Arjona (2016)

Arjona (2016) Rebelocracy

Citation:

Arjona, Ana (2016) Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Time Period Covered:

Theory, Research Question, Hypothesis:

Arjona (2016:4): Examine institutions armed actors established, local dynamics generated by those institutions, changes in daily life.

Relationship to Other Research/Ideas Contested/Noted Gaps:

Arjona (2016:5-6):  Most existing literature looks at either rebel behaviour or civilian experience, without theorizing the relationship between the two. Rebels are often portrayed as either trying to gain popular support or relying on coercion, ignoring the fact that the same group can employ different strategies towards neighbouring populations. Civilian responses can also vary between cooperation, passive obedience, and resistance. Accounts of governance focus on differences across groups, rather than within them; and on whether they govern or not, not on whether they govern them differently.

Concepts and Definitions:

Aliocracy: Arjona (2016:11): “the rule of others, where armed groups only intervene in civilian affairs by collecting taxes and regulating conducts related to security, while others – such as civilian authorities, state institutions, or traditional leaders – regulate the remaining aspects of social life.”

Order: Arjona (2016:21): “We often think of civilians living in war zones as victims trapped in a state of uncertainty, where ‘normal life’ does not exist. Yet a closer look at civil wars shows a different picture: despite fear and violence, new rules of behavior often operate, and civilians plan their daily lives around them. A new routine becomes ingrained, and people have expectations about what might happen. I refer to the existence of their predictability as order.”

Wartime social order: Arjona (2016:22): “the particular set of institutions that underlie order in a war zone, giving place to distinct patterns of being and relating.”

Warzone: Arjona (2016:22): “a territory where at least one non-state armed actor has a continuous presence” [this is so broad as to capture all forms of insurgency, not just full-blown warfare]

Disorder: Arjona (2016:55): “when armed groups operate with short time horizons due to internal indiscipline, armed competition or macro-changes in the war, they lack the incentives or the capacity to establish social contracts. A situation of disorder is thus likely to emerge, where armed groups fail to abide by established rules, and civilians are subjected to high levels of uncertainty.”

Method:

Primary/Original Data:

Arjona (2016:4): Surveys, interviews, “memory workshops” to examine interaction between non-state armed groups and 74 local populations. Fieldwork 2004-2012.

Argument/Conclusion:

Limitations/Flaws:

Abstract:

Notes:

Arjona (2016:4-5): “Civilian-combatant interactions are crucial also because they shape the context in which both civilians and combatants make decisions. Understanding the terms of those interactions is therefore central when we ask why people join rebels and militias, why families decide to flee, why combatants kill, why locals support or boycott counterinsurgency operations, and why former fighters successfully reintegrate into their communities or fail to do so. Even when we ask questions about macro-level outcomes such as the duration of war, the stability of peace agreements, or the effects of peacekeeping operations, our theories and interpretations of empirical results rely on assumptions about how actors make decisions on the ground – and such decisions are deeply influenced by the nature of civilian-combatant relations.”

Arjona (2016:9): “In any given war zone, the length of an armed group’s time horizon determines whether or not it establishes a social contract with the local population, giving place to local order. In situations where a social contract is established I argue that the quality of the preexisting local institutions – defined as their legitimacy and efficacy – determine whether rebelocracy or aliocracy emerges.” Presumes rebels would prefer to control territory to increase both strength and pressure on local incumbents, and prefer to maximise by products (resources, recruits etc) – meaning they prefer order to disorder.

Arjona (2016:10): A group operates under short time horizons if it faces armed competition in that territory – making a social contract a secondary concern and even burdensome – or a lack of internal discipline.

Arjona (2016:11): Argues groups prefer rebelocracy to aliocracy: “First, rebelocracy facilitates territorial control, as the group can directly regulate and monitor many activities. Second, it allows the group to local and transform institutions in the social, political, and economic spheres both to build its organizational capacity and further its interests. And finally, by influencing local life in profound ways, the group also manages to elicit civilian cooperation. Such cooperation, in turn, reinforces territorial control. In this way, the group reshapes local life in accordance to its interests.” [Notably missing here is the possibility that the group may have normative beliefs, and that these beliefs – and reshaping life in accordance with them – might be one of the reasons it is fighting in the first place. Unless, of course, these beliefs are understood as existing within the category of ‘interests,’ which is at best open to misinterpretation.]

Arjona (2016:12): Some territories are too valuable to allow civilian autonomy: high-ranking commanders may live there, or they may be strategically or militarily important.

Arjona (2016:25): Scholars have used the terms ‘support,’ ‘participation,’ and ‘collaboration’ to refer to civilians’ involvement with armed groups. “The terms ‘support’ and ‘participation’ can be misleading because they signal a positive motivation for such involvement, like political agreement. ‘Collaboration’ can be misleading as well as pejorative because it has been widely used to denote civilian involvement with the Nazis and the Axis powers during World War II. To avoid these limitations, I use the term ‘civilian cooperation’ to denote the behaviors of civilians that directly benefit the armed group, independent of the motivations that underlie them.” Opposite is resistance, i.e. disobedience or opposition.

Arjona (2016:26):

Arjona (2016:29): Argues a good typology “should meet at least three conditions, beyond internal consistency: (1) It should identify variation that matters either because it is a relevant phenomenon in and of itself, or because we can expect it to shape relevant phenomena; (2) it should identify types where within-group variation is minimized and between-group variation is maximized; and (3) it should be parsimonious; it should identify as few types as possible while having the greatest descriptive and explanatory potential.”

Arjona (2016:65-66): “Whether a community resists rebelocracy collectively or not might seem to be a matter of political preference: if locals support rebels’ goals, they should welcome rebelocracy; if they oppose those goals, they should resist it. Yet to the community the issue is not whether it supports the political goals of the armed actor. Rather, it is about how to respond to an actor aspiring to rule over it. Locals may endorse the political goals of the group but still desire to resist rebelocracy; in other words, they may want to cooperate with insurgents – but not be ruled by them. Thus, while rebels’ political progams and ideologies matter, they are not the determining factor shaping civilian resistance to rebelocracy.”

Arjona (2016:70-71): “wanting to resist is not sufficient for collective resistance to materialize: Civilians also have to be able to do so, which requires solving a collective action problem.” [the same claim could be made about insurgents].

Arjona (2016:80): Explicitly does not consider ideology in the theory. The choice of order and its types is determined by strategic choice: even though ideology does affect the manner in which social orders are built and their features, ideology can also affect use of violence. However, civilian acceptance or rejection of rebelocracy is not determined by their ideological preferences.

Arjona (2016:97): FARC and ELN both have formal structures, well-defined hierarchies and rules [as such, arguably not suitable for an SMT perspective]

Arjona (2016:181-190): Identifies several ways rebel groups can intervene in local life: provision of security and use of violence; taxation; moderation of disputes through institutional mechanisms; regulating economic activities and labour; regulating private behaviour and social interaction; regulating political participation and election outcomes; providing or regulating public goods.

Arjona (2016:212): Argues that, “rather than always being at the mercy of armed actors, civilians have bargaining power if they can credibly threaten combatants with collective resistance, and that high-quality local institutions are the key enables of such resistance.”

Arjona (2016:264-265): Divides existing explanations for why people join rebellions, revolutions, and civil wars into four approaches: dissatisfaction with the status quo and a desire to redress grievances; low opportunity costs and selective incentives; desire for safety, offered by such groups; and moral, social, and emotional motivations, such as boosting group status or desire to follow norms [ideology missing as a factor]. In addition to these factors, authors highlight the roles of terrain, social ties, trust in facilitating or hindering recruitment.

Arjona (2016:295): Argues that time needs to be considered more carefully as a factor in analysis, because mobilization factors may differ for new and emerging groups compared to existing ones with reputations and resources, and groups’ goals and demands may vary.