IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ginixx/v45y2019i2p215-266.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Civilian self-defense militias in civil war

Author

Listed:
  • Chelsea Estancona
  • Lucia Bird
  • Kaisa Hinkkainen
  • Navin Bapat

Abstract

To mitigate the costs associated with suppressing rebellion, states may rely on civilian self-defense militias to protect their territory from rebel groups. However, this decision is also costly, given that these self-defense groups may undermine control of its territory. This raises the question: why do governments cultivate self-defense militias when doing so risks that these militias will undermine their territorial control? Using a game theoretic model, we argue that states take this risk in order to prevent rebels from co-opting local populations, which in turn may shift power away from the government and toward the rebels. Governments strategically use civilian militias to raise the price rebels must pay for civilian cooperation, prevent rebels from harnessing a territory’s resources, and/or to deter rebels from challenging government control in key areas. Empirically, the model suggests states are likely to support the formation of self-defense militias in territory that may moderately improve the power of rebel groups, but not in areas that are either less valuable or areas that are critical to the government’s survival. These hypotheses are tested using data from the Colombian civil war from 1996 to 2008.

Suggested Citation

  • Chelsea Estancona & Lucia Bird & Kaisa Hinkkainen & Navin Bapat, 2019. "Civilian self-defense militias in civil war," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(2), pages 215-266, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:ginixx:v:45:y:2019:i:2:p:215-266
    DOI: 10.1080/03050629.2019.1554570
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03050629.2019.1554570
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03050629.2019.1554570?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sabine C Carey & Belén González, 2021. "The legacy of war: The effect of militias on postwar repression," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 38(3), pages 247-269, May.
    2. Chelsea Estancona & Lindsay Reid, 2022. "Pro-government militias and civil war termination," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 39(3), pages 291-310, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ginixx:v:45:y:2019:i:2:p:215-266. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GINI20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.