The insurgent's dilemma: seek legitimacy and risk exposure, or keep secrets and risk isolation.
Insurgents need civilians. Legitimacy, which Weber called the recognized right to rule, brings food, shelter, recruits, intelligence and willing cooperation. Winning legitimacy means telling people things: who you are, what you want, what you have done.
Every disclosure is also a vulnerability. Information about leaders, operations and members can reach the state. So each rebel group faces a trade-off:
The paper's argument is that the binding constraint is the likelihood of splintering. A radical faction that split from a larger movement has more to lose from leaks. Its leaders are easy to identify, and one arrest or defection can bring down the whole group. A coalition of factions can afford to be seen, because losing one member or faction does not sink the movement.
Peru in the 1980s and 1990s is close to a natural comparison. Two communist insurgencies fought the same state, in the same country, with similar ideological inspiration and transformative goals. One chose secrecy and the other chose legitimacy.
Based on Table 1 of the paper and the case evidence.
Share of the conflict's deaths, according to Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC 2003). The conflict caused nearly seventy thousand deaths.
The trade-off is easiest to see by trying to dismantle an insurgency. Below are two stylized organizations. The exclusive one follows the Shining Path's design: a central leadership, committees, and cells of three whose members know only each other. The inclusive one follows the MRTA's design: a coalition of two factions, a six-member directorate split evenly between them, and shared information within each faction.
You are the intelligence service. Click any member to capture them.
A stylized illustration of the paper's mechanism, not a model of the actual organizations' size. Cells of three overseen by small groups follow the Shining Path's structure as described in the paper; the six-member, evenly split directorate follows the MRTA after its 1986 merger with the MIR–Voz Rebelde.
Secrecy keeps each capture small: an arrested cell member can name only a couple of comrades. But the structure has a single point of failure. In 1992 an elite police unit, the GEIN, captured Abimael Guzmán and his inner circle in Lima after years of surveillance. With its leadership dismantled, the Shining Path rapidly declined.
Openness spreads the risk the other way. No single arrest decapitates a coalition, but every captive or defector can name many people. That is how the MRTA eventually came apart: an amnesty law that offered reduced sentences for cooperation set off a wave of defection and betrayal.
By 1970 Abimael Guzmán had been pushed out of his party, and at least four groups claimed to be Peru's true Communist Party. His Red Faction started with just over a dozen members, led by a philosophy professor and a handful of students at the University of Huamanga in Ayacucho, far from Lima. Carlos Iván Degregori called it a dwarf star: small, but dense enough to have outsized influence.
Secrecy as protection (H1). Recruits had to burn their bridges, often by taking part in punishing their own neighbors and authorities, and they took noms de guerre. One of the top leaders, Elena Iparraguirre, explained:
"We prepared internally, leaving the world, breaking completely with the system, and fully committing to the revolution… Much of our initial strength came from the break between our militants and the world around us, including our families."Elena Iparraguirre, in Zapata (2017, 114)
Secrecy builds hierarchy (H2). Rising through the ranks meant gaining access to concealed information, so decision-making concentrated at the top. "The Party ends and begins with the Central Directorate and its leaders," Guzmán declared. He seldom appeared in public, and at one point the counterinsurgency believed he was dead. Unchecked leaders pushed the riskiest and most violent tasks onto lower-ranking members.
Monitoring without exposure (H3). The party advertised its own secrecy. It claimed "one thousand eyes and one thousand ears," so members watched themselves. Cells of no more than three people reported to groups of five to nine who knew each other and no one else. "It could be your best friend," a villager said. Public sessions of "criticism and self-criticism" disciplined anyone who hesitated.
"I live a double life, teaching by day and organizing by night."Comrade José Vizcardo, in Starn and La Serna (2019, 221)
The Shining Path never tried to explain, justify or even take credit for its attacks. Its leaders also stayed away from the violence they ordered.
The Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement grew out of a merger of established left-wing parties (the PSR-ML and the MIR–El Militante) whose stated aim was "to forge the broadest possible union with other left-wing parties and organizations." It worked with Chile's Miristas and Uruguay's Tupamaros and had foreign members in its ranks.
Disclosure for legitimacy (H1). MRTA fighters wore uniforms, camped outside populated areas, invoked the Geneva Conventions, and chose targets for symbolic effect: the US embassy, Citibank, Kodak, and seven simultaneous attacks on KFC restaurants. They stole Peru's first coat of arms and its original independence flag to present themselves as heirs to a patriotic tradition. They also redistributed stolen chicken, milk and rice in Lima's shantytowns.
By 1992, only 17% of the MRTA's 1,772 armed actions could be classified as putting individuals or groups at risk (McCormick 1993). Each square is 1% of actions.
Consensus moderates (H2). MRTA militants had voting rights, and after the 1986 merger the directorate's six seats were split evenly between the MRTA and the MIR. Requiring more members to agree reduced the external costs imposed on any one of them and limited risky violence. It also made decisions slow:
"Because unity within the group is not a function of party hierarchy and party authority, it must be continually reinforced or renegotiated by ensuring that agreement is reached on matter of group policy… suboptimal policies will tend to be adopted to ensure group consensus."Gordon McCormick, report to the US Secretary of Defense (1993, 53)
Openness replaces monitoring (H3). Shared information created common expectations, so the MRTA needed less surveillance. Its top leaders, Víctor Polay Campos and Peter Cárdenas, fought in the field and were both captured in action. When the MRTA took the town of Juanjui, population 12,000, the only people who pursued the insurgents were journalists.
"Reporters snapped pictures of the peasant women dancing the tunche, a local dance, with the bearded and mustachioed guerrillas, who never stopped clutching their guns as they danced the night away."La Serna (2020, 93)
Open each hypothesis to see how it plays out in each insurgency.
The secretive group mobilized far more people. Its brutality and secrecy gave it tighter control over a large constituency, and recruitment came to rely increasingly on coercion.
Openness won sympathy but not commitment. Many people benefited from the MRTA's actions without paying any cost, and its urban strategy did not resonate in the countryside. When commanders were captured, MRTA fighters in Lima turned to kidnapping for ransom, which cost them more public support. By 1995 most remaining fighters had been captured. In December 1996 the group seized the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima and took hundreds of officials and diplomats hostage. More than four months later a military raid freed the hostages and ended the MRTA insurgency.
Secrecy bought control and fragility. Openness bought sympathy and exposure.
More than 180 armed conflicts around the world today involve both state and non-state actors. Insurgencies still walk the line between legitimacy and secrecy: