Research informing stabilization policies has argued that reducing violence between elites is a necessary first step to a sustained political settlement. However, the failings of this approach are becoming clear.
Resolving inter-elite violence at the expense of the population
Concerned with reducing violence in conflict-affected states, scholars of the ‘new institutional economics’ school of thought have spearheaded a continuing movement to place political settlements among elites at the heart of political peacebuilding efforts. Their ideas have had a deep impact on current policy frameworks and the rationalist logic behind them since the 1970s. The focus of the new institutional economics school is on elites – i.e. political leaders and armed groups – because of their potential to mobilize larger support and influence a wide range of stakeholders in society. This school argues that although these elites are naturally prone to violence, they are also driven to maximize their (real or perceived) self-interest. Material incentives can therefore compel them to stop fighting and start negotiating. Offering material incentives to warring parties fitted into a rationalist understanding of the decision-making processes of political leaders and armed groups – i.e. the elites who would emerge from wars to become governors. Douglass North summed up the school’s view when he wrote, in 1981, that ‘the risk of losing the rents can make it in the interests of powerful individuals and groups to cooperate with the coalition in power rather than to fight’.
To reduce violence in conflict-affected areas, North et al. advocate bargains among a dominant coalition of individuals and groups who have direct access to violence. They describe this social structure as a ‘limited access order’ that ‘creates cooperation and order by limiting access to valuable resources – land, labour, and capital – or access and control of valuable activities – such as contract enforcement, property right enforcement, trade, worship and education – to elite groups’.
The new institutionalist school of thought has subsequently developed to argue that the key for policymakers is to institutionalize these bargains in a way that ensures no return to inter-elite violence. The influential political economist Mushtaq Khan concluded that violent instability can only be mediated through the inclusion of powerful elites. In search of a settlement among those elites, Khan argued that the goal of policymakers should be to secure ‘a combination of power and institutions that is mutually compatible and also sustainable in terms of economic and political viability’. He noted:
The influence of the new institutionalist school continues to be reflected in policy discussions. For example, several years ago, one senior diplomat posted to Baghdad told the authors of this paper that they had been given North as fundamental reading for understanding peacebuilding and stabilization. A 2011 World Bank Development Report stated, ‘the question remains: why do some societies avoid violence when others do not? To answer this question, we build on the hypotheses put forward by North, Wallis and Weingast, who focus on impersonal institutions with open access to political and economic opportunities, creating avenues for peaceful and credible contestation.’
The approach of seeking ‘elite bargains’ that reflect compatibility between elites and the distribution of power remains at the heart of so-called ‘stabilization’ policies. The UK government defines stabilization as:
As such, stabilization efforts, both in practice and theory, have focused primarily on reducing the likelihood of violence that is inter-elite (horizontal) and direct (visible and physical/psychological violence exercised directly by an actor against a victim). Ending civil wars and insurgencies has therefore meant stopping men with guns from fighting each other and killing civilians. Key to this approach has been the promotion of rent-sharing agreements that seek to achieve stability by incentivizing and institutionalizing political settlements.
In 2018, the UK government’s Stabilisation Unit published analysis of 21 case studies that examined the relationship between elite bargains, armed conflict and external interventions. The analysis supported the logic of economic rationalism as a tool to contain direct violence. Unlike North, the analysis disaggregated different forms of ‘violence’, opening the debate to look at the commission of violence and to identify policy trade-offs. The authors categorized violence as either competitive (that which is deployed to contest the distribution of resources and power), embedded (that which is institutionalized through a political settlement), or permissive (that which the state is unwilling or unable to control). However, despite the attempt to provide a more nuanced picture, all three categories represent forms of direct violence. As such, they fail to capture the lived experiences of people who suffer from the more structural forms of violence stemming from political settlements.
This failure to capture the lived experiences of the population is a conscious choice that is justified by emphasizing the methodological difficulty of measuring structural violence and a concern that it would expand the scope of any policy intervention too widely. However, these arguments ignore the suffering of the population, which cannot be dismissed as an externality. While structural violence cannot be assessed by a singular dataset, accepted composite indices exist that do measure these aspects, such as the Human Development Index (as, for example, in this paper). Second, the exclusive focus on tackling direct violence to the exclusion of other goals undermines policy tools in areas such as development and rule of law, creating contradictions in policy frameworks. Cheng et al. explicitly reference the trade-offs of such an approach, noting that ‘all good things do not come together’, and that interventions to reduce competitive violence may, for example, exacerbate embedded violence. The authors note that ‘formalised power sharing is likely to institutionalise, politicise and entrench social divisions and political identities rather than overcome them’. But no approach is offered to correct this flaw.
Consequently, the dominant frameworks behind international peacebuilding and stabilization have not adequately accounted for the medium- and long-term impacts of short-term efforts solely focused on reducing direct violence. For policymakers, elite bargains and political settlements were an alternative to the ‘liberal peace model’, which argued that building liberal democratic institutions – like elections – could end conflict. In many cases, these institutions did not serve their populations but were hijacked by certain elite groups who resumed violence against their opponents or the public. In an effort to counter the consequences of this model, Jonathan Goodhand argued for ‘a more broad-based and progressive set of alliances… to forge a new grand bargain for peace’. However, by focusing solely on reducing direct violence through these mechanisms, those who supported this model of elite bargaining made an active decision to exclude more structural forms of violence. This omission had a lasting impact on people living under those political systems.
The dominant frameworks behind international peacebuilding and stabilization have not adequately accounted for the medium- and long-term impacts of efforts focused solely on reducing direct violence.
First, elite bargains have not always meant an end to civil war or direct violence. A study found that when corruption is widespread, a political settlement is twice as likely to collapse into some form of armed confrontation. Second, and more critically, such bargains have failed to adequately respond to the fact that an initial agreement becomes an enduring reality that may reduce direct violence but reinforces other forms of structural and indirect violence.
This missing link, and a lack of exploration of other forms of violence, can help explain why political settlements in countries like Iraq, Lebanon or Libya have not brought the kind of stability that the populations demand.
Approaches to stabilization and subsequent state-building are increasingly being called into question as their failings have become clear. For example, in a recently published article for the World Bank, Gaël Raballand and Francesca Recanatini assert the ‘need to think about corruption and fragile settings differently, expanding our time horizon and updating our toolbox. It takes a long time to address corruption and state building. Waiting for conflict and violence to end means that corrupt practices can become more entrenched and prevent future reforms.’
This paper attempts to answer this call, beginning with the need to broaden our understanding of violence and elite bargains.
