Dynamics of Violence, Governance, and Change: How Violent Non-State Actors Adapt to Shifting Social Orders

Abstract

Violent non-state actors must endure large-scale shocks to the environment in which they operate, thereby transforming how they use violence, govern civilians, engage in the economy, or relate to the state. Economic, social, or political shifts change relationships among licit and illicit actors, generating different incentives for how these organizations engage with the world around them. In areas where the state is weak, non-state actors can take advantage of the power vacuum and fill in for the state in places where it is unable to reach. The transformational power of major events such as expanding markets due to free trade agreements, natural disasters, changes in leadership or regime type, or even the end of conflict itself thus demands consideration to further our understanding of how different groups continue to reproduce violence in diverse contexts. In this dissertation, I seek to explore these processes by examining how non-state actors use violence, adapt to shifting social orders, and exercise control in the context of political violence and organized crime. Chapter 2, "Blood Avocados? Trade Liberalization and Cartel Violence in Mexico" (co-authored with Lucas Owen), explores this phenomenon in the context of trade liberalization policies with the Mexican avocado market. Several prominent studies predict that expanding markets in areas of low state capacity may decrease organized crime due to the opportunity cost mechanism, holding that booms in licit markets shift labor away from illicit markets. We posit an additional mechanism to explain the decrease in criminal violence – an influx in capital allows market actors to invest in self-defense forces to combat criminal incursions. We test this logic using the case of the Mexican avocado industry with a staggered difference-in-differences design and find that trade liberalization throughout the 2010s has a significant negative effect on cartel-related homicides compared to other violence-prone areas. Robust qualitative evidence highlighting the emergence of self-defense groups to deter criminal actors in the avocado industry supports the vigilante mechanism. By using a unique empirical case to test a novel mechanism, this article therefore contributes to the literature on the consequences of trade liberalization on organized crime. In Chapter 3, "Not So Sweet: External Price Shocks, State Capacity, and Violence from Madagascar’s Vanilla Industry," I explore this phenomenon in the context of shifts in the price and demand of Malagasy vanilla by posing the following question: to what extent do adjustments to Western consumer markets drive cycles of crime and civil resistance in areas of virtually no state capacity? As Chapter 2 explores, an expanding literature holds that shocks to labor-intensive industries lead to a decrease in crime and violence. However, these studies assume at least a nominal level of state capacity. In areas of little to no state capacity, there are no structures to protect those who gain and lose from an influx of capital. As such, I posit two hypotheses – first, a positive shock to labor-intensive commodities will lead to an increase of crime in areas most impacted by the shock; and second, an increase of crime will lead to an increase of vigilante violence to fill the power vacuum of the state. To test these conjectures, I leverage the case of the vanilla industry in Madagascar, which experienced a 12-fold increase in prices when Nestlè announced it would no longer use synthetic vanilla in 2015. I pursue a mixed-method approach by first introducing novel data on local crime in Madagascar. Using a synthetic control design, I find that the 2015 policy led to a strong positive effect on crime in vanilla-producing regions. I then use qualitative data from interviews with vanilla farmers to demonstrate that vigilante violence is on the rise as a form of retribution, protection, and justice. This research is significant because it explores an unique empirical case by introducing novel data on crime in an area where data availability is limited. Chapter 4, "Getting to the Hereafter: Variation in the Survival and Transformation of Pro-Government Militias," is a thematic parallel to the earlier studies in the dissertation on economic shocks and subsequent cycles of criminal and vigilante violence. It explores how socio-political shocks brought on by the end of conflict or crisis creates incentives for violent non-state actors to alter their group identity and behavior to adapt to the world around them. I specifically examine the conditions under which pro-government militias (PGMs) survive after they are meant to formally terminate; and, of those that survive, what explains the variation in the type of group they become. Using inductive theory-building, I hypothesize the role of six explanatory frameworks – organizational structure, power sharing, government relation, group identity, conflict characteristics, and state capacity. I test the effect of these six explanatory frameworks by developing a multi-methods program called the PGM Transformation Project, a quantitative and qualitative dataset accounting for the post-termination identities of 325 PGMs from 1982 to 2017. First, using a logistic regression, I find that two primary conditions driving PGM survival: group networks in terms of identity-based recruitment strategies, and ties to the state in terms of power-sharing measures. Second, using a multinomial logistic regression, I find that that organizational structure and state capacity dictate the conditions under which groups turn to local defense, politics, states forces, or counter-state operations. The contribution of this research is the advancement of an original data program accounting for the afterlife of PGMs, a novel resource for those studying the impact these actors have on the causes and consequences of political violence. I conclude in Chapter 5. In addition to suggesting limitations to my studies as well as avenues for future research, I discuss the collective implications of my research for theory, empirics, and policy. This dissertation speaks to the effect of varying levels of group organization and state capacity on the likelihood that different non-state groups will use violence as they adapt to large-scale shocks to the environment in which they operate. It investigates the multiple pathways groups may take to pursue such violence; in particular, it illuminate the various ways in which groups turn to vigilantism following economic or socio-political shocks. To understand these processes, I utilize a diverse set of data – from publicly-available government sources, from interviews conducted during fieldwork, and from a novel hand-collected dataset – to test how violent non-state actors adapt to the world around them.