Micro-level determinants and consequences of militia performance. Mixed-methods research into the organization of violence and security between the state and communities

当地民兵在全球范围内塑造了暴力的背景。突出的例子是伊拉克之子，它们是在复兴社会党政权倒台后出现的，目的是保护当地逊尼派社区免受基地组织或所谓的自卫队的伤害，这些自卫军是为了打击墨西哥贩毒集团手中的暴力行为而建立的。民兵的实际和被认为的表现差异很大：在某些情况下，他们可能(被认为)对严重侵犯人权的行为负责，在另一些情况下，他们可能(被视为)有效地为民众提供安全保障。民兵不仅对民众的安全局势产生巨大影响。它们的出现往往是为了取代或补充国家的一项关键职能：提供安全。因此，他们的表现很可能也会影响人们对政府的态度。拟议的项目旨在帮助我们理解民兵的这些影响：是什么解释了民兵的表现，以及民兵的表现如何影响国家的合法性？越来越多的严格的比较研究调查了(1)表现和(2)民兵的出现。第一方面的研究侧重于民兵对平民使用暴力，以及民兵与国家机构的关系如何决定这一点。然而，这项研究较少关注民兵的有效安全保障，以及他们与社区机构的关系如何可能阻止这种保障。第二条线索中的研究强调，各州建立民兵组织是为了实现自己的战略目标。然而，我们对民兵的表现对国家合法性的影响知之甚少。最后，这两个方面都侧重于对主要解释性变量和结果变量的客观衡量进行国家一级的分析。然而，对受影响人口的主观评估往往与客观数据大相径庭：例如，虽然一些民兵可能从外部看起来是安全威胁，但当地居民可能仍然认为他们是有意义的安全的提供者--反之亦然。该项目解决了这些相互关联的差距。它将就民兵与国家和社区机构的关系的客观措施和主观评估如何影响(1)民兵安全保障的客观和主观措施以及(2)国家的合法性进行辩论和检验。实证分析将依赖于在两个高度不安全的不同背景下进行的微观层面的混合方法研究：阿富汗和墨西哥。它将利用大量原始的定性和定量调查数据。实地研究和数据分析将与斯坦福大学和曼海姆大学的主要专家密切合作进行。

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.