Means to an end: Pro-government militias as a predictive indicator of strategic mass killing 1

Abstract

Forecasting models of state-led mass killing are limited in their use of structural indicators, despite a large body of research that emphasizes the importance of agency and security repertoires in conditioning political violence. I seek to overcome these limitations by developing a theoretical and statistical framework that highlights the advantages of using pro-government militias (PGMs) as a predictive indicator in forecasting models of state-led mass killing. I argue that PGMs can lower the potential costs associated with mass killing for a regime faced with an internal threat, and might hence “tip the balance” in its favor. In estimating a series of statistical models and their receiver–operator characteristic curves to evaluate this hypothesis globally for the years 1981–2007, focusing on 270 internal threat episodes, I find robust support for my expectations: including PGM indicators in state-led mass killing models significantly improves their predictive strength. Moreover, these results hold even when coefficient estimates produced by in-sample data are used to predict state-led mass killing in cross-validation and out-of-sample data for the years 2008–2013. This study hence provides an introductory demonstration of the potential advantages of including security repertoires, in addition to structural factors, in forecasting models.