Philip Roessler: Ethnic Politics and State Power in Africa: The Logic of the Coup- Civil War Trap
A great contribution to the literature on organized violence, coups and civil wars.
A "coup civil-war trap" stands at the core of Roessler's account of war and the state in sub-Saharan Africa. African leaders tend to exclude ethnic groups other than their own from political power . This increases the risk of civil war, as politically excluded groups have an incentive to take up arms against the state. So why do political leaders exclude ethnic groups ? The theory of the security dilemma provides the answer. Leaders of ethnic groups cannot commit themselves to not exploit their access to the state apparatus and security forces to overthrow the sitting ruler. Incumbent leaders, in turn, cannot credibly promise to not exclude political rivals and representatives of other ethnic groups from their coalition. Under these circumstances, mutual mistrust my spiral in an ethnically inclusive ruling coalition. Coups and purges offer an attractive tool for preventive and preemptive "first strikes", permanently eliminating political rivals by restricting their access to the state apparatus and security forces.
Roessler supplements this model of ethnic politics with a theory of what he calls cooperative counterinsurgency. Most African states lack a strong state apparatus. The only possibility for counterinsurgent forces to thus collect information and apply targeted reprisals are patron-client relationships embedded within ethnic networks. Put differently, the best counterinsurgent forces are to be found within the ethnic group whose very members are staging the insurgency. Those networks can facilitate a bargain that solves a prisoners' dilemma between local communities and the state: the state promises not to resort to indiscriminate violence, while local communities commit themselves to not support rebel groups.
A great contribution to the literature on organized violence, coups and civil wars.
A "coup civil-war trap" stands at the core of Roessler's account of war and the state in sub-Saharan Africa. African leaders tend to exclude ethnic groups other than their own from political power . This increases the risk of civil war, as politically excluded groups have an incentive to take up arms against the state. So why do political leaders exclude ethnic groups ? The theory of the security dilemma provides the answer. Leaders of ethnic groups cannot commit themselves to not exploit their access to the state apparatus and security forces to overthrow the sitting ruler. Incumbent leaders, in turn, cannot credibly promise to not exclude political rivals and representatives of other ethnic groups from their coalition. Under these circumstances, mutual mistrust my spiral in an ethnically inclusive ruling coalition. Coups and purges offer an attractive tool for preventive and preemptive "first strikes", permanently eliminating political rivals by restricting their access to the state apparatus and security forces.
Roessler supplements this model of ethnic politics with a theory of what he calls cooperative counterinsurgency. Most African states lack a strong state apparatus. The only possibility for counterinsurgent forces to thus collect information and apply targeted reprisals are patron-client relationships embedded within ethnic networks. Put differently, the best counterinsurgent forces are to be found within the ethnic group whose very members are staging the insurgency. Those networks can facilitate a bargain that solves a prisoners' dilemma between local communities and the state: the state promises not to resort to indiscriminate violence, while local communities commit themselves to not support rebel groups.
Rössler deploys an impressive, multi-method approach based on country but also statistical analysis to both build and test his theories. An extensive comparison of uprisings in Sudan's Darfur region illustrates the commitment problem of power-sharing in weak states and the cooperative counterinsurgency hypothesis. An Islamist regime, dominated by Omar al Bashir and Hassan al Turabai, had risen to power through a military coup- also labelled as the al-Ingaz (salvation) revolution- in 1989. In the early 1990s, this regime could draw upon Islamist networks among non-Arab ethnic groups in the Darfur region, particularly among ethnic Fur and Zaghawa, to crush a burgeoning rebellion through a cooperative counterinsurgency approach.
In the course of the 1990s, however, in an illustration of the commitment problem, Bashir and Turabi entered into a power struggle, with each fearing political marginalization by the respective other. The origin of this power struggle lay in the dual power centers which the regime brought into power in 1989 had. On one hand, a Revolutionary Command Council, headed by Omar Bashir took charge of the state apparatus. At the same time, the Tanzim, the Sudanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, continued to exist as a shadow government. Turabai, the Tanzim's founder, took a powerful position behind the scenes. The power struggle ended in Turabi being pushed into the opposition. The Islamist movement and its National Congress Party split along ethno-regional lines, with Turabi seeking support in Western Sudan and Bashir drawing upon the support of Northern riverain Arabs. Ethnic polarization ensued and, when another rebellion broke out in Darfour, the Sudanese state apparatus could no longer rely on Islamist networks among the Non-Arab tribes to organize a cooperative approach to counterinsurgency. Bashir had to resort to indiscriminate violence, and mostly relied on ethnic Arab militias in its counterinsurgency campaign in Darfour.
The case study evidence is accompanied by a statistical analysis of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1946 and 2005, based on the Ethnic Power Relations (EPR) data-set. The EPR constitutes a large-scale attempt to code ethnic politics, to include the degree of exclusion of ethnic groups. In a first statistical analysis (Chapter 8), Roessler demonstrates that politically excluded ethnic groups are, compared to their included counter-parts,significantly more likely to implicated in a rebellion against the state, but less likely to engage in a coup d'état.
Roessler also investigates the risks of coups and rebellions in two types of regimes in which power-sharing is borne out of necessity and commitment problems are ripe: co-conspirator regimes and split domination regimes.
Co-conspirator regimes tend to be prone to collapse, when allies which came to power together fall out and wage war. Roessler discusses the examples of Chad, Liberia and Congo.
Overall, an impressive book. The wealth of the empirical material, to include the results of very substantial field research in Congo and Sudan, is nothing less than breathtaking. Roessler does a great job in translating the bargaining theory of war, mostly developed to explain interstate relations, into the domain of ethnic politics. While the book limits itself to Sub-Saharan Africa, the basic logic of how power-sharing induces commitment problems should travel well to other cases as well. Nikolaos van Dam's book about how the Syrian regime came to be dominated by a small clique of ethnic Alawi around Hafiz al-Assad comes to mind. The only pitfall I see in the book is that it could have profited from some more editorial work. The presentation of the argument appeared slightly convoluted. Roessler introduces various, admittedly noteworthy, extensions to his theory in different parts of the book, making it difficult to follow up on all of them.
In the course of the 1990s, however, in an illustration of the commitment problem, Bashir and Turabi entered into a power struggle, with each fearing political marginalization by the respective other. The origin of this power struggle lay in the dual power centers which the regime brought into power in 1989 had. On one hand, a Revolutionary Command Council, headed by Omar Bashir took charge of the state apparatus. At the same time, the Tanzim, the Sudanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, continued to exist as a shadow government. Turabai, the Tanzim's founder, took a powerful position behind the scenes. The power struggle ended in Turabi being pushed into the opposition. The Islamist movement and its National Congress Party split along ethno-regional lines, with Turabi seeking support in Western Sudan and Bashir drawing upon the support of Northern riverain Arabs. Ethnic polarization ensued and, when another rebellion broke out in Darfour, the Sudanese state apparatus could no longer rely on Islamist networks among the Non-Arab tribes to organize a cooperative approach to counterinsurgency. Bashir had to resort to indiscriminate violence, and mostly relied on ethnic Arab militias in its counterinsurgency campaign in Darfour.
The case study evidence is accompanied by a statistical analysis of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1946 and 2005, based on the Ethnic Power Relations (EPR) data-set. The EPR constitutes a large-scale attempt to code ethnic politics, to include the degree of exclusion of ethnic groups. In a first statistical analysis (Chapter 8), Roessler demonstrates that politically excluded ethnic groups are, compared to their included counter-parts,significantly more likely to implicated in a rebellion against the state, but less likely to engage in a coup d'état.
Roessler also investigates the risks of coups and rebellions in two types of regimes in which power-sharing is borne out of necessity and commitment problems are ripe: co-conspirator regimes and split domination regimes.
Co-conspirator regimes tend to be prone to collapse, when allies which came to power together fall out and wage war. Roessler discusses the examples of Chad, Liberia and Congo.
- In Chad, Hissène Habré, an ethnic Gouran, came to power in a rebellion during which he aligned with ethnic Zaghawa, to include the man who would ultimately depose Habré, Idris Déby. In the late 1980s, mutual mistrust rose between Habré and various Zaghawa leaders, who feared being excluded from the regime. After a failed coup in 1989, Déby fled to Sudan, from where he organized an ultimately successful rebellion.
- A similar story unfolded in Liberia in the 1980s. Two childhood friends, Samuel Doe, of the Khran ethnic group, and Thomas Quiwonkpa, of the Gio ethnic group, seized power in a coup in 1980. Doe became head of state and Quiwonkpa commander of the armed forces. In a spiral of mutual mistrust, Doe ultimately deposed Quiwonkpa, who fled the country and went on to found the National Patriotic Front of Liberia. This group staged a rebellion from neighboring Sierra Leone and, under the leadership of the infamous Charles Taylor after Quiwonkpa's killing, ultimately manage to capture power in the 1990s.
- The Congo wars in the 1990s also illustrate the risks of co-conspirators falling out and tensions erupting into civil war. Laurent Kabila took power with the help of Rwandan sponsors and, at first, incorporated a high number of Rwandan representatives and ethnic Tutsi into his government. Fearing, though, that his former patrons might attempt to replace him, Kabila ended up purging his ancient allies in a pre-emptive strike in July 1998, asking all Rwandan soldiers to leave the country. Within a week, a rebellion supported by Rwanda began in Eastern Congo, triggering a war which would ultimately encompass the entire region.
In "split domination regimes" a former colonial power had usually distributed control of the security forces and the state apparatus between ethnic groups. Under such conditions, the commitment problem may become especially severe, leading to either a coup trap or ethnic exclusion and civil war. Burundi is a classical example, where at independence ethnic Hutu and Tutsi were represented in both politics and armed forces. A failed Hutu-led military coup in 1965 led to the exclusion of ethnic Hutu from power, ultimately resulting in a decades-long civil war.
In a final extension of his theory (Chapter 10), Roessler asks what might facilitate self-enforcing power-sharing between ethnic groups. He argues that ethnic groups might agree to share power and hence accept coup risk for a lowered risk of civil war when a "balance of threat" exists. Political exclusion makes less sense when various ethnic groups have a good chance of capturing the capital by force due to their demographic strength and the geographic location of their homelands. Roessler points to Benin and Ghana as paradigmatic cases of self-enforcing power-sharing. Both countries are relatively small and divided between different ethno-regional blocs. After independence, both witnessed a cycle of coups and counter-coups, but none of the two witnessed permanent or larger-scale exclusion of any of the ethnic groupings. Roessler also employs the EPR data to provide further support for his hypothesis on how a balance of threat capabilities can induce self-enforcing power-sharing.
