The varieties of paramilitaries paper present to Dublin zoom conference June 10, 2021

ABSTRACT

This is a short commentary upon five articles. The main themes of these articles are the roles of paramilitaries in civil wars, focusing specifically on Colombia and the former Yugoslavia. While recommending the quality of the articles, this paper explores two lines of criticism. The first concerns the insufficient attention paid to ideological paramilitaries, who are significant for a number of reasons, including their remarkable resilience in combat. Second, while the papers discuss how paramilitaries fund themselves, the focus is solely upon the commanders. In understanding the paramilitary mobilization it is also important to understand how the rank-in-file support themselves.

KEYWORDS:

• Paramilitaries
• violence
• ideology
• civil war
• states

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Mann

Michael Mann is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology, UCLA, an Honorary Professor at Cambridge University, a member of the American and British Academie with a D.Phil. from Oxford University and four honorary doctorates from universities in Europe and America. His major project is the four-volumed The Sources of Social Power, a history of power in human society: Volume 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to 1760 (published in 1986). Volume 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760 − 1914 (1993). Volume 3: Global Empires and Revolution, 1890–1945 (2012). Volume 4: Globalizations, 1945 − 2011 (2013). Incoherent Empire (2003) is a critique of the ‘new American imperialism’; Fascists (2004) is a study of inter-war fascists; and The Dark Side of Democracy (2005) is an explanation of ethnic cleansing. Two books of essays discuss his work, John Hall & Ralph Schroeder (eds.), The Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann (2006), and Ralph Schroeder (ed.), Global Powers: Mann’s Anatomy of the 20^th Century and Beyond (2016). He is one of the authors of Does Capitalism Have a Future? (2013). His new book, On Wars, is in press with Yale University Press.