Abstract
What explains cooperation between armed groups? Challenging existing literature that assumes armed groups must be similar or not cooperate at all, I argue that explicit differences are key to some cooperation. Comparative advantage explains why rebels and criminals—organizations that typically eschew collaboration—cooperate to produce violence. This article introduces “black market white labeling”—cooperation that emerges when one actor buys an illicit good or service from another and re-brands it as their own. To demonstrate this phenomenon and the conditions under which it occurs, I focus on kidnapping, an underexplored but common form of armed group violence. Drawing on 113 interviews with Colombian kidnappers and hostage recovery personnel from Colombia and the United States, I theorize the conditions under which rebels “outsource” violence to criminal gangs or produce it “in house.” This article explains the organizational dynamics of rebel-criminal cooperation that perpetuate violence against civilians.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Journal | Comparative Political Studies |
| DOIs | |
| State | Accepted/In press - 2024 |
Funding
The author would like to thank Elizabeth Acorn, Viviana Arias, Reynell Badillo, C\u00E9sar Caballero, Lucho Celis, Bailee Donahue, Alex Downes, Fiona Cunningham, Elizabeth Grasmeder, Meg Guliford, Francisco Guti\u00E9rrez San\u00EDn, Michael Joseph, Oliver Kaplan, Melissa Lee, Jason Lyall, Hilary Matfess, Theo Milonopoulos, Eduardo Moncada, Daniel Pike, Jonathan Pike, Angelika Rettberg, Adam Saxton, J. Seawright, Michael Weintraub, Rachel Whitlark, Elisabeth Wood, Sherry Zaks, three anonymous reviewers, and the exceptional editors of Comparative Political Studies for their invaluable comments, as well as interview participants in Colombia and Washington, D.C. for their time and insights. Earlier drafts of this manuscript benefited enormously from feedback during presentations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison International Relations Colloquium, the Perry World House Seminar Series at the University of Pennsylvania, the 2022 and 2023 International Studies Association conference, the Workshop on International Politics at the University of Chicago, and the \u201CPolitical Violence in Comparative Perspective: Beyond Regionalism\u201D workshop at Yale University. Research for this project was conducted with the support from the United States Institute of Peace and Minerva Research Initiative, the World Politics and Statecraft Fellowship from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the George Washington University, and the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation and United States Institute of Peace.
Keywords
- civil war
- Colombia
- cooperation
- crime
- kidnapping
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
