Afterword: A Roadmap for the Study of Paramilitaries: Explaining Variations of Violence, Gendered Militias, and Demobilization

Political scientists have long struggled to identify, quantify, or explain socio-economic and structural violence and to understand its relationship to physical violence. These four articles reflect both the deep and apparently constitutive ties paramilitary forces have to local, national, and international economies, providing a number of provocative hypotheses regarding the potential for demobilization in contexts of particular economic arrangements such as illicit economies or the widespread use of patronage systems to distribute limited welfare state goods.