Na krilima patriotisma—On the Wings of Patriotism: Delegated and Spin-Off Violence in Serbia

Abstract

This article addresses the causes and dynamics of spin-off violence by paramilitary groups that developed in Serbia in the early 1990s. It shows that some forms of violence that challenge the state’s monopoly come into being due to decisions of state agencies. But delegated violence easily develops a life of its own, and therefore the decisions of state leaders are not the only variable, perhaps not even an important one, needed to explain the dynamics of violence once the turmoil of war has started. In retrospect, it seems as if warfare was just an episode in the political life of militias or the political groupings behind them. Violence was just one means among others in the fight for political chances. Therefore, the emergence and the life of these groups have to be explained as attempts of single political entrepreneurs to achieve the accumulation of power through the exertion of violence.

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