Irregular Armed Forces and their Role in Politics and State Formation

Description

Existing models of state formation are derived primarily from early Western European experience, and are misleading when applied to nation-states struggling to consolidate their dominion in the present period. In this volume, scholars suggest that the Western European model of armies waging war on behalf of sovereign states does not hold universally. The importance of 'irregular' armed forces - militias, guerrillas, paramilitaries, mercenaries, bandits, vigilantes, police, and so on - has been seriously neglected in the literature on this subject. The case studies in this book suggest, among other things, that the creation of the nation-state as a secure political entity rests as much on 'irregular' as regular armed forces. For most of the 'developing' world, the state's legitimacy has been difficult to achieve, constantly eroding or challenged by irregular armed forces within a country's borders. No account of modern state formation can be considered complete without attending to irregular forces.

"This book's editors and contributors deserve high praise for producing what is all too rare in edited works: a coherent collection of insightful, provocative, and well-documented papers informed by history and theory but intent on challenging conceptions of both. ...a 'must read' for scholars of many disciplinary and theoretical persuasions...a powerful intellectual achievement, issuing broad challenges to traditional thinking about core issues in political and military sociology." Journal of Political & Military Sociology "Scholars have long recognized that wars and violent conflicts have played a central role in the formation, aggrandizement, impoverishment, and collapse of national states. However, the protagonists of these struggles have included not only national armies, but also police, warlords, guerillas, paramilitaries, death squads, and terrorist networks. By stressing the importance of such 'irregular' warriors, the essays collected by Diane Davis and Anthony Pereira challenge much of the received wisdom about state building, past and present. This volume casts a bright light upon the nature of modern warfare, state formation and democratization." Jeff Goodwin, New York University