Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network

Host: Leo Bader

Guest: Kolby Hanson, Professor of Government and Global South Asian Studies, Wesleyan University

Episode: Ordinary Rebels: Rank-and-File Militants Between War and Peace (Oxford UP, 2025)

Date: September 28, 2025

Brief Overview

This episode delves into Kolby Hanson’s new book Ordinary Rebels: Rank-and-File Militants Between War and Peace, exploring what happens when states tolerate, rather than fully repress or fight, armed groups within their borders. Through extensive fieldwork and hundreds of interviews in Northeast India and Sri Lanka, Hanson investigates how such "toleration" transforms militant groups' composition, internal organization, and behavior, particularly focusing on ordinary recruits rather than leaders. The conversation sheds new light on how intractable violence might be managed and how lasting disorder, rather than resolution, often becomes the "durable" norm.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genesis and Motivation for the Book

• Background: Hanson's interest grew from studying persistent, simmering intrastate conflicts (Myanmar, NE India), where periods of "toleration” (states allowing armed groups to operate openly) interrupted cycles of intense fighting.
• Central Puzzle: Many theorists argue peace requires restoration of the state’s monopoly on force. Yet, Hanson repeatedly encountered cases where governments traded “order” for calm, letting militants operate if they ceased fighting the state.
  • [03:03]: "The trade off for the government is essentially if you stop fighting us, at least actively fighting government forces, you can operate and recruit relatively freely... It's buying peace with essentially free rent." — Kolby Hanson

2. Patterns of Toleration and Comparative Cases

• Global Phenomenon: Similar patterns found globally—in frozen post-Soviet conflicts, the Philippines, Myanmar, Sri Lanka (Tamil Tigers' 2002-06 ceasefire), and India.
• Key Focus: Detailed studies in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam (India), and Sri Lanka.

3. How Toleration Changes Armed Groups

• Recruitment Dynamics:
  • Periods of toleration attract more recruits, including those with weaker ideological ties or peripheral connections.
  • The appeal often lies in improved living conditions, not just ideology or material wealth.
  • [07:35]: "More people joined, but it also opens up the doors to all sorts of people who have more peripheral connections... The result is that an armed group can be larger but also a little more difficult to manage." — Kolby Hanson
• Moderation Triumphs:
  • Toleration empowers moderate factions willing to accept political deals (e.g., autonomy), making them more attractive to new recruits and supporters.
  • The moderates begin to outcompete hardliners, changing the internal balance of power.
  • [10:47]: "[During toleration] moderates have more to offer... moderate splinter groups might have more success breaking away..."

4. Armed Groups as Social Welfare Organizations

• Provision of Welfare:
  • Militants, especially in periods of toleration, often provide basic needs to their rank-and-file (shelter, meals, minor payments), creating a social safety net.
  • [11:58]: "To these new recruits, it's just a job... they might care about the movement, but not enough to risk their lives or comfort." — Kolby Hanson

5. Methodological Choices: Focusing on the Rank-and-File

• Why Not Leaders?:
  • Recent scholarship emphasizes leadership, group unity, and discipline, but often skips over why ordinary recruits join or how their preferences impact group dynamics.
  • Hanson employs interviews, survey experiments (conjoint design) in Assam and Nagaland, focusing on ordinary young men and community influencers.
  • [14:28]: "I was always struck by how much this sort of skips over what I think is some important strategic behavior, at least strategic preferences... If we think discipline is... about who joins and whether they care..."

6. State Motivations for Toleration

• Beyond State Capacity:
  • Reluctance or acceptance to tolerate militants is not always about state strength; often it's about perception of threat and shifting priorities.
  • Example: Myanmar’s 1988-89 shift was due to needing to quell urban uprisings, not lack of power on the periphery.
  • [20:11]: "State capacity... is a matter of costs and benefits... there's all sorts of other considerations going on..."
  • Perceptual Bias: States may perceive some threats (e.g., religious vs. ethnic violence) as more existential, impacting toleration policies.

7. Toleration’s Organizational Consequences

• Moderation and Splintering:
  • Case studies from Nagaland and Sri Lanka:
    • Nagaland: Moderates grow stronger; multiple moderate splinters emerge; extremists marginalized.
    • Sri Lanka: Ceasefire enables a “moderate” breakaway from the Tamil Tigers, but also shows risks of fragmentation and vulnerability.
  • [26:52]: "Empowering moderates is a big piece of what happens during toleration."

8. Long-Term Effects on Group Behavior

• Indiscipline and Fragility:
  • Larger, less ideologically committed membership leads to more indiscipline—desertion, misbehavior, weaker command and control—especially if conflict resumes.
  • Groups increasingly suited to managing peace’s mundane demands, but less prepared for renewed violence.
  • [33:44]: "Attracting a larger group of people... could mean more common desertion, defection, and low level indiscipline..."

9. Toleration vs. Repression

• Different Pathways to Reduced Violence:
  • Both toleration (providing incentives for non-violence) and repression (raising the costs of fighting) can moderate groups, but they work differently and have different legacies.
  • Toleration often leads to normalized, non-state actors—a “durable disorder” rather than a restoration of state monopoly over force.
  • [38:04]: "What toleration often is, is not tolerating violence per se... It's tolerating mobilization and activity."

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Paradox of Toleration:
  • [03:03]: “It's not, importantly, restoring the monopoly on force... This is the thing that really shocked me as an outside observer.” — Kolby Hanson
• On Motivations for Joining:
  • [07:35]: “It means a warm meal twice a day, three times a day. It means a few rupees at the end of the month to buy cigarettes... These very mundane features were a big part of why people joined or didn't.”
• On Rank-and-File Perspective:
  • [12:23]: “I was always left with these questions: Why do rank and file recruits and soldiers, as well as supporters, back certain groups under different scenarios?”
• On Moderation and Splits:
  • [26:52]: "Empowering moderates is a big piece of what happens during toleration."
  • [31:20]: "[Sri Lanka]...Karuna really did [gain support] and was able to build that... moderation is a really important part of the sales pitch."
• On Organizational Effects:
  • [37:31]: "Groups become better suited for mundane types of interaction during a ceasefire, than open warfare—they become sort of happy in peace and might really be ill-suited or break down when they get into more intense conflict."

Key Timestamps

• [02:05] Episode and book introduction
• [03:03] Why study toleration, not just suppression
• [07:35] How toleration changes recruitment and group composition
• [10:47] Moderates gain power during toleration
• [11:58] Armed groups as social support providers
• [12:37] Methodology: studying rank-and-file
• [19:30] State motivations: capacity, perceptions, shifting priorities
• [26:15] How moderation leads to organizational splits
• [33:09] Long term effects: size, indiscipline, fragility
• [37:16] Comparing toleration and repression as tools of the state
• [42:17] Wrap-up and closing thoughts

Closing Thought

Hanson's research challenges the conventional wisdom that peace is simply the suppression or absorption of non-state violence. Instead, his work uncovers how “toleration” reshapes not only armed groups but the societies and states they inhabit—often resulting in new forms of normalized, managed, but unresolved conflict.

To learn more, Kolby Hanson’s Ordinary Rebels: Rank-and-File Militants Between War and Peace is available through the New Books Network.