The article examines how civilians living under the rule of rebels, militias, and criminal groups judge them, and what makes one-armed group viewed as more legitimate than another. Studying these dynamics is quite hard: areas with competition among multiple armed groups are violent and remote.
To understand them, De Bruin and her co-authors conducted face-to-face surveys with 2,400 respondents in 54 contested municipalities across Colombia. The surveys included experiments which helped overcome methodological challenges and reduce social desirability bias. The article shows that armed groups respect local norms when making rules to govern behavior; incorporate community leaders into their decision-making; provide services such as roads, dispute mediation, or medicine; and that minimize violence when punishing rule violations are judged less harshly than armed groups that do not.
The findings suggest that how armed groups and governments build legitimacy differs. While state-led economic aid often struggles to boost support, non-state armed groups received substantial dividends from offering services. The finding that the provision of a wide variety of goods and services reduces negative perceptions of armed groups also suggests that the bar to “out-compete” rivals may be relatively low.
