Journal article
The commander's dilemma: Creating and controlling armed group violence
Journal of peace research, v 53(5), pp 619-632
01 Sep 2016
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
This article proposes a framework for understanding variation in armed groups' abilities to control wartime violence, including violence against civilians. I argue that patterns (both levels and forms) of violence are shaped by armed group leaders' attempts to meet two conflicting imperatives. To succeed, commanders must build a fighting force capable of swift, unhesitating violence; they must also maintain some control over the level, form(s), and targeting of violence. I refer to this situation as the Commander's Dilemma. Drawing on literatures from psychology and sociology, I argue that effective behavioral control cannot be achieved via extrinsic incentives (i.e. pecuniary or non-pecuniary rewards and punishments) alone. Rather, effective control of combatant violence depends upon armed group institutions intended to align combatants' preferences with those of commanders. I therefore focus analytically on political education, the armed group institution most likely to operate in this way. In particular, I hypothesize that armed groups with strong and consistent institutions for political education should display, on average, narrower repertoires of violence than those without. This argument finds preliminary support in a cross-national analysis of reported rape by rebel forces, as well as a qualitative investigation of armed groups during civil war in El Salvador. More broadly, this approach suggests that the creation of restraint is at least as important to our understandings of wartime violence as the production of violence.
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Details
- Title
- The commander's dilemma: Creating and controlling armed group violence
- Creators
- Amelia Hoover Green - Drexel University
- Publication Details
- Journal of peace research, v 53(5), pp 619-632
- Publisher
- Sage
- Number of pages
- 14
- Grant note
- United States Institute of Peace Yale's MacMillan Center for International Affairs Institute for Social and Policy Studies at Yale Drexel University
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Politics
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000382949100001
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-84986000751
- Other Identifier
- 991019174723604721
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InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Web of Science research areas
- International Relations
- Political Science