Warfare, endemic violence & state collapse in Africa

Abstract

African politics in the nineties have been marked by a series of violent breakdowns of order, and in some cases the disappearance of the central state, in a large number of states. Attempts at the analysis of this phenomenon have involved several different but complementary approaches, notably those invoking globalisation, the economics of ‘new’ war, the crisis of the neopatrimonial state, or social and cultural factors as keys to explanation. These either confine themselves to case studies, or treat all instances of endemic violence as open to the same analysis, in part because they treat violence or warfare as themselves the central objects of analysis. An alternative approach does not see ‘war’ as the problem, but is instead concerned with the historical circumstances within which endemic violence occurs and which can be seen as possible causes of that violence. This approach allows for the simultaneous existence of several different historical sequences involving war and violence, and identifies one key category of cases of endemic violence which covers the great majority of those cases in the nineties: violence associated with the process of state collapse in Africa. It attributes the origins of violence in these cases to the degeneration of their ‘spoils politics’ systems under the impact of their internal dynamics, accelerated by economic decline since 1980 and the end of the Cold War. As spoils systems develop into ‘terminal spoils’, so violence intensifies and takes on new but necessary forms, and a process of state collapse begins, interacting with the growth of violence in ways that accelerate both.

Nigeria: In Search of Sustainable Peace in the Niger Delta through the Amnesty Programme

“…Also, between July and early September 2011, rampaging youths of Bayelsa State extraction barricaded the East/West Road (Gbemudu et al, 2011). Idle youths are easy to mobilize and draft into criminality as they know that it can be a means of "'empowerment,' the outcome of the search for new forms of identity and integration, a form of employment and an opportunity for looting and accumulation" (Ikelegbe, 2011;Allen, 1999). The integration of these unemployed youths (idle men and women) into the programme would make them acquire the necessary skills that the programme offers and hence, be useful to themselves and the society, rather than being instruments for violence in the region.…”

Providing security or protecting interests? Government interventions in violent communal conflicts in Africa

“…States have limited resources, and the ability of the state to intervene in communal conflicts is constrained by a number of structural and political factors. Local communal conflict in Africa has to a large extent been analysed as a symptom of state weakness or failure, with the implication that conflict management is primarily an issue of building and strengthening state institutions (Allen, 1999;Mkutu, 2008: 33;Newman, 2013). This argument suggests that intervention is contingent on the availability of material and military resources.…”

From low-conflict polity to democratic civil peace: Explaining Zambian exceptionalism

“…In Africa generally rcent years have seen a creeping "crisis of patrimonialism" (Allen 1999). If material resources shrink to the point that "codes of reciprocity" within the neo-patrimonial system can no longer be preserved and "big men" cheat remorselessly on their followers, then writers like Azam (2001) and Le Billon (2003) expect the "glue" connecting elites and their clients to weaken.…”