Political settlements as a violent process: deconstructing the relationship between political settlements and intrinsic, instrumental and resultant forms of violence

Abstract

This article explores the opportunities and conundrums of understanding violence at critical junctures following ruptures in political orders through the prism of political settlements. While there is an emerging body of scholarship on political settlements, we specifically examine its relationship to violence, which we argue has been under-theorised. Through comparative country case studies (Bangladesh, Egypt, Kenya, Sierra Leone), we examine in a historicised manner how these types of settlements interact with various forms of violence at various scales. The article reconceptualises political settlements in relation to three forms of violence, intrinsic, instrumental and resultant, and shows how multi-scale dynamics and formal/informal interactions shape the violent nature of political settlements in different contexts.

Keywords:

• Comparative political settlements
• violence

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Department for International Development [grant number OT/11009], however, the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK Government’s official policies. The authors would like to thank Robin Luckham, Jeremy Lind and Markus Shultze-Kraft.

Notes

1. Bell, ‘What we Talk About’, 17.

2. Oppenheimer, ‘Atomic Weapons and American Policy,’ 525–535.

3. Di John and Putzel, ‘Political Settlements’, 4; Melling, ‘Industrial Capitalism and the Welfare of the State’.

4. Ingram, ‘Political Settlements’, 3.

5. See especially: Bell, ‘What we Talk About’; Khan, ‘Political Settlements and the Governance’; Laws, ‘Political Settlements, Elite Pacts’; and Di John and Putzel, ‘Political Settlements’.

6. Ingram ‘Political Settlements’; Menocal, Inclusive Political Settlements; Evans, ‘A Review of the Evidence’.

7. DFID, ‘Building the State and Securing the Peace’; and DFID, ‘Building Peaceful States and Societies’.

8. For example, Tim Kelsall makes a bold attempt at making political settlement analysis user-friendly for development actors by proposing a 3-D space or cube which is premised on ‘three diagnostic questions’ (degree of inclusion, measure of inclusion and bureaucratic culture). This is intended to provide development practitioners with ‘some tips for where the smart money might be placed first, with the shape of the cuboid providing some pointers for which areas need the most attention and who the natural allies for development partners might be’ (Kelsall, Thinking and Working, 6). While Kelsall cautions that this cannot be a substitute for historicised, contextualised analysis, nonetheless as with any diagnostic tool, it runs the risk of being used as checklists in a blueprint fashion across highly diverse contexts.

9. Yanguas, ‘Role and Responsibility of Foreign Aid’.

10. Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science.

11. Bell, ‘What we Talk About’.

12. Ibid., 15.

13. Turner and Kühn, Politics of International Intervention; and Cunliffe ‘Still the Spectre at the Feast’.

14. Luckham, ‘Whose Security? What Security?’, 17.

15. Ibid.

16. See also Selby, ‘Myth of Liberal Peace-building’.

17. Bell, ‘What we Talk About’.

18. Khan, ‘Political Settlements and the Governance’, 53–58.

19. DFID, ‘Building Peaceful States and Societies’; and World Bank, World Development Report 2011.

20. Caplan, Exit Strategies and State Building.

21. Luckham, ‘Whose Security? What Security?’, 31.

22. World Bank, World Development Report 2011, 124.

23. For examples of this brokering role, see Allouche and Lind, ‘A New Deal?’.

24. Cornwall, ‘Buzzwords and Fuzzwords’, 474.

25. Moore, What on Earth is a Political Settlement?

26. Cornwall, ‘Buzzwords and Fuzzwords’.

27. Di John and Putzel, ‘Political Settlements’.

28. Khan, ‘Political Settlements and the Governance’.

29. Whaites, States in Development; and DFID, ‘Building Peaceful States and Societies’.

30. Nay, ‘Fragile and Failed States’.

31. Capoccia and Kelemen, ‘Study of Critical Junctures’.

32. Mahoney, ‘Path Dependence in Historical Sociology’.

33. On critical junctures and gradual institutional changes, see Mahoney and Thelen, Explaining Institutional Change.

34. DFID, ‘Building Peaceful States and Societies’; Menocal, Inclusive Political Settlements; Evans, ‘A Review of the Evidence’.

35. Menocal, Inclusive Political Settlements, 6.

36. DFID, ‘Building Peaceful States and Societies’; OECD, Supporting Statebuilding in Situations of Conflict and Fragility.

37. Elgin-Cossart et al., Pathways to Change; Jones et al., Pathways Out of Fragility; North et al., Violence and Social Orders; Whaites, States in Development. North et al. do not use the concept of political settlement per se. However, the social order framework is useful for analysing how the different elite groups bargain among themselves to create institutional arrangements that would distribute resources in a way that is compatible with the groups’ relative powers and can therefore be related to the political settlement concept—see the Bangladesh article in this Special Issue.

38. North et al., Violence and Social Orders.

39. Ibid., 274.

40. Parks and Cole, ‘Political Settlements’.

41. Barnes, ‘Renegotiating the Political Settlement; DFID, ‘Building Peaceful States and Societies’; Parks and Cole, ‘Political Settlements’; Whaites, States in Development, 18.

42. Laws, ‘Political Settlements, Elite Pacts’.

43. Ibid., 20.

44. Di John and Putzel, ‘Political Settlements’.

45. In line with the idea of the developmental state in Leftwich, The Developmental State; and Evans, Embedded Autonomy.

46. Hickey and du Toit, ‘Adverse Incorporation’.

47. Whaites, States in Development; DFID, ‘Building Peaceful States and Societies’.

48. For an example see Laws, ‘Political Settlements, Elite Pacts’, 9.

49. Park and Cole, Political Settlements.

50. Manning, ‘Local Level Challenges’, 3.

51. Migdal, State in Society.

52. Autesserre, Trouble with the Congo.

53. Manning, ‘Local Level Challenges’.