Legacies of Victors’ Rebel Governance

ABSTRACT

Insurgents who achieve state control through military victory or elections after peace settlements can introduce ideas and structures of civilian governance they developed during their rebellions. Some come close to fulfilling their prospective legacies while others abandon them despite commitment to them during civil war. Characteristics of rebel governance and habits of military command enhance or constrain the creation of legacy. Significant factors can be classified in three categories: dimensions of rebel governance, contextual features of civil war and responses after taking state control. The National Resistance Movement’s limited realisation of its wartime rebel governance in Uganda illustrates many of them.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Sean Ashley, Luke Melchiorre, Rebecca Tapscott and an anonymous reviewer for their suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Stewart relies on Skocpol’s well-known distinction between political and social revolutionary transformations (1979, pp. 4–5).

2. Although Weinstein generally contrasts rebel groups’ governance as the product of either economic or social endowments, they may be combined. Analysing them together yields a fourfold table that differentiates additional causal possibilities.

3. The EPRDF [Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front] is a significant exception to Day and Woldemariam’s argument. It was communally segmented before and after it took power. Later, one segment, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) became dominant (Berhe 2008, pp. 332–335).

4. Huang’s claim would be more convincing had she provided empirical evidence that the civilians who provided material support earlier were those specifically demanding democratisation afterwards.

5. Lyons ignores military and political complications by insisting that ‘in cases of rebel victory the total defeat of the old regime eliminates the need to compromise with one’s enemy’ (2016a, p. 176).

6. For civil wars after the end of the Cold War, peace agreements may be no more likely to provoke new conflicts than military victories (Gromes and Ranft 2021).

7. It has regularly held elections for its National Assembly (Knödler 2021).

8. These assessments are my judgements. Due to lack of space, I do not present supporting evidence.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nelson Kasfir

Nelson Kasfir is Professor of Government Emeritus, Dartmouth College. His research focuses on rebel governance and African politics.