Organized Armed Groups as Ruling Organizations

Abstract

Previous studies of the cohesion of organized armed groups (OAGs) have made great progress, but they have mostly focused on units fighting for modern Western states. I argue that the study of OAGs that contain their own legitimacy requires a broadened theoretical framework. Such groups may be conceptualized as “ruling organizations” in Max Weber’s terminology. Examples of such groups range from early medieval warbands to modern militias and guerrillas. Members of ruling organizations obey commands for a combination of three reasons: rational, traditional, and charismatic—these in turn form the basis of the legitimacy of the organization. Pinpointing the foundations of obedience in a group provides us with another way of emphasizing weak points that we want to either target or reinforce. This study contributes theoretically to the study of cohesion by linking it to theories of legitimacy in political orders.

Keywords

cohesion/disintegration military organization sociology political science

The understanding of cohesion in military units has made great advances. However, I believe that there are dimensions that could be elaborated upon. This contribution focuses on organized armed groups (OAGs) from other contexts than the modern Western state and on the role of legitimacy. Barkawi (2015) has argued that debates on military cohesion have suffered from being almost exclusively focused on modern Western armies. Hence, the study of OAGs must be broadened theoretically. This article advances a perspective on OAGs based on a reading of Max Weber’s historical sociology.¹ Max Weber is probably most famous for his works on the modern state and bureaucratic forms of organization. Scholars of war usually turn to this side of Weber’s works (Centeno, 2002; Centeno & Enriquez, 2016; Tilly, 1992). However, Weber also studied social formations other that states and did so with a framework that I believe can be used to understand the formation, durability, and breakdown of OAGs.² My adapted Weberian framework stresses the need to include the legitimacy of the political order in the understanding of the cohesion of a fighting group. Thereby the microlevel of social interaction, cohesion, can be linked to the macrolevel of social structure, the legitimacy of the polity.³ I do not seek to replace previous theories but to add a new theoretical perspective that is mostly geared toward understanding nonmodern and non-Western OAGs that function as ruling organizations. However, it can add a layer to our understanding of combat motivation in military units operated by states.

My reading of Weber stresses the combinations of organizational forms that exist in all organizations.⁴ A focus on the multiple logics of organization and action that exist simultaneously in a single organization allows a better understanding of its driving forces as well as its inherent tensions and contradictions. Thereby we can understand their strengths and weaknesses in relation to cohesion and survival. If we can attain clearer knowledge of the social fabric that constitutes the cohesion of armed groups, then more effective strategies can be devised against them. By understanding what makes groups fall apart, we can also better understand how to foster cohesion in military organizations. In this article, I will not make hard distinctions between different levels of analysis. The perspective that I am proposing could be used for OAGs as well as states. Indeed, Malešević (2002) used a modified version of Weber’s framework to analyze the legitimacy of Yugoslavia, Croatia, and Serbia. This said, analyzing a state would be a more complex task than analyzing a militia or a warband, and I thus cannot provide an example of a full analysis here.

The literature on cohesion is extensive and has focused on why units in modern armies are effective (e.g., they perform collectively the tasks given to them) under intense pressure. But what about entities where cohesion is linked to the stability of the (proto) political system that they form? I believe that they can be conceptualized with Weber’s concept ruling organizations (Herrschaftsverbände). In brief, these groups are orders that contain their own legitimacy. This trait is a sharp contrast to a modern army unit. Its legitimacy and the authority of its leaders are derived from the army and from the state. The cohesion of an army unit is interesting and important, but if the unit breaks down, another one will replace it. OAGs are to a higher degree self-sufficient in regard to legitimacy and authority. Thus, a corresponding unit of analysis would be the army as a whole or even the state. Weber argued that authority (e.g., the likelihood that commands will be obeyed) derives from three different sources: rational bureaucratic, traditional, and charismatic grounds. All ruling organizations are compounds of these sources of authority, and by using these concepts analytically, we can develop other typologies of OAGs that reveal their strengths and vulnerabilities in new ways.

The article is structured as follows. The next section discusses three bodies of literature relevant to the topic: cohesion in military organization, rebel groups, and criminal gangs. I then outline Max Weber’s theory of social organization. The following section discusses Weber’s concepts of three forms of authority—rational, traditional, and charismatic—and how they help us to understand what makes OAGs cohesive and how and why their members act in a unified direction. The final section summarizes the article. While this contribution is theory driven and thus mainly revolves around Weber’s theory of legitimate domination, empirical illustrations are provided, drawn from the insurgency in Iraq (ca. 2003–2014), Somali warlords in the 1990s and 2000s, Islamic State (IS) in the 2010s, and early medieval warbands.

Cohesion in Fighting Forces

Cohesion in military groups is a large research field. While I by no means mean to supersede the perspectives used in previous research, I believe that it can be complemented. The study of cohesion dates back to the 19th century. Carl von Clausewitz discussed the essence and practice of Zusammenhang (coherence, cohesion) and Zusammenfügung (joining, merger) in his magisterial work On War ( Ilmari Kaihko, 2016). The subject saw renewed interest after the Second World War, as illustrated by the publication of Marshall’s Men Against Fire (1947). While noting that many soldiers in the U.S. Army were motivated by concerns for their comrades, belief in the justness of the cause, the nation, the army, and the “politics of his nation” were also crucial elements in motivation and cohesion (Marshall, 1947). Without using such terms, Marshall thus connected the microlevel of loyalty to the macrolevel of legitimacy. Sociological studies of cohesion began with Janowitz and Shils’s (1948) work on the German Wehrmacht, which queried why German soldiers had fought so tenaciously. Janowitz and Shils argued that the close bonds of the small group and the quality of its officers were crucial for the motivation of German soldiers. Their study was the start of the “primary group” thesis, the idea that soldiers fight and stay in the units because of personal ties to their close comrades rather than ideology. However, Shils and Janowitz also stressed the importance of honor, the military organization, and devotion to Hitler. The importance of the legitimacy of the polity and the war for cohesion is clear from Shils and Janowitz’ article, but they did not analyze these factors in detail.⁵

In trying to understand the poor performance, even disintegration of some units in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, Savage and Gabriel (1976) argued that the decline of the officer ethos and the disintegration of primary groups accounted for the disintegration of several army units there. They compared the U.S. forces in Vietnam to the Wehrmacht, based on a reading of Shils and Janowitz. They argued that factors endogenous to the military organization rather than factors originating in the society at large were responsible (Savage & Gabriel, 1976). Faris (1977) in turn criticized this view by arguing that there was no evidence that primary groups disintegrated in the American Army. He also argued that “[p]rimary groups can only be effective when linked through immediate leaders and orientation to secondary symbols, to the military organization, and the broader society” (Faris, 1977, p. 459). Once again, the matter of legitimacy surfaced but it was not dealt with theoretically.

Kier (1998) and MacCoun (1993) have criticized the primary group thesis by arguing that military performance did not rest on social cohesion, that is, interpersonal attraction, but on task cohesion, members’ shared commitment to a common goal. However, the primary group thesis is still used in explanations of combat motivation, for example, in the study of Wong, Kolditz, Millen, and Potter (2003) of American soldiers in Iraq. MacCoun, Kier, and Belkin (2006) criticized this study in an article in this journal. In response to King’s criticism of the primary group thesis (more on this below), Siebold formulated a “standard model of cohesion” based on primary group cohesion, defined as face-to-face peer bonding, and secondary group cohesion. The latter consists of the larger unit, for example, a company, and the institutional bonding, which is represented by the army and its organizations, specialized roles, and microsociety (Siebold, 2007). Coming from another angle, Kirke advocates a cultural approach to cohesion. He argues that cohesion is the product of synergies between different social structures. He lists the formal command structure, the informal structure, the loyalty/identity structure, and the functional structure (Kirke, 2009). This is a more nuanced and fine-grained approach to analyzing the sources of cohesion, but it does not directly address the question of legitimacy of the polity.

King has refined earlier scholarship on cohesion by connecting it to wider themes in sociology. He argues that modern armies (e.g., ca. 1980s onward) are qualitatively different from the mass armies of the 20th century. They have become professionalized, meaning that all soldiers are trained in basic infantry skills and drills, which allows them to perform much better than earlier armies (King, 2013). However, unlike Kier and MacCoun’s emphasis on task cohesion rather than social cohesion, King (2016) argues that modern infantry platoons are also characterized by a new kind of solidarity, but of professionals, rather than of friends. While his main thesis revolves around professionalization and the introduction of sophisticated battle drills in late-modern armies, King (2016) also deals (but not so much) with the wider social context. He claims that combat performance rests on the skills of the platoon but also on being motivated to apply these skills in combat. However, he also opens for the importance of macrofactors by emphasizing that although soldiers are motivated more by “an ethos of professionalism” than by ideology, we do find strongly developed patriotism, “[a] sense of national mission” and religiosity in the U.S. armed forces (King, 2013, pp. 425–426). Wong et al. also report that many of the soldiers they interviewed claimed that they were motivated by “freedom, liberation, and democracy” (Wong, Thomas, Millen, & Potter, 2003, p. 20).

Thus, the legitimacy of the organization, of the war, and the leaders of the group seem to matter for military performance and cohesion (understood as why members want to stay with the group). It also forms a context around the kind of horizontal solidarity formed by soldiers (whether as quasi-kin, compatriots, or professionals), the importance of which all studies demonstrate. I believe that Weber’s typology of forms of legitimate domination provides a theoretical framework to study legitimacy. As noted above, debates on military cohesion have primarily concerned modern armies. This is of course a natural interest, but these studies may not help us when we study pre- or nonmodern groups. This is because modern armies and their units are underpinned by elements that studies of cohesion take for granted: the legitimacy of modern states and the authority of their representatives. Legitimacy and authority have very different foundations in different social formations, which makes it essential to capture this variation.

Political scientists also study OAGs. A main focus has been to develop adequate theoretical conceptions typologies of different groups. Many focus on goals and means, for example, those aspects of the state that the group challenges (Harbom, Melander, & Wallensteen, 2008), whether goals are religious or ethnic (Sambanis, 2001), or on the technologies used in warfare (Kalyvas, 2005). Sinno (2008) and Weinstein (2007) have proposed other organizational approaches. Sociologists like Malešević (2015) and King focus more on the social composition of armed groups. Malešević (2017) has more recently also linked the cohesion of military groups to wider social and political macroprocesses. It is this lead that this article follows.

Finally, there is a huge literature on armed street gangs, criminal organizations, and cartels: Could this research be applied to OAGs? Sullivan and Bunker (2002) compare drug cartels, street gangs, and warlords. Valasik and Phillips have used the street gang literature to analyze IS, comparing IS to street gangs in regard to structure, demography, violence and criminality, technology, and goals. They acknowledge that highly evolved gangs have political ambitions and are formed in areas where the state has lost legitimacy. Even further, some street gangs originate in political causes (Valasik & Phillips, 2017). Despite this, Valasik and Phillips, nor the works they build on, offer a framework to understand the link between political goals and legitimacy and cohesion. Neither do they discuss how to delegitimize a terror group, a street gang, or a cartel. Because these concerns seem to be relevant for some advanced and/or entrenched criminal organizations like the Cosa Nostra, the framework that I propose is relevant to understand the cohesion of some criminal organizations. It is not the main focus of the article, but questions of legitimate succession, the values of the gang, and its success in combat (if not outright war)—which are part of my framework—are pertinent understanding to gangs, cartels, and so on. I will now outline my contribution to the endeavor of broadening our ways of understanding and analyzing cohesion.

Max Weber’s Sociology of Ruling Organizations

Max Weber is most famous as a sociologist of the state and it is in this capacity that he is often used in studies of war. Although the neo-Weberian research on war and the military has generated great results, I think other aspects of his works could be introduced in order to further our understanding of cohesion. Weber’s historical sociology sought to encompass many different historical forms in time and space, from Teutonic tribes to the 19th-century German state, from ancient India to the modern United States. In order to do so, he developed basic categories of collective action, rule, and authority that would be suited to such a wide-ranging research agenda. A central concept in Weber’s theory of organizations, indeed of social life itself, is the term Herrschaft, often slightly misleadingly translated as “domination.” A closer counterpart would be “rule,” but as we shall see, the concept Herrschaft has traits that make direct translation difficult.
Domination [Herrschaft] is the probability that a command with a given specific content will be obeyed by a given group of persons…the existence of domination turns only on the actual presence of one person successfully issuing orders to others; it does not necessarily imply either the existence of an administrative staff or, for that matter, of an organization. It is, however, uncommon to find it unrelated to at least one of these. A “ruling organization” [Herrschaftsverband] exists insofar as its members are subject to domination by virtue of the established order. (Weber, 1978, p. 53)

A group whose members are ruled “by virtue of the established order” is thus a ruling organization (Herrschaftsverband). Just as Herrschaft/domination is central to Weber’s phenomenology of social action, the concept ruling organization is a basic building block in Weber’s typology of organizational forms. I argue that the concept ruling organization is suitable to understanding armed groups that contain their own legitimacy. I believe that we find such self-referentiality in Weber’s expression “the established order” that forms the reference point for domination, for example, giving commands that will be obeyed.

The concept of Herrschaft creates another interpretation of what groups and organizations are and what they are made of than the concept of cohesion. Weber did not invent this concept. Herrschaft has deep roots in the German legal–political vocabulary. Hegel used the term in the Phenomenology of the Spirit and Marx used it in in several of his works (Onuf & Klink, 1989). In the Herrschaft paradigm, arrangements of rules that always entail super- and subordination are foundational to groups (Onuf & Klink, 1989). Hegel famously juxtaposed Herrschaft with Knechtschaft, which is often erroneously translated as the “Master–Slave” relation (Herr und Knecht). Herr, however, rather means Lord and Knecht means both farmhand and a warrior, sometimes a junior one (e.g., Landsknecht, Waffenknecht, and Edelknecht). The corresponding English terms would be mercenary, man-at-arms, and squire. Thus, the use of Herrschaft conjures up patrimonial and military relations. It has been noted by Dennis Hume Wrong that Weber’s use of Herrschaft presents modern, English-speaking social theory with a problem, even a paradox, since “submission to legitimate authority is voluntary and yet at the same time is experienced as mandatory or compulsory” (Wrong, 1980, p. 39 cited in Onuf & Klink, 1989, p. 153).

Arrangements of rule ontologically precede the members of a group or organization. Herrschaft is often slightly misleadingly translated into English as “domination,” but a closer relative would be the word dominion, the order in which rule takes place. From Hegel to Weber, it is the arrangement of positions in the tradition of understanding rule as Herrschaft which gives meaning to the various positions in that order and their super- and subordination. By contrast, the concept of cohesion is linked to another sociological heritage that sees the component members as primary and rules and institutions as secondary. In the conceptual heritage of Herrschaft, the identities, expectations, and roles of a group or unit are created by that very order. In the conceptual heritage of cohesion, free individuals find themselves in a situation where the problem or puzzle is how to make them coalesce into a group. Thus, this line of thinking is more indebted to a view (or a concrete situation) where individuals are prior to social relations and form groups by through contracts.⁶ This may well describe a kind of situation where soldiers enlist voluntarily, the military is an employer among many on a kind of free market, and the soldiers arrive with a plethora of other identities that compete with the military one. That is, the kind of situation facing 21st-century armies in the West, but it is far from the historical norm. In other historical situations, individuals find themselves thrust into existing relations of rule and super- and subordination that were established before their birth. I suspect that this rather bleaker view of societies is applicable to more cases and societies even in our modern world.

Why is domination central to why groups are maintained and indeed almost synonymous with the group itself? To Weber, organization is inherently about power. Central to power is the fact that someone commands (Befehlen) and others obey (Gehorschen). Domination (Herrschaft) is the “probability that a command with a specific content will be obeyed by a specific group of persons” (Weber, 1978, p. 53). Authority and obedience are also linked to the risk of sanction and punishment for disobedience. Here Weber was trying to pinpoint the essence of power, when push comes to shove. This directness stands in contrast to definitions of power that focus on the power of norms and other kinds of constitutive factors. During war, situations will inevitably arise where someone will command and—if power is effective—others will obey. While this element of power may be implicit or tacit in many aspects of modern life, it is certainly explicit and overt in a fighting unit. The literature on cohesion tends to investigate segmentary (egalitarian) relations in fighting units and suggests that maintenance of the group is due to solidarity among its members.⁷ Weber’s (and Hegel’s) view that groups and organizations are maintained through obedience opens up different research questions. The most important of these is why people obey. By focusing on the sources of obedience, I believe we can get closer to the practices in and around combat, both those made individually, by individuals in concert and by groups of collaborating individuals.

The Sources of Obedience or a Typology of Ruling Organizations

One of the main analytical advantages of connecting the research on the stability and durability of armed forces to Weber’s sociology of legitimacy is that Weber argued that there are many different sources of authority. By extension, there are many ways groups form and remain in existence. A form of legitimate domination (Herrschaft) amounts to the particular reason why commands are obeyed in a certain group. In this respect, “legitimate” is not a normative statement on the desirability of a certain kind of order. Rather, it highlights that the members of a group believe that its order is legitimate and as a result remain in it and obey its explicit or implicit rules as well as commands of the leader and/or its staff. There are of course groups of people that are not organized around a dialectic of command (Befehl) and obedience (Gehorsam). However, understanding different forms of obedience enables the identification of ways to influence, replace, or even break these forms of obedience and thus the organization itself. In strategic terms, this search is similar to identifying the center of gravity (Schwerpunkt) of a particular group and either breaking or strengthening it (Clausewitz, 1989). A key factor in why people obey and thus how a social formation is held together is legitimacy. I do not disregard the role played by other motives such as coercion and self-interest, but I believe that legitimacy needs to be placed at the forefront.⁸

Weber (1949) talks about three ideal types of rule-based different grounds of legitimacy: rational legal, traditional, and charismatic. I believe that precisely because they are not closed, Aristotelian categories but rather heuristic devices, ideal types are particularly suitable to analyze confused and blurred situations like combat and war (Weber 1949, p.90-91). Weber designed rational domination as a condensed description of the modern, abstract, and impersonal state. In this form of rule, the claims to legitimacy are based on “/r/ational grounds—resting of a belief in the legality of enacted rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands (legal authority)” (Weber, 1978, p. 215). Rational-legal authority is synonymous with a system that operates according to formal rules enshrined in a coherent legal system. A professionally trained and meritocratic bureaucracy appointed by free contract oversees the system and its members do not own the means of production or administration. The authority of each member and subsection of the bureaucracy is confined to a particular field of human activity, formally specified as a discrete jurisdiction. The rational-legal form of domination claims legitimacy by following distinct and official procedures as well as by the technical expertise of its staff. Finally, a rational form of domination makes claims to rule exclusively over its subjects (Weber, 1978, pp. 217–223).

The category “traditional domination” is ambiguous. Firstly, it denotes a mode of thinking since “/a/uthority will be called traditional if legitimacy is claimed for it and believed in by virtue of the sanctity of age-old rules and powers” (Weber, 1978, p. 226). Within this mode of thinking, new institutions and rules can only be introduced by reference to existing practices. The claim of legitimacy rests on “an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them (traditional authority)” (Weber, 1978, p. 215). Secondly, traditional domination contains a number of distinct subcategories such as gerontocracy, patriarchalism, and patrimonialism. Traditional rule is always exercised as a personal bond between the rulers and his followers, bondsmen, retainers, or followers. Personal loyalty and obligation, not abstract duty and contractual relations, determine this bond (Weber, 1978, p. 227). Patrimonialism of different kinds may be an important element in nascent ruling organizations. It occurs when “traditional domination develops an administration and a military force which are purely personal instruments of the master” (Weber, 1978, p. 231).

Charisma is defined as “devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him (charismatic authority)” (Weber, 1978, p. 215). The basis of the claim to legitimacy by charismatic figures is that the subjects of rule have a duty to recognize the authenticity of the claimant. Charisma is a personal attribute or quality possessed by an “exceptional individual” (Derman, 2011, p. 56). As such, the rule of the charismatic individual is based on his person alone and on personal bonds with his followers. Charisma is also linked to collective beliefs such as religion (Kantorowicz, 1997). However, not only religion or faith underlies some forms of charismatic leadership but also political concepts that have metaphysical properties such as “the revolution” or the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Some charismatic leaders base their rule on being authentic representatives, interpreters, or even incarnations of transcendent and metaphysical ideas and systems. It should be noted that this tripartite distinction is not exhaustive. Weber outlines a plurality of subforms of the three ideal types of legitimate domination such as monocratic bureaucracy (rational) and patriarchalism (traditional).

Weber points out that few ruling organizations (Herrschaftsverbände) belong only to one of the ideal types. Those that do are very exceptional and they are seldom stable over time (Weber, 1978). This means that military organizations cannot be seen only as rational bureaucracies. As for OAGs, they most likely contain elements of all three ideal types, but in different measures and institutional incarnations. Furthermore, it is probable that different forms of legitimate domination will be dominant in different parts of more complex organizations. For example, we can imagine a group whose formal mandate and the workings of the central administrative/ruling organs conform to the ideal type of rational bureaucratic rule, but whose day-to-day workings of lower ranking groups in the periphery of the organization operate strongly on the basis of charismatic leadership of local commanders.

Criticism of Weber

Several writers have criticized Weber’s concept of legitimacy. Some criticism has taken the form of elaborating the concept. Rodney Barker proposed that Weber should have included value-rational (Wertrational) legitimacy in his typology of legitimate forms of rule. Barker saw this type of legitimacy as “the belief in the absolute validity of the order as the expression of ultimate values of an ethical, aestetic or of any other type” (Barker, 1990, p. 131 cited in Malešević, 2002, p. 131). According to Barker, a regime is legitimate if the public sees it as “correctly interpreting the dominant set of political, cultural or other important values by which society functions” (Barker, 1990, p. 90, cited in Malešević, 2002, p. 90).

Another criticism is that Weber fails to provide a statement on what kind of regime is legitimate. However, Weber’s enterprise was normatively agnostic. He wanted to show that different regimes can be legitimate in their own way. Grafstein (1981) criticized Weber for suggesting that actors can act as if a system is legitimate, although none of them believes that it is legitimate. While perhaps unsatisfactory from a behavioralist perspective, this assertion can nevertheless be accurate. Arendt (1973) argued that one reason revolutions can happen so quickly is that orders may go on existing long after people have stopped believing in them. But once an exogenous shock comes, then they tumble like a house of cards.

While acknowledging some of the criticism of Weber’s concept of legitimacy, Malešević (2002) concludes that it is “still the most useful tool for the comparative analysis of legitimacy formation in differently structured societies” (p. 2). This is because rival theories of legitimacy focus on one type of regime—modern states—and ascertain to what extent a specific case is in accordance with liberal democratic ideals (pluralism) or critical toward it (Marxist and critical approaches). In my view, the fact that Weber’s theory does not seek to evaluate different historical cases on the basis of their correspondence to a specific modern political regime further accentuates its usefulness in analyzing nonmodern and non-Western OAGs.

Another objection to Weber’s model has been to claim that it is circular. Malešević concedes the difficulties in seeing ideal types as both descriptive and explanatory. Instead, he proposes that we should reformulate Weber’s model in a less ambitious way and “…give up the explanatory aspiration in favour of the descriptive one” (Malešević, 2002, p. 104). Malešević argues that Weber’s theory works best as a first stage in research—as a means of building descriptive taxonomies of empirical phenomena. In subsequent stages, where “whys” and “hows” have to be answered, other theories must be brought in (Malešević, 2002, p. 107). It is in such a sprit that I am proposing that we view Weber’s theory, as a means of mapping the configurations of legitimacy in a social formation. I believe by doing so we can identify the strengths and weaknesses of a particular OAG.

All OAGs Are Configurations of Different Forms of Legitimate Domination

It would be very tempting to produce a tripartite typology on the basis of a claim that organizations are rational, traditional, or charismatic. Then we would proceed to sort empirical cases into one of the three mutually exclusive categories. If we were to follow such a course of action, we would risk falling into a trap of orientalist patterns of thought and equate modern armies only with rational authority and nonmodern or Western with traditional and charismatic (Porter, 2013). Sociologists working within the “multiple modernities” school have pointed out that it is misleading to label Islamist movements “traditional.” Instead, these movements espouse their own view of modernity and their ideologies and organizations harbor modern elements such as embracing technology and the idea that society as such could be organized and managed according to an overarching scheme (Göle, 2000). An alternative approach is to look at combinations or “configurations” of elements (Elias, 2009). In our case, this means studying different OAGs as configurations of the same elements, namely, rational, traditional, and charismatic forms of dominations.

What Is the Raison d’être of a Group?

Although the fact that OAGs are armed and use these arms is what makes them interesting for this kind of research, we must ask whether this armed status is central and a decisive factor to their formation, existence, and cohesion. I believe that we should not take this for granted. In some formations, the armed status of the group and their use of arms would be more central than in other cases. A typical example would be a roving band of marauders intent on enrichment through military means, for example, through plunder, protection, or the commodification of their armed labor. Instances of this type would be the free companies that roamed 14th-century France and possibly militias in other times and places (Froissart, 2001; Percy, 2007). In other formations, the martial element may be very important and indeed so prevalent that we would be likely to interpret it as a strongly distinguishing feature. However, the martial element (i.e., armed element) may not be decisive to the formation and cohesion of the group.

An instance of this type could be some kinship-based groups, for example, tribes or clans of the kind that are common in Central Asia (Schatz, 2004). Such groups may act as self-help units or “survival units” and have a strong ethos of honor and martial prowess, but arms and their usage are not the primary elements that keep the group together, nor the reasons for its foundation (Kaspersen & Gabriel, 2008). Instead, the group is likely to be based on different forms of deeply internalized custom (and therefore traditional forms of legitimate domination) together with the charismatic powers of the chief, his closest family, and immediate circle of men.⁹ In such a case, military defeat is unlikely to cause the group to disintegrate. This trait is further reinforced if the leadership may be reproduced from a large body of candidates, perhaps extending to the male membership of the group and the decisive element of success in leadership succession depends on personal charisma. In such cases, the group might be quite robust with regard to its order of succession and thus not vulnerable to attempts to “decapitate” the leadership or to military defeats at all; instead, the group might go on existing despite defeat. An example would be groups whose leaders are taken from a certain kinship-group or bloodline. In Arabic, Turko-Mongol as well as in old Norse societies, all members of the royal network inherited the charisma of its founding father. Since all relatives in this group could be legitimate leaders, the formation became very resilient, albeit prone to fragmentation (Imber, 2009; Jochens, 1987). In formations where many people can possess charismatic authority, decapitation strategies do not work because there are too many people that have to be killed.

Leadership can be passed on in many ways. We must ask whether succession is determined mainly by formal rules, by traditional precedence, or through the religious mystical transfer of charisma? Due to the likelihood of strong charismatic elements in the groups interesting to this study, the different types of transfer or “routinization” of charisma are relevant to note: (a) searching the basis of certain criteria and qualities, (b) revelation, (c) designation by the old leader, (d) designation by the administrative staff and recognition by the community, (e) transmission of charisma by heredity in a single line, or (f) transmission of charisma by ritual means. Succession of leadership is of particular importance if we want to understand the reproduction, organizational principles, and potential weaknesses of the group in question. As noted above, the debate on “targeted killings” is one example of a field that would be enriched by such an analysis.

Given the hybridity of most organizations with regard to the plurality of forms of legitimate domination, we need to inquire what the social ecology of the group is. Is the organization integrated in the surrounding society or does it strive to build a relatively autonomous ecology of neighboring groups and legitimating systems? Is the group interested in replacing traditional elements in its environment and creating new ones? If so, which elements is the group targeting? Furthermore, does the group intend to retain some elements of traditional legitimation or replace the majority? In other words, is the group wholeheartedly oriented toward social, political, and cultural revolutions or is it largely reformist? The last point corresponds to whether the legitimacy of group rests on value rationality, the ability of a leadership to correctly interpret (and deliver upon the values of a group; Barker, 1990, p. 91).

The foundations of legitimacy were a point where the United States misread their Vietnamese adversaries: Instead of being a thoroughbred revolutionary movement, the latter was oriented toward and supported by traditional forms of legitimate domination—often summarized under the label of “nationalism” but more accurately labeled as traditional Vietnamese culture, worldview, and perceptions of outsiders (McNamara & VanDeMark, 1995). A complete analysis of this case is beyond the scope and remit of this modest contribution, but it is unlikely that the tenacity and stamina of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong would have been as considerable if they had eschewed and opposed traditional forms of legitimate domination.

Success in War as a Central Aspect of Legitimacy

Weber (1978, p. 263) argues that different forms of domination respond differently to military victories and defeats. Indeed, in some cases, success in war may be a factor in the group’s legitimacy:
For monarchies, hence, it is dangerous to lose wars since that makes it appear that their charisma is no longer genuine. For republics, on the other hand, striking victories may be dangerous in that they put the victorious general in a favourable position to make charismatic claims.

Today, we rarely have to deal with either monarchies or republics in the sense that Weber was talking about. However, the fact that military victories are necessary to the charismatic underpinnings of some orders is of greatest interest. Military defeat may dissolve such groups, not only because of the material destruction that it entails but because it undermines the charismatic claims of their leadership.

Groups led by charismatic warlords (Charlemagne, Kemal Atatürk, Adolf Hitler, Abu musab al-Zarkawi, and Abu Bakr al-Bagdhadi) would be examples of group sensitive to military defeat. For others still, military effectiveness may not be as tightly linked to the charismatic element of their rule. Strongly religious motivated groups, particularly with millenarist tendencies, could be examples of groups of this kind. Hence, finding out what role success in war plays in the charismatic underpinnings of different groups could serve as a kind of acid test for whether strong and spectacular military defeat will be effective in dissolving them. Conversely, victory in war might be dangerous to the survival of groups that are looser coalitions of groups that distrust each other. In such cases, success could lead to a surge in prestige for the leader of the coalition and his group—or the other groups may fear such a surge in prestige and power—that they decide to rebel, defect, form “balancing” anticoalitions, or assassinate the leading cadre. The risk-averse behavior and tendency to fight primarily defensively of certain Somali militias (primarily the Mogadishu-based ones) rather than to aim for all-out victory and conquest might be linked to fears that a string of victories could turn out to be pyrrhic in the end (Peter, Haldén 2008).

In European history, some of the machinations and constant defections from both coalitions in the Thirty Years’ War could also be connected to similar fears (Wilson, 2009). Such coalitions would be harder to fight because of their loose structure. An even more difficult kind of organization to deal with through military means would be an order whose charismatic elements are highly independent of military victories and defeats. In such cases, one would have to search for other elements that form the traditionally or charismatically founded cement of the order. Linking success in war to a charismatic form of domination is hardly limited to loosely organized groups; it may also be central to states. One example is the important role that preparation for and conduct of war played in the charismatic claims of Hitler. Defeat in World War II severed the link between charismatic domination and success in war for all types of regimes in Germany. Furthermore, the contribution of the collapse of the Tsarist Army in World War I to the loss of legitimacy for the monarchy and the success of the November revolution in 1917 (Marshall, 1947, p. 161). After the revolution in 1917, success in war was important to legitimating communist rule in the Soviet Union after the civil war (1917–1923) and after World War II (Weiner, 2001).

Another example are groups tied to the kind of individuals usually labeled “warlords.” In security studies, literature warlords are often defined on the basis of some property of the leading figure. For instance, Martin (2006, 2012) has proposed that the defining feature of the warlord is that he is a landowner. The warlord is a landlord, as it were. While this may describe some dominating figures in history as well as in contemporary politics, it does not fit others. The most obvious fact is that all landlords are not warlords. Furthermore, dominance over territory tells us little or nothing about the relations within the group that the warlord commands. In some cases, territorial dominance bequeathed both ownership and rule as a legal right. So, ownership of land in some cases followed the ideal type of rational-legal domination. Defining the warlord as a landlord implies that ownership of land is the key asset and vulnerability of the warlord. However, this may not be his main asset and liability, nor the reason why his men obey. Similarly, Sullivan and Bunker (2002) discuss “warlordism” but focus on their actions while treating their aims (e.g., nationalism, protonationalism) lightly.

I will turn to the early European Middle Ages to illustrate the value of considering the forms of legitimacy in a warband. The ties with which an early mediaeval lord bound his followers were purely personal and thus the cohesion of the “war-band” (Lat: Comitatus, Ger: Gefolgschaft) would correspond to the patrimonial form of traditional domination and to charismatic forms of domination.¹⁰ In other words, what tied the lord to the land and what tied his followers to him (specifically) would have been two different forms of social relations with different strengths and vulnerabilities. In cases like this, the followers of the warlord obey him because of a number of reasons: because he provides opportunities for plunder and material support (patrimonialism); because of trust; because of ties of friendship, kinship, or dependence (which may be inherited from previous generations); and because of his charisma.

Charisma in this sense could be a personal quality but also the collective belief that the leader was favored by the gods. This favor, in turn, could either be based on his achievements a military leader or because of his lineage. In the former case, inflicting a spectacular and symbolic military victory over the group might be sufficient to unravel his ruling organization. In the latter case, military victories would be of more questionable value since the leader’s possibility to command obedience was inherent in his person and in his lineage. Instead, his succession would be an opportune point to strike at. Such a conclusion would of course lead to problematic, even horrifying, ethical consequences if it would be put into strategy. We should of course note that the strategy of targeting the offspring of one’s rivals has been highly rational and hence rather common in societies where lineages have been the bearers of legitimacy (Gregory of Tours, /1982/1974]). However, as noted above, in cases where charisma is invested in a network with many members rather than a line of straight descent, this strategy would not only be unethical but also ineffective.

Multiple Forms of Authority Are Both Assets and Liabilities

The plurality of forms of domination in any given social formation is a reflection of a more general social condition of a plurality of simultaneously existing ways of perceiving actors and events and legitimizing action. Weber (1978) is careful to point out that in the same social group many different “contradictory systems of order [can] exist at the same time” (p. 32). According to Weber, an individual may follow a multiplicity of ordering systems in even in the same act. This point has also been made by Kirke (2009) in his studies of the sources of cohesion in British Army units. As noted above, all kinds of authority are based on the willingness to obey, which is a belief. The composition of beliefs is always complex. This, in turn, makes it more difficult to gauge the level of cohesion in a group and what its crucial elements will be at a given moment. Weber exemplifies with legal authority. This kind of authority is never purely legal as the belief in the legality of certain laws, even in the legality of legality itself, depends to a large extent on habit and custom. It is therefore quite traditional. Legal authority also has a charismatic element in the sense that the failure to fulfill its political purpose may ruin a government and pave the way for a charismatically oriented revolution. Likewise, the traditional element in the upholding of legal orders may be a crucial weak point as the undermining of the traditional belief in law will erode the effectiveness of the legal order (Weber, 1978, p. 263).

Kirke is right in arguing that the more social structures that underpin cohesion are in place, the stronger an individual army unit is likely to be (Kirke, 2009). However, in some cases, an OAG may also be weakened by contradictions between its multiple sources of legitimacy. Social formations do not have to be free of inconsistencies in order to be stable; human beings can live with considerable dissonances. However, it may be worthwhile to probe an OAG for such inconsistencies (and perhaps strengthening these) to see whether it is a point of weakness. The “Anbar awakening” in 2006 is be an example of such a strategy of splitting, although the ensuing division took place between something akin to members of a coalition rather than a unitary group. In short, the strategy consisted in mobilizing and allying with tribal chiefs against the al-Qaeda in Iraq (Long, 2008; McCary, 2008). The strategy pitted a formation whose rule rested on a form of traditional/patrimonial legitimacy against one that rested on a kind of charismatic/prophetic legitimacy. The tribes had become disillusioned with al-Qaeda before allying with the Coalition, but U.S. support to the tribes that had been a part of the insurgency for years widened that gap (Phillips, 2009).

Summary

This article has argued that the debates on cohesion and research on OAGs have suffered from empirical and theoretical biases in the form of state centrism. My contribution has been to show that OAGs can be conceptualized as ruling organizations. By doing so, we can point to other sources of durability in OAGs than cohesion. Primarily these have to do with the forms of legitimate domination, which are the reasons why members obey the commands of leaders. In line with writers such as King and a Maleševic, this contribution has tried to connect the problem of military cohesion to wider questions in sociology. I believe that a topic that has been lacking in the cohesion debate is the question of the legitimacy of the political formation for which a unit is fighting. This has been suggested from time to time but not systematically analyzed. I believe, as the works of King, Marshall, Shils, and Janowitz suggest, that it is indeed important to include this macrolevel of factors if we want a comprehensive understanding of motivation in state armies. When we study OAGs, which combine the political order with the military organization, including legitimacy in the analysis is necessary if we want to understand what drives and unites them as well as how they could be broken, co-opted, or transformed.

This article presents a framework intended to enrich the understanding of OAGs. This framework could be used to understand the preconditions of cohesion of many different kinds of groups. For example, attempts to connect the study of street gangs and cartels with the study of terrorist organizations have hitherto addressed questions of legitimacy but rather focused on means and organizational structure. The revised Weberian framework could help us understand both types. Several topics suggest themselves. After their military defeat in Iraq and Syria, IS might be morphing to an organization with more loose form, but their members, affiliates, hangers-on, and sympathizers are still driven by a number of sources of legitimacy. So far, it has difficult to pinpoint which they are. Terror organizations and criminal cartels depend on overt and tacit support from people who believe in the justness of the cause or the actions of the mobilized, armed, and organized group. Mapping the sources of legitimate domination in the wider social environment is a first way to devise strategies against the malicious groups themselves. We also have to identify contradictions and tensions between different forms of legitimacy in the social environment as well as within the group itself. Then, we can devise strategies to exploit tensions to reform or split the environment from the group as well as from the group itself. However, such empirical studies be the task of future research.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors 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 research was funded by the Swedish Armed Forces.

Notes

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