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Reconsidering rebel governance
Abstract
In debates on governance in weak or fragile states, non-state actors are often overlooked. A particularly under-recognized governance actor is the rebel group. Rebel groups have substantive involvement in several governance domains, and as such acquire authority and legitimacy among their constituents. While previous research shows that non-state governance cannot be seen as the sole result of state weakness or as opposition to the state necessarily, this chapter addresses the complexity, multiplicity and (practical) dynamics of rebel governance. International actors, such as states and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), struggle to decide on whether or how to engage with rebel groups. Studying the dynamics of rebel governance will shed new light on policy debates on insurgency, peacebuilding and development in contexts of state fragility in the African borderlands. The cases of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in South Sudan, the National Resistance Army (NRA) in Uganda and the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) in Somalia will serve as examples of rebel governance in the African context. © John Idriss Lahai, Tanya Lyons and the contributors 2015. All rights reserved.
... Such governance is embedded within broader measures regulating property rights and access to natural resources within rebel-ruled areas. Examining the case of the Houthis (Ansar Allah) in northern Yemen, a pro-Iran armed movement which took over the country's capital in 2014, this chapter finds that rebel oil governance is a component of rebel diplomacy and broader measures of rebel governance (Arjona et al., 2015;Coggins, 2015;Cunningham & Loyle, 2021;Duyvesteyn et al., 2016;Huang, 2016;Mampilly & Stewart, 2021). Rebel oil governance provides plausible lawfulness to otherwise contraband goods. ...
After two decades of War on Terror, it is particularly important, for both academic and policy purposes, to clearly understand why the US formidable mobilization of means and might has transformed into a such a blatant geostrategic defeat of the US and its allies in the broad Middle East. This is all the more paradoxical that the WOT achieved a series of tactical victories – such as the toppling of hostile regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya; the crippling of the national economies of enemy states by sanctions; the successful targeted killing of lead terrorist Usama Bin Laden, ISIS cult leaders Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and his successor, etc. So, why have these tactical victories not led to what was supposed to become, according to the US government, a ‘Greater Middle East’? With most authors being from or living in the Middle East, this book is unique as it brings perspectives and answers from the region. This is crucially important as we are entering, we argue, the era of a Post-American Middle East.
Chapters 1 and 10 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com
... Such governance is embedded within broader measures regulating property rights and access to natural resources within rebel-ruled areas. Examining the case of the Houthis (Ansar Allah) in northern Yemen, a pro-Iran armed movement which took over the country's capital in 2014, this chapter finds that rebel oil governance is a component of rebel diplomacy and broader measures of rebel governance (Arjona et al., 2015;Coggins, 2015;Cunningham & Loyle, 2021;Duyvesteyn et al., 2016;Huang, 2016;Mampilly & Stewart, 2021). Rebel oil governance provides plausible lawfulness to otherwise contraband goods. ...
Both the 2003 American invasion of Iraq and the military intervention in Syria a decade later to fight terror groups in the two countries transformed their respective territorial governance and generated short to long-term political and economic consequences, oil production and trade included. This chapter studies how the US failed to utilize the oil wealth to rebuild Iraq as planned, and how China and Iran on the one hand, and Russia and Iran on the other, have managed to become indispensable industrial actors in the Iraqi and Syrian contexts. Long-term forecasts of Iraqi crude exports toward China based on different Chinese energy policy scenarios all highlight how Baghdad’s industry could remain highly dependent on the evolution of Beijing’s energy policies.KeywordsAmerican invasion of IraqChinaIraqOilRussiaSyriaUSA
... The first distinction worth pointing out is organisational: jihadist insurgencies are often affiliated to global 3. For reviews see Arjona (2008), Duyvesteyn et al. (2015), Péclard and Mechoulan (2015) and Furlan (2020) jihadist-Salafist movements, which gives them a transnational character (Kalyvas, 2018, p. 42). Groups such as al-Shabaab and Boko Haram, for example, opted to affiliate themselves with the global brands of Al-Qaida and ISIS (Bøås and Dunn 2017a;Kalyvas, 2018, p. 42). ...
The ways in which jihadist insurgents in the Sahel govern is rarely considered in the academic literature. They have often been portrayed as ‘Islamic terrorists’, who achieve their objectives by using brutal force against the civilian population and who finance their activities through criminal networks and activities. However, scattered empirical evidence reveals a different picture. Jihadist insurgents, like other insurgent groups, often use a
variety of strategies to rule territory and populations. The scale, character and form of how such groups govern differs not only between countries but also at the sub-national level within the same group. Nevertheless, until recently jihadist insurgent governance in Africa and particularly the Sahel region has largely been overlooked. This synthesis reviews the existing literature on jihadist governance in West Africa, with a particular emphasis on the understudied region of the Sahel. The review is organised as follows: first, we clarify key concepts and provide definitions. Second, we provide a brief overview of Islam and politics in the Sahel, contextualising the rise of Salafist-jihadism as well as historical cases of jihadist governance. Third, we provide a brief overview of the
literature and synthesise the existing research on jihadist insurgent governance in the Sahel. Fourth, we examine some key cases of jihadist governance in northern Mali, Nigeria and the Liptako-Gourma region straddling Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Finally, we conclude by summarising our findings, discussing the implications for the study of civil war and insurgency and consider avenues for future research.
... While recent scholarship has studied rebel-civilian interactions through the concept of 'rebel governance' (Arjona 2016, Arjona et al. 2015, Duyvesteyn et al. 2015, Kasfir 2005, 2002, Mampilly 2011, we expand the academic debate on governance by non-state armed actors during civil war in two ways. First, we widen the notion of 'rebels' to 'armed groups' in order to pay special attention to governance by a diversity of other armed actors allied to the rebels, the state or neither. ...
The full article is available open access: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13698249.2017.1419611-
Abstract: In this special issue we broaden the academic debate on rebel governance by examining additional armed actors – militias, police and foreign intervenors, and the ‘layers’ of governance they add. We develop the notion of ‘multi-layered’ governance to capture the complexity of these cases. We consider ‘mediated stateness’ as a special case of multi-layered governance. We discuss ‘polycentricity’ as an equivalent concept, but deem multi-layered governance more appropriate. The following articles discuss rebels’ legitimation strategies, armed opposition factions, auxiliary armed forces, mediated stateness and intervention by foreign powers to highlight the roles of different actors and the resulting impacts on governance.
Most studies on oil and rebellion, in the war-torn Middle East or elsewhere, focus on physical characteristics, especially the competition to control sites of resource production like fields, refineries, and export terminals. This chapter focuses on issues of ownership, detailing how rebel groups (including terrorist organizations) make legal claims to ownership of state-controlled oil assets, as rebel oil governance is embedded in broader forms of rebel governance and diplomacy. Rebels can assert legal rights to resources even when they lack physical access to them. Using the case of the pro-Iranian Houthis (Ansar Allah) in northern Yemen, the chapter shows how rebel oil governance helps to solidify elite bargains and relationships with outside patrons. Considering legality alongside physical possession of resources better explains how rebel governance operates in the economic sphere, affecting the course of conflict and conflict resolution.KeywordsOilCivil warsHouthisIllicit economiesSmugglingYemen
Most studies on oil and rebellion focus on the physical competition to control sites of resource production such as fields, refineries and export terminals. Issues of ownership are tertiary, even derisory. This paper takes issues of ownership seriously, detailing how rebel groups make legal claims to ownership of state-controlled oil assets. Rebel oil regimes are embedded in broader forms of rebel economic governance and diplomacy. Rebels can assert legal rights to resources even when they lack physical access to it. Using the case of the Houthis (Ansar Allah) in northern Yemen, the paper shows how rebel oil regimes help solidify elite bargains and relationships with outside patrons in ways that affect the course of conflict and conflict resolution. Considering legality alongside physical possession of resources better explains how rebel governance operates in the economic sphere.
Numerous oil and gas-producing countries have suffered civil war and internal conflict in the last two decades. Such political instability has had significant ramifications for global energy security. The literature addressing the connection between oil production and civil wars focuses on the contest for physical control over fields, pipelines, transport hubs, and other physical infrastructure. This overlooks how rebels make symbolic and legal claims to oil ownership that parallel the physical confrontation. Alternative national oil companies and other quasi-legal entities assert rebels’ authority to manage and dispose of oil. Here, I typologize different forms of rebel oil government and offer empirical examples of each form. I show that rebel oil governance can affect the course of conflicts, helping rebels substantiate internal control and entice international backers. More broadly, these quasi-legal rebel entities disrupt and realign global energy supplies.
This article is a case study of armed opposition factions in the Central Equatoria region within South Sudan’s current civil war. Based on research in South Sudan and northern Uganda during the spring of 2017, the study focuses on the internal organisation, recruitment and funding processes, and political ideas of these organisations, engaging with recent theories concerning governance and civilians in rebel-controlled territories. It argues that rebels and civilians are not separate analytical categories, and that the region’s new wartime orders are embedded in common local knowledge drawn from historical practice.
This introduction to the double special issue on the theme of rebels and legitimacy aims to set out the parameters for the discussion. It looks at legitimacy as a concept and at legitimation as a process. To date most of the literature on legitimacy has focused on the state. However, rebel groups such as insurgents, terrorists, warlords and guerrillas have all had claims, and continue to claim, legitimacy as well. How and when are these rebels seen as legitimate actors? Existing suggestions of rebel legitimacy focus heavily on state models of social order and the social contract. This first contribution discusses how to conceptualize legitimacy and how to make it operational. A two-pronged approach, borrowing heavily from Max Weber, is proposed. Legitimacy is investigated based on beliefs and belief systems about what is considered legitimate. This is combined with practices whereby legitimacy is enacted, copied and emulated by the population the rebels claim to represent.
Many studies have emphasized the pluralization of policing and the interactions between security providers. However, such
studies generally employ a top–down and structural approach, emphasizing the organizational ties between policing bodies.
This article employs an ethnographic approach to security and focuses on localized policing performances that materialize
from the interactions between security providers. Based on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Durban, South
Africa, this article introduces the concept of twilight policing, which refers to punitive, disciplinary and exclusionary policing practices that simultaneously undermine and support the
state, resulting in actions that are neither public nor private, but ‘twilight’. This article calls for a shift from a plural
and organizational approach to policing towards a ‘twilight’ and performative one.
State legitimacy particularly its alleged potential to counter state fragility has received increasing attention in academic and policy literature concerned with African development. Service provision can substantially influence such state legitimacy. Services, however, are mostly provided by a multiplicity of (state and non-state) providers. This article therefore specifically explores how joint service delivery by multiple providers shapes the attribution of state legitimacy in Burundi by means of two qualitative case studies. Empirically, the article demonstrates, first, that the process of stakeholder interaction, rather than the output of this process, most distinctly shapes state legitimacy and, second, that there are substantial variations in legitimacy attribution by different stakeholders and for different state institutions. Epistemologically, the article suggests three specific challenges that merit attention in further empirical investigation of state legitimacy in fragile settings: the diversity of people's expectations; the artificiality of state/non-state distinctions; and the personification and politicization of state institutions.
In the context of the widespread ‘resurgence’ of traditional authorities in Africa, increasing attention has been devoted to the manner in which the institutions of the state combine with those of non-state authorities. While much of the debate has been focused on the implications for democracy, this paper addresses the relationship between traditional resurgence and violent conflict. An analytical framework that distinguishes between ‘institutional hybridity’ and different forms of ‘institutional multiplicity’ is presented. This is then explored through a case study of the Buganda Kingdom in Uganda, where institutional disputes over land and decentralisation can be linked to the violence between state forces and Kingdom supporters that erupted in 2009. The analysis underscores the importance of careful institutional analysis in cases of traditional resurgence in order to mitigate violent conflict outcomes.
This paper discusses Eritrea as a contemporary case of state-making grounded in war, a fact that has resulted in the emergence of one of the ‘hardest’ states in sub-Saharan Africa. The state-making process in Eritrea is looked at with a focus on the legacies of liberation movement governance in the changing dynamics of state consolidation from 1993 to this day. Those dynamics are analysed by reverting to Hirsch-man’s categories of ‘loyalty’, ‘exit’ and ‘voice’. Hirschman’s framework is chosen because the category of loyalty and resulting dynamics illuminate particularly well the transitions within the Eritrean state making process.It is shown that the parameters of war that have resulted in the creation of the Eritrean state have led to a particular kind of state characterised by a high degree of loyalty, visible in the propensity of large segments of the population to associate with state activities. Over time and partly based on military defeat in renewed warfare, the exit option has gained prominence particular among the young generation. This has resulted in a drive towards state securitisation combined with measures to make exit a pillar of power consolidation. Those dynamics have not considerably altered the loyalty of Eritrea’s transnational citizenry to the wider project of state consolidation. The paper concludes that state consolidation in Eritrea can thus far be analysed as a successful shift from fostering voice via politics of mobilisation to controlling exit and voice in ways that keep citizens tied to the state project.
The Europe-inspired notion of the state with a monopoly on tax-raising and violence is empirically difficult to find in large parts of Africa; it is only superficially internalised by state officials while it is alive in thinking and discourse as a pretence. In Africa south of the Sahara, (empirically) illegitimate monopolies of violence and oligopolies of vio¬lence coexist. Both could a) be more or less (empirically) legitimate and b) offer a varying degree of security and orientation. The article explores the scope and limitations of the notion of "oligopolies of violence".
Since 1990, negotiated settlements have become the preferred means for settling civil wars. Historically, however, these types of settlements have proven largely ineffective: civil wars ended by negotiated settlement are more likely to recur than those ending in victory by one side or the other. A theoretical and statistical analysis of how civil wars end reveals that the type of ending influences the prospects for longer-term outcomes. An examination of all civil war endings since 1940 finds that rebel victories are more likely to secure the peace than are negotiated settlements. A statistical analysis of civil wars from 1940 to 2002 and the case of Uganda illustrate why rebel victories result in more stable outcomes. Expanding scholarly and policy analysis of civil war termination types beyond the current default of negotiated settlement to include victories provides a much larger set of cases and variables to draw upon to enhance understanding of the conditions most likely to support long-term stability, democracy, and prosperity.
This paper examines the value of an alternative approach to SSR policy, namely a multi-layered one in post-conflict and fragile state environments. It begins by arguing that there is a state-centric bias in current SSR policy and practice. This contradicts development principles of a ‘people-centred, locally owned’ approach in post-conflict and fragile state contexts. The SSR's state-centric approach rests upon two fallacies: that the post-conflict and fragile state is capable of delivering justice and security; and that it is the main actor in security and justice. The paper goes on to present the outline of a multi-layered strategy. This addresses the issue of who is actually providing justice and security in post-conflict and fragile states. The paper continues by describing the accountability mechanisms that could be pursued by SSR programmes in support of this approach. The conclusion is that the advantage of the multi-layered approach is that it is based not on the state's capacity, but on the quality and efficacy of the services received by the end user, regardless of who delivers that service.
In this article, mimesis and mimicry are used as analytical concepts to explore dynamics of state and identity formation in Somaliland and Puntland since the early 1990s. Mimesis captures endeavours to imitate well-established models of social and political organization. Mimicry involves the deceptive imitation of such models in order to reach a certain aim. In the particular setting of northern Somalia, miming and mimicking in state and identity formation are also related to conflict escalation. The article first presents relevant political and legal positions on state collapse and secession. This helps to grasp the theoretical and policy implications of the empirical material. Then, the establishment of Somaliland and Puntland through mimesis and mimicry is sketched. The outline of the repeated military confrontations between both sides, particularly the last round of fighting in and around the town of Laascaanood in late 2007, indicates the relation of state and identity formation to military conflict. These localized dynamics are embedded into the continuing conflict in southern Somalia that involves a number of internal and external actors. The article concludes that miming and mimicking underlie many of Somaliland's and Puntland's internal developments and their conflictive relationship. Moreover, since the conflict in northern Somalia concerns state formation, it might have far-reaching consequences for the future of Somalia as a whole. This finally leads to the suggestion that the international norms regarding state collapse and secession have to be re-evaluated in the light of the empirical realities at hand.
The debate over peace in Sudan has centred on the ongoing talks in Naivasha, Kenya. This paper argues, however, that sustainable peace is not simply a function of the implementation of an agreement between the SPLA and Khartoum, but that other fracture lines will run through post-conflict Sudan. Here we draw attention to the rupture between the Dinka, dominant within the SPLA, and the Equatorian peoples of the far south, hundreds of thousands of whom were driven from their homes or faced with economic and political oppression under SPLA occupation. As these refugees return, it will be through local government structures that Equatorians will or will not be integrated into the SPLA political project for Southern Sudan. Thus, local government figures prominently in the possibility for sustainable peace. We describe the origins and structure of local government in Southern Sudan, situating it in the history of political tension between Dinka and Equatorians. We then describe the challenge of equitably distributing land and foreign aid to returnees in the context of ethnic politics and a massive NGO presence.
It is commonly assumed that wartime leaders of illicit commercial networks engage in exploitative behavior and lack popular
support. Evidence from West Africa suggests otherwise. Some wartime leaders use their commercial activities in post-conflict
situations to build political support among demobilized fighters. Wartime leaders may then use these relationships to launch
successful electoral campaigns and to protect themselves from political marginalization or even prosecution for their wartime
activities. These developments represent the emergence of new forms of governance outside the framework of imported notions
of reform and state-building.
Special issue. Incl. abstracts and bibl. references Literature on the state in developing societies, and in particular in Africa, generally has a hard time specifying what is "state" and what is not. It seems that the closer one gets to a particular political landscape, the more apparent it becomes that many institutions have a twilight caracter, they are not the state but they exercise public authority. They defy clear-cut distinction. In fact, as we venture to study the political contours of public authority and the political field in which it is exercised, we are saddled with a paradox. On the one hand, actors and institutions in this field are intensely preoccupied with the sate and with the distinction between state and society, but on the other hand, their practices constantly befuddle these distinctions.
The concept of state fragility that has gained prominence within the development and security agenda focuses very much on deficiencies and shortcomings of governance in so-called fragile states. In contrast, the concept of hybrid political order takes a more positive outlook by focusing on the strength and resilience of sociopolitical formations that are present on the ground, that work, and that provide public goods for people and communities.
This Berghof Handbook Dialogue will not present an additional compilation of definitions and/or theoretical approaches concerning failed, fragile or weak states, nor will it offer recipes or policy recommendations in a technical sense. Our intention is instead to present some food for thought on the general premises of these concepts and to point out dilemmas which mark the current discourse (and practice). The lead article asks poignantly whether it is the states (in the South)that are failing, or the analysis of research (undertaken mostly in the North) that is inadequate or incomplete. Given a situation where state-building efforts are more often than not designed by the North and introduced to the South, this question needs to be investigated. This implies critically and honestly identifying the potential, and limits, of external intervention.
David Beetham's book explores the legitimation of power both as an issue in political and social science theory and in relation to the legitimacy of contemporary political systems including its breakdown in revolution. 'An admirable text which is far reaching in its scope and extraordinary in the clarity with which it covers a wide range of material... One can have nothing but the highest regard for this volume.' - David Held, Times Higher Education Supplement ;'Beetham has produced a study bound to revolutionize sociological thinking and teaching... Seminal and profoundly original... Beetham's book should become the obligitory reading for every teacher and practitioner of social science.' - Zygmunt Bauman, Sociology
Overcoming state fragility is one of the most important international development objectives of the 21st century. Many fragile states have turned into failed states, where millions of people are caught in deprivation and seemingly hopeless conditions. Fragile states lack the authority, legitimacy, and capacity that a modern state needs to advance the development of its peoples, and present deep challenges for the design and implementation of development policy. For instance, how is aid to be designed and delivered in a way that will help people in fragile states if their governments lack capacity to absorb and use aid? And what can be done about adverse side-effects of fragile states on their neighbours and the global community, such as heightened insecurity, rising out-migration, displaced populations, and the destruction of natural resources? This book documents the far reaching global repercussions of state fragility and provides a timely contribution to the international discourse on three dimensions of fragile states: their causes, costs, and the responses required. Its aim is to contribute to understanding of how strong and accountable states can be fostered-states where government and civil society progressively advance human wellbeing, underpin households' resilience in the face of shocks, and form effective partnerships to maximize the benefits of development assistance. © United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), 2011. All rights reserved.
There might appear to be little that binds the study of order and the study of violence and conflict. Bloodshed in its multiple forms is often seen as something separate from and unrelated to the domains of ‘normal’ politics that constitute what we think of as order. But violence is used to create order, to maintain it, and to uphold it in the face of challenges. This volume demonstrates the myriad ways in which order and violence are inextricably intertwined. The chapters embrace such varied disciplines as political science, economics, history, sociology, philosophy, and law; employ different methodologies, from game theory to statistical modeling to in-depth historical narrative to anthropological ethnography; and focus on different units of analysis and levels of aggregation, from the state to the individual to the world system. All are essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand current trends in global conflict.
This article offers a qualitative case study of the interaction between Lebanese state institutions and Palestinian authorities concerning the unofficial Palestinian camp of Shabriha. It particularly highlights the indirect nature of these interactions and the brokering role of Lebanese political parties. Governance in Shabriha is conceptualized as a manifestation of a ‘mediated state’, a notion that has been instrumental in understanding governance in sub-Saharan Africa but has not yet been applied to the Mediterranean. Based on empirical insights from Shabriha, the article offers a tentative reconsideration of the mediated state concept in order to extend it to scholarship on Mediterranean politics and governance.
This paper argues that warlord or 'non-state' politics have not brought about as fundamental a political transformation as recent discourses about violent 'state collapse' in Africa seem to suggest. In the context of the territorial break-up of the central state in the DR Congo, it examines the reconfiguration of political power in North Kivu in the extreme weakness of formal state structures and looks at the strategies of local actors to deal with the violent transformation of the state. It demonstrates that the strategies of the ruling rebels and other strongmen reveal significant continuities with regard to the Mobutu era as the marketing of minerals provides the resources for the revisiting of time-tested political strategies such as the construction of patronage-based clientelistic networks. Similarly, the limited ambitions of 'non-hegemonic rule' provide current rulers with powerful incentives to exercise power by drawing on the support of intermediary actors such as traditional authorities. Far from indicating the 'end of politics', these strategies mimic President Mobutu's political set up and thus contribute to the reproduction of the postcolonial state despite its institutional erosion.
This paper discusses the way the newly formed political entities and the local militias engage in statebuilding practices during Libya's transitional period of 2011–12. Focusing on the encounters between these actors in the security field, it provides insight into the capacity and strategy of national actors to build state structures and to develop the political arrangements that they deem necessary. It does so by identifying the key actors involved, as well as the interactions between them and the constantly evolving relations of control, power and authority. It shows how actors in the security field engage with each other in their efforts to expand and to institutionalize networks and influence, and the competition and alignments with other security actors that are active in the transitional phase and thereafter.
Events such as the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria have created an urgent need for the international community to engage with a range of armed groups during and after conflict. This engagement extends beyond humanitarian, conflict resolution and counter-terrorism ends to issues of democratization and political transition of such groups in legitimate, stable, and inclusive governments. This article underlines the need to reconsider post-counter-terrorism engagement styles, which frame non-state armed groups (NSAGs) exclusively as spoilers, and stresses opportunities for state-building partnership that certain NSAGs offer. Towards this end, this article emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between different types of NSAGs, based on their sources of legitimacy, resources, reliability, and partnering potential. It concludes with four entry points that promise a strong basis for incorporating ‘legitimacy, inclusion, and resource’ considerations into the planning and implementation of future state-building efforts.
This article explores the potential for mainstreaming wartime rebel governance structures into post-conflict state-building efforts. Through a study of the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement's (SPLA/M) efforts at state-building in South Sudan (1994–2011), it examines the oft-neglected linkages between rebel governance and post-conflict legitimacy. Findings highlight three pitfalls of mainstreaming non-state roles without sufficient analysis of the sources of legitimacy underlying rebel governance frameworks. First, by drawing upon the functions and legitimacy of other non-state actors rather than the rebel group itself, an artificial image of state-building can be projected. Second, due to the fragmented and dispersed nature of legitimacy, the ‘bottom-up’ logic of state-building can prove dubious. Third, weak capacity in governance, and subcontracted sources of legitimacy, are likely to undermine the ability to develop independent structures and functions. Conclusions offer four case specific insights that can assist policy-makers in applying a more critical framework to the legitimacy of armed groups, before incorporating them into post-war governance arrangements.
This article shows that the condemnation of organized crime stems from a simplistic explanation that obscures mechanisms and practices (such as subcontracting and badly managed invitations to tender) that are much more problematic, albeit difficult to condemn. The article demonstrates that current modalities of denunciation of economic crime are representative of the neoliberal modes of government. Through the analysis of the fight against illegal migration, money-laundering, fakes, smuggling and trafficking of goods, this essay shows that resorting to the criminalization and reification of the figures of "evil" (the terrorist, the smuggler, the mafia member, organized crime) becomes an opportunity to organize the field of possible state interventions, the condition of new state actions, an opportunity, thus, to strengthen political domination through intermediaries and private actors. The fight against crime appears more like the province of the imaginaire, where fear reigns, and the search for scapegoats deemed to catalyze this fear. It is also the province of a commitment to State action in a context that actually limits such commitment.
Against a backdrop of labor unrest and the democratization of politics, yakuza (Japanese mafiosi) and the modern Japanese state forged in the late 1910s and 1920s a symbiotic relationship born of shared ideological concerns, financial interests, and a willingness to use violence as a tool for exerting and maintaining power. This article argues that yakuza and the state were able to join forces, as exemplified by the nationalist Dai Nihon Kokusuikai (Greater Japan National Essence Association), in part because they were operating in a world in which the boundaries between the legitimate and the illegitimate were fluid and porous. Struggling to define these boundaries were leftist intellectuals, who in the interwar period took a critical stance against the political violence of groups like the Dai Nihon Kokusuikai and yet were prompted by the murkiness of violent affiliations to reinforce ideas about the legitimacy of state violence. Considered too is the legacy of the yakuza-state relationship in the post-World War II era, when public impatience with political violence shifted discussions about legitimate and illegitimate behavior and affected the visibility of yakuza-state ties, but did not undo them. Taken as a whole, the article seeks to challenge the conventional view of mafias as illegitimate and states as legitimate and poses questions about the extent to which zones of ambiguous legitimacy might have contributed to transformations of Japan's political system.
International Security 29.2 (2004) 85-120
Conventional sovereignty assumes a world of autonomous, internationally recognized, and well- governed states. Although frequently violated in practice, the fundamental rules of conventional sovereignty—recognition of juridically independent territorial entities and nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states—have rarely been challenged in principle. But these rules no longer work, and their inadequacies have had deleterious consequences for the strong as well as the weak. The policy tools that powerful and well-governed states have available to "fix" badly governed or collapsed states—principally governance assistance and transitional administration (whether formally authorized by the United Nations or engaged in by a coalition of the willing led by the United States)— are inadequate. In the future, better domestic governance in badly governed, failed, and occupied polities will require the transcendence of accepted rules, including the creation of shared sovereignty in specific areas. In some cases, decent governance may require some new form of trusteeship, almost certainly de facto rather than de jure.
Many countries suffer under failed, weak, incompetent, or abusive national authority structures. The best that people living in such countries can hope for is marginal improvement in their material well-being; limited access to social services, including health care and education; and a moderate degree of individual physical security. At worst they will confront endemic violence, exploitative political leaders, falling life expectancy, declining per capita income, and even state-sponsored genocide. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), for example, civil wars that have persisted for more than two decades have resulted in millions of deaths. In Zimbabwe the policies of President Robert Mugabe, who was determined to stay in office regardless of the consequences for his country's citizens, led to an economic debacle that began in 2000 with falling per capita income, inflation above 500 percent, and the threat of mass starvation. In Colombia much of the territory is controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist rebel group thatderives most of its income from drug trafficking. In Rwanda more than 700,000 people were slaughtered in a matter of weeks in 1994 as a result of a government-organized genocide.
The consequences of failed and inadequate governance have not been limited to the societies directly affected. Poorly governed societies can generate conflicts that spill across international borders. Transnational criminal and terrorist networks can operate in territories not controlled by the internationally recognized government. Humanitarian disasters not only prick the conscience of political leaders in advanced democratic societies but also leave them with no policy options that are appealing to voters.
Challenges related to creating better governance also arise where national authority structures have collapsed because of external invasion and occupation rather than internal conflict. The availability of weapons of mass destruction and the presence of transnational terrorism have created a historically unprecedented situation in which polities with very limited material capability can threaten the security of much more powerful states. These polities can be conquered and occupied with relative ease, leaving the occupying power with the more challenging task of establishing an acceptable domestic governing structure. Contemporary Afghanistan and Iraq are the obvious cases in point.
Left to their own devices, collapsed and badly governed states will not fix themselves because they have limited administrative capacity, not least with regard to maintaining internal security. Occupying powers cannot escape choices about what new governance structures will be created and sustained. To reduce international threats and improve the prospects for individuals insuch polities, alternative institutional arrangements supported by external actors, such as de facto trusteeships and shared sovereignty, should be added to the list of policy options.
The current menu of policy instruments for dealing with collapsed and failing states is paltry, consisting primarily of transitional administration and foreign assistance to improve governance, both of which assume that in more or less short order, targeted states can function effectively on their own. Nation- building or state-building efforts are almost always described in terms of empowering local authorities to assume the responsibilities of conventional sovereignty. The role of external actors is understood to be limited...
Zones of state failure are assumed to be anarchic. In reality, communities facing the absence of an effective state authority forge systems of governance to provide modest levels of security and rule of law. Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in Somalia, where an array of local and regional governance arrangements have emerged since the 1991 collapse of the state. The Somalia case can be used both to document the rise of governance without government in a zone of state collapse and to assess the changing interests of local actors seeking to survive and prosper in a context of state failure. The interests of key actors can and do shift over time as they accrue resources and investments; the shift from warlord to landlord gives some actors greater interests in governance and security, but not necessarily in state revival; risk aversion infuses decisionmaking in areas of state failure; and state-building initiatives generally fail to account for the existence of local governance arrangements. The possibilities and problems of the mediated state model, in which weak states negotiate political access through existing local authorities, are considerable.
This paper contributes to debates on the crisis of the African state, particularly the challenge posed by the rent-seeking elite, ethnicity and political violence. In most accounts, Burundi's persistent civil war fits contemporary discourse of the failed neo-patrimonial state in which opportunistic elites mobilize ethnicity for economic gain. Drawing on recent theorising on the politicization of identities and their intersection with state formation, the paper examines historically the development of ethnic consciousness and its links to the Burundi state. Ethnicity, it contends, has been the central organizing principle of the modern Burundi state with its successive policies of differentiation and exclusion. Throughout its post-colonial history, the Burundi state has not been a fully functioning sovereign state along the lines of its western counterparts. Yet, its citizens, irrespective of their ethnic affiliation, have not contested its territorial integrity. Instead the conflict reflects contested claims for enrichment, representation and security as expected from a model state. The on-going violence is attributed to an increasingly factionalised political elite, based on the multiple cleavages in Burundi society, who mobilize ethnicity in their struggle for control of the state. Recent peace negotiations, aimed at correcting ethnic imbalance through power sharing and reform of the institutions of governance are unlikely to resolve the political crisis as they fail to move beyond a methodological pre-occupation with ethnic identities and address the complex social reality of Burundi society and to include the people of Burundi as part of a broader non-ethnicized political community, a prerequisite for a stable pluralistic democracy.
In this article we propose a new typology for insurgent groups to explain why in such remarkably similar conflicts—Sri Lanka and Aceh—the impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami was so different. We argue that two principal factors shape all rebel groups by defining their incentive structures: the efficiency of the return on investment of the primary source(s) of support and the group's territorial objectives. The former factor is especially strong in explaining the different choices made by the LTTE and GAM. In Sri Lanka, the availability of lucrative resources outside the country has made the LTTE leadership inimical to compromise, threatened by relief aid, and less reliant on the local population. Lacking access to such high-return funding sources, GAM on the other hand was more closely linked to the needs of the local population and found greater value in both outside aid and a comprehensive settlement.
Both socio-economic and actor oriented approaches to the development of democracy imply that poorly governed polities are unlikely to make progress. Socio-economic conditions are deteriorating in many poorly governed states. Because borders are fixed, violent state death is rare, foreign assistance is available, and raw materials can be exported, political leaders in many poorly governed states do not have an incentive to craft self enforcing pareto improving agreements with their own populations. Shared sovereignty arrangements, institutions in which authority would be shared by external and internal actors, would offer the possibilities for pareto improving agreements that would not otherwise be available.
Negotiating Statehood: Dynamics of Power and Domination in Africa provides a conceptual framework for analysing dynamic processes of state-making in Africa. Features a conceptual framework which provides a method for analysing the everyday making, contestation, and negotiation of statehood in contemporary Africa. Conceptualizes who negotiates statehood (the actors, resources and repertoires), where these negotiation processes take place, and what these processes are all about. Includes a collections of essays that provides empirical and analytical insights into these processes in eight different country studies in Africa. Critically reflects on the negotiability of statehood in Africa. © Chapters © 2011 The Institute of Social Studies Book compilation
This paper provides a critical alternative to two key aspects of conventional wisdom in international policy. First, the prevailing notion of internal or intra‐state war as bounded by traditional views of the nation‐state. Second, the development model of conflict which regards so‐called internal war as originating from poverty, scarcity or weak institutions. In distinction, the idea of post‐modern conflict addresses the emergence of political projects in the South, including qualified state forms, which no longer need to establish territorial, bureaucratic or consent‐based political authority. Moreover, rather than scarcity or breakdown, despite the high social costs involved, protracted instability can be associated with innovative and expanding forms of political economy. Using material from Africa and the European East, the paper examines some of the relations and structures involved. Warlords, for example, have forged new and viable links with international organisations and global markets. At the same time, many post‐adjustment rulers, in terms of state debureaucratisation and the embrace of the free market have adopted warlord‐type strategies. The changing architecture of the nation‐state has also weakened the rule of law and blurred traditional responsibilities. This has created a demand for private protection at all levels within the emerging system.
Over recent decades, several states have experienced mounting difficulties in fulfilling classic state functions such as guaranteeing territorial integrity and law and order. Some “failing states” have even seen the disappearance of all central authority: “state collapse”. Since 11 September 2001, this phenomenon has been particularly associated with terrorism, trans-border criminality and global instability. The international community presents this “Orthodox Failed States Narrative” as an objective, apolitical analysis of a “new” problem. The hegemonic account cherishes ideological assumptions that are seldom made explicit and veil power asymmetries in the international political economy. The securitisation of the Global South provides the pretext for confrontation and top-down restructuring of domestic politics by Coalitions of the Willing in the context of the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Through analysis of America's Somalia policy, this article illustrates theoretical flaws underpinning the Orthodox Narrative together with the disastrous implications of America's new “Long War” in Africa's Horn. The absence of central government produced state collapse's archetype in Somalia: anarchy, lawlessness and an “Al-Qaeda safe-haven”, dixit Washington. This article challenges conventional wisdom by highlighting spontaneous emergences of new political complexes amidst the “chaos”, capable of providing order and stability. It explores the rise and fall of the Union of Islamic Courts. The Courts resembled a national liberation movement, based on their concoction of Sharia-justice, security and welfare provision. However, the Islamists’ tangible improvements in livelihoods were not permitted to continue. Imprisoned analytically by the Orthodox Narrative, Washington perceived the Courts as Somalia's “neo-Taliban”. This reductionist stance led to a self-fulfilling prophecy: as bellicose rhetoric radicalised positions in Mogadishu and Washington, an American-backed invasion by Ethiopia pushed-out the Islamists. Today, an insurgency is ravaging Somalia and the humanitarian situation has worsened dramatically: the GWOT's narrow world-vision has hindered the re-emergence of legitimate authority and blocked bottom-up responses to human security questions.
I discuss several conceptual problems raised by current understandings of political violence, especially as they pertain to actions, motivations, and identities in civil wars. Actions often turn out to be related to local and private conflicts rather than the war's driving (or ) cleavage. The disjunction between dynamics at the top and at the bottom undermines prevailing assumptions about civil wars, which are informed by two competing interpretive frames, most recently described as Rather than posit a dichotomy between greed and grievance, I point to the interaction between political and private identities and actions. Civil wars are not binary conflicts, but complex and ambiguous processes that foster the action of local and supralocal actors, civilians, and armies, whose alliance results in violence that aggregates yet still reflects their diverse goals. It is the convergence of local motives and supralocal imperatives that endows civil wars with their particular and often puzzling character, straddling the divide between the political and the private, the collective and the individual.
The governance debate is wide-ranging and complex. The aim of this article is to bring order to the debate by concentrating on how the rise of governance challenges many of the more traditional notions of public administration. Governance is about new methods and forms in governing and ultimately is about a change in the meaning of government. This article argues that a governance perspective provides an organizing framework for understanding the changing processes of governing. Five propositions and associated dilemmas are examined. Governance involves: multi-agency partnerships, a blurring of responsibilities between public and non-public sectors, a power dependence between organizations involved in collective action, the emergence of self-governing networks and the development of new governmental tasks and tools. The key of governance are: its weak underpinnings, a tendency to facilitate blame avoidance and scapegoating, the proliferation of unintended consequences and inadequate accountability mechanisms. In the light of such factors analysts and practitioners should consider the prospect of governance failure. Governance represents a positive attempt to tackle social and economic challenges in innovative ways but it should not be seen as a panacea. This article draws on insights from the UK Economic and Social Research Council's Local Governance Programme.
That democratic societies do not fall into conflict has become an axiom of contemporary international relations. Liberal societies, however, do not properly exist along the troubled margins of the global order. This absence has lent urgency to present efforts at social reconstruction. Whereas a couple of decades ago the principle of non–interference prevailed, this unfinished business has shaped a new will to intervene and transform societies as a whole. This article critically analyses the international will to govern through three interconnected themes. First, it examines accepted views on the nature of the new wars. These representations usually portray conflict as a form of social regression stemming from the failure of modernity. As such, they provide a moral justification for intervention. Second, an alternative view of the new wars — as a form of resistant and reflexive modernity — is developed. Made possible by the opportunities created by globalization, this resistance assumes the organizational form of network war. The essay concludes with an examination of the encounter between the international will to govern and the resistance of reflexive modernity. This encounter is the site of the post–Cold War reuniting of aid and politics. One important consequence has been the radicalization of development and its reinvention as a strategic tool of conflict resolution and social reconstruction. The use of aid as a tool of global liberal governance is fraught with difficulty; not least, the equivocal and contested nature of its influence. Rather than reconsideration, however, policy failure tends to result in a fresh round of reinvention and reform. The increasing normalization of violence is but one effect.
This article has two primary objectives. First, it sets out the methodological argument that the conventional antinomy between
normative and sociological approaches to questions of state legitimacy depends on a series of false constructions, and that
normative and sociological – or specifically historical–sociological – analyses of states and the processes by which they
obtain legitimacy can be (and ought to be) mutually reinforcing. This argument hinges on the claim that historical sociology
should renounce some of its common presuppositions regarding the coercive functions of state power and reformulate itself
as a normative social science, identifying and promoting models of statehood likely to obtain legitimacy in modern differentiated
societies. Second, it sets out the more substantive argument that the legitimization of states can be observed both as an
evolutionary or adaptive dimension of state formation and as a process of theoretical self-reflection in which the societies
where states are located construct and refine the most adequate form for the transmission of the power they designate as political.
In this respect, the article questions common assumptions about politics and legitimacy and makes a case for a change of paradigm
in the analysis of these concepts. Through this change of paradigm, politics itself and the methods used for securing legitimacy
for politics are constructed as abstracted articulations of a society’s own needs and exigencies. The article borrows elements
from the systemic-functionalist sociology of Niklas Luhmann to develop the argument. In this context, the article also uses
historical case studies to outline a theory of constitutions and constitutional rights. This theory explains how constitutions
and constitutional rights help to generate legitimacy for states by enabling modern political systems, both normatively and
functionally, to reflect and stabilize their position in society, to control the volume of politics in a society, and to elaborate
socially adequate techniques for applying and restricting political power. The article concludes by suggesting that historical–sociological
analyses of the functions of rights and constitutions can provide a key to proposing both normatively and sociologically founded
models of legitimate statehood.
Under anarchy, uncoordinated competitive theft by “roving bandits” destroys the incentive to invest and produce, leaving little for either the population or the bandits. Both can be better off if a bandit sets himself up as a dictator—a “stationary bandit” who monopolizes and rationalizes theft in the form of taxes. A secure autocrat has an encompassing interest in his domain that leads him to provide a peaceful order and other public goods that increase productivity. Whenever an autocrat expects a brief tenure, it pays him to confiscate those assets whose tax yield over his tenure is less than their total value. This incentive plus the inherent uncertainty of succession in dictatorships imply that autocracies will rarely have good economic performance for more than a generation. The conditions necessary for a lasting democracy are the same necessary for the security of property and contract rights that generates economic growth.
Oil, diamonds, timber, food aid - just some of the suggestions put forward as explanations for African wars in the past decade. Another set of suggestions focuses on ethnic and clan considerations. These economic and ethnic or clan explanations contend that wars are specifically not fought by states for political interests with mainly conventional military means, as originally suggested by Carl von Clausewitz in the 19th century. This study shows how alternative social organizations to the state can be viewed as political actors using war as a political instrument.
Why do international peacebuilders fail to address the local causes of peace process failures? The existing explanations of peacebuilding failures, which focus on constraints and vested interests, do not explain the international neglect of local conflict. In this article, I show how discursive frames shape international intervention and preclude international action on local violence. Drawing on more than 330 interviews, multi-sited ethnography, and document analysis, I develop a case study of the Democratic Republic of Congo's transition from war to peace and democracy (2003 postconflict situation; they believed that violence there was innate and therefore acceptable even in peacetime; they conceptualized international intervention as exclusively concerned with the national and international realms; and they saw holding elections, as opposed to local conflict resolution, as a workable, appropriate, and effective tool for state- and peacebuilding. This frame authorized and justified specific practices and policies while precluding others, notably local conflict resolution, ultimately dooming the peacebuilding efforts. In conclusion, I contend that analyzing discursive frames is a fruitful approach to the puzzle of international peacebuilding failures beyond the Congo.
This article argues that 'tradition' is not giving way to 'modernity' in the South Pacific. On the contrary, custom and tradition are enjoying something of a resurgence as actors in Melanesia and Polynesia rediscover the ways in which custom enables the development of resilient communities, strong social relationships and indigenous modes of dealing with conflict and restoring social harmony. Through the lens of 'political hybridity' (which argues that Weberian models of the state should not trump customary forms of governance and vice versa) this article argues that there are evolving hybrid institutions, blending the strengths of both traditional and modem cultures, that may be more appropriate to South Pacific cultures than conventional Westminster models. The argument is developed in relation to six Melanesian and Polynesian communities.
Rulers of all kinds, from feudal monarchs to democratic presidents and prime ministers, justify themselves to themselves through a variety of rituals, rhetoric, and dramatisations, using everything from architecture and coinage to etiquette and portraiture. This kind of legitimation - self-legitimation - has been overlooked in an age which is concerned principally with how government can be justified in the eyes of its citizens. In this 2001 book, Rodney Barker argues that at least as much time is spent by rulers legitimating themselves in their own eyes, and cultivating their own sense of identity, as is spent in trying to convince ordinary subjects. Once this dimension of ruling is taken into account, a far fuller understanding can be gained of what rulers are doing when they rule. It can also open the way to a more complete grasp of what subjects are doing, both when they obey and when they rebel.