Paramilitarism represents a common mode of regime response to insurgency. Two competing perspectives, the benevolent and the critical, offer differing predictions about paramilitary behaviors and public response. The study maps out the theoretical issues and conducts an empirical analysis of counterinsurgent paramilitarism in the Philippines in 1987-88 using newspaper data. Four dimensions of paramilitarism are examined: mobilization, constitutionalism, order-maintenance, and reactive public behavior. The results offer more support for the critical than for the benevolent perspective. The data reveal elite sponsorship and deviant social composition; perceptions of unconstitutionality and illegal behaviors; disruptive and abusive activities; and far more anti- than pro-paramilitary sentiment and political behavior. The findings hold true when specifications for sectoral spread, geography, paramilitary groups, and time are introduced. It is concluded that paramilitarism is a counterproductive counterinsurgent strategy.
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