Introducing the Women’s Activities in Armed Rebellion (WAAR) project, 1946–2015

This article introduces the Women’s Activities in Armed Rebellion (WAAR) project, a multi-methods project that includes a cross-sectional dataset of women’s participation in more than 370 organizations fighting in civil conflicts between 1946 and 2015. The dataset features 22 measures of women’s participation in rebel organizations: it includes prevalence and presence measures of women’s participation in combat, non-combat and leadership roles; details on all-female units within groups (and their primary focus – combat or support activities); and presence measures for types of support work (disaggregated into clandestine work, outreach to civilian populations and logistical support) and types of leadership activities (military or non-military) that women contribute. The WAAR project also includes a detailed, qualitative assessment of women’s involvement in each organization, comprising an approximately 360-page handbook of female rebel participation in the post-WWII period. This article describes the WAAR project and suggests avenues for future research leveraging these data.</p

Seeing Political Settlements through the City: A Framework for Comparative Analysis of Urban Transformation

This article proposes a new analytical framework for studying cities in the developing world based on the ‘political settlements’ approach. This has a dual purpose: to enrich comparative urban development research by bringing new theoretical ideas to bear on this field, but also to use capital cities as a lens to better understand national political settlements. The central argument is that urban built environments and their transformations in situations of late development reflect the workings of different varieties of clientelism, and by analysing the former we can better understand the latter. Specifically, issues such as the nature of urban land use and land allocation, the pace and form of construction, the effectiveness of environmental regulation and the provision of housing for different income groups are all revealing of political settlements and their broader development implications. The potential of this approach is explored through three narrative ‘sketches’ of contemporary urban development in Eastern Africa: the ‘city as marketplace’ (Kampala), the ‘city as expo’ (Kigali) and the ‘city as construction site’ (Addis Ababa). In presenting this framework, the article seeks to advance debate on methodological and analytical approaches to the study of both power relations and differential patterns of urban development

Alms, Arms, And The Aftermath: The Legacies Of Rebel Provision Of Humanitarian Aid In Ethiopia

Abstract The 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia is perhaps one of the most internationally recognized instances of acute human suffering. Although the international community’s response to the crisis and the ways in which the famine reshaped the nature of humanitarian aid have been probed, less often discussed is that one of the most effective relief organizations delivering assistance—the Relief Society of Tigray (REST)—was the humanitarian wing of an insurgency, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). This article asserts that the process of responding to the famine amidst a protracted civil war left an indelible mark on the ways in which the TPLF approached domestic civil society and international assistance after war as a part of the governing party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. This article describes the legacies of the rebels’ wartime humanitarian activities. It asserts that REST’s prominence as an organization, its role as a model and catalyst for other party-affiliated organizations, the government’s suspicion of domestic civil society and efforts to strictly control international assistance, and its reliance on service delivery to bolster its domestic legitimacy are all legacies of the rebels’ wartime governance. In doing so, this article calls for greater attention to the dynamics of rebels’ wartime humanitarian activities and the post-conflict implications of this form of rebel governance.</jats:p

Institutionalizing Instability: The Constitutional Roots of Insecurity in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

Nigeria’s return to democracy has been a tumultuous era; the Fourth Republic has been characterized by insurgencies and violence throughout the country. Though seemingly disparate movements, the violence of the Fourth Republic has its roots in the country’s constitution. Three aspects of the 1999 Nigerian constitution stand out as particularly problematic: the centralization of the police at the federal level with limited sub-national oversight, the ambiguous concept of indigeneity, and the overlapping, often contradictory land tenure systems endorsed. All of these allude to the precariousness of Nigerian federalism under the current constitution; ultimately, the police centralization primes the country for violence, while the indigeneity rules and land tenure system make it more difficult to negotiate stable post-conflict settlements. The country’s recent experience with Boko Haram will be used to illustrate how these constitutional tenets facilitate instability