Hybrid Political Orders Research Articles

Future Envisioning of Hybrid Political Order

Hybrid political order is a relatively new political concept for explaining a state-building reality observed in some new post-conflict states. Hybrid political orders and hybridity have evolved as a result of the emergence of fragile states that hardly function in the international system. The fragile states began to be characterized by post-modernity and did not fit in the classical model of the state. Thus, this paper explores the literature to demonstrate how hybrid political order functions within domestic governance than in the interaction with other states and in the international system. The purpose of this study is to examine a hybrid political order in the international system by exploring the determinants of legitimacy and recognition. Such exploration and analysis are in addition grounded on peace-building and state-building theories. This paper envisions the hybrid political order as a possible alternative for better functioning of the international system.

An Interview with Volker Boege

Dr Volker Boege is a Senior Research Fellow for Climate Change and Conflict at Toda Peace Institute. He has made significant contributions to peace studies, particularly in the Pacific region. His work focuses on hybrid political orders, traditional conflict transformation methods, and the link between environmental degradation and conflict. Currently, he researches the intersection of climate change, land, migration, identity, and conflict, with a focus on Pacific Island Countries. Dr Boege is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Queensland’s School of Political Science and International Studies. His career includes research roles at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, the University of Duisburg, and the peace research institute BICC. He has lectured extensively and in the 1980s/1990s advised the Green Party in the German Parliament on peace and security policy. Through his diverse roles and research, Dr Boege has advanced the integration of environmental and traditional approaches in conflict resolution.

Anti-corruption Law as a Fiction: The Illusion of Serving Morality by Controlling It through Rules and Regulations with an International Reach

According to the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International, corruption is still far more prevalent in “non-Western” countries. The search for more effective anti-corruption legislation has shifted from preventing and combating bribery to preventing corruption in a broader sense. Consequently, anti-corruption law has obtained a more far-reaching scope. However, this does not work sufficiently. Up till now, we do not know why. This article focuses on why we should consider revising anti-corruption legislation. The research is a qualitative theoretical analysis based on empirical insights from preliminary anthropological fieldwork conducted in Gabon (Feikema 2015). One of the reasons for the challenge seems to be that the implicit institutional setup—namely, of a national state with a rule of law, which forms the point of departure of anti-corruption law—is not self-evident in countries where this democratic rule of law is not an experienced reality. For example, in the so-called hybrid political orders (Boege 2008), these developments of anti-corruption law may have a confusing and alienating impact, as demonstrated by a case study. Therefore, the effectiveness of these laws could be doubted. Even more importantly, respect for human dignity, the rationale of these laws, seems to be seriously at stake. We could understand recent developments in anti-corruption law as an illusion of control. Even more vitally, anti-corruption law could be considered a symptom of derailment. What we experience as evil may occur as the disturbance of the ecological cohesion of society: derailment.

Informality and insecurity in the Sahel: unravelling the hybrid political orders of Northern Mali and Northern Niger

Since the Sahelian crisis broke out in 2012, Northern Mali and Northern Niger have been identified as the two potential epicentres of violence in the region. Nevertheless, while sharing very similar structural conditions and constraints, during the last decade these two subregions have scored very differently in terms of stability and armed conflict along the centre-periphery divide. Aiming to understand the divergent security patterns in Northern Mali and Northern Niger, this work highlights the importance of informal institutions as politically – and spatially contingent networks whose mechanisms for regulating authority and power are key for the appreciation of state capacity and political ordering, and essential for understanding statehood in the Sahel. We stress the importance of hybrid political orders and informality for the definition of political settlements which result in (a) the cooptation of political/economic competitors and the stabilisation of viable governance arrangements; or (b) an open contestation of authority and value-extraction that paves the way for destabilising dynamics. The diverging pattern exhibited by the two cases demonstrates that hybrid networks that straddle political and informal institutions are crucial in determining either the stabilisation or destabilisation of political settlements.

Future Envisioning of Hybrid Political Order

Future Envisioning of Hybrid Political Order

Pandemic Micropolitics in Latin America: Small Business and the Governance of Crisis From Above and Below in El Salvador

The COVID-19 pandemic had severe impacts in Latin America, with small businesses intensely affected. Beyond its economic consequences, the pandemic also exacerbated structural flaws in some of the region's weakly institutionalised democracies, diminishing State legitimacy and expanding that of organised criminal groups. In considering how State governance from above is challenged by non-state governance from below, this article examines a “pandemic micropolitics” as seen through the lens of support to the small business sector. We outline a framework to understand co-governance in hybrid political orders during crises; and examine this using case studies of urban informal markets and the transport sector in El Salvador. In showing that the pandemic contributed to a renegotiation of co-governance between the State, criminal organisations, and business associations, we contribute to understandings of the dynamics of distributive politics and the co-governance of crisis; and the potential implications for a post-COVID-19 political economy in Latin America.

Hybrid Security Provision in African Post-colonial Settings: The Cases of Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT The Weberian paradigm’s ascription of a legitimate state’s provision of security and justice overlooks the role played by non-state actors in the post-colonial world. Adopting a hybridity framework enables scholars and practitioners to re-centre the focus from a state-centric view of states as fragile or failed to recognise the strength and resilience of alternative socio-political formations of order. Existing evidence on hybrid political orders demonstrates that community resilience and customary institutions should not be perceived as spoilers but understood as assets for constructive engagements between the customary and modern states. The cases of Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone highlight how the complex and interdependent interaction between modern and traditional systems of governance, through a combination of conflict and cooperation, can explain state resilience.

Cross-case patterns of security production in hybrid political orders: their shapes, ordering practices, and paradoxical outcomes

ABSTRACT Examinations of substate security and everyday peace in hybrid political orders are mostly limited to single-case studies or statistical analyses. Seldom are qualitative methods applied with a comparative aim that can unveil patterns of security production. I attempt such an approach by studying 12 cases across the Central African Republic, Haiti, Somaliland, and South Sudan. I investigate (1) where hybrid interactions take place, (2) how they happen and (3) what this means for people’s security. I argue, first, that hybrid ordering shapes socio-geography by separating a rigorously controlled inner from a securitised outer circle. Second, I find that actors clash over the use of contrasting ordering principles on a spectrum from stable to fluid. Third, measured security indices, paradoxically, often diverge from how safe people feel depending on public support for the socio-geographical shape and ordering principles applied. These cross-case patterns of hybrid political orders underscore the importance of comparing political ordering processes.

NoraStel, Hybrid political Order and the Politics of uncertainty: Refugee Governance in Lebanon (2020). London: Routledge. 251 pp.

NoraStel, Hybrid political Order and the Politics of uncertainty: Refugee Governance in Lebanon (2020). London: Routledge. 251 pp.

A Systemic Understanding of Hybrid Peace: An Examination of Hybrid Political Orders in African Peace Governance

The idea of hybrid peace has gained prominence in both academic and policy literature, yet ongoing debates fail to explicitly address a key lacuna concerning the relationship between hybrid political orders and the enhancement of traditional peacemaking in the Global South. Using an integrative governance framework, this article examines the notion of hybridity from grassroots to regional peace practices in Africa. It argues that the efficacy and sustenance of traditional African peacemaking could be enhanced if a customary peace practice is systemically integrated with liberal procedures and that discussions on hybridity will gain more value and meaning if the debates (re)center on unpacking hybridity at key governance arenas/stages—and the implications for a national and international order. The article thus attempts to provoke a new conversation that disaggregates the possibilities, dilemmas, and implications of hybrid orders from grassroots through regional to a global level and what it contributes to future peacebuilding.

Hybrid Political Order in Libya: State, Non-State and Armed Actors

Libya, inspired by the February 17 revolution but devastated by post-revolt challenges, is struggling to build order, as state, non-state, and external actors exacerbate the already fragile security environment. Among these actors, state and non-state actors pose a repeating and paradoxical dilemma. Libya’s post-Qaddafi state structure has been formed by non-state armed actors, and at the same time these actors threaten the survival of the state; certain non-state armed groups compete against each other to accumulate more power, while in some cases being legitimized and funded by the state itself. The root causes of this paradoxical situation can be scrutinized by investigating the security culture inherited from Qaddafi’s regime, particularly its inefficient and ignored security institutionalization, and the efforts of the competing armed groups to dominate their areas of influence in the absence of a coherent state structure.

Governance, Fragility and Insurgency in the Sahel: A Hybrid Political Order in the Making

ABSTRACT Once a region that rarely featured in debates about global security, the Sahel has become increasingly topical as it confronts the international community with intertwined challenges related to climate variability, poverty, food insecurity, population displacement, transnational crime, contested statehood and jihadist insurgencies. This Special Issue discerns the contours of political orders in the making. After situating the Sahel region in time and space, we focus on the trajectory of regional security dynamics over the past decade, which are marked by two military coups in Mali (2012 and 2020). In addressing state fragility and societal resilience in the context of increasing external intervention and growing international rivalry, we seek to consider broader and deeper transformations that can be neither ignored nor patched up through the framework of the ‘war on terror’ projected onto ‘ungoverned spaces’. Focusing especially on the mobilisation of material and immaterial resources, we apply political economy lenses in combination with a historical sociological approach to shed light on how extra-legal governance plays a crucial role in the deformation, transformation and reformation of political orders.

“Who is responsible about our lives?”: “Failing” governance and mobilizations in the Palestinian refugee camps of Beirut

ABSTRACT This article situates modes of politicization based on the unclarity of camp governance in the Palestinian refugee camps of Beirut. After the Lebanese Civil War, the intervention of a growing number of actors in the camps, from international organizations to local networks of self-help, makes the governance structure of the camps hard-to-read, leading to regular complaints from camp residents about a failing or inexistent governance system in the camps. From a perspective drawing on literature on hybrid political orders, social movements, and informal institutions in urban governance, this article explains how camp dwellers in fact possess clear knowledge about the camps’ governance system, and mostly use claims of ignorance as a way to safely denounce specific authorities. The denunciation of a “failing” system of governance thus provides local activists with resources allowing them to label and challenge authority in creative manners.

State formation and economic development in post-war Somaliland: the impact of the private sector in an unrecognised state

ABSTRACTUnrecognised internationally, Somaliland operates as a hybrid political order where a range of state and non-state entities provide security, representation and social services. Local business elites have impacted state formation after war by lobbying against a range of regulations, providing the government with loans and contributions rather than paying sufficient taxes, and by hindering the development of sound financial institutions. The success of such activities has led to de facto protectionism, where foreign ventures have had limited access to the Somaliland market. While such protectionism may have negatively impacted economic development and growth opportunities, recent engagements by multinational corporations in the Berbera port suggest that foreign private investments risk sparking violent conflict. In contrast, domestic businessmen have played a role in preventing or resolving violent conflict at crucial stages in Somaliland’s recent history. Based on fieldwork in Somaliland, we argue that the impact of international corporate actors in post-war contexts needs to be understood in light of local culture and power dynamics, in which the political and economic roles of local business elites are central.

‘If you are in government, you can still implement traditional law’ Hybridity and Justice Delivery in Lanao, the Philippines

This article discusses the emergence of hybrid institutional arrangements in the field of security and justice delivery in the provinces of Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte in the Philippines. It will be argued that these hybrid institutions cannot be explained by pointing at a weak or fragile state. Rather, over the past few decades, the Philippine state has demonstrated an exceptional capacity to incorporate a range of informal practices of justice delivery within formal state institutions. In the type of hybridity that is emerging, formal state institutions serve as avenues through which highly flexible practices of justice and security delivery are being performed. As a result, control over justice and security provision has been transferred from traditional authorities to elected politicians. Rather than being a process of legitimate and sustainable state formation, this has reinforced an authoritarian political order under which access to justice and security is unevenly distributed. Based on these observations, this article puts forward some questions about a defining axiom within the current hybrid political order literature that views the interaction of informal and formal types of public authority as a prime avenue to enable post-conflict reconstruction and state formation.

Openness, transparency and public participation in the governance of uranium mining in Greenland: a legal and political track record

ABSTRACTThis article examines the implementation of the principles of openness, transparency and public participation in the decision-making regarding the conditions for uranium mining in Greenland from a legal and political perspective. The time frame covers the period from the exploration for minerals before World War II to 2016–2017 when the current Greenlandic authorities prepared a licence for a project of extraction of rare earth elements and uranium in Kvanefjeld. It is shown that the issue of openness, transparency and public participation in Greenland is a longstanding issue and that the current governance does not permit public access to a draft environmental impact assessment report, impairing public participation in decision-making, and preventing the environmental consequences of these activities from being considered as a public concern. It is argued that sovereignty–its consolidation and the accession to it–has impacted the design of governance in Greenland and that the constraints put on the full implementation of the legal principles of openness, transparency and public participation in the governance of uranium mining in Greenland, amongst other factors, point to a current hybrid political and legal order in the context of a political agenda of independence.

Political Parties and Minority Governance in Hybrid Political Orders: Reflections from Lebanon’s Palestinian Settlements and Kosovo’s Serbian Enclaves

ABSTRACT This article analyses how minority populations govern and are governed in South Lebanon’s informal Palestinian settlements and the Serbian enclave in North Kosovo. Drawing on literature about hybrid political orders, it is argued that in both settings political parties play a linchpin role in local governance. Based on this finding, three key functions of political parties in the governance of minority populations in hybrid political orders are identified: representation, provision and brokerage. Understanding the interdependencies and trade-offs between these different roles contributes to remedying the analytical blind spot regarding the nature, positions and roles of political parties in hybrid political orders.

Rethinking peace-building practices through the Somaliland experience

ABSTRACTReflecting on the Somali case, the article argues that the systematic failures of international interventions in the country have largely derived from the modernising orientation underlying UN peace-building practices. Following this logic, the solution to the Somali problem becomes dependent upon the construction of a centralised authority. Resisting an alternative romanticisation of the Somaliland experiment, the article suggests that the multiple attempts to build a sui generis model of democracy, which combines Western and local forms of governance, are giving way to a hybrid political order that may, in turn, help us to rethink UN peace-building practices in less ethnocentric terms.

Negotiating security provisioning in a hybrid political order: the case of the Arrow Boys in Western Equatoria, South Sudan

This paper discusses the emergence of a local defence force, the Arrow Boys, in Western Equatoria State in response to the threats posed by the Lord’s Resistance Army, in a context where the support provided by the state security forces is considered to be inadequate by the local population. The defence force that was put in place led to a series of negotiations between politicians and local leaders supporting the Arrow Boys and the national authorities of South Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Drawing from theories on negotiated statehood, this paper argues that in a hybrid political order negotiations about security involve interrelated questions about the relevance of external security threats, who is able and allowed to take action against those threats and according to which norms and rules. It is through negotiations on these issues that practices of state mediation take shape.

Education and extraversion: naming, valuing and contesting ‘modern’ and ‘indigenous’ knowledge in post-war Somaliland

ABSTRACT In response to critiques of the extraverted and mimetic nature of post-colonial education have come various efforts to decolonize Africa's universities. At first blush, the University of Hargeisa’s Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies’ (IPCS) stated commitment to teaching indigenous knowledge appears to follow this trend. In practice, however, IPCS has established itself as an intentionally ‘modern’ Institute valued by staff and students alike for the ‘extraverted’ globally oriented education it provides. Against the view that this proclivity for the modern simply represents the presence of an enduring colonial mentality, this article explores how, why, and to what effect an intentionally ‘modern’ education has been implemented at IPCS. I build on Bayart’s concept of ‘extraversion’ to show how invocations of modern and indigenous knowledge entail various claims to inclusion that reflect internal social changes, Somaliland’s hybrid political order, and lack of recognition. Drawing on ethnographic research that included classroom observation, interviews and informal interactions with staff and students, and reflection on my own teaching experiences, I explore how staff and students have embraced particular modes of education as a means to both ‘engage the world’ and increase their own opportunities for domestic political and socio-economic inclusion. Furthermore, I show that IPCS’ approach has not led to the devaluation of indigenous knowledge, but has instead facilitated debate about the relative merits of different knowledge systems for contemporary Somaliland. This case highlights the value of approaching (post)colonial educational institutes not simply as sites where knowledge is passively ‘imbibed’, but rather as compelling windows into complex processes of social change.