Irregular Armed Forces and Their Role in Politics and State Formation

by Edited by Diane E. Davis , Anthony W. Pereira

• ISBN13: 9780521012188
• ISBN10: 052101218X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-11-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book examines a variety of comparative and historical experiences in which irregular armed forces (ranging from militias, paramilitaries, guerrillas, bandits, mercenaries, vigilantes, and police forces to armed veteran groups) have struggled against or on behalf of national states. The study hopes to raise questions about the new political relevance of these types of armed forces. It considers the conditions under which they are more significant than conventional military personnel in supplanting or undermining states, and their broader role in national political development.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Part I. The Basic Framework and Beyond: Mobilization, Demobilization, and National State Formation: 2. Armed force, regimes, and contention in Europe since 1650 Charles Tilly

3. Limited war and limited states Miguel Centeno

4. Where do all the soldiers go?: veterans and the politics of demobilization Alec Campbell

5. Waging war and the transformation of property relationships: shaping the Japanese style of capitalism Eiko Ikegami

Part II. Deconstructing 'Armed Forces': From Militaries to Militias, Veterans, Paramilitaries, and Political: 6. Send a thief to catch a thief: state building and the employment of irregular formations in mid-nineteenth century Greece Achilles Batalas

7. Reform and reaction: paramilitary groups in contemporary Columbia Mauricio Romero

8. Policing the people, policing the state: the police-military nexus in argentina, 1880-1945 Laura Kalmanowiecki

9. Warmaking and US state formation: mobilization, demobilization, and the inherent ambiguities of federalism Susan Browne

10. Politics is thicker than blood: union and confederate veterans in the US House of Representatives in the late nineteenth century Richard Bensel

Part III. Not Just the Nation-State: Examining the International Nexus of Armed Force and State Formation: 11. The 'police municipale' and the making of the modern French state Lizabeth Zack

12. Domestic militarization in a transnational perspective: patriotic and militaristic youth mobilization in France and Indochina, 1940-1945 Anne Raffin

13. The changing nature of warfare and the absence of state-building in West Africa William Reno

14. Against all enemies: civil-military relations in the contemporary United States Ian Roxborough

15. Armed forces, coercive monopolies, and changing patterns of state formation and violence.