When kleptocracy becomes insolvent: brute causes of the civil war in South Sudan

South Sudan obtained independence in July 2011 as a kleptocracy – a militarized, corrupt neo-patrimonial system of governance. By the time of independence, the South Sudanese “political marketplace” was so expensive that the country's comparatively copious revenue was consumed by the military-political patronage system, with almost nothing left for public services, development or institution building. The efforts of national technocrats and foreign donors produced bubbles of institutional integrity but the system as a whole was entirely resistant to reform. The January 2012 shutdown of oil production bankrupted the system. Even an experienced and talented political business manager would have struggled, and President Salva Kiir did not display the required skills. No sooner had shots been fired than the compact holding the SPLA together fell apart and civil war ensued. Drawing upon long-term observation of elite politics in South Sudan, this article explains both the roots of kleptocratic government and its dire consequences

An agenda for research into justice in South Sudan

For South Sudanese, encounters with the justice system are too often an experience of injustice. But when and how do courts, and the lawyers, judges and paralegals associated with them, succeed in delivering justice? And how do these processes contribute to the construction of public authority

Somalia’s disassembled state

This blog summarises an article published in the journal of Conflict, Security and Development and has been jointly published with the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University

#PublicAuthority: the political marketplace: analyzing political entrepreneurs and political bargaining with a business lens

Alex De Waal demonstrates how the political marketplace framework helps explain four enduring puzzles in contemporary Africa and the Greater Middle East. This article is part of the #PublicAuthority blog series, part of the ESRC-funded Centre for Public Authority and International Development

The UN’s Darfur “cover-up” and the need for reliable conflict data

International peacekeeping operations are deployed to complicated and troubled places. Often, reliable information is scarce, rumors and poorly-founded allegations are common, and interpretation of events is highly politicized. Recent controversies around what is going on in Darfur illuminate the need for much better data

Governance implications of epidemic disease in Africa: updating the agenda for COVID-19

African countries have much experience with epidemics of communicable diseases. Nonetheless, certain aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic are new; for example its impacts on the global economy, and the extreme restrictions on social interaction that are recommended as mitigation measures. Other aspects of the pandemic are familiar; for example high levels of illness that overwhelm limited health care capacity, a spike in mortality, and the conjuncture of these two elements with a severe economic downturn. This memo summarises some of what is known about epidemic disease and governance in Africa based on past experience, and poses questions concerning COVID-19. The principal research resources include the Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa and the HIV/AIDS, Security and Governance Initiative. In this respect it supplements recent surveys on the issue by Crisis Group and the Carnegie Endowment. There have also been extremely alarmist predictions such as that reported from the Quai d’Orsay, that the epidemic will cause African states to collapse, necessitating international interventions. This is not an evidence-based claim. The memo then briefly examines: (a) impacts of epidemic disease on state capacity; (b) impacts on social and economic distress (especially food insecurity); then turns to (c) vicious cycles of interaction between disease, conflict and state failure; and (d) the implications of government responses to epidemics. The memo poses questions that should be examined in order to ascertain the probable governance implications of COVID-19 and identifies research gaps

Transnational conflict in Africa: a new field of study and a shift in policy priorities

It’s rare in political science to be able to say, authoritatively, that an extensive sub-field of study has been operating under a false assumption, and that there’s an adjacent sub-field that has been almost entirely neglected

South Sudan: turbulence, the political market, and prospects for peace

Creating a peaceful political order in South Sudan often seems like trying to cage a torrent: however creative the formula, however forceful its application, the water always escapes. Three recent publications from the research team at the Conflict Research Programme at the London School of Economics and the World Peace Foundation deepen our analysis and point towards important policy lessons

Book review: fighting for peace in Somalia: a history and analysis of the African Union Mission (AMISOM), 2007-2017 by Paul D. Williams

In Fighting for Peace in Somalia: A History and Analysis of the African Union Mission (AMISOM), 2007-2017, Paul D. Williams offers an account of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), the African Union’s largest, most ambitious, complex and dangerous peace support operation. Alex de Waal welcomes this thorough, balanced and thoughtful study which will be indispensable to any policymaker or scholar of Somalia