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Key Text The Politics of Insurgency in Collapsing States

Author: W Reno
Date: 2002
Size: 22 pages (163.4 KB)

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Summary

When states fail, do mass-based social movements develop to address the ensuing social problems? This article by Northwestern University looks at the situation of Nigeria's Bakassi Boys and the Oodua People's Congress and suggests that, contrary to expectation, reformist insurgencies fail to develop in failed states. The cause of this failure is found in the legacy of patronage politics. Specifically, the ensuing popular movements favour those who pursue their own economic interests, marginalizing those with more ideological agendas.

The consequence of formal state collapse and the collapse of patronage networks is that those individuals who previously had the most developed commercial contacts with the state become the best-armed insurgents. These individuals also tend to be the most fearful of mobilising political appeals. In this context, the best skills to have as a leader are a willingness to use exemplary violence to intimidate rival claimants to commercial resources. Supporters of such leaders are also primarily motivated by economic gain, typically young men who use violence and disorder to enrich themselves. Many conclude that possessing a gun, alongside the support of local strongmen, constitutes their best option for survival. Economic interest is joined with political interests where personal gain is compatible with settling scores and acting against local injustices at the individual level.

Not all armed groups prey upon their community. Locally organised home guard units, religious organisations and community associations arm themselves outside of the framework of protection from political insiders and privileged connections to economic opportunities.

Private armies of strongmen, however, often have superior weaponry and capacity to cause disorder, which makes them a focus of outside mediation efforts.
Recognition of their capacity to cause insecurity gives them further incentives to fight since predatory violence is a ticket to a seat in negotiations.
This gives organisations access to claiming State House. Once installed in the capital and accorded diplomatic recognition, they can dominate economic resources for themselves and use the façade of state sovereignty and all of its prerogatives to continue the pursuit of political power through market domination.
An unplanned consequence of such a peace is that it hobbles efforts of other community-based critics of corruption and misrule.
It consolidates predators' control over states and renders unlikely any prospect that these regimes will develop administrative apparatuses or any real interest in controlling violent exploitation of economic resources.

The key variable inhibiting the appearance of reformist or revolutionary mass movements is the continuation of this militarisation of patronage networks in the context of the collapse of formal state institutions.

This process destroys the social space that would otherwise harbour an alternative to this domination.
This poses serious challenges not only to the societies that are plagued with this specific type of misrule.
It is a challenge for international and other mediators since it requires distinguishing between governance and pretences to governance.
It also requires recognition that the former does not always coincide with the latter.
This would be a difficult change since it requires outsiders to act according to an analysis of which organisations pursue goals to create a viable alternative to oppression and those that do not.
This is a step that would violate most of the rules of sovereign non-intervention and neutrality of outside referees.

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Source: Reno, 2002, ‘The Politics of Insurgency in Collapsing States’, Development and Change, vol. 33, no.5
Author: Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/polisci/index.html