Armed Groups and Contemporary Conflicts
Armed groups operating beyond the state have become the most important actors in most contemporary wars and violent conflicts, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Colombia and Somalia. They come in a dizzying array of forms: some informally linked to the state and state power, others in opposition to the state; some pursuing classic political goals, others primarily predatory and large-scale criminal enterprises. All groups, however, challenge the states Weberian monopoly of the legitimate use of force, yet their origins, evolution, violent dynamics, and relations with state power are poorly understood.
This interdisciplinary collection includes both conceptual and empirical studies of contemporary armed groups, examining cases in Latin America, Asia and Africa. It brings sociological, political economy, and ethnographic approaches to bear on larger questions including armed groups and the changing nature of warfare, the economic dimensions of their activities, and means of engagement with armed actors. It both broadens and sharpens our understanding of how force and violence are used in todays contemporary armed conflicts.
This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy.
Keith Krause is Professor, and Director of the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland.
Armed Groups and Contemporary Conflicts
Challenging the Weberian State
Edited by Keith Krause
First published 2010 by Routledge
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First issued in paperback 2012
This book is a reproduction of Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 30, issue 2. The Publisher requests to those authors who may be citing this book to state, also, the bibliographical details of the special issue on which the book was based
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ISBN 13: 978-0-415-57457-0 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-81592-5 (pbk)
Introduction: The Challenge of Non-State Armed Groups
by Keith Krause and Jennifer Milliken
The study of non-state armed groups (NSAGs) has traditionally been limited to those actors with a political agenda that pose a specific threat to the state and undermine its ability to claim a monopoly over the legitimate use of force within its territory. In contrast, this introduction and the articles that follow expands upon this narrow conceptualization and redefines NSAGs to encompass such actors as militias, warlords, private security providers, urban gangs, and transnational and criminal networks. This understanding facilitates a wider exploration of how such groups form in relation to the state, and how the state in turn is shaped through its interactions and conflict with the armed group(s). This article provides an overview of a set of research issues, frameworks, and methods that represent a starting place for a broadened agenda on armed groups which moves beyond those actors who mount direct challenges to the Weberian state. A more nuanced understanding of the different forms and historical trajectories of the interactions between armed group and states also highlights the dynamics through which various types of violent actors influence the use of force and violence in contemporary world politics.
Non-State Armed Actors, New Imagined Communities, and Shifting Patterns of Sovereignty and Insecurity in the Modern World
by Diane E. Davis
In a world of growing security challenges, non-state armed actors have captured significant attention from scholars concerned with regime stability and the consolidation of national states. But the preoccupation with national political dynamics has eclipsed the study of non-state armed actors who struggle to secure economic dominion, and whose activities reveal alternative networks of power, authority, independence, and self-governance unfolding on a variety of territorial scales both smaller and larger than the nation-state. With a focus on actors as wide-ranging as private police, gangs, and mafias, this article charts the proliferation and significance of non-state armed action structured around economic activities, and assesses the nature of violence and insecurity generated by these activities in comparison to more conventional politically oriented non-state action. Drawing evidence primarily from middle-income countries of the global south, where political regimes are relatively more stable but a wide variety of non-state armed actors still proliferate, it examines the new spatiality of non-armed state action directed toward economic sovereignty, argues that it forms the basis for alternative imagined communities of allegiance, and assesses the implications for the future of the traditional nation-state. After highlighting the overlap and co-existence of multiple categories of non-state armed actors and how they impact the security, legitimacy, and stability of nation-states, the essay concludes with questions about conventional categorizations of states, armed and non-armed actors, and the nature of sovereignty in the contemporary era.
With the State against the State? The Formation of Armed Groups
by Klaus Schlichte
Non-state war actors have trajectories. While recent research contributions stress the role of material interest as the driving force for the formation of non-state war actors, this article attempts to sketch an alternative explanation for their formation. Based on a data-set of 80 cases and comparative case discussion it focuses on the relationships that leaders and staff members of armed groups entertain before the actual formation of such groups. Three mechanisms of formation are consecutively distinguished, depending on the degree and kind of social relationships that precede their formation. The article discusses the causal settings of each mechanism and reveals in how far state policies in medium term and long run horizons produce what they want to curb: the formation of violent challenges.
Grasping the Financing and Mobilization Cost of Armed Groups: A New Perspective on Conflict Dynamics
by Achim Wennmann
This paper approaches conflict financing as a combination of available revenue sources and the cost to start and maintain armed conflict. The paper therefore goes beyond conceptualizations of conflict financing that only look at the total available revenue of armed groups. Based on recent small arms research, the paper sketches a tool to estimate the mobilization cost of armed groups with the objective to establish data points for barriers to entry into armed conflict and the cost of competition during armed conflict. The paper argues that what matters in conflict financing is to identify the financing and mobilization costs together, and if an armed group can pay for the type of conflict required to reaching its objective. The paper contributes to an evolving literature on the feasibility of conflict and provides a new perspective on conflict dynamics with implications for peace processes, peacebuilding, and policy against conflict financing.
