Universit{ degli studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” Dottorato di Ricerca in Africanistica XII ciclo N.S. Realizzato in Cotutela con Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne École Doctorale en Science Politique State-building South Sudan. Discourses, Practices and Actors of a Negotiated Project (1999-2013) Relatrice prof.ssa Candidata Maria Cristina Ercolessi Sara de Simone Relatrice prof.ssa Johanna Siméant Coordinatrice del Dottorato in Africanistica Anno accademico 2014-2015 Abstract State-building programs supported by the international donor community since the end of the 1990s in ‘post-conflict’ contexts have often been considered ineffective. Analyzing the state-building enterprise in South Sudan in a historical perspective, this thesis shows how these programs, portrayed as technical and apolitical, intertwine with the longer term process of state formation with its cumulative and negotiated character. This negotiation occurs in an arena created by the encounter between international programs and local actors. The thesis will focus on three sectors in which the ‘local communities’ have been given an important role as right-bearing subjects: the local government reform, the delivery of basic services and the land reform. As collective rights to land, services and self-rule are managed by traditional authorities, the customary sphere overlaps with the bureaucratic sphere of the modern state, encouraging the ethnicization of South Sudanese politics. The formulation of laws and policies in these three sectors provides the ‘rules of the games’ influencing local actors’ interaction with the state, as they understand them to be necessary to gain access to state resources. Two kinds of dynamics emerge from these interactions: horizontal ethnic fragmentation and vertical patronage relationships. Discourses on administrative effectiveness and efficiency create a communal subject which contributes to re-politicize (and ethnicize) the state-building process through the appropriation of these discourses by local population and their traditional authorities. i Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................... vii Acronyms .......................................................................................................................... ix List of Tables ................................................................................................................... xi Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 1. South Sudan: outlining the context between conflict and post-conflict1 2. Origins and subject of the research .................................................................. 6 3. Defining the subject: how not to be overwhelmed by complexity ....... 8 3.1 What? Defining object(s) of research: state formation through decentralization, service delivery and land tenure reform ............................................ 8 3.2 When? Setting temporal boundaries: 1999-2013 ........................................ 9 3.3 Where? Approaching the field: encounters with South Sudan in Unity, Central Equatoria and Lakes states ....................................................................................10 3.4 How? The sources ..............................................................................................13 4. Mediated encounters ...........................................................................................17 5. Plan of the thesis ....................................................................................................19 Chapter 1. Studying the state in the era of state-building ......................22 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................22 2. Contextualizing state-building from a theoretical perspective ...............23 2.1 The State in times of global insecurity ..............................................................23 2.2 Studying state-building between Politics and policies ..................................26 3. Building state-society relations: local governance, decentralization and the ‘traditional’ temptation ......................................................................................................31 3.1 Service delivery ......................................................................................................32 3.1.1 The provision of public goods and services in a historical perspective ..32 3.1.2 Service delivery, donors and decentralization............................................36 3.2 Decentralized state-building ...............................................................................40 3.2.1 A panacea for African governance? Evolution and depoliticization of decentralization .......................................................................................................................40 3.2.4 Decentralizing conflict? ..................................................................................45 ii 3.3 Going local: the traditional temptation ............................................................ 48 3.3.1 The "traditional resurgence" ........................................................................ 50 3.3.2 The “community” as a right-bearing subject ............................................ 54 4. Avoiding state-centrism in the study of the state: the state formation perspective ..................................................................................................................................... 59 4.1 State formation as negotiation ........................................................................... 59 4.2 Actors and arenas of state formation ................................................................ 63 4.2.1 A crowded arena: multiple actors engaging in state-making ................ 63 4.2.2 Actors in South Sudan state formation ....................................................... 65 4.2.3 Arenas of negotiation in South Sudan's state formation process ............. 69 5. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 71 Chapter 2 – Patterns of state-building in Southern Sudan in a historical perspective ............................................................................................................. 73 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 73 2. The pattern of physical force: violent encounters ....................................... 76 2.1 From commerce to rehearsal of government ................................................. 76 2.2 The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ................................................................... 80 3. Building predictability: localized bureaucratization of government practices .......................................................................................................................................... 82 3.1 Government's first steps: monetization and taxation ................................... 82 3.2 The development of administrative theory ..................................................... 84 3.3 The Southern Policy: territorializing communities ....................................... 87 3.4 The creation of intra-south inequalities ........................................................... 90 4. Rise and fall of the modern state legitimacy .................................................. 93 5. War and the post-colonial state .......................................................................... 99 5.1 The Anyanya I and its civil administration ...................................................... 99 5.2 The local state in times of peace: the People's Local Government ............ 102 5.3 Strengthening centralization: the management of land ............................. 105 5.4 The crumbling away of the Addis Ababa Agreement .................................. 107 6. The SPLM: local guerrilla government ........................................................... 110 6.1 A unifying narrative (and contradictory practices) .................................... 110 iii 6.2 The embryo administration .............................................................................. 113 6.3 The Civil Administration of the New Sudan .................................................. 115 7. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 120 Chapter 3: “State-building” the New Sudan: SPLM and decentralized institution-building ............................................................................................................... 122 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 122 2 The role of relief in establishing SPLM/A ‘state-within-state’ ............... 125 2.1 Operation Lifeline Sudan ................................................................................... 127 2.2 The STAR project ................................................................................................. 135 3. Taking state-building ‘out of the bush’ ..........................................................