Regime Crises, Political Exclusion and Indiscriminate Violence in Africa
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: RISKING WAR: REGIME CRISES, POLITICAL EXCLUSION AND INDISCRIMINATE VIOLENCE IN AFRICA Philip Gregory Roessler, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Directed By: Professor Mark I. Lichbach Department of Government and Politics Between 1956 and 1999 one-third of the civil wars in the world occurred in sub- Saharan Africa. The prevailing explanation given to account for this fact is the economic weakness of African states. While low income is a robust determinant of civil war onset in global models, it is not as precise a predictor within sub-Saharan Africa. Instead, I argue that civil war is often a consequence of how African rulers respond to threats to regime survival, such as failed coups d’etat and other regime crises. In the wake of regime crises, rulers, concerned by their tenuous hold on power, seek to reduce the risk of future coups by eliminating disloyal agents from within the government and increasing spoils for more trusted clients to try to guarantee their support should another coup or threat materialize. The problem for the ruler is distinguishing loyal agents from traitors. To overcome this information problem rulers often use ethnicity as a cue to restructure their ruling networks, excluding perceived ‘ethnic enemies’ from spoils. The consequence of such ethnic exclusion is that, due to the weakness of formal state structures, the ruler forfeits his leverage over and information about such societal groups, undermining the government’s ability to effectively prevent and contain violent mobilization and increasing the risk of civil war. To test this hypothesis, I employ a nested research design. The first part quantitatively tests the causal logic on a sample of 40 African countries between independence and 1999. I find that in the five years after a regime crisis there is a significant increase in the risk of civil war onset, often when the government resorts to indiscriminate violence to regulate the opposition. Part two examines this argument at the micro-level by examining two cases in Sudan based on hundreds of interviews during more than 14-months of fieldwork between 2005 and 2006. The second Sudan case illustrates that the civil war in Darfur in 2003 was a consequence of how the central government responded to a crisis within the Islamic movement in 1999 and 2000. RISKING WAR: REGIME CRISES, POLITICAL EXCLUSION AND INDISCRIMINATE VIOLENCE IN AFRICA By Philip Gregory Roessler Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2007 Advisory Committee: Professor Mark I. Lichbach, Chair Professor Virginia Haufler Professor Paul S. Landau Professor Jillian Schwedler Professor Ernest J. Wilson, III © Copyright by Philip Gregory Roessler 2007 Foreword I am grateful to have had the support of many individuals in the process of completing this project. First, I must thank my dissertation committee in the Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland for their support and guidance. I am particularly grateful for the encouragement from my adviser, Mark Lichbach. Ann Marie Clark and Cissy Abu Rahman from the Government and Politics office also deserve special thanks for all of their assistance, without which I would not have successfully received my degree. I finished writing the dissertation while at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University. I benefitted tremendously from interactions with Jeremy Weinstein, Jim Fearon, Macartan Humphreys, David Abernethy, and David Laitin and the guidance of Lynn Eden. Data collection on indiscriminate violence was supported by a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation. Field research in Sudan in 2005 and 2006 was supported by a David L. Boren Fellowship from the National Security Education Program. I am grateful to all the Sudanese who were willing to grant me interviews, especially those from Darfur who courageously spoke with me. To protect those who have helped me, I cannot name them here. i I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, Anne and Jim, for their inspiration and to my lovely wife, Kate, for her patience, faith, and love. ii Table of Contents Foreword ........................................................................................................................ i Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... iii List of Tables ............................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................. vii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Darfur, Sudan, April 2003 ........................................................................................ 1 The Puzzle: Civil War Onset in Africa .................................................................... 4 Beyond Economic Explanations of Civil War .......................................................... 7 Argument .................................................................................................................. 8 Mechanisms .............................................................................................................. 9 Political Rule in Africa and the Logic of Exclusion ............................................. 9 Regime Crises, Political Exclusion, and Civil War Onset .................................. 11 Methodology and Summary of Findings ................................................................ 13 Plan of Dissertation ................................................................................................. 15 Chapter 2: A Theory of Civil War .............................................................................. 18 Bargaining Failure .................................................................................................. 20 Escalation ................................................................................................................ 22 The Nexus between Bargaining Failure and Escalation: Information Problems All the Way Down ........................................................................................................ 24 Summary ................................................................................................................. 27 Chapter 3: Political Rule and Civil War Onset in Africa ............................................ 28 Political Rule in Africa ........................................................................................... 29 The Colonial Legacy ........................................................................................... 29 The Institution of Neopatrimonialism ................................................................. 31 The Threat of the Coup D’état ............................................................................ 37 Clientelism and the Principal-Agent (PA) Problem ........................................... 38 Internal Threats Accentuate Concerns about the Principal-Agent Problem ...... 42 The Cost of Clientelism ....................................................................................... 44 Summary: The Logic of Exclusion ..................................................................... 45 Political Exclusion, Bargaining Failure, and Conflict Escalation ........................... 45 Sustained Bargaining Failure ............................................................................. 46 Escalation ........................................................................................................... 50 Summary ................................................................................................................. 53 Chapter 4: Regime Crises, Violent Exclusion, and Civil War Onset in Africa: Cross- National Evidence ....................................................................................................... 54 Dependent Variable: Civil War Onset ................................................................... 55 Determinants of Civil War Onset ........................................................................... 56 Structure of the Ruling Network ......................................................................... 56 Failed Coups and Other Regime Crises ............................................................. 58 Successful Coups ................................................................................................. 60 Indiscriminate Repression .................................................................................. 61 iii Foreign Support .................................................................................................. 63 Determinants of Civil War: Controls ..................................................................... 64 GDP Per Capita and Natural Resources ............................................................ 64 Political Instability.............................................................................................. 65 New State ............................................................................................................ 66 Democracy .........................................................................................................