Chris Blattman

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Where have all the African revolutionaries gone?

In the broader context of stalled reforms and the extensive street-level criticisms of citizens in many countries, popularly backed armed struggles in Africa are notable for their relative absence. One would think armed revolution or reform would be on the agenda in many countries.

That is William Reno wondering why Africa has more rebels than revolutionaries these days. It’s easy to exaggerate the change in African warfare. Too many wonks and journalists see barbaric killers devoid of political aims, partly because the politics aren’t slapping them in the face. But it’s true something’s shifted away from popular movements and political visionaries.

Reno has a bevy of reasons. One of the most provocative: after the Cold War, we meddling foreigners changed the way we meddled. Out went Cold War realpolitik, in came the “pretense of neutrality” among NGOs and foreign governments:

This approach justified the injection of resources into conflicts not on the basis of an armed group’s performance or its ideas, but instead on the basis of the needs of suffering noncombatants. This created an incentive for commanders within the ranks of these armed groups – not much different from the sorts of people who joined the earlier groups in terms of their social origins – to split from their bosses and claim some of the benefits of warfare for themselves.

…This shift in international responses to armed conflict meshed well with the domestic and regional strategies of some governments in Africa. The explosion of armed groups in Sudan’s Darfur region is partly a consequence of the efforts of that country’s government to fragment an insurgency that challenged its control.

Another of Reno’s interesting arguments: African states used to bind themselves together with state largesse. Until finances imploded, however, in the 1980s:

When these patronage-based political systems collapse, the factions knit together under the old system begin to struggle against one another for the right to claim state power.

…The consequence of these changes is that Africa’s conflicts have become more local in their political dynamics, even as they continue to tap into global material networks.

The finance argument isn’t new, but the shift to local grievances is. It jives with at least one book I am reading on the Congo conflict.

All in all, one of the best conflict pieces I’ve read all year. I’m not sure, though, if I completely agree.

Another argument, from Kalyvas and Balcells, sees other implications of the Cold War’s conclusion. Rebel groups and states saw their military assistance shrink. Where you once had strong rebel groups fighting strong states, now you have weak rebels fighting weak states. Weak states left more spaces for opportunistic rebels than the earlier environment.

I suspect we also need to start looking past the Cold War. If we are going to understand the current landscape, 2001 might be at least as important as 1989.

Since 9/11 I see less international tolerance for conflict and ungoverned spaces, and greater penalties for insurgency and its finance. Armed groups are quick to have bank accounts and travel scrutinized, while governments who fight them feel more diplomatic pressure to mount a real counter-insurgency or move to the negotiating table. Reno’s pretense of neutrality matters, but so does the intolerance for spaces where terror cells and drug lords might breed. Penalties are steeper, and we have a slew of peacemaking forces, extraordinary renditions, and ICC prosecutions to show for it.

At the same time, the late nineties and early naughts were periods of unprecedented economic and (more importantly) political growth. More states have made more room for political competition without resorting to the AK-47. This is partly due to domestic forces and partly to international pressure for democratization.

So where are the revolutionaries? We could be seeing a selection effect: for leaders and movements seeking respectability and recognition, the incentives to campaign have grown, the incentives to fight have shrunk, and the potential punishments have surged. The only fighters left standing are the thuggish variety.

One caveat: Reno actually has experience and research to support his argument, plus a new book on the way. I, on the other hand, make this stuff up as I go along.

4 Responses

  1. thanks for the link to the article – looks very interesting. I wrote a blog about a related issue some time back – why cities in Africa don’t often see the kind of popular insurreciton that has commonly been used by revolutionary vanguards for purposes of regime change.

    http://aidthoughts.org/?p=874

    sort of the flip side to this argument – why it’s harder and harder to depose established regimes using methods of popular insurrection.

  2. The thing I expected to see and didn’t was disillusionment. Our fathers supported all these revolutionary movements and they just changed the wolves. Now we’re more cynical, less idealistic, less visionary.

  3. I think we Westerners, partly out of embarrassment from some of our Cold War anti-communist excesses, tend to discount the power and reach of the Soviet intelligence apparatus. Eastern Europeans would find this question quite amusing…

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