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Vigilantes and the State: Understanding Violence Through a Security Assemblages Approach Rebecca Tapscott Article Vigilantes and the State: Understanding Violence through a Security Assemblages Approach Rebecca Tapscott The notion that states pursue a monopoly over the use of force rings increasingly hollow. From vigilantes that patrol the United States’ southern border, to thugs for hire in China, states are characterized by non-state violent actors. These trends are more pronounced in comparatively lower-capacity states. Employing the concept of “security assemblages,” I propose that it is crucial to consider historically embedded relations among violent actors and institutions in order to understand their socio-political role and implications for state authority. This approach offers three insights: first, in low-capacity states, violence is not zero-sum. Rather, it is assembled among diverse actors, which each have historically embedded comparative advantages. Second, therefore, state efforts to monopolize violence should be taken as an empirical question rather than an assumption grounding analysis. Third, relationships between violent actors occur in thick institutional environments, meaning that violent actors, including state actors and institutions, often must act under significant constraints. To illustrate these points, I conduct a mixed-methods nested study of vigilantes in Uganda, finding that vigilantes are more common where other authorities are present, and are more helpful when other authorities are also more helpful. Focusing on dynamics between vigilantes and police, I pinpoint their historically distinct roles: the police were established as a colonial-era institution to suppress political dissent, while vigilantes have long been socially embedded actors tasked with everyday security provision. Thus, in this case, police and vigilantes are not substitutes; instead they play distinct and complementary roles. he notion that states pursue a monopoly over the use Klux Klan to Kenosha. In Russia, criminal fraternities, of force rings increasingly hollow. Even states with racketeering gangs, and war veterans operate as violent T ff the greatest violent capacity worldwide o er evi- entrepreneurs (Volkov 2002). In China, local govern- dence to the contrary. In the United States, a strong ments employ “thugs” to enforce unpopular policies while tradition of militias and vigilantism casts a shadow over evading responsibility (Ong 2018). These dynamics are the state’s history from the frontiers of the “Wild West” further pronounced in states with comparatively limited to its Southern border with Mexico, and from the Ku capacity—countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, and South Africa are beset by vigilantism, private security companies, gangs, and parastatal security groups (Willis A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided 2015;Jaffrey 2020; Marks, Shearing, and Wood 2009). by the author precedes the References section. Especially in low-capacity states—where governments are neither meaningfully absent nor have the ability to Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: convincingly assert that they are the only game in town— https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ONU9NB governments may have no choice but to collaborate with a diverse range of informal and non-state violent actors Rebecca Tapscott is an Ambizione Fellow and Lecturer at the (Ahram 2011; Carey, Mitchell, and Lowe 2013). Scholars Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the Graduate seeking to understand how the presence of non-state violent Institute in Geneva, and a visiting fellow at the Firoz Lalji actors impacts on state authority and security outcomes Centre on Africa at the London School of Economics and the have widely recognized that their informal and fluid nature Department Politics and International Relations at the Uni- requires contextualized inquiry focused on the quality of versity of Edinburgh ([email protected]). violence that actors can deploy, rather than the quantity She is the author of Arbitrary States: Social Control and (Mukhopadhyay 2014;Reno2011; Staniland 2017). Modern Authoritarianism in Museveni’sUganda(Oxford I extend these insights to propose that, especially in low- University Press, 2021). capacity states, it is crucial to examine the quality of doi:10.1017/S1537592721001134 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the same Creative Commons licence is included and the original work is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use. 1 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.40, on 27 Sep 2021 at 00:04:08, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592721001134 Article | Vigilantes and the State violence from the vantage point of historically embedded the institution of the Uganda police derives from British relations among violent actors and institutions. By low- colonial intervention, and is structured to help the state capacity states, I mean those “incapable of fulfilling the control society by repressing collective action and political fundamental tasks of modern states—monopolizing vio- claim-making. Vigilantes, in contrast, are an outgrowth of lence in a given territory and providing basic services to long-standing societal responses to local insecurities, and their citizens” (Chowdhury 2018, 2). In contrast to high- have evolved into a comparatively fragile and locally capacity states, which can choose whether or not to embedded institution squeezed between the state’s secur- tolerate violence organized outside the state, low-capacity ity apparatuses and local social orders. Vigilantes are often states often have fewer options for whom to collaborate tasked with managing day-to-day security concerns of with and how. In such contexts, violent actors’ particular ordinary people and addressing low-level crimes; the police and historical characteristics shape their comparative focus on high-level crimes and regime maintenance. Vigil- advantage in regard to the type of violence they use, antes can also function as an intermediary between the how, and to what ends, with enduring implications for police—seen as a foot-soldier of the repressive state—and state authority and the provision of security. Take, for society, both helping the police better target local inter- example, the British colonial practice of forming ethni- ventions and using the institution of the police to remove cized militaries that continues to have destabilizing effects “bad elements” from the community. today in countries ranging from Myanmar to Zambia To elucidate these points, I work with the concept of (Harkness 2016; Ray 2013). security assemblages, which is one of several approaches My intervention offers three contributions to concep- recently advanced to study violence as qualitative and tualizing the so-called monopoly on the use of force in low- relational. An assemblages approach studies the capacity states: first, control over violence should not be co-functioning of multiple, contingent, and heterogenous seen as zero-sum. Said differently, in these contexts, when elements, decentering the state/non-state binary to ask: non-state actors claim to use violence authoritatively, it what modes of coercion are available to different actors, does not necessarily undermine or contradict the state’s how are they complementary or contradictory, and what claim to do so—sometimes this can actually reinforce state type of security environment does the “assemblage” col- authority. It is therefore helpful to view the organization of lectively produce (Abrahamsen and Williams 2010; violence in low-capacity states as assembled among diverse Higate and Utas 2017; Müller 2015)? Analytically, an actors, each with their own historically embedded com- assemblages approach places state institutions on equal parative advantages. Second, such states do not necessarily footing to non-state actors; their position and importance seek to maximize control over violence, but instead select- in a security assemblage must be determined empirically. ively prioritize spaces, sectors, and populations of interest. This framework does not make a normative claim as to Third, these decisions occur in already thick institutional whether assemblages improve or worsen security; assem- environments, meaning that violent actors, including the blages can be coherent or fragmented with case-specific institutions of the state, are often constrained in terms of security outcomes. who they work with and how. I first examine scholarship on vigilantism to show how To demonstrate these points, I examine the relationship conceptions of state control over violence have evolved between state and non-state violent actors in Uganda, a from a concern with violence as quantitative and zero-sum state with comparatively limited institutional capacity. to a view of violence as qualitative and relational. Vigil- Focusing on the relationship between vigilantes and the antes offer a valuable window into these relational dynam- police, the findings show that vigilantes are more common ics because they sit at the boundary between presumed where other public authorities
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