Focusing on the examples of Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Zaire, this text demonstrates how African rulers hold on to power while severed from foreign aid and subjected to collapsing economies and disappearing bureaucracies.

Warlord Politics and African States

of distinguished and rather senior economists – makes at the end of the book. Their priorities tend to be quick-fixes of problems that might, at least partly, be caused by some other challenge. More importantly, the panellists tend to disregard some of the evidence assembled by the authors. The reactions to the excellent chapter on armed conflict by Collier & Hoeffler illustrate that Nobel awards are no protection against bias. One member of the panel dismisses the economic sources of war that the Oxford economists analyse and points out that free trade is the main pacifying force, while another famous panellist mentions ethnic or religious hatred as a source of conflict. Gerald Schneider

At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict:

Jeremy M. Weinstein, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007 xx +402 pp. £43.00 ISBN 0-521-86077-6 (hardback); £16.99 ISBN 0-521-67797-1 (paperback) Inside Rebellion offers an insightful accoun...

Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence

Mark Duffield's second edition of ‘Global Governance and the New Wars’ offers an important and biting critique of how different actors within the security and development discourse have adapted to 

Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security

Periods of economic insecurity affect different age groups in different ways. Whether you call them generations or cohorts, life experiences framed by the unique intersection of age and history have proved a fascinating subject for social scientists. In their coming-of-age account of the group of birth cohorts some have dubbed Generation X, Lesley Andres and Johanna Wyn provide a readable, theoretically embedded, and empirically supported account of how policy, economic conditions, and persistent inequality create currents that can lead us to different futures from those we imagined. Utilizing a longitudinal design and 14 to 15 years of data from the ‘‘Paths on Life’s Way’’ project, based in British Columbia, Canada, and the ‘‘Life Patterns’’ project, set in Victoria, Australia, the authors examine how these two sets of adolescents, who completed their secondary schooling in the late 1980s and early 1990s, manage decisions about postsecondary education, work, and relationships in a context of increasing economic insecurity, global competition, workplace restructuring, and persistent inequalities by class and gender. The similarities in the political, social, and economic institutions of Canada and Australia allow the authors to spotlight how expansions in post-secondary education were orchestrated, how the goal of expanding education opportunity was reflected in education achievement, and how these young adults tried to articulate their educational credentials and life goals with the changing work environment. The authors organize the material into five interrelated themes: reluctant change makers, an education generation, generating new patterns of family life, a generation in search of work/life balance, and a diverse generation. In unfolding these themes, they show us how, on the one hand, these young people wanted the same sorts of things we wanted at their age—financial security (but not necessarily wealth), good relationships, and happiness. But the circumstances they face are different—better in some ways, more difficult in others. Part of that difficulty stems from the diverse pathways available to young people, which may appear incomprehensible to those who argue that more choice is always better. Those trying to figure out how to get from here to there find that having ‘‘endless possibilities’’ is not necessarily a comfort, especially when we later discover that some of those routes are in disrepair, others are too crowded, and still others come with detours that may keep us from ever reaching our destinations. Rather, seeing some number of clearly articulated routes that lead to a specific outcome assures us that we will be able to reach our goals. The trend toward the individualization of risk that has been noted in both the academic and popular press appears here in various manifestations—for example, the anxiety felt over choosing the right major, finding more than a dead-end job, and paying off student loans. The other side of this trend is showing how the costs of social change are externalized, sometimes with unintended consequences. As families and students absorb the higher costs of post-secondary schooling, parents continue to house their graduates well into their 20s, graduates delay marriage and children until they are able to establish some financial foothold, while employers are able to hire college graduates to fill clerical jobs. When the costs of such widespread social change are shifted, those already in a position of disadvantage are often the most vulnerable. Despite the expansion of post-secondary education, existing patterns of inequality are reproduced as new generations are sorted into winners and losers. Those whose parents are college graduates manage the secondary to post-secondary transition more smoothly

Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia

Dominant narratives and theories developed at the turn of the 21st century to account for civil wars in Africa converged around two main ideas. First that the increase in civil wars across Africa was the expression of the weakness and collapse of state institutions. Second, guerrilla movements, once viewed as the ideological armed wings of Cold War contenders, were seen as roving bandits interested in plundering the spoils left by decaying states and primarily driven by economic or personal interests. However, recent research has challenged such accounts by looking into the day-to-day politics of civil war beyond armed groups' motives to wage war against the established order. Indeed, civil wars, while being the cause of immense suffering, contribute to shaping and producing political orders. Thus, if we are to understand how stable political institutions can be built after civil war, it is essential to study the institutions that regulate political life during conflict. This implies a need to take into account governance institutions and relations in areas beyond the control of the state. This working paper1 thus focuses on political orders put in place by armed groups, their strategies to legitimise their existence and claim to power, and on the extent to which they manage to institutionalise their military power and transform it into political domination. To this end, we take a broad perspective by looking at (dis)continuities between political orders established under rebel rule and post-war state formation. Drawing on a Weberian conception of the making of political orders as the passage from raw power (Macht) to domination (Herrschaft), we interrogate the social fabric of legitimacy in areas under rebel control during conflict and analyse how it relates to state formation in the post-conflict phase. Based on a political anthropology of governance and state practices in three different countries (Angola, Cote d'Ivoire and South Sudan) this paper provides empirical and theoretical insights into state formation in Africa as well as into domination and legitimacy. It also links to current policy debates on statebuilding and peacebuilding in fragile contexts. The paper starts with a review of the literature on civil wars and statebuilding. It then presents the analytical framework that was developed for the three case studies, which constitute the bulk of the paper.

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Civil Wars and State Formation: Violence and the Politics of Legitimacy in Angola, Côte d'Ivoire and South Sudan

Many people in South Sudan and northern Uganda—like others around the world—see boundaries and borders as a potential source of clarity, security and conflict prevention. Political and economic ambitions, along with fears of discrimination or exclusion from land lead to the promotion of more rigid boundaries, both on the ground and between groups of people. The prevalence of such discourse reflects a picture first imagined by colonial officials, in which the peoples of this region live in discrete ethnic territories, organized into patrilineal descent groups and governed by their own decentralized administrations. In such a picture, it might indeed seem that demarcating clear boundaries and borders between various territories would resolve the tensions and conflicts that surround them. A different picture emerges, however, from a detailed exploration of the intricate histories and present realities of demography, ecology, liveli­hoods, social relations and land governance in South Sudan and northern Uganda. Historically, there is said to have been popular unease here with the moral and spiritual implications of trying to demarcate fixed boundaries in the soil. Moreover, transhumant pastoralism depends on negotiating access to land controlled by others, rendering the delimita­tion of clear and fixed borders impractical. Drawing boundaries between clans and tribal sections is also impossible because settlements are widely interspersed with other clans and sections. Although clans and sections are defined in a language of patrilineal kinship, they have always absorbed outsiders into their lineages and co-residential communities. Oral histories reveal the extent of migration and shifting identities. Practices of assimilation and intermarriage have worked to overcome boundaries rather than to create them. After all, being able to cross borders during recurrent wars and violent conflicts has been vital for survival. There is, however, a paradox. Greater peace in some parts of this region seems to have brought new conflict over land and boundariesThere is, however, a paradox. Greater peace in some parts of this region seems to have brought new conflict over land and boundaries in the past decade. Multiple factors are at work here, including urban­ization and uneven population densities driven by processes of return and patterns of service delivery and economic activity. Many people in South Sudan and northern Uganda are well aware of the wider context in Sudan and eastern Africa, where conflict over land and land grabbing are prevalent concerns. In their own countries, anticipated development and commercial exploitation drive perceptions of the changing value of land. The processes of government decentralization, begun in the 1990s, also play a key role in growing conflict over land. Local govern­ment officials and politicians may have an interest in promoting the idea of ethnic territorial units to garner popular support and increase their control of land and natural resources. Local land governance institu­tions—whether state-related, customary or the more common hybrid arrangements—derive revenue and power from both land transactions and disputes over land. It would be mistaken, however, to see increasing land disputes as simply the result of top-down control and manipulation. In an atmosphere of growing uncertainty and insecurity over land rights, there is also bottom-up demand for greater security and dispute resolution. Many people in South Sudan and northern Uganda are seeking to secure their own land rights through various mechanisms, whether through written documen­tation, the purchase of leasehold titles or by asserting customary rights to land through historical narratives and genealogical claims. Unsurpris­ingly, their efforts can easily become attempts at exclusion on the same basis, creating yet more disputes and conflicts over land and boundaries. Attempts to privatize land rights or assert more exclusionary defini­tions of customary land rights have been aided by national land reforms, which promote legal clarity and simultaneously impose simplified defini­tions of customary rights. External interventions in land governance have tended to support legal and policy processes, failing to adequately consider the implementation of statutory approaches on the ground. At the local level, it is evident that national laws and policies are being interpreted with varying degrees of accuracy, as well as being selectively adopted and adapted in combination with customary principles. These processes both rely on the cooperation of customary authorities and local governments and create competitions between them. This demonstrates a hybrid approach to land governance that is not amenable to being reduced to a legal or statutory form.

Dividing Communities in South Sudan and Northern Uganda: Boundary disputes and land governance

Briefing: Counting ‘New Sudan’

This article focuses on a strategy produced by the Government of Southern Sudan and the UNDP in 2009 for a written ascertainment of customary law. It argues that this strategy reflected a legalistic desire to regulate and order the hybrid, composite practices and laws of the local courts and to ensure certainty, predictability and substantive requirements such as equality and due process. Based on empirical research into local justice in 2009–10, the article argues that the goal of ascertainment was driven more by multiple – often contradictory – political agendas than by the actual needs of litigants. The universalising discourse of international rule of law programming can mask the politics of interventions. But in South Sudan, the politics of justice intersected with broader debate over decentralisation of government and over ethnic and cultural rights, at both national and local levels. The contradictions within the ascertainment strategy were in turn a product of long-standing tensions between local ...

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The Politics of Customary Law Ascertainment in South Sudan

External actors have been engaged in what is now South Sudan from the colonial era through to the present day, providing humanitarian and development assistance and exerting political pressure duri...

Martina Santschi

Papers

Civil Wars and State Formation: Violence and the Politics of Legitimacy in Angola, Côte d'Ivoire and South Sudan

Dividing Communities in South Sudan and Northern Uganda: Boundary disputes and land governance

Briefing: Counting ‘New Sudan’

The Politics of Customary Law Ascertainment in South Sudan

Trajectories of International Engagement with State and Local Actors: Evidence from South Sudan