Pragmatic and Promiscuous

Abstract

Across African states, militias have become one of the main agents of political violence, accounting for a third of all recent conflict. Militia violence is attributed to cultural reactions to disorder, failing and predatory states, and local cleavages which emerge during civil wars. However, activity largely occurs in democratizing states without civil wars. This article presents a typology of militias based on their local roles and actions and an explanation for the prevalence of “competition militias.” Changes in macro politics ushered in a new era of conflict and fragmentation among political elites; militias operate as private armies for these elites. The goal of this violence is to alter the political landscape, increase power for patrons, protect supportive communities, and hinder opponents. Incentives within African democratic institutions reward the use of force by elites. As a result, African democracies, and states transitioning into democracy, are not likely to be internally peaceful. Futhermore, the dominant type of conflict across African states shifts to accommodate the goals of violent agents within modern political contexts.

Keywords

conflict democratic institutions democratization internal armed conflict

The suggestion that large-scale international wars, smaller civil wars, and acts of civilian killings are fewer and less intense than in the extended past is undoubtedly true (Pinker 2011). However, in the more recent past and across developing states, a decline in civil conflict is debatable: political instability persists in the Horn and Central Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia. By some measures, episodes of rioting, protesting, and violent attacks by nonstate and state groups alike are increasing. Furthermore, the dominant type of conflict across African states is shifting to accommodate the goals of violent agents within modern political contexts. During a period of distinct civil war decline and increasing democratization and decentralization, political militias have become one of the main agents of political violence. By some measures, their actions account for a third of recent conflict.¹ This article argues that militias operate as private armies for a range of political elites, and this activity has increased as democratization encourages competition and fragmentation within regimes and between opponents. Hence, African democracies, and states transitioning into democracy, are not likely to be internally peaceful.

Two obstacles stand in the way of situating and explaining the rise of militia violence. The first is how to categorize various types of internal political violence. Political violence outside of civil wars receives less attention within conflict literature, despite its pervasiveness and extensive negative effects. A growing concentration on alternative forms has revealed that a spectrum of violence, agency, and actors exists: several types of groups use violence to pursue their political objectives operate outside legally sanctioned state institutions.

Politically violent groups engage in organized conflict ranging from localized uprisings to coordinated attacks on state powers.² Distinguishing nonstate conflicts by its main actors provides insights into the different patterns and goals of violence, the risk to civilians, threats to national security and how institutions create incentives and disincentives for emergence (see Raleigh 2012; Choi and Raleigh, 2014). Each type of actor (e.g., rebels, militias, rioters, terrorists, governments, etc.) is engaged in conflict to reach goals shaped by active and relevant political cleavages (Kalyvas 2006); hence, actors and their motivations differ in significant and substantial ways that influence the onset, practice, and cessation of conflict. Whereas civil wars involve a primary cleavage of rebels against an established government, and its objective is to replace the regime or establish a separate state (Gleditsch et al. 2001; Collier and Hoeffler 2002; Sambanis 2004), militias operate as “private armies” for political elites, which broadly include regimes (e.g., Janjaweed in Sudan; Young Patriots in Ivory Coast), members of governments (e.g., Mungiki in Kenya); rebels (e.g., Mayi-Mayi in the DRC); political opponents (e.g., Boko Haram in Nigeria); and community or religious leaders (e.g., Pokot militias in Uganda and Kenya; Carey and Mitchell 2011; Raleigh 2012). These armed groups are often used by politicians to compete over access to power, settle territorial and resource disputes, strengthen local power disparities, and continue historical disagreements. Most events occur outside of civil war periods, when the state is considered relatively peaceful and violent episodes are often limited in their spatial scope, with significantly fewer fatalities than civil wars. As Figure 1 notes, the level of militia activity has increased steadily in the past sixteen years, second only to governments.

Figure 1.

Political violence across Africa by actor.

Despite the plethora of militia groups operating across Africa, there is little research into this form. Militias are a growing threat to the stability of governments and civilians, particularly because of their adaptability to state circumstances, relationship to political elites, and the fluidity of form. Their growing influence is evident in the chronic conflict among groups in peripheral areas (e.g., pastoral or religious militias in the Sahel); in difficult elections in Kenya (2007–08), Zimbabwe (2008), and Côte D’Ivoire (2010–11); and in the ongoing high rate of political violence in wars of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan, and Somalia.

This article describes and distinguishes militias by the political context in which groups emerge and are embedded, while arguing that the presence and depth of institutional strength and government consolidation dictates group activities. A categorization based on these criteria suggest that three subtypes of militia exist: Local Security Providers (LSP)—found in areas of state decay, where elites create militias to dominate local politics in response to absent or limited government control. These militias rarely act outside of immediate localities, and the relative rate of violence by LSP is stable within countries and across the continent. Emergency Militias (EM) are found in periods of state crisis, including civil wars, where both the government and opposition use militias for control and civilian punishment in frontline and strategic areas (e.g., Mayi-Mayi in the DRC).³ As civil wars have declined, so have EM groups. Finally, Competition Militias (CM) emerge within consolidated democracies during periods of political contestation, when elites vie for control and access to power and state rents. This “civic” instability is highest during periods of national elite competition, including elections. The rate of activity by CM has increased in recent years, as they function as private armies for political elites, parties, or interest groups (e.g., Boko Haram in Nigeria; Mungiki in Kenya). States differ on which groups are active within a country at any point in time. All three militia contexts may be present in a state, or more commonly, both LSPs (state decay) and CMs (contestation) can be found within and across African states. These distinctions offer a new perspective on militia violence and deviates from typical dichotomies of pro/antigovernment and predation/protector (see Reno 2007). This article focuses on the rise of CM in states without civil wars to explain the dominant form of political violence across African states.

The second obstacle to understanding militias is that their actions are often attributed to greed or ethnicity, and portrayed as anarchic, lacking ideological focus, and cultural reactions to disorder (Ignatieff 1997; Kaldor 1999). These popular explanations often “tribalize” and, by extension, depolitize African violence. In doing so, the agendas of strategic, competing elites and governance patterns are concealed (Keen 1998; King 2001). An alternative perspective emphasizes that militia violence increases due to competing political elites, who employ their services to gain advantage against opponents, access to state resources and positions. These political maneuvers are part of African “state making” and occur in places and periods of state decay, competition, and crisis.

The argument present here for the rise of CM is as follows: the symbiotic relationship between political elites and militias is shaped by the transition to modern institutions, including liberalization, decentralization, and democratization. These institutions limit regime power while increasing the paths to power for non-regime elites. Specifically, democratization provides political elites with the ability to directly contest control of the state. The new avenues to power increase elite fragmentation away from central regimes, and intensify competition between elites. Within this context, competing elites seek to gain local, regional, or national control and are willing to form extralegal groups and use violence to secure access to power and patronage (Chabal and Daloz 1999; Reno 1998). Hence, the key to understanding militia activity is not ethnic tension, criminality, or marginalization, but the competing agents of governance within the African state and the growing reliance on informal violent groups to influence political processes (Mueller 2002). Ultimately, violence is a structural problem embedded in the competition for power and the resources that come with obtaining power, a situation that is not easily fixed through the holding of elections or declaring a country democratic.

Following is a discussion of militia definitions, which situates these groups within the existing literature on African governance. The second section presents an argument for how the political capacity and geography of African states creates networks of violence that correspond to specific governance contexts. Different militias emerge as a response to a state’s political circumstances, including state decay, competition, and crisis. In the third section, a series of models analyzes the frequency and proportion of militia activity. Finally, a discussion of why we are witnessing a growing informalization of politics and political violence suggests that armed groups and violence are used for political gain through the instrumental use of disorder (Chabal and Daloz 1999).

One Man’s “Thug” Is Another’s “Informal Security Provider”

In an era of intensely fragmented sovereignty, the differences among soldiers, bandits, pirates … blurred into a continuum of coercive action. (Tilly 1990, 184)

Research on militias is hampered by the “politics of naming” (Bhatia 2005), leading to a proliferation of different terms to describe similar activities and functions. The terms civil militia, paramilitaries, civil defense forces, vigilantes, irregular forces, and death squads are used interchangeably, often without clear definitions.⁴ In general, these groups are characterized by the use of violence to achieve political and/or security goals. However, such a broad definition also encompasses other violent groups, including rebels, mutinous troops, or rioters, who each use violence to pursue their objectives and operate outside legally sanctioned state institutions. Specifically, militias differ from rebels in their relationship to patrons and goals, as the specific motive of a rebel is to overthrow the governing regime. Militias mainly perform strategic, targeted acts of violence in locations with limited overlap with rebel activity, and, increasingly, are the main agents of violence in states without civil wars. They are also distinct from rioters who perform spontaneous, individual acts of violence against governments. Militias, in contrast, organize armed violence to achieve patron-determined goals around gaining political power, often within the confines of the existing government.

Three narratives typically explain militia group formation and emergence: the first suggests that they mainly function as government paramilitaries; the second, as greed-motivated warlords responding to a vacuous state; and finally, as local reactions to larger violent cleavages. Each explanation is supported by evidence with also obscures and underplays important characteristics of these actors.

The paramilitary literature often defines militias as supplementary security agents where they function as armed, organized “pro-government” groups without a formal affiliation to regular security forces (Carey and Mitchell 2011) and “irregular combat units that usually act on behalf of, or are at least tolerated by, a given regime. Their task is to fight rebels, to threaten specific groups or to kill opposition leaders” (Schneckener 2007, 25). While this indicates the important role militias play within the context of political instability, it does not consider the range of groups that operate for patrons other than the government and whose role is to defend the existing political system and all of its agents across scales. Instead of being solely accountable to the state, civil militias in Africa “are organized by a diverse group of interests and stakeholders, including governments … with no constitutional provision or legislation legalising their existence” (Francis 2005, 5). The participants are often not politically motivated but populated with those seeking employment and marginalized youths “struggling for their share of patronage” (Hoffman 2007; Meagher 2007; Christensen and Utas 2008).

In practice, militias engage in violence for a variety of elites including regimes (e.g., Upfumi Kuvadiki and Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front [ZANU-PF] in Zimbabwe), political parties (e.g., Mombasa Revolutionary Council in Kenya; Unified Democratic Patriots Party in Tunisia), opposition groups (e.g., Union of Democratic Forces in Guinea; Digil Salvation Army, Somalia), regional governors (e.g., Bakassi Boys, Nigeria; Kibir Militia, Darfur), rebel groups (e.g., Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda [FDLR], union of congolese patriots [UPC] in the DRC), and community leaders (e.g., Fulani militia, Nigeria). Hence, while the alliances of the pro-government militias are more formidable, and their actions are more widespread, they demonstrate little divergence from other forms of militia in intentions, goals, and tactics. Militias are both pragmatic and promiscuous in their choice of patron, and attempt to maximize their political benefits in pursuing their own local agendas, such as criminal activity, racketeering, control over trade, and resource allocation. This can be seen in a number of examples: in Sudan and Chad, the Janjaweed militia exploited its strategic status as an ally of the government to clash with local ethnic competitors with whom they had fought frequently in the past over territory.

Another branch of research explains militia action in terms of predatory states and militarized societies. Reno (1998) and Bates (2008) both forward this explanation by concentrating on political competition between elites and the relationship between the local and national level. Reno suggests that “warlords” seek to take advantage of government’s weak and largely corrupt exercise of power through the use of private armies. This militia version of the “greed” hypothesis is focused on extraction and materialist explanations. While the consequences of an absent and/or corrupt state are detrimental, the analysis does not consider the range of militia actors found within the typical African state, how consolidated democracies experience high rates of militia action, or how democracy changes the form of competition and violence. Bates suggests a counternarrative, where a predatory executive power drives the militarization of society, but he does not address elite competition.

The resulting protector/predator dichotomy suggested in militia literature is rooted in the perception that security is underprovided in the modern African state (Schneckener 2007) due to the limited and/or selective presence of government. Therefore, security becomes a “club good,” provided to select groups and individuals. In this context, militias function as a supplemental security/control provider and they operate towards the predation/protection of ethnic communities (or clubs); those outside of the select “ethnic/regional/party” club are subject to predatory or repressive behavior at the hands of a militia (or national security units; Guichaoua 2010a, 2010b). Classifying militias in this way can obscure the fluid functions of an informal, armed, and largely extralegal force.

Others situate militias locally and explain violence as a reaction to larger scale events: Kalyvas (2006) and Autesserre (2006) contend that local conflicts in civil wars sustain, and are sustained by, violent national and regional cleavages. Yet, neither author allows for local conflicts and actors to be autonomous from these larger fissures. Autesserre (2010) suggests that “security dilemmas” emerge in postconflict societies, creating continued exposure to violence among populations where a solution to the absence of the state is the establishment of protection militias. Others do not restrict militias to these “protection” roles: Boyle (2009) finds that militia groups produce violence in order to position themselves within a hierarchy of opposition, and hence, intramilitia motives are more important than protecting civilian groups. This is another counter to the protection/predation debates within militia literature, yet all of the aforementioned analyses are based on civil war environments, where the number of militia groups is markedly higher and their actions different, than in non–civil war–affected states.

A thorough assessment of militia forms and activity suggest that the main functions of thugs, political gangs, militias, informal security providers, and extralegal police are to alter the political landscape (e.g., by threatening or forcing voters out before elections; Straus 2011); provide security (e.g., protector groups may predate on another community to provide security); gain access to territory and its accompanying resources, including land and populations; or, battle to distinguish the most powerful political elite within a local space. The overall fluidity in militia form and function results in part from changing patron and group goals.⁵ Political elites co-opt militias to achieve their own goals, including dominating a pastoral zone, competing in an election, or assisting the overthrow of a regime (Badmus 2006). As militia groups are co-opted, they often transform and this is especially obvious in cases where militia forces are regarded as parallel to government forces. For example, the Civil Defence Forces (CDF) in Sierra Leone is often equated with the Sierra Leonean government due to their role in the civil war in the 1990s, yet initially they were an umbrella organization of local protection groups (Hoffman 2007). In Nigeria, the Bakassi Boys originally provided crime protection to market traders, but as politicians co-opted them for political gain the group lost its community protection focus (Meagher 2007). This fluidity is suggested by Tilly (2003) as a common strategy for groups whose violence forms evolve with the state.

Hence, the most comprehensive definition of these groups is they are armed groups using violence or the threat of violence to influence an immediate political process. They are rarely organized in a formal or rigid hierarchy, but are closely affiliated with a political elite patron or community who dictate the goals of violence. They operate at the subnational level, and often in a localized area. Membership is often based on ethnicity, locality, and other identity manifestations including region (subnationally or rural/urban divides), religion, or occasionally previous group role (e.g., Zimbabwe’s former militants).⁶ They receive very little military training, though patrons may provide arms and supplies. This definition allows for the fluidity of this type of conflict with respect to patrons, political goals, periods, and scale of activity, while acknowledging the commonalities across multiple groups characterized as militia. By focusing on the contexts in which groups emerge and operate, rather than the groups themselves, relationships, and forms can change over time and as circumstances evolve.

Despite difficulties in generalizing across each distinct group, there are clear differences in the roles militias fulfill for communities and patrons. Once categorized into the context in which they appear, the functions they fulfill, the actions they engage in, and the interactions between groups, three distinct subtypes emerge.

State Decay: LSP

A large number of militia groups are formed to deal with local security concerns for small ethnoregional groups. They emerge to arbitrate over power disputes with minimal state intervention and provide security and predate based on group membership.⁷ They are mainly present in rural, peripheral parts of states where the government is absent or decayed, and communities and their representatives vie for power and to fill a local security vacuum through the use of local militias (Abbink 1998, 2000; Hagmann and Mulegata 2008). Violence is highly contained, rarely diffusing beyond the location of the initial attacks. Such groups have variously been known as “communal,” “community,” or “ethnic militias,” and recent work has attributed their actions to environmental and livelihood changes (see Straus 2011; Special issue of JPR 2012). They are distinct from other militias, as their formation and role is solely related to membership in local ethnic, often small communities with a traditional leader (Scheye 2009).

LSP are responsible for a low, stable rate of conflict across Africa (approximately 9 percent). Over half of the actions across LSPs are clashes with similar groups, while one-quarter of actions are violent attacks against civilians targeted by ethnicity. These militias interact with police or military forces in fewer than 12 percent of all recorded acts, and with other intrastate politically violent agents on very rare occasions (less than 7 percent of attacks). Examples of such groups abound throughout Africa, but are especially evident in pastoral zones: the Turkana, the Pokot, the Borana, and the Karamojong are responsible for high rates of violence within and across Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia. Although they produce relatively low rates of conflict, their actions can aggregate to create zones of instability.

State Crisis: EM

During a civil war, the agents of violence within the conflict environment are not exclusively rebel groups. EM operate as a proxy and supplement for government or opposition control during periods of war. These groups are unique in that they exist solely within the national security dilemma created by the context of civil war, and their activities are shaped by a fundamental crisis of the state where multiple centers of potential national political power contest control of territory. Governments and rebels use militias, so that external observers may not be clear on who is attacking, especially as warring factions splinter and shift their alliances (Pottier 2003). During civil wars, the average number of militia groups increases by a factor of three, and these are responsible for a significant proportion of conflict events and fatalities. On average, militias active in wars spend 60 percent of their time attacking civilians, 9 percent contesting governments, 5 percent against rebels, and 25 percent against other militias.⁸

Specifically, these militias engage in the local acquisition of territory or resources, the protection of held areas, and the predation on the population through violence against civilians (Raleigh 2012). For example, EM active in Sudan (e.g., Janjaweed, the Popular Defence Forces [PDF]) largely augment order where the state has a limited reach or when the state was overextended (De Waal 2004). They operate in politically critical areas (Tar 2005), and are allied, to some degree, to the formal and informal interests and structures of power of either government or rebel organizations. In Côte d’Ivoire, the Rally for Democracy and Progress, Student Federation of Côte d’Ivoire and Group for Peace and Progress all operated in government-held territory to punish and threaten civilians during the war with northern forces. But in the DRC groups such as the Group of 47, the Mayi-Mayi, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, and the Front for Patriotic Resistance to Ituri operate to secure local control bases while allying with rebel groups seeking national power. These groups that function within the complete breakdown of state order support both Autesserre’s and Kalyvas’s findings that the form of local and regional violence is shaped by national cleavages, and continued violence is a reaction to security dilemmas that emerge in conflict environments.

Contested State: CM

The largest increase in militia groups and actions is due to the rise of competition militias (CM), that occur in nonwar states and periods where they operate as the private armies of politically active patrons. They are attached to governments, political parties, and elites and operate in areas where no obvious security vacuum exists. The state is present, but political power is contested between agents of violence in critical locations (e.g., urban areas) or periods of political competition (e.g., elections). CM’s activity is mainly against civilians (55 percent), followed by governments (25 percent) and other CM (15 percent). Their frequent actions in militia heavy states can result in conflicts of the same intensity as a civil war (e.g., “post-conflict” Darfur, South Sudan, and DRC).

In politically important areas where government power is present yet contested, militias use force to forward or impede political change. Violence is a strategy employed by diverse political elites to undermine political opposition, promote ideologies, counter multiparty democracy, and gain political initiative. This process is apparent in both intragroup and intergroup actions. During periods of national competition and polarization, militias undertake specialized activities of specific predation, directed against opponent militias and their supportive civilian communities. Elections are critical periods because they alter the power structure within a state and the national and subnational levels where multiple actors seek to establish their claims on power. Political candidates cripple opposition by mobilizing militias to disrupt political meetings and intimidate, displace, and disenfranchise ethnic populations suspected of being sympathetic to opponents (Branch and Cheeseman 2008). Electoral conflicts have become increasingly common in Mozambique, Ethiopia, Togo, Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, DRC, the Gambia, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, and Nigeria (Bekoe 2010).

Periods of contestation extend well past elections to include other challenges, including periods of rapid urbanization, increasing poverty and unemployment, natural disasters, and internal political maneuverings (Christensen and Utas 2008). In these cases, political patrons use militias as (1) local power brokers in larger disputes (e.g., the Janjaweed predecessors were used to pave the way for new breed of “Arabist” Islamism, allowing for local and national legitimating narratives of power; De Waal 2004); (2) to fan tensions across ethno-regional communities (in Côte D’Ivoire, politicians exploited conditions among the southern indigenous and disenfranchised northern indigenous populations before the onset of war; Boone 2009); and (3) operate as informal police and predators in areas deemed politically critical (e.g., cities), politically relevant ethnic communities, and resource areas. Examples include the Falcons for the Liberation of Africa in Chad and Sudan and the Veterans group and Farm Workers Militia of Zimbabwe.

Table 1 summarizes the contexts and emergent group characteristics. LSP militias are found in contexts of state decay, where due to state absence as a provider of security or an arbitrator of power, local ethnic community institutions fill the vacuum. EM are found in contexts of state crisis, when a country is characterized by an oligopoly of “state-making” actors, security services and potential governance contexts, and militias operate as supplemental forces and allies for either government or rebel groups. CM emerge in contexts where formal political elites and organizations and coalitions fragment and compete for access to power and privilege. As militias fill power vacuums or contest political change, there are distinct differences in number of groups, rates of violence across states, and spatial overlap between group types: an analysis of violent event locations across countries finds that LSP and CM spatial overlap at 30 percent; LSP’s overlap with EM is 14 percent; and CM’s and EM’s overlap is 26 percent.

Table 1.

Group Type by Political Context and Governance Scenarios.

Group type	Political context	Governance scenario
Ethnic or local security providers	DECAY: Local political maneuvering	State absence
Competition militias	CONTEST: Civic instability including periods of national elite competition	Heavily contested state power either across or between governance networks
Emergency militias	CRISIS: Periods in which the ruling regime has lost the Monopoly of violence	A contest for replacement of executive branch

Yet the critical question remains: If LSP rates are stable, and EM rates declining, why are CM rates increasing?

Political Geography of Control and the Oligopoly of Violence

The rise of CM into the main form of political violence in the modern African state requires an examination of African political institutions and elite competition. Theories of militia emergence suggest that these groups emanate from state predation and local elite militarization, both borne of chequered state capacity and weakness (see Reno 2007; Bates 2008). However, the rise of CM may also be explained by the transition to, and practices of, multiparty democracy. This has brought about a significant change to the relationship between elites and governments and led to the use of violence to contest, challenge, and compete for access to power within institutions designed to distribute power and resources.

Since independence, African states relied on networks of control, structured by the central regime, and fed by public rents. This was exemplified by the one-party state, where the dividing line between the “state” and the “regime” was obscured, and the state was, in practice, “a set of relationships and interactions among social classes and groups that is maintained, organized and regulated by a political power” (Sangmpam 1993, 203). Access to power was based on ethnoregional relationships with the executive branch, which created a patron/client-based structure (De Waal 2009). Patronage/clientalism is the social practice and political mechanism developed by ruling elites to co-opt groups who provide legitimacy and support in exchange for access to public rents. The resultant networks are integral to the “politics of survival” for both patrons and clients in developing states (Midgal 1988; Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith 2002). Hence, postcolonial African state strength was based on the success of a regime’s co-option of elites for legitimacy and control of local areas (Mehler 2004). In turn, elites benefited from access to the central state; as Kamungi (2009, 185) notes, “in most of post-colonial Africa, the only way for elites to secure life and prosperity and some freedom was to be in control, or at any rate, to share in the control of state power” (also see Ake 2000; Posner 2004; Boone 2003; Enloe 1980).⁹

This symbiotic relationship had a physical manifestation in the political geography of governance and violence. African states ruled indirectly through a network of elite intermediaries that expanded in places of importance and largely co-opted power brokers in peripheral areas, without having a direct presence (Mehler 2004; Schneckener 2007; Scheye 2009). In exchange for regime support, elites could pursue local agendas and engage in violence against groups but not against the state (Engel and Olsen 2005). Hence, although postindependence African states have consistently claimed a monopoly over violence, rarely did governments prove such capacity (Mehler 2007), nor was control over territory and violence the intent of the African state. The main interest was to control agents of violence in areas that are important to the regime and to extract rents (see Boone 2003; Mehler 2007). Public monies were misused to “feed” clients across parts of territory that states were unable or unwilling to directly control (Erdmann and Engel 2005). Changes in the economic and political fortunes of states led to a decrease in direct support and limits on compliance from these agents. The resultant loss of direct control over elites led the state to surrender the monopoly of violence, if they ever had what could be considered a monopoly (Mueller 2008).

Indeed, from the 1970s onward, the search for state resources became more difficult, leading to a rise in competition among political elites; the 1980–95 period was extremely unstable, in that approximately one-third of all African states experienced serious problems in exerting any sustained authority due to fiscal disarray and ineffective administration structures (Chabal 2005; Forrest 2006; Bates 2008). In the post–Cold War global environment, liberalization, democratization, and decentralization were forced upon Africa by external powers eager to limit the control of the one-party state and to curb the excessive instability emanating from the continent (Treisman 2007). Alterations to the public income structures, and the shift of public monies into private paths, decreased the regime’s ability to use public rents at will. Decentralization exacerbated state decay, leading to the rise of independent local power brokers. Although meant as a direct measure to curtail the power of the state, transferring official power over to lower levels did not guarantee that government would grow more representative and accountable (Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith 2002). In economically underdeveloped countries, decentralization as a form of power sharing actually increased corruption (Treisman 2007) as in several African states, it led to the increased salience of ethnic or regional differences, higher rates of conflict, and enhanced the power of local elites by binding with politicians and strongmen in tight networks (Brancati 2007).

Faltering political networks and growing competition lessened state capacity, and one-party states began a campaign of predation that, paradoxically, enhanced their weakness and eventually led to their end. The competition for extraction and state rents manifested itself in the form of the “predator state” as African governments continued to siphon capital for personal/regime uses, including client “feeding” (Chabal and Daloz 1999; Van de Walle 2005; Bates 2008). Yet, local elites were also fighting for extraction rights and local power. These competing, informal, private networks of power replaced the once formidable regime-elite relationships (Reno 1998, 2003; Mueller 2002; Ismail 2008). This “greed” narrative concerning state rents and resources has been suggested by Reno (1998) as the basis for “warlord” states.

An alternative path is suggested by Bates (2008), who points to executive corruption and predation as initiating the rise of countergovernment “protection” militias. Acknowledging that weakness led to competing local and national elites, he argues that falling public revenue and increasing pressure from civil society groups, political contenders, and external donors positioned African regimes in increasing predatory positions vis-à-vis internal rivals. In states where a predatory regime was accompanied by militarization of communities in response to security dilemmas, an oligopoly of violent actors was the result. However, militias engage in such similar violent actions, it is difficult to distinguish Reno’s predators from Bates’s protectors.

Hypothesis 1 argues that contests over state resources and extractive rights motivate local political elites to use militias:

Hypothesis 1: High government expenditure and extractive resource rents increase the frequency and proportion of militia action.

But as noted by Branch and Cheesman (2008), neither Reno nor Bates account for militias outside of failed state environments, or discuss the competition between political elites and opposition across states. Liberalization and decentralization divorced regimes from complete state control, contributing to the continued weakness of the African state. In addition, democratization allowed political agents within states to compete for power and increased challenges to governments by opening a political arena for opposition both within and outside regimes (Choi and Raleigh, 2014).

Once elites were not beholden to regimes for access to power, they became competitive and fragmented. To garner significant influence, elites manipulated ethnoregional ties as the mode of support. Hence, across Africa, democracy became a competition among ethnoregional political elites, instead of ideology, public interest, or economic classes (Boone 2009; Rakner and van de Walle 2009; Bekoe 2010). The political realm in Africa is defined and dictated by ethnoregional groups, which have a base in ethnic identity while “being constantly moulded by political interaction with other groups and the state” (Scarritt and McMillan 1995, 325).¹⁰ Ethnicity, relative to other social cleavages, is “a cost effective strategic resource for organizing collective political action. Ethnic cleavages, therefore, are the dominant ones in electoral and party opposition” (Scarritt and McMillan 1995, 335). Elites organize in ethnopolitical party units to mirror group grievances, thereby using identity was a justification to compete for public goods and challenge power distribution.

On the other hand, regimes no longer dictate the degree of ethnoregional inclusiveness or exclusiveness but are still engaged in “state making,” described by Tilly (1985) and later Thies (2009) as a process involving promotion, neutralizing, or bargaining with other elite rivals. Hence, countries with high levels of potential ethnic and regional salience, a weakened central power, and new institutional frameworks designed for democratic competition are particularly open for both elite fragmentation and competition. In turn, violence is a way for elites to manipulate the political landscape in order to attain power, protect supportive communities, and destroy opposition. For political elites, there are many benefits to using violence for political gain: militias perform targeted functions on the cheap such as threatening the support community of an opponent, neutralizing potential larger threats including local militant and nationalistic groups (e.g., Niger Delta), or settling zero-sum political disputes (De Waal 2004; Joab-Peterside 2007). Regional elites also use the threat of indiscriminate or persistent violence and disorder to demand a greater share of resources from federal and state governments (Menkhaus 2007; Kagwanja 2003, 2005; Meagher 2007; Branch and Cheeseman 2008; Merz 2010). The benefits of militia violence also stem from the lack of patron accountability, enabling militias to commit human rights abuses while the patron can deny having hired the force (Branch and Cheeseman 2008). Finally, many new democracies depend on violence to build electoral influences, “violence is the product of political competition itself; and for that reason, competition may threaten the sustainability of any institutional reform that is devised to control violence” (Mueller 2008, 190).

Hypothesis 2 argues that democracy, in particular, has increased the competition between political elites, leading to frequent militia actions:

Hypothesis 2: Democratic and democratizing institutions increase the frequency and proportion of militia actions. This relationship is strongest during election periods.

Patterns of Control and Violence

This study uses country-years across Africa from 1997 to 2012 as the unit of analysis. Conflict data come from Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED) as three features of that project are critical: (1) ACLED collects information on a wide range of political violence, including actions by governments, rebels, militias, communal actors, rioters, and protesters. It also details the interaction between types of actors (e.g., CM vs. governments); (2) ACLED codes violence systematically across several state and nonstate actor types without a fatality-based criterion or predefined conflict distinctions;¹¹ (3) ACLED uses an “atomic” definition for constituent events. An atomic spatial (town), temporal (day), event (type), and actor (group name and type) unit is based on the finest resolution possible recorded from conflict reports. Atomic data allow for the greatest aggregation options, as the base units are comparable across countries, periods, conflicts, and locations.

To discern different forms of militias, all events in which militia are associated with ethnic/identity groups are grouped into “LSP” or “communal” actors in ACLEDs categorization; all remaining militia actors and actions occurring in a civil war are considered “emergency militias” and CM are non-LSP actors present in nonwar periods. For the purposes of this analysis, all militia actions barring LSP are included in the analysis, and a dummy variable for “civil war” controls for those actions during periods of crisis. There are two dependent variables: a count variable of the number of events by militia and a proportional variable for the level of activity within a state perpetrated by militias.

Institutional data come from two sources: the Polity IV data on political institutions (Marshall, Jaggers, and Gurr 2011) and the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project of the World Bank (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi 2010). To measure democratic institutional strength, consistency, and transitions, dummy variables for democracy are created for country-years ranked 4, 5, and 6 on the Polity IV scale. Thirty percent of the sample is above “4” on the Polity scale. Positive movements (toward democracy) and negative movements (toward autocracy) are created by comparing lagged and annual Polity scores; approximately 10 percent of the sample is “democratizing.” However, accounting for violence within states contaminates components of Polity scores: the “Constraint on Chief Executive” (Xconst) is a Polity indicator for checks and balances on executive power but does not incorporate violence. Xconst measures the extent to which the decision-making power of chief executive is constrained by any “accountability groups,” which can be the legislatures or independent judiciaries in democracies and councils of nobles, ruling parties, or militaries in nondemocracies (Marshall, Jaggers, and Gurr 2011). This variable is coded on a seven-point ordinal scale: 1 corresponds to no constraints on the executive’s decision-making power and 7 to accountability groups having power equal to or greater than the chief executive.¹² For this analysis, Xconst is normalized to the scale of 0 to 1. An “election years” dummy variable accounts for both national presidential and parliamentary elections. The number of parties competing in both presidential and parlimentary elections is collected to gauge the level of competition among political elites and democratic contenders.

Several measures of resource wealth are incorporated. The first is a measure of the proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) consumed by the government indicating the level to which states control the wealth of the state, and a larger proportion is a greater potential “take” for violent groups. The second and third are more direct measures of resource wealth including the proportional percentage of exports of agricultural goods and ore/mineral goods. To gain local control of these exports would result in significant wealth for local groups.¹³

Controls¹⁴

Control variables in all models include the natural log of population, annual economic growth, the level of ethnic fractionalization, a dummy variable indicating whether the country is in a state of civil war, and a lagged variable accounting for previous militia action. All variable information and sources are noted in Table 2.

Table 2.

Variables.

Variable	Mean (SD)	Range	Frequency	Source
Militia activity—events	11.52 (43.69)	0–641	376 (0)	ACLED (2012)^a
Militia activity—events	11.52 (43.69)	0–641	393 (>0)	ACLED (2012)^a
Militia activity—proportion events	.257 (.368)	0–1	377 (0)	ACLED (2012)
Militia activity—proportion events	.257 (.368)	0–1	392 (>0–1)	ACLED (2012)
Democracy (>5)	.32 (.46)	0–1	523 (0)	Polity IV^b
Democracy (>5)	.32 (.46)	0–1	247 (1)	Polity IV^b
Elections	.246 (.431)	0–1	580 (0)	African Elections Database^c
Elections	.246 (.431)	0–1	190 (1)	African Elections Database^c
Number of political parties running in election	1.48 (4.52)	0–44	652 (0)	African Elections Database
Number of political parties running in election	1.48 (4.52)	0–44	128 (1)	African Elections Database
Checks and balances	.448 (.269)	0–1	32 (0)	Polity IV-XCONST
Checks and balances	.448 (.269)	0–1	688 (>0)	Polity IV-XCONST
Government consumption	15.23 (7.83)	2.04–69.54	770	World Bank Institute (2012)
Agricultural exports	9.76 (16.07)	0–93.8	770	World Bank Institute^d (2012)
Ore and mineral exports	12.38 (18.85)	0–85.3	770	World Bank Institute (2012)
Toward democracy	.093 (.291)	0–1	689 (0)	World Bank Institute (2012)
Toward democracy	.093 (.291)	0–1	72 (1)	World Bank Institute (2012)
Population (logged)	16.04 (1.27)	13.06–18.80	768	United Nations^e
GDP (logged)	22.25 (1.48)	19.04–25.95	770	World Bank
Civil War (dummy)	.17 (.37)	0–1	634 (0)	ACLED
Civil War (dummy)	.17 (.37)	0–1	134 (1)	ACLED
Ethnic political fractionalization	.638 (.235)	0.5–.959	770	Montalvo and Reynal-Querol (2005) ^f

Note: GDP = Gross domestic product; ACLED = Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset. ^aACLED data accessed on July 25, 2013. Militia actions are noted as either “3” political or “4” communal in the interactions section. Data from Raleigh et al. (2010). ^b Marshall, Jaggers, and Gurr (2011). ^cAfrican Elections Database, accessed August 1, 2012; supplemented by Psephos at http://psephos.adam-carr.net/. ^dWorld Bank data on exports from World Bank Economists and published on World Bank Download site, accessed August 1, 2012. ^eUnited Nation Data, accessed on August 1, 2012. From World Population Prospects (2010). ^fIn country cases where this index provides no information, a continental average is used.

Model Method

A negative binomial model analyses the count of country-year militia events. An ordinary least squares (OLS) model is used to analyze the proportion of militia events compared to other forms of opposition political violence (excluding government violence). As neither dependent variable is a “rare event,” both analysis methods are appropriate. All models include random effects for states that control for unobserved factors that may influence the distribution and frequency of militia actions.

Results

Table 3 presents negative binomial results for CM event counts. In model 1, a state with a Polity score of 4 or higher has a higher number of CM acts than a nondemocratic state. This result supports Hypothesis 2, although models 2 and 4 show that higher Polity scores are not robust mechanisms for explaining CM. This may be due to the corruption of Polity scores through the inclusion of violence. For that reason, alternative measures of democracy are tested including (1) a measure of “checks and balances,” (2) the transition toward a more democratic institutions, (3) the number of official political parties operating within a state, and (4) held elections. As the number of parties and elections are highly correlated, they are considered in separate models. All alternative measures for democracy display a clearly positive and significant effect on the count of CM acts in models 1 through 5.

Table 3.

Count Models.

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5
Variables	Count of militia acts	Count of militia acts	Count of militia acts	Count of militia acts	Count of militia acts
Obs: 770	716	716	669	716	716
Democracy (4)	.304 (.132)**
Democracy (5)		.138 (.137)			.163 (.137)
Checks and balances			.491 (.290)*
Polity2				.003 (.003)
Polity				.015 (.016)
Toward democracy	.945 (.238)***	.898 (.241)***	1.08 (.265)***	.942 q(.241)***	.887 (.241)***
No. of political parties	.021 (.006)***	.023 (.006)***	.026 (.007)***	.022 (.006)***
Elections					.421 (.106)***
Agricultural exports (percentage)	.004 (.006)	.003 (.006)	.002 (.007)	.003 (.006)	.003 (.006)
Ore and mineral exports (percentage)	.006 (.004)	.006 (.004)	.004 (.004)	.006 (.004)	.006 (.004)
Government consumption	−.009 (.011)	−.007 (.011)	−.013 (.012)	−.010 (.011)	−.008 (.011)
GDP growth	−3.55 (.929)***	−3.34 (.929)***	−2.73 (.974)**	−3.38 (.921)***	−3.47 (.922)***
Population (logged)	.408 (.075)***	.417 (.075)***	.380 (.083)***	.406 (.077)***	.421 (.075)***
Civil war	.560 (.130)	.537 (.129)**	.547 (.141)***	.561 (.131)***	.560 (.130)***
Ethnic political fractionalization	.965 (.349)**	1.04 (.346)**	.824 (.378)**	1.06 (.353)**	1.06 (.349)**
Lag political militia events	.002 (.000)***	.002 (.000)***	.002 (.000)***	.002 (.000)***	.002 (.000)***
Constant	−4.65 (1.56)**	−5.05 (1.55)***	−4.96 (1.69)**	−4.84 (1.58)**	−5.03 (1.55)***
Clusters	49	49	48	49	49
Log likelihood	−1549	−1550	−1397	−1549	−1548

Note: GDP = gross domestic product. Standard errors in parenthesis. *p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01. Two-tailed tests.

Neither the proportion of state wealth consumed by the government nor resource exports accounted for the frequency of competition militia events. All measures were insignificant under several model specifications. Hypothesis 1 is not supported across count models.

Table 4 presents linear regression results for the proportion of CM activity. Measures of democracy at Polity level 4 and 5 do not affect the proportion of militia activity, and neither do “checks and balances.” However, a squared term for Polity is positive and significant; this quadratic result suggests that the proportion and direction of militia activity changes over the institutional range. There is, on average, a 5 percent decline in militia activity in the transition from a full autocracy to a full democracy; however, countries moving toward democratic institutions have 15 percent more militia actions than those that are regressing politically, regardless of where of the polity scale they lie.

Table 4.

Proportional Models.

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 9	Model 5
Variables	Proportion of militia acts	Proportion of militia acts	Proportion of militia acts	Proportion of militia acts	Proportion of militia acts
Obs: 770	716	716	669	716	716
Democracy (4)	.046 (.038)
Democracy (5)		.019 (.038)			.020 (.038)
Checks and balances			−.015 (.077)
Polity 2				.001 (.000)*
Polity				−.003 (.004)
Toward democracy	.142 (.069)**	.135 (.069)**	.124 (.073)*	.139 (.069)**	.126 (.069)*
Election parties	.006 (.002)**	.006 (.002)**	.008 (.003)**	.007 (.002)**
Elections					.103 (.027)***
Agricultural exports (percentage)	−.000 (.001)	−.000 (.001)	−.000 (.001)	−.000 (.001)	−.000 (.001)
Ore and mineral exports (percentage)	.002 (.001)*	.002 (.001)**	.002 (.001)**	.002 (.001)**	.002 (.001)**
Government consumption	−.000 (.002)	−.000 (.002)	−.000 (.002)	−.000 (.002)	−.000 (.002)
GDP growth	−.340 (.219)	−.336 (.220)	−.302 (.223)	−.336 (.219)	−.355 (.218)*
Population (logged)	.044 (.019)**	.046 (.019)**	.049 (.020)**	.051 (.019)**	.049 (.019)**
Civil war	−.131 (.039)***	−.136 (.039)***	−.139 (.040)***	−.132 (.039)***	−.131 (.038)***
Ethnic political fractionalization	−.068 (.108)	−.058 (.107)	−.080 (.112)	−.026 (.110)	−.051 (.109)
Lag political militia events	.000 (.000)**	.000 (.000)**	.000 (.000)**	.000 (.000)**	.000 (.002)**
Constant	−.083 (.402)	−.119 (.401)	−.186 (.414)	−.249 (.412)	−.165 (.404)
Clusters	49	49	48	49	49
ρ (between/overall)	28 percent	28 percent	29 percent	31 percent	29 percent
ρ (between/overall)	12 percent	12 percent	12 percent	13 percent	12 percent

Note: GDP = gross domestic product. Standard errors in parenthesis. *p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01. Two-tailed tests.

The number of political parties, elections, and movement toward democratic institutions all exert a positive impact on the proportion of CM. Each institutional change toward more participation and executive checks is associated with an increase of 12 to 14 percent in proportional militia activity. Increases in political parties from the lowest (one party) to the highest recorded competitors (forty-four) double the proportional activity from 25 percent to over 50 percent. Figure 2 displays the average proportional rate of activity across the range of political party totals. During an election year, the rate of political militia activity increases by 10 percent, holding all other variables at their mean. Unlike the count models in Table 3, resource exports exert a positive and significant influence on the proportional actions: a 10 percent increase in exports leads to a 2 percent average increase in militia activity. The OLS random effects models explain between 28 percent and 30 percent of the samples between country-year variance.

Figure 2.

Political parties and militia activity.

The control variables offer additional insights: increasing rates of growth are strongly and negatively correlated to the frequency of militia actions, but insignificant in determining the proportion of militia acts (with the exception of its influence during an election year). Higher population densities, ethnic political polarization, and lagged militia events also exert positive effects on the frequency and proportion of this violence.

Overall, Hypothesis 1 is a poor explanation for militia violence: only resource exports are associated with higher proportions, but not counts, of militia activity; no other measure of the “government prize” affects the rate of frequency of this violence. In contrast, several different measures of democratic institutions and change are robustly associated with the rate and frequency of militia actions. Elite competition is therefore a strong explanation for the rise of political militias.

Implications and Conclusions

Militia groups have emerged as one of the main instruments of political violence during a time of institutional reform across African states. The significance of this approach is a further consideration of the “universe” of political violence and violent actors. Militia numbers and actions force a review of how political violence is characterized, framed, and modeled. In particular, the process of governance and the goals and strategies of political elites may explain significant variation in peaceful and conflicted states. Militias are found across all governance contexts, but their actions, sponsors, patterns of behavior, and forms are shaped by the capacity of regimes throughout a state’s territory and the competition facing sitting governments.

The cases identified here suggest that armed groups do not emerge in a vacuum: all militias work within the structure of the state, are reactions to governance within the state, and transform as the state and its political elites change. African states constructed a network of intermediaries to provide security for groups and control for patrons. As the central state weakened, competing elites challenged spheres of authority and influence. Of course, state control vacillates over space and time, corresponding to increases and decreases in the number of militias and the proportion of violence for which they are responsible. Weakness does, in part, correspond to institutional structures. Not only do nominally democratic states have higher rates of militia activity, but in democratic states with zero-sum political logics (e.g., Kenya) or highly lucrative elections (e.g., Nigeria), the election process also encourages patrons to use militias to contest opposition.

If we are to understand governance as active management of a state, then African governments have often leased out control to local agents. As external pressures mandated that central regime change to limit the reach and power of the executive, competition for power became more pronounced, and more elites engaged in struggles to join or replace sitting governments. Militias have become the main violent agents of these struggles, and competition militias are now the most common across states. Other forms of militia including local security and war militias have always been present within their unique contexts and account for a smaller overall proportion of political violence. But democratization, liberalization, and decentralization ushered in a period of intense elite competition, and new violence entrepreneurs are a result.

The implication for militia involvement in governance is a further distancing between the facade of African institutions and the practice of democracy throughout states. As the threats of militias are mainly borne by civilians, the citizens of states are ignored, if not victimized, by the practices of political elites. Further, as security continues to be regarded as an ethnic “club” good, politically irrelevant citizens are less likely to receive this basic public good. Hence, governance takes on new meaning in developing African states where it involves the perpetuation of controlled disorder and a growing retribalization and “ethnicization” of politics and political change.

Alternative perceptions of militia action have fueled narratives of African “retribalization”; such perceptions depoliticize violence occurring on the local level (Kamungi 2009). Anthropological literature presents “vigilantism” as a reversion to traditional institutions for the maintenance of law and order and owing to “widespread disillusionment with the inability of the state to provide security” (Meagher 2007, 95). Not only does this have serious implications for both political accountability and institutionalization of violence across states, but it also directly counters the evidence suggesting that retribalization of violence is, in fact, deeply rooted in political competition (Young 2002). Political elites make various claims regarding the inequitable distribution of land, public goods, representation, and so forth, to accentuate resentments of exclusion, especially when perceived marginalization is expressed in ethno-geographical terms (Fayeye 2004; Kamungi 2009). Ethnicity thereby moves beyond a cultural consideration into one of political and economic consequence. Ethnicity-based “grievance” is a common component of militia formation and community support, but this process has benefits for political elites well beyond potential militia recruitment. Retribalization has also served as a basis for explaining security, public goods, and political power in solely ethnic terms. In cases with a limited or contested government, the geographic expression of retribalization is balkanization, where a state’s territory dissolves into competing ethnic fiefdoms using violence as a means to legitimate separation.

In turn, the “retribalization” logic without an associated political logic perverts the external perception of militia groups. A large literature focusing on the criminal behavior and human rights abuses of militias has emerged to support a narrative of “uncontrollable” African politics. This logic benefits political elites, who can use violence when it is strategic, but can also halt it to prove their control of their territory (Chabal and Daloz 1998). Militias, in turn, look like groups of “drug-addled young men,” or unemployed, disaffected youths who commit criminal acts out of a greed motive (Kaplan 2001; Collier and Hoeffler 2002; Goldstone 2002; Urdal 2005). There is a growing tendency to criminalize conflict without understanding the logic of control and the networks of influence at work throughout a state. In choosing a definition and contexts that focus on the identity, informality, and function of militias, their relationship to the hybrid structures of the African state, formal facades and informal mechanisms of control, are made obvious.

But is Africa unique? Research in African conflicts is too often focused on the quality and dynamics of violence, not on the deliberate and systematic use of it by elites (Mueller 2008). Although neopatrimonial relationships are common across developing states, recent intuitional changes to political networks and violence patterns are particularly evident across Africa. This is due to both the form they assume within this context and the characteristics of the continent as a whole. Generally, the zero-sum game over rents is most destabilizing in societies with major regional, ethnic, or religious blocs, as these cleavages overlap and reinforce the patron–client networks (Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith 2002). The structure of African ethnopolitical relations are perhaps most unstable as clients can change patrons, and this is especially so during government transitions (Erdmann and Engel 2005). Further, the misuse of public wealth to fund governance networks has been more egregious in Africa in comparison to other developing contexts (Van de Walle 2005; Kasara 2007). In turn, the limiting of centralized state control has led to an increase is elite-level competition and violence, the patterns of which are now dictated by state deinstitutionalization instead of state control. Whereas in other contexts, the criminal/economic motives of gangs drive the narrative as to their existence and their co-option of political elites and institutions, in Africa, it is a tactic to acquire political power.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work is supported by the European Research Council Young Investigator Grant—GEOPV.

Notes

Supplemental Material

The online [appendices/data supplements/etc] are available at .

References

Abbink

Jon

. 1998. “Ritual and Political Forms of Violent Practice among the Suri of Southern Ethiopia.” Cahiers d’études Africaines 150:271–95.

Abbink

Jon

. 2000. “Violence and the Crisis of Conciliation: Suri, Dizi and the State in South-West Ethiopia.” Journal of the International African Institute 70:527–50.

Ake

Claude

. 2000. The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa. Dakar, Senegal: Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa.

Autesserre

Severine

. 2006. “Local Violence, National Peace? Postwar “Settlement” in the Eastern D. R. Congo (2003–2006).” African Studies Review 49:1–29.

Autesserre

Severine

. 2010. The Trouble with the Congo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Badmus

Isiaka Alani

. 2006. “Ethnic Militia Movements and the Crisis of Political Order in Post-military Nigeria.” Journal of Social Science 13:191–201.

Bates

Robert

. 2008. When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-century Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bekoe

Dorina

. 2010. Trends in Electoral Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace.

Bhatia

Michael V.

2005. “Fighting Words: Naming Terrorists, Bandits, Rebels and Other Violence Actors.” Third World Quarterly 26:5–22.

10.

Boone

Catherine

. 2003. Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

11.

Boone

Catherine

. 2009. “Electoral Populism where Property Rights are Weak: Land Politics in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa.” Contemporary Politics 41:183–201.

12.

Boyle

Michael

. 2009. “Bargaining, Fear and Denial: Explaining Violence against Civilians in Iraq 2004–1007.” Terrorism and Political Violence 21:261–87.

13.

Brancati

Dawn

. 2007. “Decentralization: Fueling the Fire or Dampening the Flames of Ethnic Conflict and Secessionism?” International Organization 60:651–85.

14.

Branch

Daniel

Cheeseman

Nic

. 2008. “Democratization, Sequencing and State Failure in Africa: Lessons from Kenya.” African Affairs 108:13–30.

15.

Brinkerhoff

Derick

Goldsmith

Arthur

. 2002. Clientelism, Patrimonialism and Democratic Governance: An Overview and Framework for Assessment and Programming. Washington, DC: USAID.

16.

Carey

Sabine C.

Mitchell

Neil J.

. 2011. “Why Do Governments Use Militias?” Paper from Centre for International Crisis Management & Conflict Resolution (ICMRC), Atlanta Georgia.

17.

Chabal

Patrick

. 2005. “Power in Africa Reconsidered.” In The African Exception, edited by Engel

Ulf

Olsen

Gorm Rye

, 17–34. London: Ashgate.

18.

Chabal

Pascal

Daloz

Jean Paul

. 1999. Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument. Oxford, UK: James Currey.

19.

Choi

Hyun Jin

Raleigh

Clionadh

. 2014. “Dominant Forms of Conflict in Changing Political Systems.” International Studies Quarterly. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1111/isqu.12157

20.

Christensen

Maya M.

Utas

Mats

. 2008. “Mercenaries of Democracy: The ‘Politricks’ of Remobilized Combatants in the 2007 General Elections, Sierra Leone.” African Affairs 107:515–39.

21.

Collier

Paul

Hoeffler

Anke

. 2002. “On the Incidence of Civil War in Africa.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46:13–28.

22.

De Waal

Alex

. 2004. “Counter-Insurgency on the Cheap.” Review of African Political Economy 31:716–25.

23.

De Waal

Alex

. 2009. “Mission without End? Peacekeeping in the African Political Marketplace.” International Affairs 85:99–113.

24.

Engel

Ulf

Olsen

Gorm Rye

. 2005. “The African Exception: Conceptual Notes on Governance in Africa in the New Millennium.” In The African Exception, edited by Engel

Ulf

Olsen

Gorm Rye

, 1–13. London: Ashgate.

25.

Enloe

Cynthia H.

1980. Ethnic Soldiers. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.

26.

Erdmann

Gero

Engel

Ulf

. 2005. “Neopatrimonialism Revisited: Critical Review and Elaboration of an Elusive Concept.” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 45:95–119.

27.

Ero

Comfort

. 2000. “Vigilantes, Civil Defence Forces and Militia Groups: The Other Side of the Privatization of Security in Africa.” Conflict Trends 1:28–40.

28.

Fayeye

Joseph

. 2004. “Ethnic Militias: National Security, Democracy and Development.” In Democracy and Development in Nigeria, vol. 3, edited by Saliu

Hassan A.

Ogunsanya

Ade A.

Olujide

Jackson O.

Olaniyi

Johnson O.

, 25–42. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company.

29.

Forrest

Joshua B.

2006. “State Inversion and Non-state Politics.” In The African State at a Critical Juncture. Between Disintegration and Reconfiguration, edited by Villalon

L. A.

Huxtable

P. A.

, 45–46. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner.

30.

Francis

David J.

2005. “Introduction.” In Civil Militia: Africa’s Intractable Security Menace? edited by Francis

David J.

, 5–16. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

31.

Gleditsch

Nils Petter

. 2012. “Whither the Weather? Climate Change and Conflict.” Journal of Peace Research 49:3–9.

32.

Gleditsch

Nils

Strand

Havard

Eriksson

Mikael

Sollenberg

Margareta

Wallensteen

Peter

. 2001. “Armed Conflict 1946–99: A New Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research 39 (5): 615–637

33.

Goldstone

Jack

. 2002. “Population and Security: How Demographic Change Can Lead to Violent Conflict.” Journal of International Affairs 56:2–22.

34.

Guichaoua

Yvan

. 2010a. “How Do Ethnic Militias Perpetuate in Nigeria? A Micro-level Perspective on the Oodua’s People’s Congress.” World Development 38:1657–66.

35.

Guichaoua

Yvan

. 2010b. “Processes of Violent Political Mobilization: An Overview of Contemporary Debates and CRISE Findings.” Working paper no. 5, CRISE-Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity. http://www.qeh.ox.ac.uk/pdf/pdf-research/crise-ib7. Accessed on November 8, 2011.

36.

Hagmann

Tobias

Mulugeta

Alemmaya

. 2008. “Pastoral Conflicts and State-building in the Ethiopian Lowlands.” Afrika Spectrum 43:19–37.

37.

Harnischfeger

Johannes

. 2003. “The Bakassi Boys: Fighting Crime in Nigeria.” Journal of Modern African Studies 41:23–49.

38.

Hoffman

Daniel

. 2007. “The Meaning of Militia: Understanding the Civil Defence Forces of Sierra Leone.” African Affairs 106:639–62.

39.

Ignatieff

Michael

. 1997. Warrior’s Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience. New York: Holt.

40.

Ismail

Olawale

. 2008. “Power Elites, War and Postwar Reconstruction in Africa: Continuities, Discontinuities and Paradoxes.” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 26:259–78.

41.

Joab-Peterside

Sofiri

. 2007. “On the Militarization of Nigeria’s Niger Delta: The Genesis of Ethnic Militia in Rivers State, Nigeria.” Working Paper No. 21 Niger Delta Economies of Violence Working Paper Series from the Institute of International Studies, University of California, and Berkeley, California.

42.

Kagwanja

Peter Mwangi

. 2003. “Facing Mount Kenya or Facing Mecca? The Mungiki, Ethnic Violence and the Politics of the Moi Succession in Kenya, 1987–2002.” African Affairs 102:25–49.

43.

Kagwanja

Peter Mwangi

. 2005. “Power to Uhuru: Youth Identity and Generational Politics in Kenya’s 2002 Elections.” African Affairs 105:51–75.

44.

Kaldor

Mary

. 1999. New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

45.

Kalyvas

Stathis

. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil Wars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

46.

Kamungi

Prisca Mbura

. 2009. “The Politics of Displacement in Multiparty Kenya.” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 27:345–65.

47.

Kaplan

Robert D.

2001. The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War. New York: Vintage.

48.

Kasara

Kimuli .

2007. “Tax Me If You Can: Ethnic Geography, Democracy and the Taxation of Agriculture in Africa.” American Political Science Review 101:159–72.

49.

Kaufmann

Daniel

Kraay

Aart

Mastruzzi

Massimo

. 2010. “The Worldwide Governance Indicators: Methodology and Analytical Issues.” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 5430. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1682130.

50.

Keen

David

. 1998. The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Accessed on November 8, 2011.

51.

King

Charles

. 2001. “The Benefits of Ethnic War: Understanding Eurasia’s Unrecognized States.” World Politics 53 (2): 524–552.

52.

Marshall

Monty G.

Jaggers

Keith

Gurr

Ted Robert

. 2011. Polity IV Project: Dataset Users’ Manual. Center for Systemic Peace: Polity IV Project. http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/p4manualv2010.pdf. Acccessed on August 1, 2012.

53.

Meagher

Kate

. 2007. “Hijacking Civil Society: The Inside Story of the Bakassi Boys Vigilante Group of South-Eastern Nigeria.” Journal of Modern African Studies 45:89–115.

54.

Mehler

Andreas

. 2004. “Oligopolies of Violence in Africa South of the Sahara?” Themen Quartal 3:539–48.

55.

Mehler

Andreas

. 2007. “Hybrid Regimes and Oligopolies of Violence in Africa: Expectations on Security Provision ‘From Below’: A Response by Andres Mehler.” Working Paper from the Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management. http://www.berghof-handbook.net/documents/publications/dialogue8_mehler_comm.pdf. Accessed on November 8, 2011.

56.

Menkhaus

Ken

. 2007. “Local Security Systems in Somali East Africa.” In Fragile States and Insecure People? Violence, Security and Statehood in the 21st Century, edited by Andersen

Louise

Møller

Bjørn

Stepputat

Finn

, 67–99. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave-Macmillan.

57.

Merz

Sebastian

. 2010. “Security by Militia, but for Whom? Non-state Actors and Security Governance in Nigeria.” Simon Papers on Security and Development at Simon Frasier University, Vancouver, British Columbia.

58.

Midgal

Joel

. 1988. Strong Societies and Weak States: State-society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

59.

Montalvo

Jose G

Reynal-Querol

Marta

. 2005. “Ethnic diversity and economic development.” Journal of Development Economics 76: 293–323.

60.

Mueller

John

. 2002. “The Remnants of War: Thugs as Residual Combatants.” Paper prepared for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Organization, Boston, MA, August 30–September 3, 2002.

61.

Mueller

Suzanne

. 2008. “The Political Economy of Kenya’s Crisis.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 2:185–210.

62.

Pinker

Steven

. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature. London: Allen Lane, Penguin.

63.

Posner

Daniel

. 2004. “Measuring Ethnic Fractionalization in Africa.” American Journal of Political Science 48:849–63.

64.

Pottier

Johan

. 2003. Emergency in Ituri, DRC: Political Complexity, Land and Other Challenges in Restoring Food Security 2003. Rome: FAO International Workshop Proceedings.

65.

Rakner

Lise

van de Walle

Nicolas

. 2009. “Opposition Weakness in Africa.” Journal of Democracy 20:108–21.

66.

Raleigh

Clionadh

. 2012. “Violence against Civilians: A Disaggregated Analysis.” International Interactions 38:462–81.

67.

Raleigh

Clionadh

Linke

Andrew

Hegre

Håvard

Karlsen

Joakim

. 2010. “Introducing ACLED-armed Conflict Location and Event Data.” Journal of Peace Research 47:1–10.

68.

Reno

William

. 1998. Warlord Politics and African States. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

69.

Reno

William

. 2003. “Political Networks in a Failing State: The Roots and Future of Violent Conflicts in Sierra Leone.” International Politics and Society 2:29–43.

70.

Reno

William

. 2007. “Protectors and Predators: Why Is There a Difference among West African Militias.” In Fragile States and Insecure People? Violence, Security, and Statehood in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Andersen

Louise

Møller

Bjørn

Stepputat

Finn

, 67–80. Baskingstoke, UK: Palgrave-Macmillan.

71.

Sambanis

Nicholas

. 2004. “What is a Civil War? Conceptual and Empirical Complexities of an Operational Definition.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 48 (6): 814–85

72.

Sangmpam

S. N.

1993. “Neither Soft nor Dead: The African State is Alive and Well.” African Studies Review 36:94–112.

73.

Scarritt

James

McMillan

Susan

. 1995. “Protest and Rebellion in Africa: Explaining Conflicts between Ethnic Minorities and the State in the 1980s.” Comparative Political Studies 45:323–49.

74.

Scheye

Eric

. 2009. “State Provided Service, Contracting Out, and Non-state Networks: Justice and Security as Public and Private Goods and Services.” Working Paper from the International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF), Paris.

75.

Schneckener

Ulrich

. 2007. “Fragile Statehood, Armed Non-state Actors and Security Governance.” In Private Actors and Security Governance, edited by Bryden

Alan

Caparini

Marina

, 25–40. Geneva: DCAF/LitVerlag.

76.

Straus

Scott

. 2011. “It’s Sheer Horror Here: Patterns of Violence during the First Four Months of Cote d’Ivoire Post-electoral Crisis.” African Affairs 110:481–89.

77.

Tar

Usmam

. 2005. “The Perverse Manifestations of Civil Militias in Africa: Evidence from Western Sudan.” Peace, Conflict and Development 7:135–73.

78.

Thies

Cameron G.

2009. “National Design and State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa.” World Politics 61 (4): 623–69.

79.

Tilly

Charles

. 1985. “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime.” In Bringing the State Back In, edited by Evans

Peter

Rueschemeyer

Dietrich

Skocpol

Theda

, 170–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

80.

Tilly

Charles

. 1990. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990. Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell.

81.

Tilly

Charles

. 2003. The Politics of Collective Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

82.

Treisman

Daniel

. 2007. The Architecture of Government: Rethinking Political Decentralisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

83.

Urdal

Henrik

. 2005. “People vs. Malthus: Population Pressure, Environmental Degradation, and Armed Conflict Revisited.” Journal of Peace Research 42:417–34.

84.

Van de Walle

Nicolas

. 2005. “The Donors and the State in Africa: How much has Changed?” In The African Exception: Governance in Africa, edited by Engel

Ulf

Olsen

Gorm Rye

, 69–84. London: Ashgate.

85.

Williams

Phil

. 2008. “Violent Non-state Actors and National and International Security.” Working paper for International Relations and Security Network in Zurich. http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?id=938809. Accessed on November 8, 2011.

86.

Young

Crawford

. 2002. “The End of the Post-colonial State in Africa? Reflections on Changing African Political Dynamics.” African Affairs 103:23–49.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.04 MB

0.00 MB

Pragmatic and Promiscuous

Abstract

Keywords

One Man’s “Thug” Is Another’s “Informal Security Provider”

State Decay: LSP

State Crisis: EM

Contested State: CM

Political Geography of Control and the Oligopoly of Violence

Patterns of Control and Violence

Controls 14

Model Method

Results

Implications and Conclusions

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

Notes

Supplemental Material

References

Supplementary Material

Controls¹⁴