What explains the emergence of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State as parties in civil wars? This study provides the first large-N analysis of this question, studying a sample of states in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, 2003–2020, contributing to ongoing debates among peace and conflict scholars about jihadist rebels in civil war. Theoretically, it is argued that higher levels of state repression and states’ military capabilities should impact the preferences of local groups and increase the likelihood of a ‘transnationalization’. On the other hand, it is hypothesized that increases in bureaucratic state capacity should reduce the risk of such transnationalization. A series of penalized logistic regressions yield support for the hypotheses regarding state repression and bureaucratic capacity, but not military state capacity. The findings point towards the importance of bureaucratic capacity building as well as the potentially adverse consequences of excessively repressive counterterrorism strategies.
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