Gentle Warlords: The Potential for Violent Non-State Actors to Provide Stability

This paper provides a heuristic to determine the potential effects of violent non-state actors (VNSAs) on stability. It classifies VNSAs by type, categorizing groups as either clientelist, communal, or corporate. It finds that corporate VNSAs, those organized around a shared but non-ascriptive identity, such as membership in a guild or society, generally behave in a manner that is most likely to create stability. This hypothesis is supported through an in-depth examination of the Civil Defense Forces, a corporate VNSA that played a crucial role during the 1991-2002 Sierra Leone Civil War