Existing literature on civil wars relies predominantly on state- and organization-level variables to understand conflict dynamics and outcomes. In this article, we propose that rebel leaders’ personal backgrounds and experiences are also key to explaining the behavior of the organizations they lead. Just as scholars have long highlighted the importance of state leaders’ biographical characteristics in interstate war and diplomacy, we argue that the attributes of rebel leaders affect their organizations’ decisions and actions in civil war. To substantiate our claims, we introduce the Rebel Organization Leaders (ROLE) database, which contains a wide range of biographical information on all top rebel leaders in civil wars ongoing between 1980 and 2011. We first describe the contents of the database and present a number of novel descriptive findings about rebel leaders. To illustrate its utility, we then examine the influence of rebel leaders’ attributes on their organizations’ use of terrorism in civil war. Ultimately, our work encourages – and enables – a new research agenda that goes beyond rebel organizations and campaigns as units of analysis and brings individual leaders more fully into modern conflict and peace studies.

现有的关于内战的文献主要依赖于国家和组织层面的变量来理解冲突动态和结果。在本文中，我们提出反叛领导人的个人背景和经历也是解释他们领导的组织行为的关键。正如学者们长期以来一直强调国家领导人的传记特征在州际战争和外交中的重要性一样，我们认为叛军领导人的属性会影响其组织在内战中的决策和行动。为了证实我们的主张，我们引入了叛军组织领导人 (ROLE) 数据库，其中包含 1980 年至 2011 年间正在进行的内战中所有最高叛军领导人的传记信息。我们首先描述了数据库的内容，并展示了一些关于反叛领导人的新颖的描述性发现。为了说明其效用，我们随后考察了叛军领导人的属性对其组织在内战中使用恐怖主义的影响。最终，我们的工作鼓励并促成了一项新的研究议程，该议程超越了作为分析单位的反叛组织和运动，并将个别领导人更充分地带入现代冲突与和平研究。