Complex Hybrid Governance in the South American Borderlands: The Agency of Grassroots Actors in Transforming Violent Conflicts

Africa’s vulnerability to new security threats from terrorism, illicit trafficking, and organized crime calls into question the effectiveness of its regional security policies and cooperation. Regional cooperation has been identified in the extant literature as being essential to ensuring the collective security of states. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and Southern African Development Community (SADC) are primarily and explicitly important security organizations, despite their general-purpose mandates. But how they cooperate to confront security threats, the respective roles they play in the implementation of security policies, and the challenges they face are important factors in explaining Africa’s vulnerability to insecurity and how the continent is confronting emerging security challenges. Despite the increasing importance of the role of regional security actors, there has been surprisingly little theoretical and empirical comparative analysis of the role of regional security actors and their cooperative efforts in confronting insecurity in the region. This chapter addresses the gap in the literature by providing a theoretical and empirical understanding of the role, cooperation, and challenges of ECOWAS, IGAD, and SADC in countering terrorism in Africa within the context of the Anthropocene. The chapter observes that aside from the push and pull drivers that negatively affect counterterrorism in the region, the low level of inter-subregional security cooperation worsens the region’s inability to contain the spillover of terrorists.

The Middle East has become a battleground for armed non-state actors (ANSAs), and investigation reveals that these regional actors, excluding the PYD, constantly gain or lose territory. Considering the fact that these territorial losses and gains are determined to a great extent by cooperation and conflict among non-state actors (NSAs), the PYD, unlike other NSAs, has a network of foreign relations which functions consistently and pragmatically. Although the military activity of NSAs can lead to deterioration of their relations with others, the PYD has managed to develop its foreign relations, retain its territorial holds, and consolidate popular support, notwithstanding the presence of other rival Kurdish groups and the many-sided conflicts in Syria. The important question here is: Despite marginal differences what is it that enables the PYD to develop a consistent foreign policy unlike other NSAs? Is it legitimate to say that global actors, especially the USA and Russia, support the PYD exclusively because of its professed secular ideology? How does the PYD build its ties with local, regional, and global actors notwithstanding the ideological and strategic differences? To put it differently, how does the PYD manage to get support from both the USA and Russia? In fact, all these questions touch upon the issue of resources and structures that allow the PYD to differentiate itself from other ANSAs. This study will account for the parameters that render it possible for the PYD to develop a “foreign policy” at the local, regional, and global level.

IntroductionMegacities are developing across many regions of the world - in particular in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. These cities are growing rapidly as migrants from rural areas or those escaping conflicts gravitate to urban areas. Migrants often settle in informal urban settlements that frequently lack infrastructure and services. In the absence of state presence, or in areas where the state's presence is substantially weakened, criminals and other non-state actors become the providers of services needed by citizens. Many security specialists write that the rise of criminal groups in megacities presents a critical challenge to global stability. They suggest that poor governance by states and the rise of disgruntled populations in these megacities may result in alternative structures of governance where gangs and warlords assert control over urban territory.1Research in Karachi, a city in which criminal organizations, terrorists and crime-terror groups are all powerful actors, suggests a different reality. Crime and violence are deployed strategically by criminals in Karachi for economic and political gain. Yet they are just one group competing for power in an environment in which every political player is armed and has a stake in the city.Despite the presence of much intra-personal and politically motivated violence, including high rates of homicide, there is an order in Karachi that is established from the bottom up rather than the top down. This order is not entirely separate from the state but-as this analysis will show-these diverse criminalized non-state actors manipulate the state and are in turn manipulated by the state.The reason that many fail to see the order that exists in this chaos is that they use Western concepts of nation-building or state formation to analyze the new urban reality of the developing world. Thus they miss the distinctive relationships that exist between state and non-state actors in the megacities of the developing world, of which Karachi is a prime example.This paper analyzes how criminalized non-state groups are connected to the wider political and economic contexts in which they operate. The relationships between organized crime and the state are different in Karachi from those that exist in Sicily, Italy. Yet the Sicilian context provides the overarching framework for our understanding of crime-state relationships. In Sicily, family relationships determine the structures of criminal groups and votes are delivered to politicians in return for contracts and tolerance of their activities. Criminal groups are loyal to the state and have grown along with the economic development of the Italian state since World War II.2In contrast, in Karachi, non-state actors do not benefit as directly from a parasitic relationship to the state. This is true, in part, because the state has less to give. Moreover, there is less of an exchange relationship between the non-state actors and political structures than in Italy. Rather, much more complex relationships exist between the state and the non-state actors in this difficult environment in which crime and terror groups have assumed many functions that are vital for the survival of citizens, such as the provision of housing and water.Karachi: Order and Disorder in this MegacityKarachi, a city with a population of approximately twenty million, contributes at least a quarter of Pakistan's GDP and serves as its primary port. Through its port flow many illicit commodities including drugs,3 ensuring the centrality of illegal commerce to the economic life of the city, and by extension, the country.Karachi's political structure is distinctive in having criminal groups, terror groups (Al-Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT)), and crime-terror groups (D-company) as major actors in the political and economic environment of this great port city. Even its primary political party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement or MQM (party representing migrants) as it is popularly known, is credited for introducing systematic violence and crime to the city's politics. …

Since the end of WWII, states have formed several international organizations dealing with international peace and security issues. Among them are the Security Council, the Conference on Disarmament, the Arms Trade Treaty regime, and the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. Although regional actors, such as Economic Community of West African States, European Union or the Arab League, are at best observers in those international security organizations (ISO), their member states frequently get active on their behalf. This paper examines how regional actors engage in ISO negotiations. It shows that not all regional actors are equally vocal in the negotiations, which is puzzling given that negotiation activity is important for negotiation success. To explain the variance in regional actor vocality, this paper draws on international conflict and cooperation theories and develops hypotheses on activity of regional actors in international negotiations, which are tested with quantitative methods. It is striking that even in the traditionally state-dominated policy field ‘security’, regional actors are vocal and are, thus, contributing to the creation of international peace architectures. However, the role of regional actors varies, depending on the characteristics of the negotiation arena and of the regional actors themselves.

Apart from national contestations, there has been some form of third-party involvement in the conflict and peace process in Sudan. Actors in the immediate region and internationally played the role of mediators in the peace efforts in Sudan. The international community played a role in negotiating the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan and other agreements. The Sudan government and armed groups are key actors in conflict and peace but there was hardly any negotiated peace that was reached without the involvement of regional and international actors. IGAD, the AU, and the UN were among key actors in the Juba Peace Agreement. Through the analysis of existing material, this contribution looks critically at the roles played by different actors in the process and how regional and international actors brought the interlocutors around the table. A key argument in the article is that mediators succeed in having parties sign agreements but play no significant role beyond that.

1 THE FRAMEWORK The dismantlement of the Soviet Union brought about the liberation of six Central Asian Muslim republics--Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan (figure 1). Although Azerbaijan is part of the Caucasus region, it is included in this study because: * The independence of that country, like that of the Central Asian states, was brought about as a result of the dismantlement of the Soviet Union. * Azerbaijan, like its Central Asian counterparts, is a Muslim state, and faces similar politico-economic problems. Azerbaijan's conflict with Armenia involving Nagorno-Karabkh reminds one of a number of conflicts in the Central Asian region. These include a seething ethnic conflict in Kazakhstan (involving the Khazaks and the Slavs), the ongoing civil war in Tajikistan ethnic, national, and religious lines (since the Russian forces are also involved in this civil war), and the ethnic conflict in the Fargana valley that cuts across the borders of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. * Like the economies of its Central Asian neighbors, the Azeri economy was largely dependent on the economy of the former Soviet Union. Consequently, like its other neighbors, Azerbaijan is busy establishing economic self-sufficiency, along with strengthening its religious political, linguistic, and ethnic identities. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] All these states are ethnically heterogenous, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan having the largest percentage of Russian population; except for Azerbaijan, the Sunni Muslim faith predominates; and the mother tongue of these countries, save Tajikistan, is of Turkic origin. Although these states appear to have more in common with the Middle East than with other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), quite wisely, these states decided to join that organization. Through this action, they appear to have postponed the political instability that their sudden independence was likely to have caused. These states are either primarily or substantially Muslim. They have no tradition or institutional memory of a democratic government. The level of education of their population is among the lowest in the region. As these states deal with this unique period of independence, they will try to find their proper places in the world community. During this time, they will be influenced by various regional and extraregional actors who have their own agendas vis-a-vis these states. The old version of the might have entered history; the new version began soon after the breakup of the Soviet Union. It is this game--post-Cold War style that is the topic of this study. The originator of the phrase was J. W. Kay, who used it in his book, History of the War in Afghanistan, (1) but Rudyard Kipling popularized it in his novel, Kim, to describe the 18th- and 19th-century rivalry between Britain and Russia over the Indian subcontinent. Peter Hopkirk, in The Great Game, establishes that the territory of this struggle--characterized by intrigues and conspiracies--was the land between Russia and India. (2) The Central Asian territory was then ruled by a variety of local khans. Even though they did not have much knowledge of the world beyond their immediate vicinity, they were indeed quite cognizant of Russian motives and of the British conquest of India. To prolong their own rule, they were able to play these two great powers against each other with considerable skill. The new great game may not be aimed at the physical subjugation of Muslim Central Asia, but Russia--the only regional actor with the capability to conquer one or more nations of Muslim Central Asia--may indeed resuscitate its own historical will to reconquer one or more nations of Muslim Central Asia, especially if the democratic experience in that country becomes a miserable failure and if extremists gain control of the Russian government. …

In this paper, we consider the development of Nigeria as a regional security actor, and the extent to which it shows security leadership in two dimensions: the sub-region West Africa, and in the whole of Africa. Whereas we contribute to studies that show, this paper provides a more nuanced assessment of the perceptions of Nigeria’s regional role. We argue that Nigeria’s dual regional role is a carefully constructed narrative that is central to its foreign policy objectives, and indeed its identity as an African state. The implication of this is that on the one hand borne out in Nigeria’ regional performance vis-a-vis the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), which we explore in nuanced detailed. On the other hand, however, we also consider how Nigeria’s sub-regional performance, the usual focus of academic discourse unfolds in the context of its pan-African commitments. In doing so, we highlight the various tensions that underscore and challenge Nigeria’s role as a regional (African) leader. In particular, we examine claims of hegemonic ambitions, the impact of on-going national security challenges, the potential competition between Nigeria and others for leadership, and the role of external actors in discourses around who is a regional actor.

This article makes three important arguments. The first is that one of the most crucial factors in explaining the various outcomes of UN peacekeeping cases over the past seventy-five years can be found in the role of contingencies: the idiosyncratic circumstances that have combined to enable success or failure. The second is that these peacekeeping missions critically demonstrate the importance of focusing attention on the significant role of key domestic, regional, and external actors. The third is that contingencies at these three important levels, rather than any established security patterns or theories, are often the most critical factors in explaining the outcomes of UN peacekeeping missions over the past seven and a half decades. The choices of national and regional actors as well as external great powers often shape how these missions start, develop, and end. Examining interests and motivations in detail thus helps explain how and why UN peacekeeping missions have succeeded or failed.

The paper looks at the impact the European Union accession and recent regional policy changes have on the possibilities of regional and local actors to influence development of their regions. The integration process inevitably brings new opportunities and challenges at local and regional levels. While increased funding for development projects is the most obvious expected impact of European Union accession, other potential benefits include institution building, a more active approach in formulating national policy frameworks, and the creation of new cooperation linkages. is paper describes recent changes in the regional policy approach, and assesses their impact on building the capacity of regional actors to design development policies. It examines the experience of regional and local actors with the Cohesion Policy in the new member states of South East Europe (SEE), and the accession and candidate countries. Particular attention is given to experiences of using the EU pre–accession funds, which are valuable in terms of learning and building absorption capacity for the implementation of development projects funded through the Structural Fund. Finally, some proposals are put forward for a more efficient and effective role of regional and local actors in the overall national development policy context.

The legal and economic analysis presented here empirically tests the theoretical framework advanced by Kugler, Verdier, and Zenou (2003) and Buscaglia (1997). This paper goes beyond the prior literature by focusing on the empirical assessment of the actual implementation of the institutional deterrence and prevention mechanisms contained in the United Nations' Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo Convention). A sample of 107 countries that have already signed and/or ratified the Convention was selected. The paper verifies that the most effective implemented measures against organized crime are mainly founded on four pillars: (i) the introduction of more effective judicial decision-making control systems causing reductions in the frequencies of abuses of procedural and substantive discretion; (ii) higher frequencies of successful judicial convictions based on evidentiary material provided by financial intelligence systems aimed at the systematic confiscation of assets in the hands of criminal groups and under the control of "licit" businesses linked to organized crime; (iii) the attack against high level public sector corruption (that is captured and feudalized by organized crime) and (iv) the operational presence of government and/or non-governmental preventive programs (funded by the private sector and/or governments and/or international organizations) addressing technical assistance to the private sector, educational opportunities, job training programs and/or rehabilitation (health and/or behavioral) of youth linked to organized crime in high-risk areas (with high-crime, high unemployment, and high poverty).An empirical jurimetrics model is for the first time developed for the above four anti-crime policy domains in order to assess the legal implementation of organized crime laws. In this context, the empirical results suggest that high-impact prosecutions and effective convictions against criminal organizations are less driven by incarceration of physical persons and more focused on disrupting the production function of criminal groups through asset forfeitures that reduce the amounts of net worth aimed at expanding public corruption rings in order to feudalize States. At the same time, preventive policies aimed at diminishing the flow of youth into criminal activities will also tend to disrupt the street-based operational capacities of organized crime.Accordingly, a paradox of criminal dissuasion emerges that requires the adjustment of Becker's (1968) framework when applied to organized crime. As a result of the jurimetrics-based analysis presented in this study, just relying on traditional legal sanctions to counteract organized crime (e.g., increased incarceration and/or extradition of physical persons) will tend to create an incentive for criminal groups to expand their corruption rings (in order to protect themselves from higher expected sanctions) thus increasing the feudalization of the state by criminal groups while enhancing their operational capacities. This unwanted result of applying traditional criminal sanctions will occur if the network of criminal assets (net worth in the hands of a network of licit and illicit businesses) is not hampered by intelligence and judicial authorities first. In the cases where criminal asset networks remain untouched, the data in this paper show that criminal groups will simply react to higher expected punishments by re-assigning their relatively untouched financial resources to expanding their rings (scope) and scale of corruption at higher levels in order to protect themselves. As a result, organized crime and high level corruption grow even when the expected punishment aimed at the members of criminal enterprises is increasing at the same time. The jurimetrics-based results in 107 countries show that, in the absence of an active financial intelligence-based criminal assets forfeiture program, high-level corruption grows rapidly while, paradoxically, public sectors continue to devote more criminal justice system resources to incarcerating increasing numbers of organized crime members. At the same time, empirical analysis shows that higher probabilities of sanctions combined with stiffer sentencing guidelines on the books against organized crime members do not play their dissuasive role in the absence of preventive programs to reduce the flow of youth to criminal groups. This constitutes the paradox of criminal sanctions where more frequent and stiffer punishments applied to physical persons lead to higher levels of organized crime and higher level corruption. The deterioration of institutional performance against criminal enterprises in Afghanistan and México and the recent 2001-2007 significant improvements experienced by Colombia and Jordan can be explained jointly by financial intelligence, judicial capacities, and preventive capabilities coordinated by public sectors and civil societies.

Regional Threat Perceptions and Security Issues The post-Cold War security landscape is increasingly characterized by regional security interactions (Buzan and Waever 2003). Sub-system violent conflicts, often labeled “new wars” (Kaldor 1999) have become a core concern. While their novelty remains contested (e.g. Melander et al. 2009), such wars have become an integral part of security strategies. Thus, the 2003 European Security Strategy identified “regional conflicts” as a key threat (CEU 2003: 4). Asia, too, faces new security threats, including the effects of regional conflicts (Caballero-Anthony and Cook 2013). Both the EU and China show increasing concerns, for instance, about the instability and terrorist threats emanating from the Central Asian region (Lain 2014; CEU 2015: 6, 11). To the EU, such regional conflicts are particularly relevant if they persist in the EU's own neighborhood. The wars in the context of the break-up of former Yugoslavia signified the failure and sparked the development of EU security policy (Juncos 2005; Kirchner 2006). In this context, the build-up of military capacities in the form of battlegroups and the construction of the European External Action Service (EEAS) as a diplomatic force on the EU level have received a lot of attention. Yet, at the same time, the EU is committed to the transformation of regional conflicts through civilian and political means and, in particular, through the promotion of regional integration. Meanwhile, the Asian context illustrates that regionalism is not equal to EU-style “institutional” integration. It may also take the form of “intergovernmental” regionalism, focused on states and “networked” regionalism, in which states and regional actors are connected in relatively decentralized yet interlocking webs and variable geometries (Yeo 2010). Such comparisons of the EU's and China's regionalization policies are complicated by the fact that one is a regional organization and the other a “great power.” As a mature security community, the EU is committed to the transformation of its external security environment, using both power and values-based means to achieve normative ends. As an “authoritarian capitalist” “great power” (Gat 2007), China seeks to influence and shape its external security environment in ways that best benefit its nationalist ends. To China, regional conflicts are relevant if they have the potential to destabilize the regional security environment and adversely affect the region's (and hence China's) economic dynamism.

The conflict in South Sudan since December 2013 has devastated the lives of the majority of South Sudan people. It has killed tens of thousands, placed nearly a third of the population at risk of famine and ravaged key parts of the country. Against the backdrop of historical and narrative approaches by scholars and practitioners, the roles of international actors and the impact of violent conflict in South Sudan is yet to be contextually situated. While some see the causes of Africa’s problem as economic and linked to poverty, debt and structural adjustment programs from the international financial institutions, political and governance-related factors, others could relate it as the artificially carved African boundaries by which many regard it as a colonial creation that caused frequent confrontations as a form of interstate conflict. The historical trajectory of ethnic divide and political identity in South Sudan brings to fore the germane question of decolonization within the context of democratic values and ideals. This study, ‘roles of international actors and the impact of violent Conflicts on the democratic development in South Sudan: Rethinking the narrative’ is focused on a critique of the roles of international actors in the South Sudan conflict. The argument in this study seeks to advance knowledge with a paradigm shift from the parochial focus on international bodies as solutions to violent conflict situations while situating democracy within the context of decolonization. The study seeks to evaluate the source of recourse and relapse to violent conflict in spite of several conflict resolution and mitigation strategies and attendant impact of violent conflict on the democratic development in South Sudan. The study is exploratory with the use of secondary data and archival materials. The study will use qualitative measures in gathering data as it depends on secondary sources of data collection such as written text, archival materials, journals and online sources.

This article examines the impact of privacy rights norms and North–South technological diffusion on the development of Nigeria's emerging legal regime for data governance, and the relationship between this legal regime and the digitalisation of border control in Nigeria. We show that federal data protection regulations and border control technologies in Nigeria are not characterised by the extractive logics of surveillance capitalism, which is the focus of several contemporary critiques of ‘digital colonialism’. Nonetheless, the country's data governance regime and its digital borders have been shaped by Northern-produced norms, practices, and technical tools – interacting with the interests and agency of local actors – through both legislative and technological influences. Critically analysing the co-production of law and digital infrastructures highlights the coloniality of knowledge relating to data protection, privacy rights, and digital mobility control. These cases suggest that digital colonialism can be productively analysed beyond the scope of surveillance capitalism.

In history and literature, colonial rule is often read correctly in terms ofviolence, trauma, (super) structural mutations and the undermining byexternal forces of local endogenous authorities, cultures and ideologies.Incorrectly, however, these effects and mutations are typicallyconsidered to be induced unilaterally from the outside hence occludingthe role and agency of local actors and the characteristics of internalsocial dynamics in the colonized space. This paper focuses preciselyon aspects of these often forgotten dimensions explored through ananalysis of the paradoxal ‘Baudot’ praise song by Maazou Inoussaalias Dan Alalo and his troupe. The song foregrounds the colonialadministrator René Baudot both as hero and anti-hero, the artist as apowerful actor and lucid critic, the local society as reactive, ambivalentand heterogeneous. In this performance of power, panegyric/parody,empathy/satire, insider/outsider, high-status/low-status, private/public,domination/resistance, centrality/liminality power/powerlessnessand low status/high status emerge as key concepts in a piece demonstrating artistic virtuosity, humour and lucidity.

Toward Peace, Security, and Governance in the Great Lakes Region - G.M. Khadiagala. Regional Actors and Issues. Governance and Security in Rwanda - F. Reyntjens. Burundi at a Crossroads - R. Lemarchand. Congo in the Great Lakes Conflict - M. Baregu. Nonstate Actors and Governance in Uganda - A. Ndinga-Muvumba. The Economic Dimensions of Conflict in the Region - G. Prunier. The Role of External Actors. South Africa - C. Landsberg. The United Nations - A. Adebajo. Belgium, France, and the United States - P. Schraeder. Conclusion. Building Security for Peoples, Societies, and States - G.M. Khadiagala.