Governing After War - Rebel Victories and Post-War Statebuilding

Governing After War explores how wartime processes affects post-war state-building efforts when rebels win a civil war and come into power. Post-war governance is a continuation of war--although violence has ceased, the victor must consolidate its control over the state through a process of internal conquest. This means carefully making choices about resource allocation towards development and security. Where does the victor choose to spend, and why? And what are the implications for ultimately consolidating power and preventing conflict recurrence?

The book examines wartime rebel-civilian ties under rebel governance and explains how these ties--along with rebel governing institutions--shape the rebel victors' post-war various resource allocation strategies to establish control at the sub-national level. In turn, successfully balancing resources dedicated toward development and security helps the victor to consolidate power. The book relies on mixed-methods evidence from Zimbabwe and Liberia, combining interviews, focus groups, and archival data with fine-grained census, administrative, survey, and conflict datasets to provide an in-depth examination of subnational variation in wartime rebel behavior and post-war governing strategies. A comparison of Zimbabwe and Liberia alongside four additional civil wars in Burundi, Rwanda, Côte d'Ivoire, and Angola further demonstrates the importance of wartime civilian tie-formation for post-war control. The argument's central insights point to war and peace as part of a long state-building process, and suggest that the international community should pay attention to sub-national political constraints that new governments face. Her findings offer implications for recent rebel victories and, more broadly, for understanding the termination, trajectories, and political legacies of such conflicts around the world.

List of contents

• List of Figures


• List of Tables


• Acknowledgements


• Acronyms


• I Governing After War


• Chapter 1 Introduction


• Chapter 2 Statebuilding Through Rebel-Civilian Ties


• II Resource Allocation


• Chapter 3 Introducing the cases


• Chapter 4 The Zimbabwe LiberationWar (1972-1979)


• Chapter 5 The Liberia CivilWar (1989-1996)


• III Consolidating Power


• Chapter 6 Divergent Trajectories Across Rebel Victories


• Chapter 7 External Comparisons


• IV Implications


• Chapter 8 Implications and Future Research


• Bibliography


• Appendix A Security Challenges After War


• Appendix B Zimbabwe LiberationWar


• Appendix C First Liberia CivilWar

About the author

Shelley Liu is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Duke University. Her research examines how citizens relate to the state, and how these citizen-state relationships affect post-conflict development and state-building in developing contexts. Her scholarship has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Journal of Peace Research, Politics & Society, and PLOS ONE.

Summary

Governing After War explores how wartime processes affects post-war state-building efforts when rebels win a civil war and come into power. Post-war governance is a continuation of war--although violence has ceased, the victor must consolidate its control over the state through a process of internal conquest. This means carefully making choices about resource allocation towards development and security. Where does the victor choose to spend, and why? And what are the implications for ultimately consolidating power and preventing conflict recurrence?

The book examines wartime rebel-civilian ties under rebel governance and explains how these ties--along with rebel governing institutions--shape the rebel victors' post-war various resource allocation strategies to establish control at the sub-national level. In turn, successfully balancing resources dedicated toward development and security helps the victor to consolidate power. The book relies on mixed-methods evidence from Zimbabwe and Liberia, combining interviews, focus groups, and archival data with fine-grained census, administrative, survey, and conflict datasets to provide an in-depth examination of subnational variation in wartime rebel behavior and post-war governing strategies. A comparison of Zimbabwe and Liberia alongside four additional civil wars in Burundi, Rwanda, Côte d'Ivoire, and Angola further demonstrates the importance of wartime civilian tie-formation for post-war control. The argument's central insights point to war and peace as part of a long state-building process, and suggest that the international community should pay attention to sub-national political constraints that new governments face. Her findings offer implications for recent rebel victories and, more broadly, for understanding the termination, trajectories, and political legacies of such conflicts around the world.

Additional text

A tremendous advance in the study of post-war politics, Liu offers an insightful and compelling analysis of how rebel victories produce distinct political behaviors. Eschewing the tendency to view statebuilding as unfolding upon a blank canvas, Liu instead shows how behaviors forged amidst the fighting can shape the behavior of the new regime. Combining sophisticated and often surprising logics with extensive ethnographic and other evidence, Liu's contribution is sure to make a mark in the wider fields of conflict resolution and statebuilding.

Product details

• Authors: Shelley X. Liu, Shelley X. (Assistant Professor Liu
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 25.03.2024
• EAN: 9780197696712
• ISBN: 978-0-19-769671-2
• No. of pages: 352
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; Liberia, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Comparative Politics, POLITICAL SCIENCE / World / African, Zimbabwe, Comparative Politics