How can we improve public confidence in the legitimacy of recently instituted police forces in a divided society affected by violent conflict? And can public perceptions of clan representation within the police force encourage public engagement with law enforcement? It is generally understood that public confidence in domestic security sector institutions is integral for stability and consolidation of states affected by prolonged warfare. However, in deeply divided societies, building such confidence can be difficult. Accordingly, advocates argue that improved demographic representation within domestic security institutions can help improve residents' engagement and cooperation with security forces. The current study tests this prediction relying on community survey data collected in Kismayo, Somalia. The authors find that residents who perceive the local police to be representative of local clans are more likely to believe the force is legitimate. In turn, residents who believe the force has more legitimacy are more willing to cooperate with and empower police with greater discretionary authority, while perceptions of clan representation maintains an indirect and significant impact on residents' willingness to empower officers.
In extant scholarship on intergroup conflict, perceived threat is portrayed as either positively linked with conflict occurrence or neutralizable by individuals' internal psychological inhibitors, such as feelings about a past experience or encounter or pre-existing dovish disposition. Yet, conflict avoidance is possible even in the absence of such internal guardrails against destructive responses to threat. This comparative qualitative study of two similarly structured communities in Jos, Nigeria's ethnic conflict hotbed, reveals that while perceived threat may create aggressive dispositions, as established in extant scholarship on intergroup conflict, conflict avoidance remains possible in the absence of both internal inhibitors and external coercion. The compared Jos communities, Angwan Doki and Dadin Kowa, are similar in terms of widespread fear of the outgroup and significant willingness to respond aggressively to threat. Yet, conflict avoidance was possible in the latter because its community leaders both wittingly and unwittingly confronted the underlying threat that drove people's violent dispositions. Past variability analyses omit this dynamic of external malleability of perceived threat outcomes - aggression and violence. Generally, the findings show that low-tech threat management interventions are more effective at mitigating intergroup conflict in weak states than interventions that seek to forcefully suppress the threat.
In understanding conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), the notion of how sexuality and sex are naturally linked to power is gaining traction in IR discourses. There is, however, little contextual or empirical evidence that accounts for the various forms of CRSV against men, or how offenders exploit power dynamics in conflict and post-conflict settings to achieve their sexual desires. As a result, we rely on ethnographic accounts from survivors/victims, NGO workers, and security personnel on the front lines of the counter-terrorism campaign in the Lake Chad basin, particularly in Northeastern Nigeria. Long-term terrorist violence, we argue, creates material imbalances in men and boys and increases their vulnerabilities, providing platforms for individual perpetrators to exploit their vulnerable status or engage in sex-trafficking rings to satisfy their sexual urges. Therefore, this article adds conceptually and empirically to the nature and motivations of wartime sexual violence, as well as the gendered dynamics of armed conflict. It challenges the popular masculinist notion that men are immune to sex trafficking and sexual violence. The study emphasises the importance of effective IDP camp management and prosecution in preventing would-be offenders.
ABSTRACT Academic literature on post-conflict peace-building and democratisation has established the important relevance of rebel-to-party transformations on the one hand, and of the political engagement of individual former combatants on the other hand. Yet, little is known about the interrelation between these two dimensions. This paper aims to address this knowledge gap, by proposing a framework to scrutinise former rebel parties’ ways of mobilising their former combatants politically. Based on a review of theoretical and empirical literature, we suggest three broad mobilisation strategies: the employment of material incentives, control and coercion, and strategies to nurture a sense of identification or even groupness. Given that this last dimension is less tangible than the first two, we further explore and conceptually dissect it, by discussing – what we argue to be – three of its main inherent components: ideology, emotions and patronage. By doing so, we hope to conceptually guide and inform future empirical research on the topic.
This article empirically deepens understandings of the relationship between everyday ex-combatants and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Sierra Leone. It asks, what are the agentic implications of this victim-centred model of justice among its designated perpetrators (everyday or ordinary ex-combatants)? This article advances criticisms against the participatory limitations of the victim-centred model of justice in truth commissions. It applies the concept of friction to analyse the theft of agency produced by Sierra Leone's TRC among everyday ex-combatants. It analyses the contradictions between everyday ex-combatant hopes for the TRC against institutional expectations set for this population to reveal the agentic effects of this sticky engagement. In so doing, this article exposes the agentic theft produced by compound frictions which interact to deny agency among those designated as perpetrators by the material engagement and frictional travels of transitional justice. It argues that the primacy placed on the restoration of victims' dignity within truth commissions comes at a particularly heavy cost for the population of everyday ex-combatants, who experience multiple processes of exclusion as a result.
