A Theory of Community Protection

This chapter builds a theory of local community protection from populist state violence, focusing on the “meso” level where state agents and communities interact. After describing the characteristics of this new type of political violence, it explains how two key variables – the moral commitment of local elites (Catholic priests and other religious actors) and the capacity of local social organizations (in this case, the Catholic parish) – facilitate community protection. Commitment and capacity have a path-dependent character, reflecting formative experiences for clergy, exposure to Catholic religious orders with histories of public action, and long church embeddedness in local communities. These two independent variables operate via six mechanisms: disrupting operations and reducing targets function through interactions with local state agents, threatening accountability and reintegrating victims involve partnerships with civil society, and raising moral salience and building solidarity work at the level of the local public.