4. Violence by Nonstate Actors

2020 ◽  
pp. 88-117
Keyword(s):  
Nonstate Actors

Honor Among Thieves: Understanding Rhetorical and Material Cooperation Among Violent Nonstate Actors

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Blair ◽  
Erica Chenoweth ◽  
Michael C. Horowitz ◽  
Evan Perkoski ◽  
Philip B.K. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Time Series Data ◽  
Transnational Networks ◽  
Series Data ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Security Risks ◽  
Community Monitoring ◽  
The Face

Abstract Cooperation among militant organizations contributes to capability but also presents security risks. This is particularly the case when organizations face substantial repression from the state. As a consequence, for cooperation to emerge and persist when it is most valuable, militant groups must have means of committing to cooperation even when the incentives to defect are high. We posit that shared ideology plays this role by providing community monitoring, authority structures, trust, and transnational networks. We test this theory using new, expansive, time-series data on relationships between militant organizations from 1950 to 2016, which we introduce here. We find that when groups share an ideology, and especially a religion, they are more likely to sustain material cooperation in the face of state repression. These findings contextualize and expand upon research demonstrating that connections between violent nonstate actors strongly shape their tactical and strategic behavior.

How ISIS Fights

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar Ashour
Keyword(s):  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Combat Effectiveness ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Military

How can a widely hated, massively outnumbered and ludicrously outgunned organisation expands to occupy over 120 cities, towns and villages from the Southern Philippines to Western Libya? How can it endure and survive a military coalition of over 150 armed state and nonstate actors? How did ISIS/IS and their predecessors fight? And how can we account for their combat effectiveness? This book describes and analyses how ISIS/IS fights in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt. It analyses the military-making of ISIS/IS and their predecessors. The analysis focuses on 17 urban battles in Fallujah, Mosul, Ramadi, Raqqa (City and Governorate), Derna, Sirte and Northeastern Sinai. The book is based on fieldwork, dozens of interviews with soldiers and fighters who engaged ISIS/IS and their predecessors, and hundreds of ISIS/IS combat-relevant publications, audio- and video-releases. The findings contribute to our understanding of insurgencies’ combat effectiveness and offer insights on how ISIS/IS, like-minded organisations, and other armed nonstate actors may or will fight in the future.

Community Defense and Criminal Order in Michoacán: Contention in the Grey Area

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Fuentes Díaz
Keyword(s):  
Organized Crime ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The Self ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Government Control ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Grey Area ◽  
Los Grupos

The self-defense groups of La Ruana and Tepalcatepec and other communities in the Tierra Caliente of Michoacán, Mexico, emerged to oppose both the extortion and violence of the local parastatal order of organized crime and the central state’s demands for their disarming and dissolution. They represented a form of governmentality at the local level in which various nonstate actors performed the functions of government, control, and security in the grey area between legality and illegality. Los grupos de autodefensa de La Ruana y Tepalcatepec, así como de otras comunidades de tierra caliente en Michoacán, México, surgieron para contrarrestar las extorsiones y violencia del orden local paraestatal formado por el crimen organizado, así como las exigencias de desarme y disolución del estado central. Representaban una forma de gobernabilidad a nivel local, con varios actores no estatales haciendo las veces de gobierno, control y seguridad en un área gris entre lo legal y lo ilegal.

scholarly journals Privatizing Crime Control

2018 ◽  
Vol 679 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Tilley
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Crime Prevention ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
The State ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Full Responsibility ◽  
Reducing Costs

Crime problems largely result from opportunities, temptations, and provocations that have been provided to offenders unintentionally by those pursuing other private interests. There is a widespread notion that the state and its agencies can and ought to take full responsibility for crime control and that there is, therefore, nothing that nonstate actors can or need to do. In practice, there is little that the state can do directly to address the opportunities, temptations, and provocations for crime; but where crime control responsibilities have been accepted in the private sector, successful measures to reduce opportunities and temptations have been devised and adopted, preventing many crimes and reducing costs that would otherwise fall on the state as well as on victims. This article sets out the reasons why a shift in responsibility for crime prevention from the public to private sector can produce patterns of crime control that are both effective and socially desirable, albeit important roles remain for the public sector in stimulating and supporting such measures.

Grand Strategy Beyond the West

2021 ◽  
pp. 88-103
Author(s):  
K. M. Fierke
Keyword(s):  
Family Resemblance ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Military Strategy ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
The West ◽  
Sun Tzu ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
Grand Strategies

This chapter examines two of the most famous grand strategies with origins in Asia, identified with Sun Tzu and Gandhi. On the surface they would appear to be unfit for comparison. While Sun Tzu belongs to a tradition of military strategy, and is now part of the classical canon, Gandhi is identified with the nonviolent strategy of nonstate actors. The intention in examining the two together is to explore a family resemblance in their respective conceptions of grand strategy, even while recognizing that they are very distinct. After setting out some broad contrasts regarding cosmology, ontology, and epistemology, the chapter zooms in on the relevance of these points more specifically for understanding Sun Tzu or Gandhi. It concludes with some reflections on why the contrasts are important in a globalizing world. Both cases highlight the importance, if possible, of achieving objectives without recourse to military force, which, it argues, arises from a relational cosmology, where harmony and diversity coexist, and in which truth is not uniform but multiperspectival.

State Terrorism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Brown
Keyword(s):  
State Policy ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
State Behavior ◽  
State Terrorism ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Common Policies ◽  
Analytical Tools

State terrorism is a contentious topic in the field of terrorism studies. Some scholars argue that the concept of terrorism should only be applied to the behavior of nonstate actors. Others argue that certain government behaviors may be understood as terrorism if the intent of state violence and threats is to stoke fear and influence the behavior of a wider audience. Three possible conceptualizations of state terrorism are worth exploring: government sponsorship of nonstate actors’ terrorism, terrorism perpetrated by government agents outside a legal framework, and “inherent” state terrorism—acts perpetrated by the state in the everyday enforcement of law and order that, if perpetrated by nonstate actors, would clearly qualify as terrorism. Each of these conceptualizations yields insight about state behavior, highlighting particular uses of violence and threats as instruments of state policy. Depending on one’s conceptualization of state terrorism, common policies and functions of government possess an underlying terroristic logic. Analytical tools developed in the field of terrorism studies may be useful in helping us understand state behavior, when violence and threats appear to have a broader communicative function in influencing an audience beyond the immediate target.

International Dispute Settlement

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen J. Alter
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
International Courts ◽  
Constitutional Review ◽  
International Dispute ◽  
Institutional Actors

This chapter looks at the seventeen international courts (ICs) with the formal jurisdiction to adjudicate disputes pertaining to a broad range of issues. Fourteen of these ICs have jurisdiction to adjudicate disputes between state parties; thirteen have jurisdiction regarding disputes involving nonstate actors (international institutional actors or private litigants). Quite often the dispute settlement role primarily binds others to follow the terms of the legal agreement, and quite often the IC has also been delegated other roles. Indeed, all but three of the ICs with a formal dispute settlement jurisdiction also have been delegated either enforcement, administrative, or constitutional review roles. These facts help explain why more often than not ICs have compulsory jurisdiction for their dispute settlement role.

Violent Nonstate Actors and Narcotics Trafficking in Colombia

2017 ◽  
pp. 282-304
Author(s):  
Arlene Beth Tickner ◽  
Diego García ◽  
Catalina Arreaza
Keyword(s):  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Narcotics Trafficking
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