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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
A permanent threat of an outbreak of communal strife is a common characteristic of societies deeply divided along ethno-national, religious or linguistic lines. In such societies the state apparatus is often devoid of the capacity to maintain monopolistic control of the means for the exercise of organized violence in society. Indeed, there are many indications that conditions in communal-conflict-prone deeply divided societies are conducive to the evolvement of illegal or semi-legal community-based armed organizations (Horowitz 1982).