![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
Although the concept of legitimacy is central to Western counterinsurgency theory, most discourse in this area black-boxes the concept. It hence remains under-specified in many discussions of counterinsurgency. Fortunately, recent research on rebel governance and legitimacy contributes to our understanding of the problems faced by counterinsurgents who want to boost state legitimacy while undermining that of the rebels. Taken together, this research illustrates that a rational choice approach to legitimacy is simplistic; that micro-level factors ultimately drive legitimacy dynamics; and that both cooption of existing legitimate local elites and their replacement from the top–down is unlikely to succeed. Western counterinsurgency doctrine has failed to grasp the difficulties this poses for it.
Notes
1. Department of the Army, J-P 1, Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States, X (Italics added).
2. Department of the Army, FM 3-24 MCWP 3-33.5 Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies, 1–27, 1–25.
3. For instance, see North Atlantic Treaty Organization “AJP-3.4.4: Allied Joint Doctrine for Counterinsurgency” (Citation2011); and Ministry of Defense (UK), “JDP 3-40: Security and Stabilisation,” 2-18–2-20 (Citation2009).
4. Department of the Army, FM 3-24, 1–31, 5–8.
5. Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 5.
6. Trinquier, Modern Warfare.
7. Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 10, 11. He does add that it is ‘[s]o much the better’ if ‘popularity and effectiveness are combined’, 11.
8. Cromartie, “Field Manual 3-24,” 107.
9. On the Manual’s constructivism, see Kalyvas, “Review of the New U.S. Army,” 351–353.
10. Byman, “Death Solves All Problems”; and Ucko, “The People are Revolting.”
11. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 15.
12. Ucko, “The People are Revolting,” 31, 35.
13. Arendt, The Human Condition, 201.
14. Schlichte and Schneckener, “Armed Groups and the Politics of Legitimacy,” 413.
15. Arjona, “Wartime Institutions,” 1363. See also Kalyvas, Logic of Violence in Civil War, 88.
16. See Daddis, No Sure Victory.
17. Department of the Army, FM 3-24, 1–29.
18. Dahl, Modern Political Analysis, 52.
19. Arjona, “Wartime Institutions”; Lyall, “Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks?”; and Kalyvas, Logic of Violence in Civil War.
20. Department of the Army, FM 3-24, 1–27.
21. Scott, Seeing Like a State.
22. Department of the Army, FM 3-24, 1–28.
23. Jansen, “The Formation of German Nationalism,” 234–259.
24. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States; and Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen.
25. Scott, Weapons of the Weak; and Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance.
26. Quoted in Milne, “Our Equivalent of Guerrilla Warfare,” 202.
27. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion.
28. Sukanya, “Mainstreaming the Non-state,” 221.
29. Department of the Army, FM 3-24, 1–83. On this point, see Cromartie, “Field Manual 3-24.”
30. Valentino, Huth, and Balch-Lindsay, “Draining the Sea.”
31. Arjona, Kasfir, and Mampilly, “Conclusion,” 294.
32. Scott, The Art of not Being Governed, 153.
33. Mampilly, “Performing the Nation-state.”
34. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion, 9–11.
35. David Elliott’s magisterial study of the NLF in Dinh Tuong province provides the best insight into this dynamic. See Elliott, The Vietnamese War.
36. Fitzsimmons, “Hard Hearts and Open Minds?” 337–365.
37. Arjona, “Wartime Institutions.”
38. Kalyvas, “Rebel Governance during the Greek Civil War.”
39. On this idea, see Metz, “Rethinking Insurgency,” 35, 36.
40. Greene, “Pathological Counterinsurgency.”