Why States Use Militias: Regime Security, Delegation, and Political Cover

What The Authors Ask

Sabine C. Carey, Michael P. Colaresi, and Neil J. Mitchell investigate why many governments arm irregular, state-linked militias even when the state is not failing. The authors challenge the common assumption that militias mainly signal state breakdown or are precursors to formal militaries, and ask what strategic purposes these groups serve for incumbent governments.

Why This Matters

Militias appear across democracies and autocracies—from India and Thailand to Libya—raising questions about how states manage violence, protect leaders, and remain accountable. Understanding why governments create or tolerate militias matters for theories of civil-military relations, regime durability, and for international actors concerned with governance and human rights.

How The Study Approaches The Question

The authors build on delegation theory to specify three incentives for governments to sponsor militias outside regular armed forces: (1) substitute control when regular forces are unreliable and the regime fears coups, (2) complementarity that increases efficiency and local information for security tasks, and (3) political distancing that shields the regime from blame for controversial uses of force. To test these arguments, Carey, Colaresi, and Mitchell use cross-national data covering 1981–2005 and analyze variation in state-linked militias across countries and time.

Key Findings

• Empirical evidence supports a mixture of incentives: militias are associated with concerns about regime security and the reliability of regular forces.
• Militia presence also corresponds to complementarities with state forces—roles where militias can provide local knowledge or cost advantages.
• The pattern of formation suggests militias serve an intentional governance role, not only a symptom of state failure.

Implications For Policy and Scholarship

The authors argue that militarized delegation raises distinct accountability challenges: militias can insulate governments from responsibility for repression, complicate oversight, and create durable parallel security structures. These findings reframe militias as a strategic element of many governments' security portfolios and invite renewed attention from scholars and international actors to the governance effects of state-linked irregular forces.