Coercive Brokerage: The Paramilitary-Organized Crime Nexus in Borderlands and Frontiers Working Paper I

January 2024

Research Paper 26

Dr Patrick Meehan, SOAS University of London

Professor Jonathan Goodhand, SOAS University of London

SOC ACE Project: Para-statal armed groups, illicit economies and organised crime

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PUBLICATION SUMMARY

This research paper is the first of a three-part series exploring the nexus between paramilitaries, illicit economies and organised crime. It advances a conceptual framework for analysing the nexus in borderland and frontier regions and outlines how this concept advances the growing body of recent literature on militias and paramilitaries. We challenge two dominant policy narratives around paramilitaries: first, the idea that these organisations are symptomatic of state breakdown and flourish in marginal spaces suffering from ‘governance deficits’. Second, the idea that paramilitaries can primarily be understood as apolitical, predatory and self-enriching actors, driven by economic motives, and operating outside formal political systems.

In critiquing these narratives, we develop an alternative approach that studies how paramilitaries become embedded in enduring systems of rule in borderlands shaped by protracted conflict and illicit economies. At the centre of our approach is the concept of ‘coercive brokerage’ which provides a lens for exploring how paramilitaries play a crucial role in shaping power relations by mediating between different scales, jurisdictions and policy domains.

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