parties’ organisational roots, we must look at how they organised themselves during war. After all, when rebel victors come into power, they neither remake their political party nor arrive at power to a blank political slate. Rather, many of their wartime activities which made them strong in the first place are likely to make them strong when they come into power as well. Much of their power is derived from below, as many victorious rebel groups run nascent political parties that are already endowed with pre-existing organisational structures, capacities for governance, and grassroots supporters. These forms of rebel governance are common across the world: while rebel governance under the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the National Unity Government/ethnic resistance in Myanmar are most often discussed today, rebel groups around the world have undertaken governance activities in controlled territory. These governance activities range from providing education, to administering justice, to diplomacy; they also galvanise supporters to exert control over communities by policing civilian movement, behaviors, and allegiances.
In other words, rebel groups that engage in wartime governance are also party-building from the bottom up: they are establishing community-level party cells and cultivating supporters, which make up the necessary grassroots structures to sustain support if (1) they face violent insurrection from rival groups, or if (2) they must win elections to stay into power. This gives us a good sense of rebel victors’ post-war path towards consolidating power and winning stability: the deeper and more comprehensive rebel governance was implemented, and the broader the coverage across territories, the easier the rebel ruler’s experience of staying in power after war.
Wartime legacies in the long run
These organisational endowments help to explain how rebel rulers are able to hold on to power decades after winning. While rebel rulers use somewhat different strategies across regimes, they all draw on their organisational capacity from wartime to extend their post-war rule. As I argue in a recent article, organisationally, parties borne out of rebel victory tend to be remarkably strong, well-resourced, and resilient to political crises because they are able to institutionalise wartime practices in post-war politics. Many of these parties, if they are not overthrown in war, subsequently develop an organisational advantage at every level: an organised grassroots movement for widespread and effective targeting during election season, robust local governing apparatuses and/or party cells, and an institutionalised political party that is often less personalistic than their electoral rivals. Beyond organisational capacity, other research shows that rebel victors are more cohesive and their political and military wings tend to be more intertwined, meaning that these political parties can better manage civil-military relations.
In addition to arriving at power with superior organisation capacity, rebel victors also maintain control over the narrative of their victory and subsequent rule. While this often involves liberation politics, war narratives may also be ethnic or ideological, and these narratives get reproduced by the victor’s party through education, commemoration, and institutions. Take conflict veterans’ associations or youth militias, for example: in some countries where liberation parties still rule, liberation veterans’ associations are important in politics. Members of these associations are, however, not necessarily veterans: rather, “veteran” is a role or position that supporters play. In Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association and the Zimbabwe Liberators and War Collaborators Association are two such pro-government entities. People have observed that the members of these organisations today are too young to have been involved in the Liberation War. In Burundi, the youth wing of the ruling party (Imbonerakure) similarly had its organisational roots in wartime rebel governance even if the members of the Imbonerakure today were not necessarily involved in the Burundian civil war.
Broader implications
Rebel victors’ overwhelming organisational strength at the very start of their rule have a path dependent effect. They are therefore likely to dominate and pervade state structures from the national to the local level. This means that victorious rebel parties such as FRELIMO in Mozambique are likely to fare much better than their opposition for significant periods of time even if elections are consistently held. Thus, while rebel victors vary in their use of intimidation, violence, and authoritarian strategies, nations on the continent may find it difficult to escape long periods of dominant party rule.
Shelley Liu is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University. She is also the author of Governing After War: Rebel Victories and Post-war Statebuilding.
This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.