Armed Politics and the State in South Asia
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Date
2017-02-13
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Publisher
Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies
Abstract
Regimes deal with armed groups in remarkably diverse ways: in some contexts they wage total wars of annihilation, in others they cut live-and-let-live deals, and in yet others they closely ally with non-state actors. Varying topographies of armed order emerge and evolve across time and space. This project introduces an “armed politics” framework that can integrate the study of state building, civil war, and electoral violence into a unified analytical approach.
It conceptualizes and measures different armed orders – limited cooperation, alliance, containment, and total war – and the pathways through which these orders end, in collapse or incorporation.
The project then offers a new theory of how states evaluate armed groups, arguing that ideological perception and instrumental incentives combine to assign groups to six different political roles. These roles, ranging from mortal enemies to business partners to undesirable, determine the strategies that governments pursue and the orders they seek to construct. Political ideas about state and nation are central to political conflict. Comparative evidence from South and Southeast Asia illustrates how regimes perceive armed groups and the armed orders that emerge.
Description
The media can be accessed here: http://streaming.osu.edu/knowledgebank/Mershon17/Paul_Staniland.mp4
Keywords
South Asia, armed, politics