Abstract
Over the past 15 years, paramilitarism has become a key area of study in European history. Historians, political scientists and sociologists have examined various forms of paramilitary organizations and extreme violence in different geographical and historical contexts.
Pritchard and Drapac, historians at the University of Adelaide, position their book within this trend by examining paramilitarism during World War II and its aftermath. Though the topic is not new, the authors distinguish themselves by offering a new theoretical and methodological framework designed to overcome the dominant Resistance-Collaboration Paradigm (RCP). The RCP is too binary, the authors argue, and is influenced by political and moral concerns that jeopardize interpretive efforts. Furthermore, the RCP fails to consider the unitary dimension of paramilitary violence, by sharply distinguishing between politically motivated violence and various other forms of social violence – such as sexual, criminal and structural – with a substantial underestimation of the latter.
As an alternative, the authors propose a new model that they suggestively call the ‘Regimes of Violence Paradigm’ (RVP). Pritchard and Drapac have two goals. First, they seek to make paramilitarism an encompassing term that includes all forms of non-state violence. Second, they want to investigate the genesis of paramilitarism and how its features change over time. To do so, they suggest an interpretative model based on four regimes of violence: Civilian (type A), Authoritarian (type B), Paramilitarized (type C) and Shatter Zones (type D). This is not a static model, and the authors emphasize that the borders between the types are porous and that evolution from one type to another is common.
The potential for innovation is significant. For instance, the authors emphasize the transformative power of paramilitarism in shaping social relations, an interpretation primarily derived from the work of sociologist Siniša Malešević. Other important and innovative contributions concern the central role of gender, class, generation and religion in fostering paramilitarism. The RVP also has the advantage of situating WWII paramilitarism within a broader chronological framework, naturally emphasizing continuities and hybridizations. Most importantly, RVP treats paramilitarism as both a subject of study in its own right and as a lens through which to analyze other historical subjects.
Despite its many strengths, there are also some shortcomings that deserve to be outlined. First, the treatment of proponents of the RCP is somewhat cursory. Supporters of the RCP are rarely engaged in depth, and at times, Pritchard and Drapac seem slightly ungenerous, as when they claim that the RCP ‘ignores or glosses over the lives of the vast majority of people’ (p. 200). Second, RVP's main aim is to demonstrate the processes of radicalization that lead to paramilitarism. However, less attention is devoted to how societies exit paramilitarism. Although Chapter 7 addresses this topic, it merely shows that paramilitarism was largely a byproduct of war. This explanation is somewhat unsatisfactory and raises questions about the applicability of RVP to contexts other than WWII and the interwar period.
A third concern is more methodological in nature. The empirical foundation for RVP is a corpus of 13 biographies of paramilitaries who operated during the period under consideration. The sample is heterogeneous in terms of gender, type of perpetrator and geography, but the biographies are concise and lack in-depth details. More importantly, the authors adopt a deductive, top-down approach, and it is unclear why they chose these biographies over others. In other words, would their new interpretive paradigm have been demonstrated if they had taken other life experiences into consideration? I believe so, but presenting an a priori tailored sample raises doubts. More generally, a constant obsession with modelling and uniformity – sometimes bordering on determinism – pervades the entire book, leaving little room for the unpredictable and multifaceted nature of history.
All things considered, the authors’ effort to bridge distinct historiographical traditions, combine different methodological approaches and advance a fresh interpretive framework is commendable. In my view, it is also largely successful. Further empirical research and a more flexible, variable-geometry approach would likely help consolidate the authors’ argument and better capture the complexity of historical reality.
