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Abstract
This article explores how mutually productive intersections between religion and governance constitute international political order in sub-Saharan settings. Asking ‘who governs’, I propose religion–governance entanglement as a means of analysing these intersections and rethinking governance, order and religion in Africa. Existing literatures typically characterise the public reliance on religious actors and institutions as being part of a uniquely ‘post-secular’ moment in contemporary world politics or a wider ‘post-Westphalian’ shift in modern governance. Enduring dynamics between postcolonial states and the Global North problematise these framings. In sub-Saharan Africa, religion has a protracted history in postcolonial hybrid governance, overlapping the regional presence of international non-govermental organisations following decolonisation. Using the example of South Sudan, I build on recent analyses of religious-political activities that leave their collective implications under-theorised.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Mateja Peter, Andrew Ross, Gregorio Bettiza, Monica Toft, Karin Fierke and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Denzin, “Triangulation 2.0,” 82.
2 Bilgin and Morton, “Historicising Representations of ‘Failed States,’” 55.
3 Krasner and Pascual, “Addressing State Failure.”
4 Fox, “Rise of Religious Nationalism,” 715; Juergensmeyer, Global Rebellion; Toft, Philpott, and Shah, God’s Century.
5 Linklater, Transformation of Political Community.
6 Ruggie, “Reconstituting the Global Public Domain,” 7; Rosenau, “Change, Complexity and Governance,” 175.
7 Barbato and Kratochwil, “Towards a Post-Secular Political Order?,” 318–9.
8 Haynes, “Religion, Secularisation and Politics,” 715; Lynch, “Religious Communities and Possibilities for Justpeace,” 597–8.
9 Bayart, State in Africa, 21; Burchardt, “Faith-Based Humanitarianism.”
10 Fluehr-Lobban, “Islamization in Sudan,” 616; Sharkey, “Christians Among Muslims.”
11 Porter, Religion versus Empire, 2; Etherington, Missions and Empire, 8.
12 Gibelman and Gelman, “Promise of Faith-Based Social Services,” 20.
13 Global Humanitarian Assistance, Report 2015, 45.
14 Appleby, Little, and Omer, Oxford Handbook of Religion; Barnett and Stein, Sacred Aid.
15 Meagher, “Strength of Weak States,” 1074.
16 Holsti, Taming the Sovereigns, 17–9; Cooley and Spruyt, Contracting States, 4.
17 Hurd, Politics of Secularism in International Relations; Wilson, “Theorizing Religion as Politics”; Menchik, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia.
18 Thomas, Global Resurgence of Religion; Wilson and Steger, “Religious Globalisms in the Post-Secular Age,” 482.
19 Asad, Formations.
20 Barbato and Kratochwil, “Towards a Post-Secular Political Order?,” 324; Pabst, “Secularism of Post-Secularity,” 996.
21 Mavelli and Petito, “Postsecular in International Relations,” 931.
22 Barbato and Kratochwil, “Towards a Post-Secular Political Order?”; Wilson and Steger, “Religious Globalisms in the Post-Secular Age”; Mavelli and Petito, “Postsecular in International Relations,” 932.
23 Pabst, “Secularism of Post-Secularity,” 996.
24 Wilson and Steger, “Religious Globalisms in the Post-Secular Age,” 483.
25 Ibid., 481–4.
26 Appleby, Little, and Omer, Oxford Handbook of Religion; Barnett and Stein, Sacred Aid; Lynch, “Religious Humanitarianism and the Global Politics of Secularism”; Agensky, “Dr Livingstone, I Presume”; Schwarz, Faith-Based Organizations in Transnational Peacebuilding; Burchardt, “Faith-Based Humanitarianism”; Powers, “Religion and Peacebuilding”; Lynch, “Religious Communities and Possibilities for Justpeace”; Sandal, Religious Leaders and Conflict Transformation.
27 Meagher, “Strength of Weak States,” 1074; Burchardt, “Faith-Based Humanitarianism,” 37.
28 Clapham, “Degrees of Statehood,” 143–57; Young, “End of the Post-Colonial State,” 23; Cooper, Colonialism in Question.
29 Boege, Brown, and Clements, “Hybrid Political Orders”; Mampilly, Rebel Rulers; Raeymaekers, Menkhaus, and Vlassenroot, “State and Non-State Regulation,” 7; Hagmann and Péclard, “Negotiating Statehood”; Meagher, “Strength of Weak States,” 1073.
30 Boege, Brown, and Clements, “Hybrid Political Orders,” 13; Podder, “Mainstreaming the Non-State,” 215.
31 Hagmann and Péclard, “Negotiating Statehood,” 541; Burchardt, “Faith-Based Humanitarianism.”
32 Podder, “Mainstreaming the Non-State,” 232.
33 Mampilly, Rebel Rulers, 163.
34 Ibid.; Podder, “Mainstreaming the Non-State.”
35 Podder, “Mainstreaming the Non-State,” 231–2.
36 Ibid.; Mampilly, Rebel Rulers, 159–63.
37 Hurd, Politics of Secularism.
38 Wilson, “Theorizing Religion as Politics,” 348.
39 Boege, Brown, and Clements, “Hybrid Political Orders,” 14; Camilleri, “Postsecularist Discourse in an ‘Age of Transition,’” 1032; Barbato and Kratochwil, “Towards a Post-Secular Political Order?,” 319.
40 Pernau, “Whither Conceptual History,” 11; Therborn, “Entangled Modernities,” 293–300; Eisenstadt, “Reconstruction of Religious Arenas.”
41 Randeria, “Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities,” 80.
42 Lynch, “Neo-Weberian Approach”; Wilson, “Theorizing Religion as Politics.”
43 Swidler, “African Affirmations,” 197–8; Burchardt, “Faith-Based Humanitarianism”; Agensky, “Dr Livingstone, I Presume”; Patterson and Kuperus, “Mobilizing the Faithful”; McCauley, “Africa’s New Big Man Rule.”
44 Burchardt, “Faith-Based Humanitarianism.”
45 McCauley, “Africa’s New Big Man Rule.”
46 Hagmann and Péclard, “Negotiating Statehood,” 541; Mampilly, Rebel Rulers, 239.
47 Menkhaus, “Governance without Government in Somalia.”
48 Otayek and Soares, Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa, 3–7.
49 Burchardt, “Faith-Based Humanitarianism”; Patterson and Kuperus, “Mobilizing the Faithful.”
50 Ranger, Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa, 4–5; Gifford, “Some Recent Developments in African Christianity,” 50.
51 Gifford, “Some Recent Developments in African Christianity,” 521.
52 Maxwell, “Post-Colonial Christianity in Africa,” 415.
53 Bornstein, Spirit of Development, 14.
54 Gifford, “Some Recent Developments in African Christianity,” 521; Burchardt, “Faith-Based Humanitarianism,” 34.
55 Burchardt, “Faith-Based Humanitarianism”; Patterson and Kuperus, “Mobilizing the Faithful.”
56 Maxwell, “Post-Colonial Christianity in Africa,” 411–2.
57 Burchardt, “Faith-Based Humanitarianism,” 31.
58 McCauley, “Africa’s New Big Man Rule,” 5.
59 Wilson and Steger, “Religious Globalisms in the Post-Secular Age”; Barbato and Kratochwil, “Towards a Post-Secular Political Order?”
60 Philpott, Revolutions in Sovereignty; Phillips, War, Religion and Empire.
61 Mavelli and Petito, “Postsecular in International Relations”; Camilleri, “Postsecularist Discourse in an ‘Age of Transition.’”
62 Haynes, “Religion, Secularisation and Politics”; Lynch, “Religious Communities and Possibilities for Justpeace”; Mavelli and Petito, “Postsecular in International Relations”; Barbato and Kratochwil, “Towards a Post-Secular Political Order?”
63 Stepan, “Religion, Democracy, and the ‘Twin Tolerations’”; Philpott, “Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion”; Buckley, Faithful to Secularism; Menchik, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia.
64 Burchardt, “Faith-Based Humanitarianism”; Patterson and Kuperus, “Mobilizing the Faithful”; McCauley, “Africa’s New Big Man Rule.”
65 Johnson, Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars; Hilhorst and van Leeuwen, “Grounding Local Peace Organisations”; Maitre, “What Sustains ‘Internal Wars’”; Mampilly, Rebel Rulers; Hutchinson, “Curse from God.”
66 Deng, War of Visions; Croft, “Thy Will Be Done”; Ashworth and Ryan, “Strategic Peacebuilding.”
67 Johnson, Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, 35; Sharkey, “Christians Among Muslims.”
68 Maitre, “What Sustains ‘Internal Wars’”; Branch and Mampilly, “Winning the War, But Losing the Peace.”
69 Johnson, Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars; Collins, History of Modern Sudan.
70 Rolandsen, “Quick Fix.”
71 Hilhorst and van Leeuwen, “Grounding Local Peace Organisations.”
72 Interview, Nairobi, March 2011; Collins, History of Modern Sudan, 200–4; Hutchinson, “Spiritual Fragments of an Unfinished War,” 136–62.
73 Mampilly, Rebel Rulers.
74 Interview, Juba, June 2011.
75 Interview, Nairobi, March 2011.
76 Burchardt, “Faith-Based Humanitarianism.”
77 Interview, Nairobi, March 2011.
78 Werner, Anderson, and Wheeler, Day of Devastation; Jenner, When Truth Is Denied; Rolandsen, Guerrilla Government; African Rights, Great Expectations; Adar, “Conflict Resolution in a Turbulent Region”; Bradbury et al., Local Peace, 28–59; Hilhorst and van Leeuwen, “Grounding Local Peace Organisations.”
79 Werner, Anderson, and Wheeler, Day of Devastation, 398.
80 Interview, Nairobi, May 2011.
81 Interview, Nairobi, June 2011; Bradbury et al., Local Peace, 37.
82 Werner, Anderson, and Wheeler, Day of Devastation, 398.
83 Interview, Nairobi, June 2011; Rolandsen, Guerrilla Government, 76.
84 Jenner, When Truth Is Denied, 12.
85 Interviews, Nairobi, June 2011.
86 African Rights, Great Expectations; Rolandsen, Guerrilla Government.
87 Rolandsen, Guerrilla Government, 76.
88 Interview, Nairobi, March 2011; Werner, Anderson, and Wheeler, Day of Devastation, 391–4.
89 Jenner, When Truth Is Denied, 11.
90 Interview, Nairobi, June 2011.
91 Interviews, Nairobi, March–June 2011.
92 Interviews, Juba, February 2011; Nairobi, June 2011.
93 Interview, Juba, June 2011; Ashworth and Ryan, “Strategic Peacebuilding,” 58.
94 Interview, Juba, June 2011.
95 Adar, “Conflict Resolution in a Turbulent Region,” 54.
96 Interview, Juba, March 2011.
97 Ibid.
98 Interviews, Juba, February 2011.
99 Interviews, Nairobi, March–May 2011.
100 Interview, Nairobi, June 2011; African Rights, Great Expectations, 29–30; Werner, Anderson, and Wheeler, Day of Devastation, 398.
101 Interviews, Juba, June–July 2011.
102 African Rights, Great Expectations, 21–3.
103 Interviews, Juba, February and July 2011.
104 Interviews, Juba, June–July 2011.
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Jonathan C. Agensky
Jonathan C. Agensky is an assistant professor of political science at Ohio University, specialising in international relations. His research draws on international historical sociology, postcolonial studies and African studies, with a focus on humanitarianism, global governance and postcolonial Africa. He has published in journals such as the European Journal of International Relations, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Global Society and Globalizations and has contributed to recent edited volumes on humanitarianism and international peace operations. Dr Agensky is currently completing a manuscript on evangelical humanitarianism and the global politics of South Sudan.