Every state has a ‘political order’, or a system of rule, that is based on one or several sources of authority and that manifests itself through a set of governing practices.[38] While, as noted, the state remains the dominant principle of territorial organisation in the 21^st century,[39] different states adopt different systems of rule, such as autocracy, oligarchy, polyarchy or democracy.[40] Each system of rule has a range of formal elements in turn, such as the branches of government, a number of security organisations and a range of economic arrangements. There is significant variety in what formal elements exist in a particular political order, how they are configured and what their operating modalities look like. ‘Behind’ these formal elements typically hides an even greater variety of governing practices, authority structures and power brokers in the form of patriarchal, neo-patrimonial, tribal, family, criminal, customary, sectarian, religious and commercial networks. These more informal elements of political order often strongly influence – or effectively run – the formal elements of political order.[41]

In consequence, it is not only the formal elements of political order that vary, but also the mix and level of alignment between formal and informal elements of political order, as well as the nature of the informal elements. In some states, informal components of political order have faded into the background. This is most clearly the case in mature democracies, although even here, new informal sources of authority and influence assert themselves behind the formal elements of political order – for example, through interest groups based on class, wealth and education. At face value, informal components of political order also appear absent in autocracies – as monarchs, dictators, generals and despots bend the institutions and networks of power to their will through the formal structures of autocracy – but this is often not actually the case.[42] While most autocracies project an outward appearance of dominance of formal elements of political order in the form of strong and centralised institutions, this is often based on complex domestic alliances between informal and intersecting networks of power and influence of a tribal, sectarian, professional, commercial and/or religious nature. Syria before 2011, with its significant informal economic and military networks, and Yemen, with its tribal, military and commercial networks, are good examples.[43]

The political orders of many states feature a significant mix between formal and informal components of rule.[44] This is most evident in young states with recently (re)configured political orders that have not yet reached a durable equilibrium (e.g. in post-colonial states like Kenya, or in states that have recently seceded like Kosovo or South Sudan), in states that carry either a conflict legacy or feature an active conflict (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq or Lebanon), or in states that face high levels of poverty, possess appreciable resources and feature significant socio-religious diversity (e.g. the DRC, Iraq or Chad).[45] Appreciable overlap between these categories of states compounds the problem.

In all these cases, informal elements of political order offer pathways for elites and special interest groups to infiltrate, capture and use formal elements of political order – and the public authority and legitimacy they confer – to their advantage. This is because such informal elements allow self-interests to be pursued more freely, create more possibilities to use threat and coercion with impunity and exhibit far less transparency. In extreme cases, the formal elements of political order matter only because of the international recognition and privileges they bestow on office holders that presumably represent the state (e.g. Somalia, Afghanistan, the DRC and Yemen).[46] Political orders with dominant informal elements of rule also have a lower adaptive capability to changing circumstances in an orderly and peaceful manner. Whatever negotiated stability exists is more fragile and more temporary.[47]

‘Crisis vectors’ (e.g. developments, trends, events or actions) of a domestic or foreign nature that negatively affect the ability of political institutions to smoothen processes of sociopolitical change and resolve disputes more or less peacefully have a more forceful impact on political orders with a mix of formal and informal components, or on political orders in which informal components dominate. As politics is an actor-based and relational activity of contestation over the ability to realise preferences through the exercise of public authority and the distribution of public resources, there are three primary ways in which such vectors can create disruption:

In all cases of disruption, the elites that run a given political order will respond to restore the status quo as rapidly as possible in a bid to safeguard their position, interests and material advantages. They have a great variety of strategies and resources at their disposal to accomplish this, ranging from cooptation to compromise and coercion. The mix of disruption and elite response is therefore not always violent. In fact, in many cases, disruptions of the political order are likely to be short given the greater (coercive) resources ruling elites can typically muster.[54]

However, when the elites that run a political order are no longer able to contain and accommodate such disruption, pre-existing fissures that were hitherto contained are likely to widen. For the reasons discussed, this is more likely to happen in political orders with both formal and informal components of rule. It is in the context of such disruptions that existing and new coercive organisations acquire prominence in enabling elites to pursue their interests and/or social groups to provide security for their members.

Figure 1 brings together our thinking on different types of coercive organisation and types of disruption in the context of contemporary intrastate conflict. It enables us to explore essential linkages between these two categories.

Most of Figure 1 reflects the discussion so far, but the final column requires an additional explanation. Essentially, we expect the nature of political disruption to have consequences for the initial type of coercive organisations that will emerge.

In the case of intra-elite disruption (Type 1), we expect both governmental, quasi-governmental and hybrid coercive organisations to emerge as essentially partisan capabilities to support respective sets of elite claims. In these cases, the argument is about the (re)distribution of power between the same select group of elite players. A good example is the conflict between Turkey’s AKP and the Gülen movement between 2012 and 2016, culminating in the coup attempt. Both sides effectively sought to mobilise parts of governmental coercive organisations to establish greater control. Another example is the warlordism of the Afghan civil war of the 1990s, in which different elites competed for territorial control through their own militias.[55]

In the case of a dispute that centres on new claims made via elite representation (Type 2), we expect to see quasi-governmental, hybrid and anti-regime coercive organisations emerge as manifestations of a starker contrast (compared with a Type 1 disruption) between ruling elite resistance and organised popular protest. Using quasi-governmental coercive organisations enables the government to suppress popular protests while distancing itself from any responsibility. Hybrid coercive organisations enable both status-quo elites and elites that represent revisionist popular demands to hedge their bets while competing for power, while anti-regime coercive organisations put outright pressure on the ruling elite to change its ways or make concessions. The argument is about accommodating hitherto excluded social groups or interests that are represented by their leadership. An initially peaceful example is Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference in 2013–2014 (though its failure led to more of a Type 3 disruption). A less peaceful example is the mobilisation and strengthening of informal state coercive organisations in Iraq by Prime Minister Al-Maliki in 2010–2014 to suppress Sunni dissent.

Finally, in the case of a more prolonged popular disruption (Type 3), we can expect to see anti-regime and anti-state coercive organisations emerge since such disruptions indicate that other channels for protest are blocked, unavailable or dysfunctional. They highlight the existence of serious dissatisfaction with the existing political order and its ruling elites. More extreme anti-regime or anti-state coercive organisations do not emerge overnight, but we argue that if either Type 2 disruptions or popular protests fail to realise change, such organisations can ultimately emerge, depending on practices of repression, the presence of justificatory frames and the possibilities for social mobilisation.[56] The disruption is not about cooptation or accommodation by the system, but about its fundamental change. The rise of the PKK in 1978 is a good example of an anti-regime coercive organisation, emerging as it did after the Turkish state’s sustained period of repression of Kurdish nationalism, interests and culture, including both judicial and forceful suppression of protests, political mobilisation and other types of more or less peaceful Kurdish protest.[57]