Case Study: Intervention in Sierra Leone

Case Study Prepared for Intervention in Internal ConflictSierra Leone is a case of state collapse, in which the conflicts of the 1990s were not an independent event but merely the work of the maggots on a dead body. Thus no intervention could have done anything more, at best, than removing the momentary parasites taking advantage of the situation. It would require a longer, deeper, and more sustained effort of the Sierra Leoneans, necessarily with help from the international community, to restore a functioning political, economic and social structure necessary to prevent a recurrence of conflict. At the same time, it is noteworthy that this internal conflict was not an ethnic conflict, despite some secondary ethnic ramifications. The collapse of the Sierra Leonean state, already a weak creation of colonization and decolonization, took place under the long reign of Siaka Stevens (1968-85) and his All Peoples Congress (APC) drawing primarily on the interior Temne and Limba people from the northern part of the country, reacting against the previous predominance of the coastal Mende people from the south and east. Collapse was consummated under Stevens" handpicked, ineptsuccessor, Gen. Joseph Momoh, overthrown by dissatisfied junior officers led by Capt Valentine Strasser in April 1992. The main rebel groups operated under the name of the Revolutionary United Force (RUF), led by ex-cpl Foday Sankoh and Samuel Bokarie and operating with the active support of the rebel movement and then the government of Liberia under Charles Taylor. The rebellion expanded into neighboring countries and then wore down under the falling away of external and internal support

Re-thinking Secularism in Post-Independence Tunisia

The victory of a Tunisian Islamist party in the elections of October 2011 seems a paradox for a country long considered the most secular in the Arab world and raises questions about the nature and limited reach of secularist policies imposed by the state since independence. Drawing on a definition of secularism as a process of defining, managing, and intervening in religious life by the state, this paper identifies how under Habib Bourguiba and Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali the state sought to subordinate religion and to claim the sole right to interpret Islam for the public in an effort to win the monopoly over religious symbolism and, with it, political control. Both Bourguiba and Ben Ali relied on Islamic references for legitimacy, though this recourse to religion evolved to face changing contexts, and both sought to define Islam on their own terms. Bourguiba sought to place himself personally at the summit of power, while under Ben Ali the regime forged an authoritarian consensus of security, unity, and ‘tolerance’. In both cases the state politicised Islam but failed to maintain a monopoly over religious symbolism, facing repeated religious challenges to its political authority

Major flaws in conflict prevention policies towards Africa : the conceptual deficits of international actors’ approaches and how to overcome them

Current thinking on African conflicts suffers from misinterpretations oversimplification, lack of focus, lack of conceptual clarity, state-centrism and lack of vision). The paper analyses a variety of the dominant explanations of major international actors and donors, showing how these frequently do not distinguish with sufficient clarity between the ‘root causes’ of a conflict, its aggravating factors and its triggers. Specifically, a correct assessment of conflict prolonging (or sustaining) factors is of vital importance in Africa’s lingering confrontations. Broader approaches (e.g. “structural stability”) offer a better analytical framework than familiar one-dimensional explanations. Moreover, for explaining and dealing with violent conflicts a shift of attention from the nation-state towards the local and sub-regional level is needed.Aktuelle Analysen afrikanischer Gewaltkonflikte sind häufig voller Fehlinterpretationen (Mangel an Differenzierung, Genauigkeit und konzeptioneller Klarheit, Staatszentriertheit, fehlende mittelfristige Zielvorstellungen). Breitere Ansätze (z. B. das Modell der Strukturellen Stabilität) könnten die Grundlage für bessere Analyseraster und Politiken sein als eindimensionale Erklärungen. häufig differenzieren Erklärungsansätze nicht mit ausreichender Klarheit zwischen Ursachen, verschärfenden und auslösenden Faktoren. Insbesondere die richtige Einordnung konfliktverlängernder Faktoren ist in den jahrzehntelangen gewaltsamen Auseinandersetzungen in Afrika von zentraler Bedeutung. Das Diskussionspapier stellt die große Variationsbreite dominanter Erklärungsmuster der wichtigsten internationalen Geber und Akteure gegenüber und fordert einen Perspektivenwechsel zum Einbezug der lokalen und der subregionalen Ebene für die Erklärung und Bearbeitung gewaltsamer Konflikte

The Local, the ‘Indigenous’ and the Limits of Rethinking Peacebuilding

© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2021.1882755Recent critical perspectives on peacebuilding have sought to shed light on experiences so far marginalized by mainstream approaches. In particular, critics have pushed peacebuilding towards radically different ways of thinking about governance, conflict and peace, by engaging with narratives, experiences and knowledge coming from societies perceived as not invested in modernity or liberalism, such as Indigenous communities. Whilst this may force theory to confront questions of human-centrism, colonial erasure, and structural violence, turning to Indigeneity without questioning the impact of liberal peace ‘thinking', might further elicit marginalization and appropriation, and simply ‘save’ liberal peacebuilding through the back door.Peer reviewe

The innovation of the symbiosome has enhanced the evolutionary stability of nitrogen fixation in legumes

Nitrogen-fixing symbiosis is globally important in ecosystem functioning and agriculture, yet the evolutionary history of nodulation remains the focus of considerable debate. Recent evidence suggesting a single origin of nodulation followed by massive parallel evolutionary losses raises questions about why a few lineages in the N2 -fixing clade retained nodulation and diversified as stable nodulators, while most did not. Within legumes, nodulation is restricted to the two most diverse subfamilies, Papilionoideae and Caesalpinioideae, which show stable retention of nodulation across their core clades. We characterize two nodule anatomy types across 128 species in 56 of the 152 genera of the legume subfamily Caesalpinioideae: fixation thread nodules (FTs), where nitrogen-fixing bacteroids are retained within the apoplast in modified infection threads, and symbiosomes, where rhizobia are symplastically internalized in the host cell cytoplasm within membrane-bound symbiosomes (SYMs). Using a robust phylogenomic tree based on 997 genes from 147 Caesalpinioideae genera, we show that losses of nodulation are more prevalent in lineages with FTs than those with SYMs. We propose that evolution of the symbiosome allows for a more intimate and enduring symbiosis through tighter compartmentalization of their rhizobial microsymbionts, resulting in greater evolutionary stability of nodulation across this species-rich pantropical legume clade

The Dualism of Contemporary Traditional Governance and the State

In many parts of the world, people live in “dual polities”: they are governed by the state and organize collective decision making within their ethnic community according to traditional rules. We examine the substantial body of works on the traditional–state dualism, focusing on the internal organization of traditional polities, their interaction with the state, and the political consequences of the dualism. We find the descriptions of the internal organization of traditional polities scattered and lacking comparative perspective. The literature on the interaction provides a good starting point for theorizing the strategic role of traditional leaders as intermediaries, but large potentials for inference remain underexploited. Studies on the consequences of “dual polities” for democracy, conflict, and development are promising in their explanatory endeavor, but they do not yet allow for robust conclusions. We therefore propose an institutionalist research agenda addressing the need for theory and for systematic data collection and explanatory approaches