Militias, coercive brokers and public authority

The Centre for the Study of Illicit Economies, Violence and Development (CIVAD) at SOAS, and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), are organising a series of six seminars which will bring together academics, students, policy makers and practitioners with an interest and engagement in questions of illicit economies, violence and development.

This seminar explores the entanglements between para state armed groups (PAGs) illicit economies, organised crimes and formal politics. It will challenge dominant narratives on PAGs, which see as them a temporary response to governance deficits, or as automatically apolitical and criminal actors. It will discuss the role of PAGs as an embedded feature of many frontier regions, in which they act as ‘coercive brokers’ who mediate between different actors, scales and jurisdictions.

Chair: Vanda Felbab-Brown (Brookings Institution) (TBC)

Panellists: Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín (National University of Colombia) and Antonio Giustozzi (RUSI)