Mexican independence was the result of a complex process initiated in 1808 due to a problem of dynastic legitimacy and ended in 1825 with the surrender of the last Spanish fortress in Veracruz. In 1810, armed uprisings began, led by hundreds of clergymen who rejected the authorities that were supposedly foisted on the colonies by orders of Napoleon Bonaparte. In the absence of an army capable of subduing the rebels, the government had to form it with armed civilians. Without a political and government program to define the course to be followed by the rebels, little by little the territories they controlled fell into the hands of the king’s defenders. In the territories affected by the war, governability was guaranteed through civic-military self-governments. Everything changed after 1820, with the reestablishment of the Constitution of Cadiz, when the militarized self-governments gave way to liberal governments. The military reacted against them a year later with the military pronunciamiento led by Agustín de Iturbide. He proposed an independence subordinated to the House of Bourbon. In the end, a republic was imposed as the form of government in Mexico.

To understand the ways in which Saudi Arabia and Iran have engaged with Iraqi politics and sought to define the principles of vision within Iraq’s political field, one must understand the structural factors conditioning and curtailing the deployment of capital. Here, tracing the evolution of Iraq’s political field is essential as a means of understanding the actions of Riyadh and Tehran. This tracing involves reflecting on identity politics and the interplay between identity groups and the state. The nature of this interplay, in turn, allows for the development of relations with regional powers, on both an individual and a communal level.

Chapter 4 looks specifically at the reorganisation of military power in this period, which is closely related to the declining power of aristocracies. The rise of the modern state and its monopoly of legitimate force made militaries and law enforcement bureaucratic functions of the state, rather than localised privileges of divided nobilities. The pacification of the nobilities, the subduing of their traditions of martial competition to the modern state, opens up the scope for the more civil forms of competition. The ‘wild’ can now be replaced by the ‘domesticated’.

Chapter 5 turns to the strategy of violence outsourcing by examining a party that shared many of the same incentives in Karachi as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement for carrying out violence but which did not possess the capacity to do so itself. I focus on how the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) relied on the People’s Aman Committee (PAC), an ethnic militia in Karachi, both to meet the demands of its constituents in the neighborhood of Lyari and to carry out the “dirty work” of violence, intimidation, and extortion. Through the PAC, the PPP was able to engage in voter fraud and intimidation; engage in criminal activity and ‘turf wars’ with the MQM and ANP over valuable economic property; and maintain support among its co-ethnic base by further polarizing the electorate along ethnic lines. In Karachi’s polarized environment, the PPP had a generally captive support base of Sindhi and Baloch voters in the city who imposed minimal electoral costs on the party for violence given their lack of alternative options. Despite evident principal–agent problems, the PPP relied on the gang because it did not have the local-level organizational capacity to carry out violence – or gather votes – itself.

Although the nature, organisation and behaviours of ‘non-State armed groups’ (NSAGs) are issues of increasing concern for the international community, in particular due to the participation of these entities in the majority of armed conflicts, relatively little is known about them within the legal realm. When compared to other actors affecting or being affected by different regimes, normative studies dealing with the way in which these non-State entities behave seem to be scarce. This chapter examines NSAGs’ limited position within the international legal architecture. This is because understanding what these actors are allowed to do, or rather are restricted from doing, is determined by a set of rules, the creation and further development on which NSAGs had, at least a priori, no say. This basis serves to assess later in the chapter how international law, political sciences, and different institutions and bodies address NSAGs. A typology of these actors is provided for the purposes of this book.

Chapter 6 assesses why ‒ though facing similar stalemates and other structural challenges ‒ two adjacent districts in Zambézia province experienced the diffusion of militias so differently. The chapter shows that communities learned from neighboring communities about how militias formed and “diffusion agents” migrated to spread the message of militia success, which helped initiate militia diffusion. However, “sustained diffusion” ‒ the persistence of militia activity in a district and integration of the militia into the local security apparatus ‒ depended on the cohesion of elites. The chapter explores the validity of the argument by analyzing the diffusion of the Naparama to a district in Nampula province.

Chapter 5 shows that, while community responses to the violence were widespread, the Naparama militia formed at a strategic moment in time, when “community-empowering military stalemates” emerged. Tracing the process of how Naparama formed over time, the chapter shows that local stalemates shaped community residents’ and local elites preferences and gave rise to windows of opportunity for militia formation. Community residents were willing to engage in armed responses to insurgent violence, as other options appeared inviable. Local administrative elites complained about insufficient support from the provincial government and supported alternative military solutions such as the Naparama. This chapter draws on evidence from an over-time analysis of Naparama’s formation in Zambézia province in Mozambique.

Chapter 1 introduces the topic and relevance of the book, links the arguments to previous work and provides an overview of the book's chapters.

Chapter 7 demonstrates that militias successfully mobilize members when they appeal to common social conventions, create innovative institutions and provide an opportunity for self-empowerment. In particular, the chapter shows that the appeal to common social conventions such as traditional healing facilitated the mobilization process, as the new militia institution resonated with local communities and created a belief in agency, which enabled the large-scale mobilization of members. The chapter develops these arguments with evidence from Nicoadala district in Zambézia province and explores their validity with evidence from the main district of militia activity in Nampula province, Murrupula.

Chapter 2 contains a theoretical framework to analyze how militias form. It also introduces a definition and typology of militias, introduces the theory that guides the subsequent analysis, and provides an overview of the research design of the study.

The concluding chapter reviews the theory and evidence and derives implications for how civilian agency, violent resistance, and the rise of third actors affect the dynamics of civil war. The chapter explores how the arguments can shed light on similar developments in past and contemporary armed conflicts and reflect on Naparama’s legacy for postwar politics in Mozambique. Overall, the chapter shows that, while this book explains when, where, and how militias originate, there is much work to be done to understand how militias evolve and develop their relations with governments, rebels, and civilians. Militias are important third actors in civil wars, but we do not yet completely understand the challenges that come along with their rise.

Whereas Americans had quickly won redress amid the Stamp Act controversy, over the following decade the use of similar, affiliated social movement organizations exacerbated rivalries with Britain and eventually mobilized the War of Independence. First, colonists responded to the hated Townshend Acts of 1767 with boycotting associations that sought to overturn the measure through economic warfare – that only led to partial changes. American rights became a partisan issue with Britain, as colonial patriots increasingly allied with the Wilkes and Liberty movement. The enduring tax on tea and the colonial resistance it inspired in 1774 motivated British passage of the Coercive Acts, that militarized the colonial networks and led them to prepare for war. Committees of Safety and Security seized power in many locales and proved integral in mobilizing the civil war against the British.

In the Mekong Delta, in addition to directly fighting against the communist-led Resistance, the French also allied with semi-autonomous militias against the Resistance, particularly those associated with the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao. A situational logic of alliance and opposition, understood by all participants, shaped the overarching "system." Within this system, both the French and the Resistance competed to co-opt smaller groups, from parastates to local militias, to their side, which in turn tried to establish their autonomy. This chapter looks at these allies, some of which were parastates, their funding, their economic bases, and their interactions. It gives particular attention to those affiliated with the Cao Dai (Pham Cong Tac, Trinh Minh The) and the Hoa Hao militias (Tran Van Soai, Ba Cut). It also examines the complexity of control at local levels, where in some villages, up to three different political actors, including the Vietnamese state, vied for dominance.

By 1953, the communist-led Resistance had been marginalized in much of the Mekong delta. But the cost was high. "Traditional" institutions of the village had, in large swaths of the delta, been destroyed. The Franco-Vietnamese "coalition" had defeated the communist-led Resistance. But who would win the peace? The militia leaders, so skilled in war, were not fluent in the arts of peace. This chapter looks at the endgame of empire, when France was withdrawing from rural areas all over the South, downsizing its military presence, and shifting its support to the State of Vietnam. The end result by 1954, however, was a balkanized southern Vietnam with fragmented sovereignty where militias entrenched themselves in rural fiefdoms. The chapter shows how Ngo Dinh Diem, faced with this divided South, won the battle for post-war control of the South. It pays particular attention to his expulsion to Cambodia of the Cao Dai leader Pham Cong Tac, the co-optation of the Hoa Hao militia leader Tran Van Soai, and the arrest, trial, and execution of the Hao Hao militia leader Ba Cut. The chapter also examines the regional, national, and international legacies of the war.

This chapter outlines the nature of the “Franco-Chadian state” and its early postcolonial political evolution. It highlights the deep embeddedness of French influence in the Chadian economy and security services. It also provides an overview of the broader context of postcolonial Franco-African relations and French strategic aims in its former empire. The chapter then examines the outbreak of civil war in the country. In 1965, communities in central Chad rebelled against abusive governmental taxation. Quickly the revolt spread throughout the country and gradually its disparate factions became more organized under the loose banner of the Front de Liberation Nationale du Tchad (Frolinat). By early 1969, Frolinat elements threatened Fort-Lamy, Chad’s capital. This chapter examines the nature of this rebellion and French President Charles de Gaulle’s decision, in the final weeks of his presidency, to launch a sizeable military intervention on behalf of Tombalbaye’s regime. This intervention included an important statebuilding component, the Mission pour la réforme administrative (MRA). It aimed to address the administrative failures that French policymakers saw as a root cause of the rebellion. The chapter concludes with a description of the MRA’s mission and an analysis of its ultimate failure.

The Libyan case study in Chapter 3 reveals how harrowing the introduction of democratic elections can be in countries without national unity or any of the attributes of a modern state. Qaddafi’s ideology of a stateless, egalitarian society based on an idiosyncratic blend of Islamic and Marxist concepts left Libya’s transitional regime largely without a bureaucratic apparatus to implement policies. Qaddafi had also reinvigorated Libya’s tribal system by favoring his own and punishing the region and tribes that were the base of support for the prior monarchical regime. Competitive elections in Libya were implemented in a country without a national military that could monopolize the use of violence. In its place, during the civil war, a welter of regional, local, tribal, and ideological militias – some more powerful than the “national military” – emerged and prevented transitional governments from being able to provide peace and security for Libyans. There was also a military strongman in Libya, General Haftar, seeking to utilize the near anarchic conditions to forge a military authoritarian regime – by reining in the militias and providing desperately needed security.