Project Details
Projekt
Micro-level determinants and consequences of militia performance. Mixed-methods research into the organization of violence and security between the state and communities
Applicant
Professor Dr. Alexander De Juan
Subject Area
Political Science
Term
from 2020 to 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 444857661
Local militias shape contexts of violence across the globe. Prominent examples are the Sons of Iraq, which emerged after the fall of the Baath regime to protect local Sunni communities against Al Qaeda or the so-called Autodefensas that have been established to counter violence at the hands of drug cartels in Mexico. Militias’ actual and perceived performance varies greatly: they may be (held) responsible for gross human rights abuses in some cases and may be (perceived as) effective secu-rity providers to the population in others. Militias do not only have a massive impact on the security situation of the population. They often emerge to replace or supplement a key function of the state: the provision of security. Thus, their performance is likely to also shape people’s attitudes towards the state. The proposed project seeks to contribute to our understanding of these impacts of militias: what explains militia performance and how does militia performance influence state legitimacy?A growing body of rigorous comparative research has investigated (1) the performance and (2) the emergence of militias. Research in the first strand has focused on militias’ use of violence against civilians and how this may be determined by militias’ relations with state institutions. However, this research has payed less attention to militias’ effective security provision and how it may be deter-mined by their relations with communal institutions. Studies in the second strand highlight that states establish militias to foster their own strategic goals. However, we know little about the repercussions of militia performance for the legitimacy of the state. Finally, both strands have focused on country-level analyses of objective measures of the main explanatory and outcome variables. However, sub-jective assessments of the affected population often differ strongly from objective data: for example, while some militias may appear as security threats from the outside, the local population may still perceive them as providers of meaningful security – and vice versa. The project addresses these inter-related gaps. It will develop and test arguments on how objective measures and subjective assessments of militias’ relations to the state and to communal institutions impact on (1) objective and subjective measures of militia security provision and (2) the legitimacy of the state. The empirical analysis will rely on micro-level mixed-methods research in two diverse con-texts of high insecurity: Afghanistan and Mexico. It will draw on a comprehensive body of original qualitative and quantitative survey data. The field research and data analysis will be carried out in close collaboration with leading experts at Stanford and Mannheim University.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
USA
