Militias, Ideology, and the State

• Published date: 01 August 2015
• Date: 01 August 2015
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002715576749
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Militias, Ideology,

and the State

Paul Staniland

1

Abstract

Research on militias portrays them as subservient proxies of governments used to

achieve tactical goals. The conventional wisdom, however, ignores the diversity of

state–militia relations. This article outlines four distinct strategies that states can

pursue toward militias, ranging from incorporation to suppression. It then argues

that regime ideology shapes how governments perceive and deal with militias. A new

theory of armed group political roles brings politics back into the study of militias.

Comparative evidence from India and Pakistan shows that varying regime ideological

projects contribute to different patterns of militia–state relations. These findings

suggest that political ideas ought to be central to the study of political violence,

militias should be studied in direct dialog with other armed groups, and a traditional

focus on civil war should be replaced by the broader study of ‘‘armed politics.’’

Keywords

civil wars, rebellion, separatism, peace agreement

a state is that human community which (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of the

legitimate physical violence within a given territory.

(Weber 1994, 310-11)

U Po Kyin halted in his stride. He was astonished. ‘Good gracious, woman, what idea

have you got hold of? You do not suppose Iam rebelling against the Government? I – a

Government servant of thirty years’ standing!Good heavens, no!I said that I had

1

Department of Political Science, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Paul Staniland, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago, 5828 South University Avenue,

Chicago, IL 60637, USA.

Email: paul@uchicago.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2015, Vol. 59(5) 770-793

ªThe Author(s) 2015

Reprints and permission:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0022002715576749

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started the rebellion, not that I was going to take part in it. It is the fools of villagers

who are going to risk their skins, not I.’

(Orwell 1974, 139)

George Orwell’s U Po Kyin—a (fictional) colonial bureaucrat during British

rule in Burma—captures an important truth about states and violence. Rather

than always pursuing Max Weber’s monopoly of legitimate violence, govern-

ments have complex, often unexpected relationships with non-state armed

groups. States govern coercion in a number of ways; while Weber describ es

some places at some times, Orwell captures many others. Yet simply pointing

out this variation is insufficient: the key question is when and how these differ-

ent political orders emerge.

This article blends the insights of Orwell and Weber to make two arguments

about state–militia interaction. First, governments and militias engage in a much

wider range of political orders than existing research can explain. The dominant con-

ceptualization of this dynamic is one of supportive collaboration, with regimes

straightforwardly outsourcing or delegating violence to militias (Mitchell 2004;

Roessler 2005; Reno 2011; Acemoglu, Robinson, and Santos 2013; Biberman

2013; Carey, Mitchell, and Lowe 2013; Carey, Colaresi, and Mitchell 2015;

D. Cohen and Nordas 2015; Eck 2015). But this is only one possible state strategy.

Militias may also be violently targeted by regimes, absorbed into the state apparatus,

or contained as a low level but endemic challenge. They are not intrinsically subser-

vient junior partners of governments.

Rich variation in state–militia politics can be found from Hitler’s assault on the

SA in ‘‘Night of Long Knives’’ in 1934 Germany to the collusion strategy the

Myanmar military has adopted toward the United Wa State Army to the incorpora-

tion strategy that puts private armies in the Philippines on government payroll. These

strategies may lead to a state monopoly of violence but can also sustain an endur-

ingly fragmented distribution of coercion.

Second, I argue that regime ideology plays a crucial role in shaping state strategy

toward militias. Existing theories adopt an apolitical vision of how states use mili-

tias, treating them as simple, easily controlled solutions to tactical problems of local

information and weak state capacity. These operational concerns are certainly rele-

vant, but they are incomplete for making sense of the sophisticated state–armed

group relationships that we observe in the world. In their introduction, the editors

of this issue identify militias as ‘‘potential allies to the state’’(Jentzsch, Kalyvas, and

Schubiger 2015). Identifying who is—and is not—a potential ally is rarely an obvi-

ous calculation, and it varies across governments and over time within them. There is

a deeper ideological politics at work that influences both which regimes are open to

using militias and which kinds of groups are seen as potential partners. Differing

conceptions of the political arenas that they seek to construct and defend help gov-

ernments decide which armed organizations are threatening, allied, or unsavory but

tolerable.

Staniland 771