Rebel groups exhibit significant variation in their treatment of civilians, with profound humanitarian consequences. This book proposes a new theory of rebel behavior and cohesion based on the internal dynamics of rebel groups. Rebel groups are more likely to protect civilians and remain unified when rebel leaders can offer cash payments and credible future rewards to their top commanders. The leader's ability to offer incentives that allow local security to prevail depends on partnerships with external actors, such as diaspora communities and foreign governments. This book formalizes this theory and tests the implications through an in-depth look at the rebel groups involved in Liberia's civil war. The book also analyzes a micro-level dataset of crop area during Liberia's war, derived through remote sensing, and an original cross-national dataset of rebel groups.

This book 's radical theory of police argues that the police demand for order is a class order and a racialized and patriarchal order, by arguing that the police project, in order to fabricate and defend capitalist order,must patrol an imaginary line between society and nature, it must transform nature into inert matter made available for accumulation. Police don 't just patrol the ghetto or the Indian reservation, the thin blue line doesn 't just refer to a social order, rather police announce a general claim to domination--of labor and of nature. Police and police violence are modes of environment-making. This edited volume argues that any effort to understand racialized police violence is incomplete without a focus on the role of police in constituting and reinforcing patterns of environmental racism.

Rebel groups exhibit significant variation in their treatment of civilians, with profound humanitarian consequences. This dissertation proposes a new theory of rebel behavior and cohesion based on the internal dynamics of rebel groups. Rebel leaders have incentives to provide security, but are often unable to prevent group members from abusing civilians. Leaders exert effective control over their troops when they can offer cash payments and credible future rewards to their top commanders. Leaders who cannot offer these incentives allow their forces to loot locals in exchange for a minimal level of loyalty. The leader's ability to offer incentives that allow local security to prevail depends on partnerships with external actors such as diaspora communities and foreign governments. When these patrons have a stake in the group's success, they are motivated to supply financial resources to qualified, trusted leaders. Other patrons have goals that conflict with those of the rebel client. These patrons exert leverage over the rebels by supporting low quality leaders and withholding resources that could strengthen leader control, resulting in more abusive, faction-prone groups. The type of partnership available depends on factors beyond the group's control. The dissertation formalizes this theory and tests the implications in various ways, using an original cross-national dataset of rebel groups, 1980-2003, as well as a micro-level dataset of crop area during Liberia's war, derived through remote sensing. The dissertation also traces the model's logic through a detailed analysis of Liberia's rebel groups, based on fourteen months of fieldwork and interviews with nearly all surviving rebel leaders and top commanders who participated in Liberia's war, 1989-2003.

The Nature of Police explores the everyday practices of police and policing as modes of violence in the fabrication of social order.

The most violent places in the world today are not at war. More people have died in Mexico in recent years than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. These parts of the world are instead buckling under a maelstrom of gangs, organized crime, political conflict, corruption, and state brutality. Such devastating violence can feel hopeless, yet some places—from Colombia to the Republic of Georgia—have been able to recover. In this powerfully argued and urgent book, Rachel Kleinfeld examines why some democracies, including our own, are crippled by extreme violence and how they can regain security. Drawing on fifteen years of study and firsthand field research—interviewing generals, former guerrillas, activists, politicians, mobsters, and law enforcement in countries around the world—Kleinfeld tells the stories of societies that successfully fought seemingly ingrained violence and offers penetrating conclusions about what must be done to build governments that are able to protect the lives of their citizens. Taking on existing literature and popular theories about war, crime, and foreign intervention, A Savage Order is a blistering yet inspiring investigation into what makes some countries peaceful and others war zones, and a blueprint for what we can do to help.

This book integrates the problem of violence into a larger framework, showing how economic and political behavior are closely linked.

In Ordering Violence, Paul Staniland advances a broad approach to armed politics—bringing together governments, insurgents, militias, and armed political parties in a shared framework—to argue that governments' perception of the ideological threats posed by armed groups drive their responses and interactions. Staniland combines a unique new dataset of state-group armed orders in India, Pakistan, Burma/Myanmar, and Sri Lanka with detailed case studies from the region to explore when and how this model of threat perception provides insight into patterns of repression, collusion, and mutual neglect across nearly seven decades. Instead of straightforwardly responding to the material or organizational power of armed groups, Staniland finds, regimes assess how a group's politics align with their own ideological projects. Explaining, for example, why governments often use extreme repression against weak groups even while working with or tolerating more powerful armed actors, Ordering Violence provides a comprehensive overview of South Asia's complex armed politics, embedded within an analytical framework that can also speak broadly beyond the subcontinent.