Collaboration in comparative perspective

Abstract

The concept of collaboration is simultaneously contested and multifaceted. Its current political and scholarly use has been largely determined by the events of the Second World War. The term has acquired a pejorative and/or polemical connotation signifying primarily the collaboration of native political forces with the Axis occupiers during the Second World War. In its most polemical dimension, the term has become synonymous with treason and the adoption of a Fascist or Nazi ideological position. Yet, from a conceptual perspective, this practice is highly restrictive. To begin with, it is hard to come up with a serious theoretical reason for excluding from the concept practices of collaboration with non-Axis forces, e.g. of German or Japanese elites with the Allied occupation forces following the Axis defeat in 1945. In fact, collaboration as a practice is ‘as old as war and the occupation of foreign territory’. The concept of ‘indirect rule’ so essential for understanding colonisation also requires the use of collaboration. To go even further, it is possible to observe that collaboration is an essential feature of both empire and also state-building processes. In spite of this conceptual minefield, convention forces us to use the term in a way compatible with current practices. Even within this restricted conceptual domain, however, collaboration can be analysed across several dimensions. One dimension refers to the political and legal modalities of collaboration. Did it follow a formal treaty or not? Where those who signed this treaty representative and legitimate political actors? A second dimension refers to the (non-mutually exclusive) policy areas in which collaboration was practised: was it political, military, or economic. A third distinguishes between the primarily political dimension of collaboration and its cultural and social underpinnings. Collaboration by political versus ethnic organisations is a related issue. A fourth dimension entails the study of underlying motivations and distinguishes by forced collaboration (or cooperation), survival-driven collaboration (or attentisme), and collaboration that is chosen given acceptable alternatives. This last category is further distinguished from ‘collaborationism’ used exclusively for a collaboration based on ideological identification as opposed to state collaboration based on the raison d’Etat. Additionally, it is also possible to disaggregate motivations and dynamics among elites and ordinary citizens. A key issue is understanding whether collaboration is superimposed on pre-existing political cleavages and whether it creates