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

地方民兵塑造了地球仪各地的暴力环境。突出的例子是伊拉克之子，它是在复兴党政权垮台后出现的，以保护当地逊尼派社区免受基地组织或所谓的自卫队的攻击，自卫队是为了打击墨西哥贩毒集团手中的暴力而建立的。民兵的实际表现和人们所认为的表现差别很大：在某些情况下，他们可能对严重侵犯人权行为负责，而在另一些情况下，他们可能（被认为）是人民的有效保护者。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，他们的表现可能也会影响人们对国家的态度。拟议的项目旨在帮助我们了解民兵的这些影响：什么解释民兵的表现，民兵的表现如何影响国家的合法性？越来越多的严谨的比较研究调查了（1）民兵的表现和（2）民兵的出现。第一部分的研究重点是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，这一研究较少关注民兵的有效安全提供以及如何通过他们与社区机构的关系来确定。第二部分的研究强调，国家建立民兵是为了促进自己的战略目标。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，这两方面都侧重于在国家一级分析主要解释变量和结果变量的客观计量。然而，对受影响民众的主观评估往往与客观数据有很大差异：例如，虽然一些民兵可能从外部看来是安全威胁，但当地民众可能仍然认为他们提供了有意义的安全，反之亦然。该项目解决了这些相互关联的差距。它将开发和测试的论点如何客观的措施和民兵的关系，国家和社区机构的主观评估影响（1）民兵安全提供的客观和主观的措施和（2）国家的合法性。实证分析将依赖于在两个不同的高度不安全的背景下：阿富汗和墨西哥的微观层面的混合方法的研究。它将利用全面的原始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顶尖专家密切合作进行。

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.