Hybrid Political Orders Research Articles

‘Public–Private Entanglement’: Entrepreneurship in Lebanon’s Hybrid Political Order

While the literature is clear that political influence and clientelism characterises the investment decisions of entrepreneurs and the performance of their firms when governance is weak, it is less understood how governance systems and entrepreneurs interact, particularly when governance is of a hybrid nature. We address this issue in this paper by studying how entrepreneurs obtain access to electricity in Lebanon, showing that the hybrid political order imposes a high cost on electricity. We furthermore find that a hybrid political order channels entrepreneurial talent into lobbying and bribery. The key constraint that emerges from the hybrid political order in this case is the corrupt organisation of governance of the electricity sector. This results in higher prices (because bribes for contracts have to be earned back) in entrenchment of oligopolies, because contracts often come with political protection.

The fallacy of constructing hybrid political orders: a reappraisal of the hybrid turn in peacebuilding

ABSTRACTThis article reviews the recent academic and policy interest in hybridity and hybrid political orders in relation to peacebuilding. It is sceptical of the ability of international actors to manufacture with precision hybrid political orders, and argues that the shallow instrumentalization of hybridity is based on a misunderstanding of the concept. The article engages in conceptual-scoping in thinking through the emancipatory potential of hybridity. It differentiates between artificial and locally legitimate hybrid outcomes, and places the ‘hybrid turn' in the literature in the context of the continued evolution of the liberal peace as it struggles to come to terms with crises of access and legitimacy.

Understanding Power in Hybrid Political Orders: Applying Stakeholder Analysis to Land Conflicts in Cambodia

Current peacebuilding debates centre around the idea that international and local activities need to be better aligned. However, the distinction between ‘local’ and ‘international’ actors and processes obscures both power and interest differentials among actors and the various interconnections between international, national and local actors and discourses. This article proposes stakeholder analysis as a way to help understand power relations among various actors. This approach is applied to an empirical sample of land conflicts in Cambodia, in which local residents saw their livelihoods threatened by collusion between international private investors and national and local political interests. The findings suggest that building peace in insecure settings is not just a matter of harmonising approaches to strengthen the state with initiatives to support local groups. The reflex of international peacebuilders to strengthen the state and promote the rule of law overlooks the fact that governments may be unaccountable and laws may be illegitimate.

From Hybridity to Standardization: Rethinking State-Making in Contexts of Fragility

Having been top of the agenda for the past two decades, debates on state fragility have recently witnessed the emergence of pluralist concepts. While the concept of ‘hybrid political orders’ has invigorated our thinking about fragile states, it yields to the fallacy that pluralism constitutes the birth certificate of statehood. This article introduces an alternative concept to better grasp state trajectories, proposing an understanding of state developments in terms of institutional and identity standardization. Rooted in existing accounts of state-making, the analytical prism of ‘rule standardization’ is original in that it conceptually bridges the gap between statebuilding and nation-building as well as between state-making and state-breaking. Substantiating the theoretical discussion with three case studies from the Somali territories, the paper fundamentally proposes that what is required to sustain states should not be confused with what is required to initiate them.

Illiberal peace-building in hybrid political orders: managing violence during Indonesia’s contested political transition

The paper presents a new interpretation of peace-building in contested transitional states. The peace-building literature is dominated by analysis of international liberal processes and policies, their costs and benefits. To understand non-liberal processes of peace-building, especially those conducted by national governments, new concepts have emerged. The paper employs the concept of ‘hybrid political orders’ to analyse the logic of illiberal peace-building processes in transitional states. In contrast to a normative liberal analysis, this approach interprets violent democratising states as they are, rather than as they ought to be. It also assesses the role that illiberal political institutions, such as those of neo-patrimonialism, can play in reducing violence. In the light of overall government policy and two comparative sub-national cases taken from the Indonesian transition, the paper discusses how illiberal peace-building reduced violence during political transition, and when and why it failed. The discussion has relevance for wider understanding of the comparative politics of democratisation and peace-building in contested states.

The Two Faces of Security in Hybrid Political Orders: A Framework for Analysis and Research

This paper reframes the security and development debate through fresh theoretical lenses, which view security as highly contested both in the realm of politics and in the realm of ideas. 1 For some analysts security concerns political power, including the use of organised force to establish and maintain social orders and to protect them from external and internal threats. For others it is about how individuals and communities are protected (or protect themselves) from violence, abuse of power and other existential risks. We integrate both approaches whilst placing our focus on the deep tensions between them. Combining them is especially apposite in the hybrid political orders of conflict-torn regions in the developing world – where the state and its monopoly of violence are contested and diverse state and non-state security actors coexist, collaborate or compete. We ask what security in these hybrid contexts looks like from below, that is from the perspective of “end users”, be these citizens of states, members of local communities or those who are marginalised and insecure. What are their own vernacular understandings of security, and how do these understandings link to wider conceptions of citizen and of human security? Even when security and insecurity are experienced and decided locally, they are at the same time determined nationally and globally. It is at the interfaces between local agency, state power and global order that the most politically salient and analytically challenging issues tend to arise. To analyse these interfaces we focus on three interconnecting political spaces, each characterised by their own forms of hybridity, in which security is negotiated with end-users: (i) “unsecured borderlands” where state authority is suspended or violently challenged by alternative claimants to power or providers of security, including nonstate armed groups; (ii) “contested Leviathans”, that is state security structures whose authority and capacity to deliver security are weak, disputed or compromised by special interests; and (iii) “securitised policy spaces” in which international actors collaborate to ensure peace and fulfil their responsibility to protect vulnerable end-users in unse cured regions. In making these distinctions we argue that similar analytical lenses can be turned upon international actors in securitised policy spaces as well as upon state and non-state security actors. The concluding section argues that such a reframing of the security and development debate demands not just new modes of analysis but also fresh approaches to

Hybrid Governance: The Case of Georgia

Based on fieldwork interviews, this article examines the internationally sponsored good governance reforms in Georgia in the wake of the 2003 Rose Revolution. In one reading, the consolidation of power around the president can be seen as a failure of the good governance agenda. The article argues, however, that rather than using the success/failure binary to judge Georgia, it can be seen as a hybrid political order. Using an adapted four-part model of hybridization, the article examines the complex mix of international, local, and transnational dynamics that combine to produce hybrid governance.

Limits of hybrid political orders: the case of Somaliland

Hybrid political orders are in the literature discussed as a heuristic tool to understand how power and legitimacy are negotiated in settings where the Western model of the liberal democratic state does not work. Sometimes they are presented as an alternative model for successful statehood, e.g., by combining ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ political institutions. The Republic of Somaliland is frequently presented as functioning hybrid political order. A cornerstone for Somaliland's success was the integration of traditional authorities in government. These authorities engaged in peace-building and state formation in the early 1990s. Their role was institutionalized in the ‘House of Elders’, the upper house of parliament. This article argues that the hybrid political order of Somaliland has outlived its success. What is left at the beginning of the 21st century is an imbalanced and in many regards ‘crippled’ hybrid. It threatens democratic progress and undermines the authority and legitimacy of the state institutions as well as the leading traditional authorities in the region. These developments in Somaliland show the limits of hybrid political systems in general.

Public-Private Entanglement: Entrepreneurship in a Hybrid Political Order, the Case of Lebanon

The instability and informality that characterize hybrid political orders and its effects on entrepreneurs remains largely unexplored in the scholarly literatures. In this paper we provide initial findings from the case of entrepreneurs' access to electricity in Lebanon. Using quantitative and qualitative methods we find that political connections significantly influence the investment decisions of entrepreneurs and the performance of their firms. In general, a hybrid political order imposes a 'tax' on entrepreneurship by channelling entrepreneurial talent into lobbying and bribery; by reinforcing male and family-owned dominance in business; and by skewing investment decisions. Specifically, we find that family firms whose entrepreneurs engage in bribery, and who obtain government contracts alleviate electricity problems and perform better.

Hybrid Violence: Locating the Use of Force in Postconflict Settings

Abstract This article unpacks the notion of hybrid violence and sketches the different forms of hybrid violence—categorical, institutional, motivational, and temporal—that can be found in many postconflict contexts. It highlights how attempts to establish a monopoly over the legitimate use of force are often at odds with the various roles that violence plays in contemporary states, especially (but not exclusively) in postconflict contexts. The article argues that in fact many of the shortcomings of the liberal peacebuilding paradigm stem from a failure to recognize that a hybrid political order existed before conflict erupted and that hybridized forms of violence were a critical element in shaping conflict dynamics in many postcolonial states.

Herrschaft und Ordnung jenseits des Staates in Somalia

Schlagwörter: Staatszerfall, Staatsbildung, Friedensbildung, Interventionen, hybride politische Ordnungen, Somalia, Somaliland, Puntland ----- Governance and Order beyond the State in Somalia. Abstract This article provides an overview of the most important institutions and actors that have played a role in delivering a minimum of political order and governance in various parts of Somalia since 1991, sometimes simultaneously. Among them are traditional authorities, shari’a courts, warlords, businessmen/women, local NGOs, Islamist militias and diasporic groups. The main argument is that statelessness does not equal lack of rule and anarchy. Instead, alternative political orders strive in the absence of functioning state institutions and these orders can acquire a substantial degree of legitimacy in the eyes of the concerned (local and transnational) populations. The external interventions that have characterized the international approach to Somalia since 1991 have aimed to rebuild formal statehood. These interventions have largely been counter-productive as they have ignored or even fought against most of the existing and emerging alternative political orders, with the exception of the warlords. This has added to the continuation of war and statelessness. The examples of Somaliland and Puntland, two state-like entities in northern Somalia that are based on a hybrid political system, illustrate that stability and peace are more likely to be reached in the absence of external interventions. Keywords: State-collapse, state-building, peace-building, interventions, hybrid political orders, Somalia, Somaliland, Puntland

Hybridity, Political Order and Legitimacy: Examples from Nigeria

Africa is a region characterised by state fragility based largely on the failure of Western-style institutions. This article argues that local/hybrid political order can emerge as a response to lack of access and persistent sub-national concentrations (decentralisation) of power in post-colonial states. The role of sharia in producing political trust in three states in Nigeria is examined and the argument advanced that even in divided states it can function to increase trust, thereby providing legitimacy. The study finds broad support for the contention that hybrid political orders produce greater legitimacy, with trust in local and national governments reflected in Kebbi, Kaduna, and Zamfara states that generally exceed national averages.

Hybrid and ‘Everyday’ Political Ordering: Constructing and Contesting Legitimacy in Somaliland

A number of recent post-colonial liberal peace critiques have moved beyond the counter-positioning of ‘liberal/Western’ versus ‘communal/non-Western’ peace and political order. Instead, they draw attention to the interstices – the processes of contestation, repulsion and accommodation – between these approaches. Some argue that the most promising, if contentious, forms of political ordering and peace building take place exactly in a hybrid of state-based and liberal practices, and local customs and ‘everyday’ life in post-conflict settings.Through a case-study of Somaliland, this article examines the potentials and limits of such a hybrid approach to advancing peace and political order. The analysis in particular engages with the largely uncharted issue of how political legitimacy is constructed or undermined, in the context of post-conflict hybrid political orders. Somaliland’s reconstruction process was characterised by very low international intervention when compared to other so-called ‘fragile states’ and post-conflict settings. The article looks at how political institutions and structures of governance were constituted from within Somaliland through local agencies and formation of alliances, which cut across the dichotomies of ‘state/non-state’ and ‘liberal/traditional’ forms of governance and legitimacy. It illustrates the advantages, as well as some of the challenges, of this process of political ordering and hybridization, where the domestic sphere was allowed to be constitutive for the creation of legitimacy.Examining a small-scale international-local initiative of peace dialogues and community policing in Somaliland, the article also discusses how international support may engage with ‘everyday’ strategies of self-securing, and deliberately ‘facilitate’ hybridity in the context of conflict management and justice.The analysis offers an empirical anchoring of the concepts of ‘hybridity’ and the ‘everyday’, but also demonstrates how the case of Somaliland speaks more broadly to post-colonial liberal peace critiques and the call for new approaches to peace and political order.

Moving beyond rethinking the ‘state of the state’: to the challenge of reshaping international contributions to peace operations

The need for an accurate understanding of the environment into which peace- and capacity-building missions are deployed cannot be overstated. Suppositions about the mission environment inform every facet of an intervention's design and implementation, in addition to expectations surrounding success. Yet this critical element continues to be misunderstood by those most in need of an accurate grasp, a condition which severely undermines the war to peace transition. Rather than continuing to assume that recipient ‘states’ are states in the Western sense of the term, we must instead focus our energies on how best to enable sustainable peace in the hybrid political orders which do in fact constitute these troubled places. After setting out the largely unrecognised characteristics of recipient societies, the article explores alternative forms of assistance with promise to complement such realities.

Negotiating Statehood in a Hybrid Political Order: The Case of Somaliland

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the negotiation of statehood in Somaliland, a non‐recognized de facto state which emerged from Somalia's conflict and state collapse. The negotiation process centres on the continuing transformation of a hybrid political order, involving ‘formal’ as well as ‘informal’ spheres, both in existing institutions (as ‘rules of the game’) and in the bodies or agents enforcing these rules. The negotiation processes considered take place at the national and local level respectively, as well as between the two. These negotiations are heterogeneous, non‐linear and ongoing. The article demonstrates how the polity's tolerance for heterogeneous negotiations and different forms of statehood allowed local political actors to establish peace in their own local settings first. Although it did not produce uniform statehood, it provided the basis for communities to explore the scope for common statehood. On the national level, hybrid elements initially allowed for a healthy adaptation of statehood to local needs, and for legitimate, productive instruments of negotiation. This responsiveness was not maintained, and current hybrid elements threaten to undermine the polity's stability.

How to Maintain Peace and Security in a Post-conflict Hybrid Political Order – the Case of Bougainville

After a decade-long large-scale violent conflict, the Pacific island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea has gone through another decade of post-conflict peacebuilding and at present is confronted with the task of state formation. Peacebuilding has been a success story so far, and the prospects of state formation look promising. The maintenance of order, security and justice in post-conflict Bougainville is based on legal pluralism, with strong customary law and strong customary non-state policing. The violent conflict on Bougainville was a hybrid social-political exchange, with the causes and motivating factors stemming from both the sphere of statecentred politics (‘war of secession’) and the local societal realm in which non-state customary issues (land conflicts, pay back etc.) played a major role. This article explores the specific features of post-conflict peacebuilding on Bougainville that flow from this context, focussing on the local capacities, but also acknowledging the contribution of international peacekeeping, particularly through the United Nations and a regional Peace Monitoring Group. Based on the Bougainville experience, the article develops a critique of the conventional Western peacebuilding-asstatebuilding approach to fragile post-conflict situations, and it critiques the accompanying focus of external actors on capacity-building of state institutions for maintaining order and internal peace. It makes a case for an alternative approach which acknowledges the hybridity of political order and the co-existence and interplay of state and non-state providers of security and justice. Positive mutual accommodation of state and non-state customary institutions are presented as a more promising way to sustainable internal peace and order than the attempted imposition of the Western Weberian model of the state.

Building Peace and Political Community in Hybrid Political Orders

Peacebuilding supports the emergence of stable political community in states and regions struggling with a legacy of violent conflict. This then raises the question of what political community might mean in the state in question. International peacebuilding operations have answered that question in terms of the promotion of conventional state-building along the lines of the Western Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) model as the best path out of post-conflict state fragility and towards sustainable development and peace. This article argues for peacebuilding beyond notions of the liberal peace and constructions of the liberal state. Rather than thinking in terms of fragile states, it might be theoretically and practically more fruitful to think in terms of hybrid political orders, drawing on the resilience embedded in the communal life of societies within so-called fragile regions of the global South. This re-conceptualization opens new options for peacebuilding and for state formation as building political community.

Traditional Village Councils, Modern Associations, and the Emergence of Hybrid Political Orders in Rural Morocco

This essay aims to emphasize the relevance and analytical usefulness of the concept of hybrid political orders with regard to a state and a society that is neither in a post-war nor peace-building situation. Rather, the case of rural Morocco illustrates how hybrid political orders emerge over time, in the context of post-colonial state-building in general, and in the context of decentralization reforms, the proliferation of participatory programs, and the growth of ‘‘civil society’’ in particular.

Hybrid Political Orders, Not Fragile States

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.