Description
Recent scholarship on non-state armed groups (NSAGs) concentrates on their emergence and impacts, examining their recruitment tactics, motivations, and impact upon nation states. The majority of this scholarship studies groups in the Global South, arguing NSAGs in such settings are detrimental to social and cohesion and to effective governance. However, there is less focus on armed groups in Western states, despite a long history of NSAG action in many such states. In this paper, we call for provincializing the study of NSAGs by examining their histories and impacts in the West. Drawing upon our ethnographic fieldwork, including interviews with key stakeholders, as well as on textual and visual analysis of NSAG-produced resources in the United States and Northern Ireland, we focus specifically on the modes by which NSAGs work to legitimate themselves as part of the political structure in Western democracies. We argue NSAGs strategically utilize one or more modes of legitimization-popularization, formal recognition, and deputization/paramilitarization-to gain authority for their antidemocratic actions. We conclude by critically reflecting upon these modes of legitimization of armed groups in relation to ongoing concerns about democratic backsliding in the United States and other similar democracies.
