IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ctwqxx/v40y2019i3p471-487.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ethnicity and conflict severity: accounting for the effect of co-ethnic and non-ethnic militias on battlefield lethality

Author

Listed:
  • Huseyn Aliyev
  • Emil A. Souleimanov

Abstract

How does the presence of armed pro-regime groups affect conflict lethality? This study examines the relationship between ethnicity, militia violence and conflict lethality in civil wars. We emphasise that differences in whether pro-regime militias were recruited in accordance with their ethnicity or not are critical in their influence upon conflict lethality, which we estimate in battlefield deaths. To that end, we categorise militias into groups recruited on their ethnic basis (co-ethnic militias) and those recruited regardless of their ethnicity (non-ethnic militias). We hypothesise that conflicts are more lethal when non-ethnic militias are involved. We link higher number of battle-deaths in conflicts with non-ethnic militias with the militia use of one-sided violence against civilians. Co-ethnic militias – that is militias recruited from the same ethnicity as rebels – are deployed amongst their co-ethnics and therefore tend to target civilians less than non-ethnic militias. This militia–civilian relationship has direct impact on conflict severity. To test our hypotheses we conduct global statistical analysis of 84 intrastate conflicts from 1989 to 2014.

Suggested Citation

  • Huseyn Aliyev & Emil A. Souleimanov, 2019. "Ethnicity and conflict severity: accounting for the effect of co-ethnic and non-ethnic militias on battlefield lethality," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(3), pages 471-487, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:40:y:2019:i:3:p:471-487
    DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2018.1545568
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2018.1545568
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01436597.2018.1545568?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:40:y:2019:i:3:p:471-487. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ctwq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.