Unpacking Ethnic Stacking: The Uses and Abuses of Identity in Security Forces

• In Event: Paramilitaries, Praetorians, Police: Designing & Deploying State Security Forces

Abstract

The recruitment of co-ethnics into security forces by political elites, a practice commonly referred to as ethnic stacking, has recently received considerable attention from scholars. The practice of ethnic stacking has been linked to an array of mostly negative outcomes, including repression, high levels of political violence and low levels of democratization. In this paper, we problematize the notion of ethnic stacking, highlighting differences in how the term is defined, measured, and scholarly assessments of the causal mechanisms at work. Drawing on empirical examples in Sudan, Tunisia, and Nigeria, we argue that 1) ethnic stacking is not one coherent concept, but several related concepts that encompass the recruitment of soldiers by elites on the basis of shared political, and not just ethnic, identity; 2) identity based stacking is used by elites to serve a variety of distinct civil-military functions, including coup-proofing, repression, and war-fighting; and 3) the outcomes associated with ethnic stacking are mediated by which identities leaders choose as a basis for stacking, which security force institutions are stacked, where in the hierarchy the stacking takes place, and whether security forces that share political identity with elites are merely privileged or whether those that do not share the same identity as elites are completely barred from service.

Authors

• Nathaniel Allen

• Risa A. Brooks, Marquette University