Many armed groups create informal institutions to maintain social order during conflict. The remnants of these informal institutions form a key challenge for governments in postconflict societies in their attempts to reestablish themselves as credible state authorities. The persistence of paramilitary groups' informal "justice" systems in the form of so-called punishment attacks in Northern Ireland, more than twenty years on from the Good Friday Agreement, offers insights into the legacy of wartime institutions. We argue that armed actors can benefit from the social control wartime institutions grant them long after the conflict ends and both armed actors and civilians are socialized into relying on these institutions. Building on research on wartime institutions, criminal governance, and postwar state-building, we examine how the informal "justice" systems created during the Troubles (1968-98) remain at the fringes of postwar society, drawing on historical works, interviews with stakeholders, geocoded data on "punishment attacks," and survey data.My mummy visited me and said "Listen I've been talking to someone to try and sort it out to get someone to give you an easy shooting." I put my shoes on straight away and said "Yes, let's get it over and done with." … The first time they shot me I only moved a bit but the second time they shot me I was screaming. It went right through and hit my main artery. It busted my whole knee bone.

This forum provides an outlet for an assessment of research on the delegation of war to non-state armed groups in civil wars. Given the significant growth of studies concerned with this phenomenon over the last decade, this forum critically engages with the present state of the field. First, we canvass some of the most important theoretical developments to demonstrate the heterogeneity of the debate. Second, we expand on the theme of complexity and investigate its multiple facets as a window into pushing the debate forward. Third, we draw the contours of a future research agenda by highlighting some contemporary problems, puzzles, and challenges to empirical data collection. In essence, we seek to connect two main literatures that have been talking past each other: external support in civil wars and proxy warfare. The forum bridges this gap at a critical juncture in this new and emerging scholarship by offering space for scholarly dialogue across conceptual labels.

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