Recruitment into Armed Groups in Colombia: A Survey of Demobilized Fighters

The role of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards in committing violence during combat: A cross‐sectional study with former combatants in the DR Congo

“…This is in line with other studies, which reported that aggressive behavior was reinforced by extrinsic rewards (e.g., Humphreys & Weinstein, 2006;Kruger & Nesse, 2004;Weekes-Shackelford et al, 2003;Weinstein, 2007) and intrinsic rewards (e.g., Arjona & Kalyvas, 2012;Wessells, 1997) or both (Haer et al, 2013). This is in line with other studies, which reported that aggressive behavior was reinforced by extrinsic rewards (e.g., Humphreys & Weinstein, 2006;Kruger & Nesse, 2004;Weekes-Shackelford et al, 2003;Weinstein, 2007) and intrinsic rewards (e.g., Arjona & Kalyvas, 2012;Wessells, 1997) or both (Haer et al, 2013).…”

“…In line with our hypotheses, we found a significant association between both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards with types of committed offenses in our sample of combatants. This is in line with other studies, which reported that aggressive behavior was reinforced by extrinsic rewards (e.g., Humphreys & Weinstein, 2006;Kruger & Nesse, 2004;Weekes-Shackelford et al, 2003;Weinstein, 2007) and intrinsic rewards (e.g., Arjona & Kalyvas, 2012;Wessells, 1997) or both (Haer et al, 2013).…”

Militias in Civil Wars

“…In other words, the notion that pro-and counterinsurgent armed groups recruit from mutually exclusive social strata or different ''types'' of prospective recruits could be incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Instead, these studies suggest that preferences are heterogeneous across recruits within both ''camps,'' that multiple types of incentives may overlap at the individual level (Humphreys and Weinstein 2008), that endogenous dynamics are central (Arjona and Kalyvas 2012; see also Kalyvas 2008b), and that individual preferences may be transformed through the very experience of being part of a given armed group (Gutiérrez Sanin 2008).…”

“…The scarce existing evidence on the determinants of individuals' participation in insurgent and counterinsurgent armed groups shows that, first, social background variables are poor predictors, which runs contrary to what the extrapolation of classic grievance or opportunity cost arguments would suggest. Second, both pro-and counterinsurgent mobilization are driven by processes that often are endogenous to civil war (Humphreys and Weinstein 2008;Arjona and Kalyvas 2012;Kalyvas 2008b). In other words, the notion that pro-and counterinsurgent armed groups recruit from mutually exclusive social strata or different ''types'' of prospective recruits could be incomplete at best, misleading at worst.…”

“…Carey, Mitchell, and Lowe (2013) find that pro-government militias, which only constitute a subset of this type of armed group, were present in 81 percent of all country-years affected by civil war between 1981 and 2007. Although militias emerge in most conflicts, rarely are they part of comparative studies of civil wars, be they empirical or theoretical (but see exceptions, Humphreys and Weinstein 2008;Gutiérrez Sanín 2008;Arjona and Kalyvas 2012). Recent studies have underlined the fragmented nature of rebel groups in civil wars (Pearlman 2009;Pearlman and Cunningham 2012;Cunningham, Bakke, and Seymour 2012;Staniland 2012;Kenny 2010;Christia 2012) and have called for a revision of the usual dichotomy between state actors and insurgents (Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan 2009).…”