TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2017//
TI  - Means to an end: pro-government militias as a predictive indicator of strategic mass killing
JO  - Conflict management and peace science
A1  - Koren, Ore
SP  - 461
EP  - 484
VL  - 34
IS  - 5
N2  - 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.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0738-8942
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0738894215600385
ID  - ref1
ER  -