Social Organization in Regular and Irregular Armed Forces

Session Submission Type: Virtual Created Panel

Session Description

The effectiveness of armed forces does not come from material capabilities alone. The papers in this panel look deep inside combatant organizations, from great power militaries to rebel outfits, to understand how dynamics of training, recruitment, hierarchy, and social identity shape what happens on the battlefield. They each present novel evidence, from fine-grained metrics of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), to datasets of the ethnic composition of regional militaries and civil-military relations in rebel armies around the world. Hundman and Lind assess the potential performance of the PLA, arguing that “raw power is not synonymous with effectiveness on the battlefield.” After examining a broad set of external evaluations and Chinese-language sources, they find that social factors, including corruption, domestic politics, and inexperience present major obstacles for the PLA. Worsnop and Cowan turn away from state armies to rebel forces. They present an original dataset of the “civil-military balance” within these insurgent armies, measuring factors such as recruitment practices, hierarchical structures, ideological rigidity, and ethnic composition. And they show how such factors may be important in explaining aspects of performance ranging from cohesion and discipline to the targeting of civilians. Finally, Johnson and Thurber explore specifically on the implications of the ethnic composition of militaries. Using new data on the ethnic composition of militaries in Africa and the Middle East, they show that greater co-ethnicity between the members of those forces and participants in mass uprisings increases the likelihood of defections. Together, the panel advances an emerging field within security studies that takes seriously the social and organizational underpinnings of fighting forces.

Sub Unit

• Division 19: International Security 

Individual Presentations

• Can China Fight? Assessing the Battlefield Effectiveness of the PLA - Eric Hundman, NYU Shanghai; Jennifer M. Lind, Dartmouth College

• From Mao to the Islamic State: The Insurgent Civil-Military Balance - Alec Worsnop, University of Maryland; Michael Cowan, University of Maryland, College Park

• Ethnicity and Defection During Uprisings from Below - Paul Lorenzo Johnson, Independent researcher; Ches Thurber, Northern Illinois University

Chair

• Jason Lyall Dartmouth College

Discussants

• Jonathan Obert Amherst College

• Ches Thurber Northern Illinois University