Dynamics of deadly loyalist militia violence in Northern Ireland*

Abstract

This project examines the dynamics of deadly violence by loyalist militias during Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Although the Troubles contained the typical civil conflict rivalry between an armed rebel group (Provisional Irish Republican Army) and the armed forces of the state, most of the killings conducted in the name of the pro-union cause were carried out by loyalist paramilitary groups. The loyalist militias stand out in that the vast majority of their targets for violence are civilians, indicating repressive goals. In this paper, I conduct time-series analysis (via vector autoregression) of killings from 1969-2001 to empirically examine explanations of militia violence. In contrast to prevailing explanations of militia violence globally, in Northern Ireland, deadly militia violence does not exhibit an empirical pattern consistent with either complementarity or substitutability with the state’s deadly violence. Instead, it primarily exhibits a reciprocal relationship with insurgent deadly violence, while its relationship to state violence is more consistent with a pattern of strategic avoidance. I also find that loyalists significantly escalated violence during early attempts at conflict resolution by the state. This project enhances our understanding of how states, insurgents, and militias interact to produce particular forms of violence.