‘No peace, no war’ proponents? How pro-regime militias affect civil war termination and outcomes
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836718766380 |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836718766380
Cooperation and Conflict
2019, Vol. 54(1) 64 –82
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836718766380
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‘No peace, no war’ proponents?
How pro-regime militias affect
civil war termination and
outcomes
Huseyn Aliyev
Abstract
Previous research on non-state actors involved in civil wars has tended to disregard the role of
extra-dyad agents in influencing conflict outcomes. Little is known as to whether the presence
of such extra-dyadic actors as pro-regime militias affects conflict termination and outcomes.
This article develops and tests a number of hypotheses on the pro-government militias’ effect
upon civil war outcomes. It proposes that pro-regime militias involved in intrastate conflicts tend
to act as proponents of ‘no peace, no war’, favouring low-activity violence and ceasefires over
other conflict outcomes. These hypotheses are examined using an expanded dataset on pro-
government militias and armed conflict in a statistical analysis of 229 civil war episodes from 1991
to 2015. These findings shed new light on the role of extra-state actors in civil wars.
Keywords
Armed groups, civil war, conflict outcome, extra-dyadic, extra-state
Does termination of a civil war depend on the types of armed actors involved in the con-
flict? Research on civil war dynamics has identified the role of extra-dyadic actors as
significant towards shifting the balance of powers and contributing to conflict termina-
tion (Cederman and Gleditsch, 2009; Cunningham, 2006; Cunningham et al., 2009;
Gleditsch, 2007). Nevertheless, the literature continues to disregard the effect of extra-
state agents existing outside of the government–rebel dichotomy on civil war termination
and outcome. Research on civil wars has thus far tended to generalise all conflict stake-
holders as associated with either side of the dyad. Likewise, the literature offers limited
explanation about the contribution of extra-state actors, or non-state third parties, towards
the success, or the lack thereof, of a government, or a rebel group in a civil war. A volu-
minous body of literature exploring conflict outcomes focuses almost exclusively on
various properties of belligerents, such as the balance of power, technology, leadership,
Corresponding author:
Huseyn Aliyev, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, Lylibank Gardens, Glasgow
G12 8RZ, UK.
Email: Huseyn.Aliyev@glasgow.ac.uk
766380CAC0010.1177/0010836718766380Cooperation and ConflictAliyev
research-article2018
Article
Aliyev 65
external support and military tactics (Buhaug et al., 2009; Lyall and Wilson, 2009;
Salehyan et al., 2011), or on structural factors, including but not limited to economy,
natural resources, geography and ethnicity (Buhaug et al., 2008; Cederman and Gleditsch,
2009; Wucherpfennig et al., 2012).
This article contributes to this broader literature by further theorising and analysing
the relationship between civil war outcomes and pro-government militias (PGMs). Of all
other extra-state actors, PGMs1 emerge not only as one of the most widespread types of
conflict stakeholders (Carey et al., 2013), but also as a critically understudied phenom-
enon in research on intrastate conflict. Despite their association with governments,
PGMs tend to exist outside formal institutional frameworks and, therefore, can influence
conflict termination differently from non-state groups. Notwithstanding assumptions
that PGMs ‘increase the length of civil wars’ (Jentzsch et al., 2015: 6), the existing litera-
ture offers limited insights into whether the presence of militias in intrastate conflicts is
conducive to particular conflict outcomes. In contrast to the literature on rebels’ roles in
civil war outcomes (Buhaug, 2006; Nilsson, 2008), no studies have thus far explored the
impact of PGMs on conflict termination. To fill this gap, this article seeks to expand our
understanding of the extra-dyadic actors’ effect on civil war termination.
The main theoretical argument is that PGMs increase the likelihood of civil wars
culminating in a stalemate or low-intensity violence because neither peace agreements
nor absolute victories by either side of dyad are in the PGMs’ interests. Based on this
overall argument, I derive and test four separate hypotheses. Firstly, civil wars involving
militias are unlikely to end in a peace agreement between governments and rebels.
Secondly, participation of PGMs does not increase the government’s chances of emerg-
ing victorious and defeating the rebels. Thirdly, conflicts with the PGM presence tend to
result in ceasefire agreements. Fourthly, civil wars involving militias are likely to trans-
form into low-intensity conflicts. Taken together, these four hypotheses are employed to
theorise the role of pro-regime militias in conflict termination as of ‘no peace, no war’
proponents. To empirically ground these theoretical claims, I conduct statistical analyses
of 229 civil war episodes between 1991 and 2015.
Government proxies in civil wars
For decades, militias were analysed through the prism of state security forces, or as tools
of repression employed by authoritarian regimes against their political rivals. A growing
body of literature on militias, which has only started to emerge during the past several
years, argues that PGMs were involved in 80 per cent of civil wars since 1981 (Carey
et al., 2013), and that militias have functioned as crucial stakeholders in intrastate con-
flicts since the early Cold War period (Mazzei, 2009). As estimated by Mitchell et al.
(2014: 812), PGMs have been deployed by 60 countries engaged in civil conflicts since
1989.
In context of civil wars, PGMs often engage in various forms of civilian persecution
(Ahram, 2015; Mitchell et al., 2014). The prominent role of Rwandan Interahamwe mili-
tias, Serb death squads and Sudanese Janjaweed in conducting mass atrocities in their
respective countries perpetuates the image of militias as perpetrators of genocidal vio-
lence. A large and growing body of empirical literature explored PGMs’ involvement in
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