Irregular armed forces and their role in politics and state formation / edited by Diane E. Davis, Anthony W. Pereira.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contemporary challenges and historical reflections on the study of militaries, states, and politics / Diane E. Davis -- Armed force, regimes, and contention in Europe since 1650 / Charles Tilly -- Limited war and limited states / Miguel Angel Centeno -- Where do all the soldiers go? : veterans and the politics of demobilization / Alec Campbell -- Military mobilization and the transformation of property relationships : wars that defined the Japanese style of capitalism / Eiko Ikegami -- Send a thief to catch a thief : state-building and the employment of irregular military formations in mid-nineteenth-century Greece / Achilles Batalas.

Reform and reaction : paramilitary groups in contemporary Colombia / Mauricio Romero -- Policing the people, building the state : the police-military nexus in Argentina, 1880-1945 / Laura Kalmanowiecki -- War-making and U.S. state formation : mobilization, demobilization, and the inherent ambiguities of federalism / Susan M. Browne -- Politics is thicker than blood : Union and Confederate veterans in the U.S. House of Representatives in the late nineteenth century / Richard Franklin Bensel -- Police municipale and the formation of the French state / Lizabeth Zack -- Domestic militarization in a transnational perspective : patriotic and militaristic youth mobilization in France and Indochina, 1940-1945 / Anne Raffin -- Changing nature of warfare and the absence of state-building in West Africa / William Reno -- Ghost of Vietnam : America confronts the new world disorder / Ian Roxborough -- Armed forces, coercive monopolies, and changing patterns of state formation and violence / Anthony W. Pereira.

Print version record.

Annotation This book examines a variety of comparative and historical experiences in which irregular armed forces (ranging from militias, paramilitaries, guerrillas, bandits, mercenaries, vigilantes, and police forces to armed veteran groups) have struggled against or on behalf of national states. The study hopes to raise questions about the new political relevance of these types of armed forces. It considers the conditions under which they are more significant than conventional military personnel in supplanting or undermining states, and their broader role in national political development.

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