Shirts Today, Skins Tomorrow: Dual Contests and the Effects of Fragmentation in Self-Determination Disputes

Politieke Instituties: Ontwerp, functioneren, effecte

A Plague of Initials: Fragmentation, Cohesion, and Infighting in Civil Wars

Politieke Instituties: Ontwerp, functioneren, effecte

Sovereignty, territory and authority: boundary maintenance in contemporary Africa

Why have Africa's borders survived intact in the post-Cold War era, and what changes have the past two decades witnessed in the relationship between sovereignty, territory and authority in African statehood? After 1989, a number of authors predicted changes to the political map of the continent, with far-reaching international changes expected to reverberate in ways the fragile borders of African states were unlikely to contain. Yet legally recognized borders remain basically fixed. Only in the cases of Sudan/South Sudan and Ethiopia/Eritrea did borders change with the consent of the states concerned. This paper tracks the transformations to the postcolonial boundary maintenance regime masked by the lack of meaningful changes to sovereign territorial jurisdictions. The end of superpower competition and the advent of donor conditionality, combined with liberal norms of conflict management and state reconstruction, have attenuated the sovereignty that once bolstered African states against internal rivals. But changes sparked by China's deepening engagement with Africa and the emphasis placed on the effective administration of territory in the War on Terror have shored up wavering sovereigns and contested borders. The cumulative effects have been twofold: first, to diminish the formal protections afforded by juridical sovereignty even as recognized boundaries remain fixed; and second, to complicate authority relations within and across borders, undoing the great levelling of the postcolonial period that sought to replace complicated authority relations within and across states with a relatively uniform system of sovereign territorial states

Let’s bullshit! Arguing, bargaining and dissembling over Darfur

The crisis in Darfur led to one of the most powerful advocacy campaigns in recent US history. Responding to intense political pressures from this campaign, the US engaged Sudan in a heated public confrontation, increasingly echoing the rhetoric of an advocacy campaign that was surprisingly indifferent to realities on the ground in Darfur. This article examines how the exceptional mobilization around Darfur affected US policy and diplomatic outcomes, using the case to explore larger theoretical questions around deception and truthfulness in International Relations. There was a curious disconnect between the exceptionally strong language US leaders used during the crisis, and the failure of these public claims, promises and threats to achieve the desired diplomatic outcomes. Such strong language should have bolstered US arguments to persuade allies to support measures against Sudan, given the US bargaining leverage with Sudan, and opened opportunities for activists to rhetorically entrap US officials into defending the norms they publicly invoked. Instead, I argue that US leaders bullshitted their way through the crisis in response to advocacy and the demands it generated. Far from being a harmless form of moral posturing, this complicated US diplomatic efforts and undermined the prospects for a political solution in Darfur

Why factions switch sides in civil wars: rivalry, patronage, and realignment in Sudan

Side switching by armed groups is a prominent feature of many civil wars. Shifts in alignment have far-reaching consequences, influencing key outcomes such as civil war duration and termination, military effectiveness, levels of civilian victimization, and state-building prospects. In Sudan's wars, ideological and ethnic cleavages have not influenced factional alignments nearly as much as one might expect given the prominence of clashing political projects and ethnically organized violence in southern Sudan and Darfur. Recent explanations highlighting the role of territorial control, factional infighting, or relative power considerations also have limited value. In many wars fought in weak states characterized by low barriers to side switching, two mechanisms explain patterns of collaboration and defection: first, political rivalries that lead actors to collaborate in exchange for military support in localized struggles; and second, patronage-based incentives that induce collaboration for material gain. A nested analysis drawing on original data from wars in southern Sudan and Darfur supports this argument. The findings have implications for understanding alignments in civil wars, the role of weak states in counterinsurgency, and ethnic politics more generally, as well as policy relevance for factionalized civil wars