Side-Switching as State-Building: the Case of Russian-Speaking Militias in Eastern Ukraine

Why do some militias bandwagon with the state during a civil war while others resist state authority? A formal model highlighting the role of material incentives treats militia commanders as rent-seekers competing for security sector jobs run by civilians. Western donors can send aid to inflate the size of the pie that civilians distribute to militia commanders. Our key result is a partial incorporation equilibrium by which jointly-sustainable strategies selected by a minimum winning coalition of battalion commanders maximize their share of rents. Battalion commanders outside this coalition do best by remaining outside the state. We evaluate the model using an analytic narrative of contemporary Ukraine – a hard case for our theory since ideology and ethnicity play an important role in most standard accounts of the conflict. Analysis of a volunteer battalion incorporation dataset, results from a survey of 64 Ukrainian volunteer battalion members, and a short discussion of the Azov Battalion suggest the salience of intra-Ukrainian distributional politics to militia commanders’ incorporation strategies.