Neil J. Mitchell

Recent evidence suggests that public support for holding soldiers accountable for war crimes and human rights violations is conditional on the national identity of the soldier. We investigate how information about the status and application of humanitarian and human rights norms, in ways that draw on national identity, might reduce bias in prosecuting soldiers who kill civilians. Using survey experiments in the United States and the United Kingdom, we find that among our four norm-reinforcing information treatments, only references to principled conduct by close and like-minded allies can significantly increase public willingness to prosecute and uphold the rule of law in both countries, although this finding is highly dependent on the specific ally referenced. Depending on the context and application, highlighting national outgroup violations and potential hypocrisy by leveraging the timing of the survey to capture the abuse of Ukrainians by Russian soldiers, at least temporarily increased the willingness to prosecute in the United States. Otherwise, leveraging pride in the military to reinforce norms, or informing the public about their government's commitment to these norms does little to alter attitudes. Although communicating norms in ways that have cultural and national salience has the potential to strengthen public commitment to accountability, where there are strong preexisting partisan and national loyalties it is difficult to do so.

This article presents version 2.0 of the Pro-Government Militias Database (PGMD). It is increasingly clear that it is untenable to assume a unified security sector, as states often rely on militias to carry out security tasks. The PGMD 2.0 provides new opportunities for studying questions such as when states rely on militias, how they chose among different types and the consequences for stability and peace. We detail how the PGMD 2.0 provides new information on the characteristics, behaviour, life cycle and organization of 504 pro-government militias across the globe between 1981 and 2014.

This chapter explains how the modified logic of delegation differs from the standard account in the treatment of the main parties to the relationship. The principal is a more untrustworthy and at times unresponsive figure in her relationship with the agents. The agent, likely a professional agent, is more complicated than portrayed. Professional responsibility is a mechanism to overcome the trust gap in a delegation relationship, according to principal-agent theorists. But overlooked are the side effects of professionalism, where the loyalties it fosters create tenacious control problems. It has a pronounced form in the church and the army, but other security and police forces may find punishing and controlling rogue agents a complicated process. While the boundaries to delegation are uncertain and some may choose not to delegate as much as they should, blame is one task that will be delegated.

This chapter discusses how techniques of evading blame are suggested by the components of accountability. For instance, in democracies, lines of accountability run from government leaders to legislatures and to voters in more or less complex patterns. Meanwhile, the relative simplicity of parliamentary models of accountability offers a contrast with the more complex presidential model. Given these components of accountability, it follows that evading accountability can be achieved in three ways. First, it can be evaded by manipulating the flow of information about events, actions, and policies. Second, it can be evaded by manipulating the standards used for evaluating the action or policy. Third, it can be evaded by manipulating the consequences for wrongdoing.

International ‘naming and shaming’ campaigns rely on domestic civil society organizations (CSOs) for information on local human rights conditions. To stop this flow of information, some governments restrict CSOs, for example by limiting their access to funding. Do such restrictions reduce international naming and shaming campaigns that rely on information from domestic CSOs? This article argues that on the one hand, restrictions may reduce CSOs’ ability and motives to monitor local abuses. On the other hand, these organizations may mobilize against restrictions and find new ways of delivering information on human rights violations to international publics. Using a cross-national dataset and in-depth evidence from Egypt, the study finds that low numbers of restrictions trigger shaming by international non-governmental organizations. Yet once governments impose multiple types of restrictions, it becomes harder for CSOs to adapt, resulting in fewer international shaming campaigns.

Research suggests that civil society mobilization together with the ratification of human rights treaties put pressure on governments to improve their human rights practices. An unexplored theoretical implication is that pressure provokes counterpressure. Instead of improving treaty compliance, some governments will have an interest in demobilizing civil society to silence their critics. Yet we do not know how and to what extent this incentive shapes governments’ policies and practices regarding civil society organizations. In this article we argue and show—using a new global database of government-sponsored restrictions on civil society organizations—that when governments have committed to human rights treaties and, at the same time, continue to commit severe human rights abuses, they impose restrictions on civil society groups to avoid monitoring and mitigate the international costs of abuses.

Sociologists, political scientists, and economists have long emphasized the benefits of monopolizing violence and the risks of failing to do so. Yet recent research on conflict, state failure, genocide, coups, and election violence suggests governments cannot or will not form a monopoly. Governments worldwide are more risk acceptant than anticipated. They give arms and authority to a variety of nonstate actors, militias, vigilantes, death squads, proxy forces, paramilitaries, and counterbalancing forces. We develop a typology based on the links of the militia to the government and to society as a device to capture variations among these groups. We use the typology to explore insights from this emerging literature on the causes, consequences, and puzzling survival of progovernment militias and their implications for security and human rights, as well as to generate open questions for further research.

Pro-government militias are a prominent feature of civil wars. Governments in Ukraine, Russia, Syria, and Sudan recruit irregular forces in their armed struggle against insurgents. The United States collaborated with Awakening groups to counter the insurgency in Iraq, just as colonizers used local armed groups to fight rebellions in their colonies. A now quite wide and established cross-disciplinary literature on pro-government nonstate armed groups has generated a variety of research questions for scholars interested in conflict, political violence, and political stability: Does the presence of such groups indicate a new type of conflict? What are the dynamics that drive governments to align with informal armed groups and that make armed groups choose to side with the government? Given the risks entailed in surrendering a monopoly of violence, is there a turning point in a conflict when governments enlist these groups? How successful are these groups? Why do governments use these nonstate armed actors to shape foreign conflicts, whether as insurgents or counterinsurgents abroad? Are these nonstate armed actors always useful to governments or perhaps even an indicator of state failure? How do pro-government militias affect the safety and security of civilians? The enduring pattern of collaboration between governments and pro-government armed groups challenges conventional theory and the idea of an evolutionary process of the modern state consolidating the means of violence. Research on these groups and their consequences began with case studies, and these continue to yield valuable insights. More recently, survey work and cross-national quantitative research have contributed to our knowledge. This mix of methods is opening new lines of inquiry for research on insurgencies and the delivery of the core public good of effective security.