Post-conflict States Research Articles

Nepal’s Social Security Reforms, State-building and the Role of Trade Unions

Trade unions play an important role in Nepal’s post-conflict economic development, but their influence is under-studied. Using a qualitative case study, this article examines the negotiations surrounding the development of Nepal’s Labour Law and Social Security Act. The evidence highlights the difficulty of bedding down a new welfare regime for workers in a country that does not have a strong, established, state-run welfare system and lacks robust government institutions. The article provides insights into the function of trade unions and other political entrepreneurs and their role in reforms. While unions know the ‘rules of the game’, they serve their paying member base in a stringent, democratic manner. They need little assistance from donors, as they understand how to play the game in a more astute manner than other groups excluded from traditional power. This does not mean that the trade union movement is a threat to building an inclusive state or that it aims for elite capture. Instead, it reveals how the power captured by the traditional upper caste is being slowly diffused. The negotiation strategies presented in the article are relevant for development partners engaging in welfare-related reforms in post-conflict and clientelistic states.

The democracy dilemma. Aid, power-sharing governments, and post-conflict democratization

How does development aid shape democracy after civil conflicts? I argue that political aid conditionalities and the economic utility that recipient elites gain from office give rise to a rent-seeking/democracy dilemma: recipients can initiate democratic reforms but also risk uncertainty over office and rents. Or they can refuse to implement such reforms, but risk losing aid rents if donors reduce aid flows in response to failed democratic reforms. This dilemma is strongest in power-sharing cabinets. By granting rebel groups temporally limited access to the state budget, such cabinets intensify elites’ rent-seeking motives. Thus, aid-dependent power-sharing elites will hold cleaner elections, but also limit judicial independence and increase particularistic spending to simultaneously reap aid benefits and remain in power. I find statistical support for this argument using data on aid flows and power-sharing governments for all post-conflict states between 1990 and 2010.

Mande hunters and the state: cooperation and contestation in post-conflict Côte d’Ivoire

Abstract:This article analyzes the relationship between Mande hunters (dozos) and the Ivorian state in the prefecture of Ouangolodougou in northern Côte d’Ivoire. Having adopted a prominent security role during the violent conflict of 2002–2011, dozos have made continuing efforts to maintain their position in the post-conflict state. To negotiate their position, they draw on a performative repertoire, such as the display of powerful attributes in the context of processions. Although they have had to concede some more strategic and profitable activities to the reestablished state, dozo chiefs effectively govern the rural northern borderlands of Côte d’Ivoire.

De-politicization of the partisan forces in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

ABSTRACTThe paper explores possible means to achieve reform in the highly politicized security sector of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. We maintain that the de-politicization of the KRG’s security forces is crucial for the future stability and prosperity of an independent Kurdish state. One option is to accomplish reform as part of a unified, state-building process supported by an outside actor, specifically the United States. Alternatively, the KRG would preserve the existing, de-facto division between the ‘KDP dominated zone’ controlled by Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and a ‘PUK dominated zone’ controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Gorran Movement. The two zones would agree to a federal arrangement, working together to gradually develop shared policies on issues of national security, economic development, and foreign policy, while maintaining autonomy over local issues. Our article seeks to situate the KRG case study within the literatures of post-conflict environments, state building, and state security reform (SSR). The approaches we have suggested here for the depolitization of KRG security forces will be relevant for the foreseeable future if KRG continues to be a part of federal Iraq or becomes an independent state.

The role of leadership in fostering public service motivation in post-conflict states

This article explores the relationship between leadership and public service motivation in post-conflict states. Conflict is ubiquitous and heterogeneous. It affects the way in which public institutions operate. Information was gathered through a review of contemporary literature on administrative challenges in post-conflict states and was analysed to establish the role of leadership in fostering public service motivation. The article established that leadership plays an important role in the overall performance of public sector organisations. The findings are relevant because leadership is essential for the achievement of organisational goals. The public service requires not only skilled staff but also motivated employees to implement the agenda of the post-conflict state. Thus, there is a need to keep the public servants motivated in order for them to participate effectively in rebuilding public administration institutions that would have become dysfunctional as a result of conflict.

The Challenge of Building Resilience in Post-Conflict African States: What Role for Local Institutions?

The Challenge of Building Resilience in Post-Conflict African States: What Role for Local Institutions? Cyril Obi (bio) and Abosede Omowumi Babatunde (bio) INTRODUCTION: SITUATING THE RESILIENCEPEACEBUILDING NEXUS Since the 2000s, the concept of resilience has featured prominently in peacebuilding scholarship, policy, and practice. The reasons for this lie partly in the shortcomings associated with liberal peacebuilding and international intervention models to address the roots of conflict or prevent regression to violence in post-conflict settings. This failure of “universalist and externally imposed liberal peace strategies” (Juncos 2018: 560) fueled moves to shift from international peacebuilding models to focus greater attention on the capacity of local communities to manage crises, shocks, and uncertainties by strengthening local institutions, norms, knowledge, and mechanisms. International peace-builder’s acknowledgement of the limitations of models developed on the basis of experiences and imposed from outside specific conflict-affected settings made them pay closer attention to internal sources of resilience in post-conflict countries and regions, with the aim of identifying and supporting such locally rooted processes and institutions. Thus, scholarship in the field of peacebuilding has increasingly focused on the shift from international interventions aimed at “promoting statebuilding, free and fair elections, and free markets in most conflict-affected societies, towards locally-rooted adaptive capacities to respond, cope with or transform societies emerging from conflicts” [End Page 1] (Juncos 2018: 559–60). The notion of building resilience has been variously associated with “a local turn” in peacebuilding, or peacebuilding as “risk management” based on discourses that “emphasize internal capabilities to deal with these challenges” (Juncos 2018: 560–62). Although the debate on the ideological dimensions of the paradigmatic shift is yet to fully emerge, there is a sense in which it suggests an attempt at “de-politicizing” peacebuilding, or at least distancing it from the failure of liberal peacebuilding to halt the regression of post-conflict states into violence, and sustain peace in many regions of the Global South. In spite of the shift toward local ownership of resilience-building in relation to peacebuilding, several questions persist as to the nature of international peacebuilding and its relationship with conflict-affected locales. At the heart of these questions is the issue of the agency of “the local” and its engagements with international peacebuilding actors. In a recent study, de Coning places emphasis on investing “in the resilience of local social institutions to prevent, cope with and recover from conflict, i.e., to sustain peace,” while noting that “international actors can help, but if they interfere too much they will undermine the self-organizing processes to sustain resilient social institutions” (2016: 167). In seeking to advance the resilience of local institutions, he notes that a “complexity-informed approach to sustaining peace would safeguard, stimulate, facilitate and create the space for local societies to develop resilient capacities for self-organization” (2016: 167). His main argument is that “complexity provides us with a theoretical framework for understanding some of the complex social dynamics that the international system attempts to influence through peace interventions.” In this regard, he reiterates the point made by other scholars on the link between “facilitating the capacity of societies to self-organize, so they can increase their ability to absorb and adapt to stress, to the degree necessary to sustain peace” (2016: 173). He moves the discourse away from international interventionism, which focuses largely on mainstream peacekeeping, peace support operations, and peacebuilding programs, toward international support for building the capabilities of conflict-affected societies to “self-organize” endogenous peacebuilding institutions, initiatives, and projects. Beyond providing good insights into how to strike the right balance between international support and local agency for driving the internal dynamics of resilience-building, this perspective cautions international peace-builders based on a complexity-based approach to sustaining peace. It also raises some further issues pertaining to the “depoliticization” of peacebuilding and the coopting of local institutions/processes to serve dominant interests in the field of peacebuilding. [End Page 2] Three issues emerge from the foregoing, first is to analyze the politics of building resilient institutions in conflict-affected African states and societies, examine the role of local actors and institutions in the context of dominant “post-conflict” social relations...

The role of leadership in fostering public service motivation in post-conflict states

The role of leadership in fostering public service motivation in post-conflict states

NATION-BUILDING CONFESSIONS: CARCERAL MEMORY IN POSTGENOCIDE RWANDA

The postconflict Rwandan state has crafted a “we are all Rwandans” national identity narrative without ethnicity, in the interest of maintaining a delicate, postgenocide peace. The annual genocide commemoration period calledKwibuka—“to remember”—which takes place over the course of one hundred days every year, is an underresearched part of this narrative. During the commemoration period,génocidaires’ confessions increase dramatically; these confessions lead the government to previously undiscovered graves all over the country, just as confessions given during the grassroots justice system—gacaca—did in the more immediate aftermath of the genocide. According to a prominent government official known for his prison outreach, the Rwandan government no longer provides incentives for prisoners to confess. Instead, he stated in a 2017 interview, those who speak up over twenty years later are simply “moved by the spirit of Kwibuka.” When confessions are made, memories of past action (“bad behaviour”) are used by the state, seemingly toward an ultimate end of reinforcing the national master narrative, to subsume the individual memories of innocent survivors into the national collective memory. This paper explores the questions around the state’s evolving use of prisoner confessions, both how those confessions are obtained, and how they factor into commemoration practices now.

Fieldwork after conflict: contextualising the challenges of access and data quality.

Despite sustained scholarly interest in post-conflict states, there has not been a thorough review and analysis of associated methodology and the challenges of conducting research in these contexts. Addressing this gap, this paper directs attention to the particular effects of these settings on access and data quality and their ramifications for the resulting scholarship. It assesses the intrinsic challenges of performing fieldwork in these environments, drawing on both relevant social science literature and the authors' experiences of carrying out research in Afghanistan and Timor-Leste. The study demonstrates that the post-conflict environment moulds research design and, consequently, influences how questions are answered as well as the questions asked. Moreover, it highlights ways to mitigate these issues. This work is of relevance to scholars planning to engage in field research and to researchers reflecting upon their work, as well as to policymakers who are considering undertaking programmes or commissioning research in post-conflict areas.

Evolving local government in post conflict South Africa: Where to?

Protracted negotiations between the main role-players steered in the new South African state on 27 April 1994 and final Constitution, 1996 , which constitutionalised local government. A cursory analysis points to some municipalities which are pockets of excellence; however, local government generally is in ‘distress’. Local communities are rapidly losing confidence in the system as the majority of municipalities are unable to discharge even basic functions. Local government has been characterised by violent service delivery protests; abuse of political power and increasing corruption; financial challenges; poor infrastructure planning/maintenance/investment; political strife and factionalism and staff turbulence. Despite governmental interventions to improve local governance, there are still major constraints hampering good governance, namely political posturing and factionalism; corruption; lawlessness and poor service delivery, symptomatic of virtually all post conflict states. Good local governance is an integral part of post conflict reconstruction and development and is key to building a new local government dispensation.

Bridging the Capabilities–Expectations Gap: Lessons Learned from Post-Conflict Democracy Assistance to Liberia

ABSTRACTThe unfulfilled expectations of post-conflict democracy assistance are palpable and disconcerting. The backsliding of several post-conflict states from democracy to authoritarianism, or even to violent conflict, has prompted a serious revision of the merits of democracy assistance. The lack of engagement with the very values and assumptions attached to democracy assistance can precipitate a debilitating gap between what assistance is capable of accomplishing through its strategic instruments and what people and partner organizations expect and demand assistance to deliver in post-conflict countries. Positively, the practice of post-conflict democracy assistance is responding to these challenges, showing signs of maturity and sophistication. The case of Liberia demonstrates that enhanced financial resources, improved peacekeeping, a broader conception of democracy, and a more refined use of instruments can bridge the capabilities–expectations gap on critical themes. Gaps, however, remain, including the conflation of democracy building and peacebuilding, unrealistic expectations of the benefits of democracy aid, and the often-exaggerated importance that international organizations proclaim for their work. These gaps ought to be addressed as they may not only undermine the successes and credibility of peacebuilding, but also shatter the hopes of local citizens who believe that international involvement will help them achieve democracy and peace.

Self-Determination and Democracy in Post-Conflict Africa: Moving from Procedure to Substance

This article reviews the application of the principle of self-determination to postconflict rule of law developments in Africa. Popular conceptions of the principle or right of self-determination often associate it with so-called ‘self-determination’ or ‘sovereignty-based’ conflicts, that is, those fought with the aim of separation or secession. This link with secession has experienced a recent resurgence with the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea, and the arguments put forward by the Kremlin in defence of its actions. However, focus on the relationship between secession and selfdetermination tends to overshadow other understandings and approaches. This article focuses upon a too often neglected aspect of self-determination – the application of internal self-determination, with a focus on African post-conflict States. The specific concern here is the ways and means by which self-determination governs the relationship between the ‘people’ of a State in entirety and the State itself, especially during periods of political transition. The principle of internal self-determination is argued here to consist of three critical facets: representation, accountability and responsiveness. These facets in turn require a move away from liberal-democratic approaches, which equate (internal) self-determination with ‘democracy’ expressed via elections, and a focus instead on the ways and means by which effective participation of an entire population might be advanced.

‘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.

On our terms! How domestic elites localised the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala

In summer 2004, an UN-sponsored international rule of law commission based on an initiative of the Guatemalan human rights community was rejected by Guatemalan political elites. In 2007, a new version, the International Commission against Impunity (CICIG), was approved by the Guatemalan Congress and has since been active in the country, supporting the modernisation of the Guatemalan judicial system and the investigation and prosecution of criminal networks. The CICIG has been hailed as part of a new generation of rule of law promotion that addresses the problems of post-conflict states. How did this change in elite support come about? Neither increased pressure from the international community nor changes in the elite groups in power can fully explain this shift. Rather, Guatemalan elites actively reshaped the commission; in addition, the human rights community reframed it to better fit the risk perceptions of the general public.

Europeanization in a Difficult Environment

This article examines the impact of the process of Europeanization on the consolidation of political systems and on the pace of European Union (EU) accession in very difficult transitional environments like those of Croatia and Albania. Croatia, a post-socialist and a post-conflict state, and Albania, heavily burdened with the consequences of its recent isolationist history (which is unprecedented among other post-socialist states), were intentionally selected for this research as atypical cases. Acknowledging the lack of consensus about the Europeanization phenomena in the academic community, the authors decided to rely on indicators that focus not only on institution-building and policy-making processes in the technical sense, but also in the processes of construction and diffusion of formal and informal rules, procedures, styles and shared beliefs, norms and identities that are being transmitted from the European to the national level. Based on qualitative research comparing the two countries – that is, Albania and Croatia – and using a number of indicators, the authors conclude that while Europeanization is an important part of European politics in general and the EU accession process in particular, it does not result in having a uniform impact on different candidate countries. On the contrary, the pace of integration depends on the specific domestic political context, on the role of the institutions, and on the processes of adaptation to the European political environment.

Endorsers, challengers or builders? Political parties’ diaspora outreach in a post-conflict state

How do parties in government and opposition in a contested post-conflict state reach out to their diasporas abroad? Do their policies overlap or differ, and if so why? Scholarly accounts of sending states’ outreach towards diasporas have paid little attention to the variety of actors and processes within sending states, and have grouped states with contested sovereignty in the same cluster as states for which sovereignty is not a salient issue. This article focuses on one of these contested states, Kosovo, and on the party engagement with diasporas abroad that has emerged there. I conceptualize three types of extraterritorial party outreach – state-endorsing, state-challenging, and party-building. I argue that parties that emerge from secessionism and warfare are more likely to reach out to the diaspora through a state-endorsing or party-building approach, depending on whether they are in government or opposition. Parties that are newly institutionalized in the post-conflict polity seek to engage the diaspora through a state-endorsing or state-challenging approach.

Sending States and Diaspora Positionality in International Relations

Diaspora politics is of growing interest to International Relations (IR), yet theorizing about sending states’ engagement of diasporas in different global contexts has been minimal. Central to this article is the question: How do challenges to postconflict statehood shape a sending state’s diaspora engagement? I provide a fresh socio-spatial perspective on “diaspora positionality,” the power diaspora political agents amass or are perceived to amass from their linkages to different global contexts, which speaks to utilitarian, constructivist, and governance rationales, and to emerging IR relational and positional theories. This power is relative to that of other actors in a transnational social field, in which sending states and diasporas operate globally: it is socio-spatial, defined by social relationships among diasporas across the globe, and by their linkages to specific spatial contexts. I argue that postconflict states view the positional empowerment of diasporas in distant locations as an asset to their statebuilding. Diasporas are not controlled, but involved in extraterritorial processes through partially rationalized, partially implicit governance practices. The article focuses on Kosovo as a postconflict de facto state, and brings evidence from extensive multi-sited fieldwork in Kosovo in 2013, and the UK, US, Sweden, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland in 2009-2017.

Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping: Women, Peace, and Security in Post-Conflict States. By Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 296 p. $79.00 cloth.

Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping: Women, Peace, and Security in Post-Conflict States. By Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 296 p. $79.00 cloth. - Volume 16 Issue 2

Response to Catherine Goetze’s review of Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping: Women, Peace, and Security in Post-Conflict States

Response to Catherine Goetze’s review of <i>Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping: Women, Peace, and Security in Post-Conflict States</i>

Creating and building a post-conflict fiscal state through global wealth chains

PurposeThis paper aims to assess using a historical approach the challenges facing Somaliland and analyze how the Somalilanders are in the twenty-first century using the globalized financial architecture and system of wealth chains to finance their nascent state and move the debate forward on the calls for self-determination.Design/methodology/approachResearch on this paper included not just a desk review but two research trips to Somaliland and over 20 interviews of politicians, government officials and the private sector and academia.FindingsToday the global wealth chains flowing in and out of Somaliland include some complex ones which include the interactions with other members of the Somali diaspora whether they are in the USA or in Australia where money moves in and out of bank accounts in different countries finally ending up in either Dubai or Djibouti where it is finally transferred through the money transfer agencies into Hargeisa and finally withdrawn by the relative of a diaspora member. The similar wealth chains are those going between traders such as those that already maintain companies in Djibouti because of the war period and continue to live and trade there but have branches in Somaliland. There are simple direct transfers that are easily understood.Research limitations/implicationsTranslators had to be used, as some parliamentarians only spoke Kisomali.Originality/valueNo papers have been written on the global banking and finance system with specific reference to Somaliland.