Despite an increasing interest in civil agency and its role in armed conflict, little is known about the effect it might have on rebel groups' patterns of behaviour. In this study I explore the theory of collective action capacity, which is the population's ability to cooperate and forego short term incentives to preserve long term cooperation, and its effect on rebel groups' method of generating compliance in new territory. My main claim is that non-secessionist rebel groups won’t be able to persuade populations with high collective action capacity to surrender to their control, and must therefore use coercive measures to generate compliance. This claim is tested through a qualitative comparative case study, and finds that rebels might always initially apply persuasive measures, and then if they realise that the society in question have high levels of collective action capacity, and thus willingness and ability to resist territorial occupation, fall back on coercive methods. The results provide support for the theoretical framework and the hypothesis, but alternative explanations make the result require further research to determine their significance.