Community defence recruitment and counterinsurgency intelligence flows in Burkina Faso: a comparative process-tracing analysis of vigilante co-optation and civilian protection outcomes

The central argument is that co-optation creates a structural tension between the state's demand for actionable intelligence and the militias' need to preserve the trust of the communities from which they are drawn. When co-optation is deep, intelligence flows improve but civilian protection deteriorates as militias become targets and lose their protective ambiguity. When co-optation is shallow, civilian protection is preserved but intelligence remains thin and unreliable. It proposes a mechanism-centred framework that identifies the conditions under which co-optation can improve both intelligence and protection, and the conditions under which the trade-off is unavoidable.