https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5194-8983
![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
Rebel governance assumes a symbiotic relationship between coercion and public goods provision. However, in the rebel-held town of Ndélé, Central African Republic, we find that governance happens in rebel-held territory, but rarely by rebels. Rebels allowed other actors to provide services for the people only when this did not hinder rebels extracting political clout and economic benefit from the people and their lands. We show how rebels’ extractive ambitions and governance discourses evolved during successive stages of rebellion through a diachronic comparison rooted in multimethod fieldwork from 2018 to 2022. We ask, why were rebel groups able to set up their rule, then rule for seven years, before ultimately losing power? Rebels evoked public goods at the onset of rebellion to justify the use of coercive means. After rebel rule was established, rebels outsourced public goods to international and state actors allowing for governance in rebel-held territory while focussing their own efforts on extraction. When their rule was challenged, rebels targeted governance actors and spaces in their territory in pursuit of economic gain and political dominance. Our findings call for a re-evaluation of existing rebel governance studies and the ways in which rebel groups are engaged with.
Acknowledgments
This article is inspired by and dedicated to Igor Calvin Acko. We thank the participants of the author workshop on rebel governance and the editors of this special issue, Regine Schwab and Hanna Pfeifer for their invaluable comments. We thank two anonymous collaborators for research assistance on the ground and Thibaut Le Forsonney for remote research assistance. We are thankful for research financing by I-WOTRO, award number W08.400.172, the Knowledge Management Fund, award number 8703_1.1. and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), project number 437386574.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. Kasfir, “Rebel Governance – Constructing a Field of Inquiry: Definitions, Scope, Patterns, Order, Causes,” 24.
2. Pfeifer and Schwab, “Politicising Rebel Governance.”
3. See note 2 above.
4. Boege, Brown, and Clements, “Hybrid Political Orders, Not Fragile States.”
5. Helmke and Levitsky, “Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda.”
6. Lund, “Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa.”
7. Glawion, The Security Arena in Africa: Local Order-Making in the Central African Republic, Somaliland, and South Sudan.
8. Glawion, de Vries, and Mehler, “Handle with Care! A Qualitative Comparison of the Fragile States Index’s Bottom Three Countries: Central African Republic, Somalia and South Sudan.”
9. Förster, “The Formation of Governance – the Politics of Governance and Their Theoretical Dimensions.”
10. Gurr, Why Men Rebel.
11. Gates, “Recruitment and Allegiance: The Microfoundations of Rebellion.”
12. Cederman, Wimmer, and Min, “Why Do Ethnic Groups Rebel? New Data and Analysis.”
13. Arjona, Kasfir, and Mampilly, Rebel Gov. Civ. War, 3.
14. Mampilly, Rebel Rulers.
15. Worrall, “(Re-)Emergent Orders: Understanding the Negotiation(s) of Rebel Governance,” 712.
16. Arjona, Rebelocracy.
17. Krasner and Risse, “External Actors, State-Building, and Service Provision in Areas of Limited Statehood: Introduction.”
18. Lee, Walter-Drop, and Wiesel, “Taking the State (Back) Out? Statehood and the Delivery of Collective Goods.”
19. Schäferhoff, “External Actors and the Provision of Public Health Services in Somalia.”
20. Lake and Fariss, “Why International Trusteeship Fails: The Politics of External Authority in Areas of Limited Statehood.”
21. Barakat and Urdal, “Breaking the Waves? Does Education Mediate the Relationship Between Youth Bulges and Political Violence?.”
22. Davies, “Education, Change and Peacebuilding.”
23. Pherali and Sahar, “Learning in the Chaos: A Political Economy Analysis of Education in Afghanistan.”
24. Interview with FPRC general coordinator, 22 July 2018, Ndélé.
25. Gerring, “Case Selection for Case-Study Analysis: Qualitative and Quantitative Techniques,” 648ff.
26. Gerring, “What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good For?.”
27. Krause, “The Ethics of Ethnographic Methods in Conflict Zones.”
28. Kapiszewski, MacLean, and Read, Field Research in Political Science – Practices and Principles; Wedeen, “Reflections on Ethnographic Work in Political Science.”
29. Cf. Malejacq and Mukhopadhyay, “The ‘Tribal Politics’ of Field Research: A Reflection on Power and Partiality in 21st-Century Warzones.”
30. Glawion, van der Lijn, and de Zwaan, “Securing Legitimate Stability in CAR: External Assumptions and Local Perspectives”, we thank Aristide Oula for participating in our field study of Ndélé.
31. Cf. Bennett and Checkel, Process Tracing : From Metaphor to Analytic Tool.
32. Woodfork, Culture and Customs of the Central African Republic, 33.
33. Lombard, “Raiding Sovereignty in Central African Borderlands,” 83–96.
34. Cf. Lombard, Hunt. Game.
35. See note 10 above.
36. International Crisis Group, “Central African Republic. Anatomy of a Phantom State,” 23–27.
37. de Vries and Glawion, “Speculating on Crisis: The Progressive Disintegration of the Central African Republic’s Political Economy.”
38. Weyns, Hoex, and Spittaels, Mapping Conflict Motives: The Central African Republic, 21.
39. See note 9 above.
40. Glawion and De Vries, “Ruptures Revoked: Why the Central African Republic’s Unprecedented Crisis Has Not Altered Deep-Seated Patterns of Governance.”
41. Lombard, State of Rebellion. Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic.
42. Appointment of national education officials is centralized and not regional. Qualified teachers receive, often after a wait of several years, an appointment in a region of the country as a mission order.
43. And more than a year after the rebels were dislodged the number of teachers taking up their posts in Ndélé had still not increased. Cf. Brice Ledoux Saramalet (21/02/2022), ”Centrafrique: Un seul enseignant titulaire pour le lycée de Ndélé”, Oubangui Media No 121.
44. The ”coupeurs de route” bandits have a long history in the RCA: Chauvin and Seignobos, ” L’imbroglio Centrafricain » État, Rebelles et Bandits,” 248.
45. Schouten, ”Roadblock Politics in Central Africa.”
46. See note 22 above.
47. International Crisis Group, “Centrafrique : Les Racines de La Violence,” 10 f; Weyns, Hoex, and Spittaels, Mapping Conflict Motives: The Central African Republic, 24ff.
48. Anonymous interviews, Ndélé, July 2018.
49. Interview with high-level civilian staff of MINUSCA, June 2019, Bangui.
50. United Nations Security Council, S/RES/2605 (2021).
51. See note 22 above.
52. The Sentry, “Fear, Inc.: War Profiteering in the Central African Republic and the Bloody Rise of Abdoulaye Hissène.”
53. Author’s translation. Jeune Afrique (19 January 2021), “Noureddine Adam: « Rien n’empêche d’imaginer François Bozizé à la tête de la CPC, » available online at: https://www.jeuneafrique.com/1107253/politique/noureddine-adam-rien-nempeche-dimaginer-francois-bozize-a-la-tete-de-la-cpc/.
54. The assessment was not representative but randomized and diversified. It is however intriguing that people being assessed in rebel territory during rebel rule were overwhelmingly and openly critical of them.
55. Male barber, identifying as Catholic and Ngadja ethnicity. Most of the interviews were conducted in Sango or a local language and then transcribed into French. All the interviews have been anonymized. All the interviews with the local population took place between February and April 2019. The dates are not given to avoid identification of specific respondents. French original: « Qu’ils ne se laissent plus enrôler par les rebelles pour se retourner contre nous. Nous étions une même famille. Nous nous promenions ensemble, alors qu’ils étaient les premiers à nous tuer.
56. Raleigh et al., “Introducing ACLED: An Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset.”
57. Cf. Glawion, The Security Arena in Africa: Local Order-Making in the Central African Republic, Somaliland, and South Sudan.
58. In contrast to the rebel groups of the former Seleka, the Anti-Balaka were deliberately fluid in their organization, composition, and resource extraction. They were hundreds of unconnected, barely armed, locally rooted village defence groups.
59. Le Noan and Glawion, ”Education Nationale En Territoire Rebelle: Le Cas Du Lycée de Ndélé En République Centrafricaine.”
60. Female shopkeeper, identifying as Muslim and Runga ethnicity, translation by Aristide Oula and the authors.
61. Cf. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion.
62. See note 43 above.
63. United Nations Security Council. (2018). Midterm report of the Panel of Experts on the Central African Republic extended pursuant to Security Council resolution 2399 (2018): Vol. S/2018/729, pp. 97–99.
64. Interview with a leading FPRC member, July 2018, Ndélé. It is not confirmed how regularly these taxes are levied and how far they are negotiable.
65. Interview with officials in the education sector in Bangassou, August 2018.
66. Cf. Focus group discussion with students of secondary high school, August 2018, Ndélé.
67. Cf. among many others Weinstein, Inside Rebellion; Arjona, Rebelocracy.
68. Document viewed and photographed in Bangassou, 6 August 2018. Proviseur du Lycée de Bangassou: ”Rapport du fin du 1e semestre de l’année académique 2017–2018”.
69. International Crisis Group, ”Réduire Les Tensions Électorales En République Centrafricaine.”
70. Cf. communiqué available in United Nations Security Council, “Final Report of the Panel of Experts on the Central African Republic Extended Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 2507 (2020),” vol. S/2020/662, 2020, 91 f, 10.1017/s0020818300030599.
71. MINUSCA (7 March 2020) ”La MINUSCA condamne énergiquement le meurtre d’un de ses employés à Ndélé [Press release]”, available online at: https://minusca.unmissions.org/la-minusca-condamne-energiquement-le-meurtre-d%E2%80%99un-de-ses-employes-ndele.
72. United Nations Security Council, S/2020/662:9.
73. Ibid.:11.
74. UNHCR (2020), « Rapport mensuel de monitoring de protection: Bamingui-Bangoran | Août 2020 »: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/79637.
75. Cluster Protection Centrafrique (2020), “CMP Juin 2020 statistiques detaillees des sites PDIs en RCA”: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/78469; However, since many thousands had already sought shelter in Bamingui-Bangoran coming from Birao, some of those seeking refuge in camps might be from the neighbouring prefecture Vakaga.
76. Cf. letter available in United Nations Security Council, S/2020/662:73 f.
77. United Nations Security Council, S/2020/662:91 f.
78. United Nations Security Council, S/2020/662:84 f.
79. OCHA: Spike in attacks against humanitarian organisations in Ndélé town, 9 May 2020, available online at: https://reliefweb.int/report/central-african-republic/spike-attacks-against-humanitarian-organisations-nd-l-town.
80. Joint statement on the suspension of activities in Ndélé, Central African Republic,” 19 May 2020, available online at: https://reliefweb.int/report/central-african-republic/joint-statement-suspension-activities-nd-l-central-african-republic.
81. See note 70 above.:15.
82. United Nations Security Council, “Final Report of the Panel of Experts on the Central African Republic Extended Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 2536 (2020).”
83. Cf. Glawion, “Cross-Case Patterns of Security Production in Hybrid Political Orders: Their Shapes, Ordering Practices, and Paradoxical Outcomes.”
84. Interview with Ndélé luminary, 17 July 2018. French original: « Ils ont pris des armes à cause de la route, l’école etc., alors quand on donne tout ça, s’ils prennent des armes, ils sont des bandits. »
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Tim Glawion
Tim Glawion is co-Editor in Chief of Africa Spectrum and a research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, Germany. He is the author of The Security Arena in Africa: Local Order-Making in the Central African Republic, Somaliland and South Sudan (Cambridge University Press 2020) and numerous articles on order-making, local security, and the security arena. His current research focuses on security paradoxes and the monopoly on the use of force in Lebanon and the Central African Republic.
Anne-Clémence Le Noan
Anne-Clémence Le Noan is a PhD student at the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany and at Sciences Po in Paris, France. After working as a teacher in France, she conducted research on education in conflict affected zones such as the Central African Republic and Haiti. Her current work compares educational policies targeting social inequalities in Germany and France.