Militias and the Politics of Legitimacy

Abstract

Militias and rebels depart from different angles when it comes to the politics of legitimacy. While rebels have to address the issue of legitimacy early on in order to gain popular support, militias can rely on some kind of ‘borrowed legitimacy’. Based on this observation, the paper introduces militias as special form of organised violence visible in many civil wars and fragile states as well as elaborates on the politics of legitimacy typical for militias. By distinguishing different forms of militia violence (counter-insurgency, counter-rival and counter-crime), the articles shows how militias respond to major challenges in legitimizing violent actions.

Keywords:

• Militias
• rebels
• legitimacy
• civil war
• fragile states
• counter-insurgency
• counter-crime

Notes

1. Francis, “Introduction,” 2.

2. Schneckener, “Status-quo Orientierte Gewalt.”

3. Rosenbaum and Sederberg, “Vigilantism.”

4. Ahram, Proxy Warriors.

5. Carey et al., “States, the Security Sector, and the Monopoly of Violence,” 249–58.

6. This experiment, however, did not last for very long, since the ruling upper class of the republic of Florence did not trust their own armed population and returned to the practice of hiring foreign mercenaries, see Münkler, Machiavelli, 381–94.

7. Daase and Davis, Clausewitz on Small War, 195–204.

8. See note 1.

9. Ibid, 2, 3.

10. See Gerwarth and Horne, Paramilitary Violence in Europe.

11. Peic, “Civilian Defense Forces,” 166.

12. See Mowle, ‘Iraq’s Militias Problem”; Schmeidl and Karokhail, “Non-State Actors in ‘Community-based Policing.’”

13. See Mazzei, Death Squads.

14. See Gerlach, Extremely Violent Societies, Chap. 2.

15. See data bases provided by Carey et al., “States, the Security Sector, and the Monopoly of Violence”; and Jones, Strategic Logic of Militia.

16. Schlichte, Shadow of Violence, 48–56.

17. See, e.g. Jentzsch et al., “Militias in Civil Wars.”

18. This section draws on Schlichte and Schneckener, “Politics of Legitimacy,” 413.

19. On different ways of outside support, see Byman et al., Trends in Outside Support.

20. For a more elaborate debate and further references, see Schlichte and Schneckener, “Politics of Legitimacy,” 414–21.

21. See in particular Schlichte, Shadow of Violence, 65–76.

22. Giustozzi, Empires of Mud, 193–4.

23. See also Schlichte, Shadow of Violence, 86–7.

24. On this distinction, see Schneckener, “Status-quo Orientierte Gewalt,” 175–7.

25. For coup-proofing, see Carey et al., “States, the Security Sector, and the Monopoly of Violence.”

26. For PAGAD, see Ero, “Vigilantes”; for the Bakassi Boys, see Meagher, “Hijacking civil society”; and Harnischfeger, “The Bakassi Boys.”

27. See Schneckener, “Dilemma der Milizen”; Malyrenko and Galbraith, “Paramilitary Motivation in Ukraine.”