The Pro-Government Militias Database (PGMD)
We define a pro-government militia as a group that:
is identified by media sources as pro-government or sponsored by the government (national or sub-national),
is identified as not part of the regular security forces,
is armed and
has some level of organisation.
We use local, regional and international media sources via Nexis to identify PGMs, primarily relying on English language news sources from around the world from LexisNexis. The sources from Nexis include a wide range of sources including transcripts from local radio stations, national newspapers, BBC World Summaries of local news, and all major international newspapers. We supplement the news sources with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports, and for Version 2.0 with a meta-analysis of academic publications.
The PGMD 2.0
The PGMD 2.0 covers the years 1981 to 2014 and contains information on a wide variety of group characteristics, including variables on how PGMs were terminated, how they were created, as well as more specific information on ethnic membership and ethnic targets. This database contains extensive information on over 500 pro-government militias. For detailed information about the PGMD 2.0, consult the article “The Life, Death and Diversity of Pro- Government Militias: The Fully Revised Pro-Government Militias Database Version 2.0” by Carey, Mitchell and Paula and the PGMD codebook.
When using these data, please cite:
Carey, Sabine C., Neil J. Mitchell and Katrin Paula. 2022. “The Life, Death and Diversity of Pro- Government Militias: The Fully Revised Pro-Government Militias Database Version 2.0”. Research & Politics 9(1), https://doi.org/10.1177/20531680211062772.
Carey, Sabine C., and Neil J. Mitchell. 2022. Pro-Government Militias Database (PGMD) Version 2.1 Codebook, University of Mannheim.
Structure of the PGMD
Online PGMD 2.0
The most comprehensive version of the PGMD is the online relational database at at https://militias-database.com. It allows access to all tables that code various aspects of the pro-government militias. It also links each group to the main documentary evidence researchers used to create the dataset. The unit of analysis if the pro-government militia.
PGMD 2.1 Group Data
The static Group Data contain all time-invariant variables on each group. The unit of analysis if the pro-government militia. It includes references for the key sources but does not contain the documentary evidence, unlike the online version.
PGMD 2.1 Country-Year Data
The static Country-Year Data transforms selected variables from the Group Data into a country-year format. The unit of analysis is the country-year.
Militias Guidebook
The online guidebook at https://militias-guidebook.com describes the basic characteristics of each group in text form.
Download the data from the Harvard Dataverse
Previous versions
The main difference between the PGMD v2.0 and PGMD v2.1 is limited to the Country-Year Data, which contains more variables in version 2.1. Please see the PGMD version 2.1 codebook for details.
The PGMD 1.1-2017 includes fewer variables than the PGMD 2.0, covers the time period from 1981-2007 and does not use academic sources as additional analyses.
Update of the PGMD country-year dataset version 1.1-2017
This updated version 1.1-2017 contains new presence variables based on a new coding role for the termination date of a PGM. Please read our "Notes Version 1.1-2017" file for this new coding rule. The updated PGMD country-year dataset version 1.1-2017 includes both the old presence variables and the newly generated ones.
