After the recent rebel victories in Afghanistan and Syria, the victors face the pressing challenge of what comes next. Will the successful rebels rebuild the state and consolidate their rule, or will new violent challengers arise? Although focusing on conflicts in Africa, Shelley Liu’s Governing After War offers a major advancement in addressing the likely post-war trajectories of states after rebel victory. Liu argues that the nature of rebel-civilian ties during the preceding civil war shapes the victor’s ability to consolidate their rule and avoid, or at least survive, civil war recurrence. Rebel groups that formed strong ties with civilians over a large stretch of the country can focus limited post-war resources on winning over civilians outside their strongholds of support by providing development and institutions. Victors contain any rival strongholds by investing resources instead into the post-war security forces of the new regime. However, rebels who established weak ties with civilians across only limited areas of the country start the post-war period with narrow strongholds of support. Such victors struggle to provide development to the large numbers of undecided civilians and must devote more resources into security to contain larger areas dominated by rivals.  Rivals capitalize on discontent among undecided civilians leading to a higher likelihood of civil war recurrence. The theory is tested with two in-depth mixed method cases of civil wars in Zimbabwe (1972–79) and Liberia (1989–96) leveraging impressive data from fieldwork and archival research. To test the broader external validity, a medium-N assessment of rebel victors across Africa is paired with three sets of paired cases. Liu raises new questions for future research on territorial control and post-war statebuilding.