ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how state–militia relations affect human rights abuses. It documents patterns in the use of state-run or “official” militias, which are a recognized part of the state’s security sector, and argues that the official status of these militias means that their members face different incentives and constraints in the use of violence than militias with less formal links to the government. A statistical analysis of human rights violations shows that both informal and official militias are associated with higher rates of human rights violations than semi-official militias; however, while the association between informal militias and violations is driven by agent-centric violations, that between official militias and violations is driven by higher rates of political imprisonment. The chapter joins a growing number of studies that find that different forms of human rights violations have different causes.
