Main findings

The findings that emerge from this research project relate to three main areas. First, I present evidence of the heterogenous nature of conflict spaces and corporate groups among several examples from Africa and the Middle East, to demonstrate how their relative fragmentation (or cohesion) affects violence onset and intensity. I further show that the elite-conflict nexus is multidirectional, and plays out at the national, regional and local levels. Second, elite inclusion should not be viewed as a mere issue of institutional representation which concerns the distribution of political offices among key socio-political constituencies. Rather, it involves the degree to which these groups are able to maintain access to power in different political arrangements. Third, political survival animates the behaviour of elites in changing political orders, requiring a combination of accommodation and repression according to the circumstances.

1.4.1. The elite-violence nexus

I show that conflict patterns in civil war contexts are indicative of the fragmented nature of the political environment and of the political competition taking place therein. These conflict spaces are populated by highly heterogenous groups competing with each other for political influence and power, and with political elites whose support is deemed essential to secure survival. Drawing from the examples of Libya and Yemen, I argue that the vanishing of state institutions did not produce ‘ungoverned spaces’, but rather wartime political orders characterised by subnational state-making practices, volatile alliances and distinct geographies of violence.

Using different methodologies, I show that the fragmentation of these wartime political orders can influence conflict intensity and onset in various ways. First, conflict geographies are embedded in the nature and modes of domestic political competition. In Libya, subnational variations in violence levels are a product of the interaction between

national and local political considerations, which inhibited or incentivised fragmentation and violence intensity. The emergence of wartime political orders – each characterised by distinct levels of fragmentation and violence – therefore reflects locally-situated governance relations between armed groups and the dominant power holder. Second, fragmented groups find significant constraints to mobilise and secure support from local elites. The ability to conduct successful collective action – ranging from coup attempts to uprisings – rests on the ability of the leadership to mobilise its loyal supporters. During a regime’s existential crisis, the absence of a cohesive support base risks leaving elites more exposed to repression, co-option and defection; a fate that many incumbents and power holders from Sudan and Zimbabwe to Yemen came to realise.

Theories positing a link between elite or armed group fragmentation and violence argue that when fragmentation is higher, the risk of violence and instability are also greater (Cunningham 2012; Levitsky and Way 2012). However, the examples from Libya and Yemen reveal that fragmentation alone is not a predictor of violence patterns. Despite arguments highlighting the purely sectarian, regional, or state-centred motivations of conflict, the research project emphasises the importance of local political conditions and power relations in providing domestic elite groups with incentives to escalate violence and seek access to power.

1.4.2. Elite inclusion

A second set of findings concerns the notion of elite inclusion in political orders. Existing literature on this subject typically assumes that political power reflects the institutional representation assigned to key constituencies. As a result, in states regulated by patronage-based mechanisms, the distribution of political offices according to socio-political criteria – such as region, ethnicity, or tribe – signals the leadership’s willingness to cement coalitions with the groups represented in the state’s apical political institutions.

In fact, the notion of inclusion is multidimensional, and political power cannot be measured solely as a matter of representation (Rocha Menocal 2017).

I show instead that this relation is more complex. In some contexts, elites may decide to deliberately renounce to government positions in order to maximise political power or rule by consensus, explaining the rise of non-party ministers that would otherwise be impossible to explain through patronage-based arguments (Chapter 4). The reconfiguration of existing political alliances is otherwise shown to occur following

existential challenges faced by a regime, requiring a reshuffle in the composition of its governing elites (Chapters 5 and 6). Chapter 7 further highlights that institutional representation is a poor indicator of a group’s relative power. Indeed, power-sharing agreements may result in unbalanced political settlements when some key political brokers, by virtue of their position within wider elite networks, are able to exercise disproportionate power either individually or as part of a corporate group. Signalling a desire for greater inclusion in the distribution of rents, armed groups acting at the behest of local elites may resort to different forms of political violence, often without requiring escalation (Chapter 8). In such cases, power is conditional on their ability to use violence to extract rents, including political representation in the state’s governance institutions.

Additionally, I emphasise the importance of understanding the conditions in which political power is exercised. One-size-fits-all solutions prescribing the application of institutional arrangements in different political contexts are unlikely to produce the same political outcomes but can instead exacerbate existing power imbalances. Notably, the popular branding of Tunisia’s technocratic governance as a model for governance in conflict-ridden states such as Yemen (Al-Akhali, Al-Rawhani and Biswell 2019) rests on the assumption that non-party governments are inherently apolitical, leaving government affairs to highly competent technocrats while sidelining the real power holders. Instead, the Tunisia example analysed in Chapter 4 shows how governments consisting of non-affiliated ministers are also the outcome of highly political processes and ostensibly inclusive and accepted elite settlements.

1.4.3. Political survival in changing political orders

A third key finding arising from this research project is the importance of understanding elites’ political survival strategies in changing political orders. I show that elites employ a variety of strategies to ensure their continued access to power, ranging from making political concessions for opponents to using repression and violence against rivals. This political bargaining, aimed at securing survival, in power often occurs through cabinet appointments, requiring the reconfiguration of ruling coalitions to weather volatile political transitions or popular mobilisation. These are moments of intense political fluidity (Banegas 1993), mutating shared expectations over the regime’s or the leader’s survival and exacerbating defections or alliance switches. In response to these changing circumstances, changes in the regime’s hierarchy can either be cosmetic, when intended to placate unrest through co-option or facilitating demobilisation, or can significantly alter

the composition of the ruling coalition in an effort to broaden the regime’s support base or purge the most restive among the allies.

I show that similar mechanisms occurred in the aftermath of three leadership changes in Africa when the elites orchestrating the leader’s removal faced the challenge of anchoring the regime in society and among the elites (Chapter 6). This required a broad reconfiguration of existing alliances and power structures which, however, left the seizing group’s leading role uncontested. In Chapter 5, I also find that events of popular unrest across Africa rarely trigger a drastic overhaul of the cabinet, epitomising a widely shared attitude when resisting change. Instead, when such accommodation occurs, this reflects the survival-oriented political calculations and strategies of elites.