Including chiefs, maintaining peace? Examining the effects of state–traditional governance interaction on civil peace in sub-Saharan Africa
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343318790780 |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles |
Including chiefs, maintaining peace?
Examining the effects of state–traditional
governance interaction on civil peace
in sub-Saharan Africa
Katariina Mustasilta
Department of Government, University of Essex
Abstract
The continued influence of traditional governance in sub-Saharan Africa has sparked increasing attention among
scholars exploring the role of non-state and quasi-state forms of governance in the modern state. However, little
attention has been given to cross-country and over-time variation in the interaction between state and traditional
governance structures, particularly in regard to its implications for intrastate peace. This study examines the con-
ditions under which traditional governance contributes to state capacity to maintain peace. The article argues that the
type of institutional interaction between the state and traditional authority structures influences a country’s overall
governance dynamics and its capacity to maintain peace. By combining new data on state–traditional authorities’
interaction in sub-Saharan Africa from 1989 to 2012 with intrastate armed conflict data, I conduct a systematic
comparative analysis of whether concordant state–traditional authorities’ interaction strengthens peace. The empiri-
cal results support the argument that integrating traditional authorities into the public administration lowers the risk
of armed conflict in comparison to when they remain unrecognized by the state. Moreover, the analysis suggests that
the added value of this type of interaction is conditional on the colonial history of a country.
Keywords
intrastate conflict, state capacity, sub-Saharan Africa, traditional governance
Introduction
State capacity is found to be among the key components
contributing to the maintenance or collapse of intrastate
peace (Fearon & Laitin, 2003; Gleditsch & Ruggeri,
2010; Fjelde & de Soysa, 2009; Hegre et al., 2001).
Existing research has focused on examining state govern-
ance capacities (e.g. economic, bureaucratic, and admin-
istrative) as well as their formal political institutions and
ability to coerce order (Fjelde & de Soysa, 2009; Hegre
& Nygård, 2015; Hendrix, 2010). Yet besides the mod-
ern state structures, other actors and structures often
influence a country’s governance realm. Traditional gov-
ernance – defined as context-specifically constructed and
identified authorities, rules, and institutions – continues
to influence society amid other non-state and quasi-state
governance forms, particularly in post-colonial sub-
Saharan Africa. In Malawi, local chiefs contributed to
maintaining stability in the country’s transition from a
one-party rule to multiparty political order (Eggen,
2011). In South Africa, while the recognition of tradi-
tional authorities has faced criticism from the perspective
of democratization (Mamdani, 1996; Ntsebeza, 2005), it
also played a role in restoring intrastate peace in the post-
apartheid political order (Beall & Ngonyama, 2009;
Beall, Mkhize & Vawda, 2005). Overall, in many
regions there is a growing perception of political reality
as a hybrid system of different forms of governance,
rather than as an unchallenged prominence of the state.
Despite the increased awareness of the role of tradi-
tional governance alongside the state, its impact on the
maintenance of intrastate peace has so far received little
Corresponding author:
kemust@essex.ac.uk
Journal of Peace Research
2019, Vol. 56(2) 203–219
ªThe Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343318790780
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systematic and comparative academic scrutiny.
1
There-
fore, this article investigates traditional governance in
sub-Saharan Africa by asking: under what conditions
does traditional governance contribute to state capacity
to maintain intrastate peace? Specifically, I argue that the
type of institutional interaction between the state and
traditional governance shapes the overall governance
framework of a country and the odds for peace.
Drawing upon research on the contemporary role of
traditional governance (Baldwin, 2015; Goodfellow &
Lindemann, 2013; Oomen, 2005), I test a theoretical
framework proposing that a concordant interaction
between the state and traditional governance reduces the
risk of intrastate armed conflict. This is argued in rela-
tion to discordant types of interactions that are defined
by lack of accommodation and clear recognition of tra-
ditional governance. Specifically, I advocate the relative
advantage of institutional hybridity where traditional
authorities are incorporated into the public administra-
tion. This theory is tested on new data that cover sub-
Saharan African countries between 1989 and 2012. The
empirical results provide support for the hypotheses.
They also highlight the variation in the effects of con-
cordant interaction subcategories, and the conditioning
influence of colonial legacies in particular.
This article contributes to the literatures on intrastate
peace, mixed governance, and traditional governance.
Recent research on traditional governance has shed light
on its resilience but lacked in comparative approaches to
examine the effects of mixed governance on particular
outcomes. In response, this study draws inferences from
systematic, cross-country, and over-time observations
investigating one specific outcome. By doing so, the
article offers a novel perspective to the study of intrastate
peace. Moving the focus beyond pure state capacity, the
article introduces a typology on state–traditional govern-
ance interaction and investigates the role of non-state
actors (specifically traditional authorities) in shaping a
country’s civil peace.
State governance capacity and peace
The potential influence of traditional governance in a
state’s capacity to maintain peace has attracted little sys-
tematic attention. Most studies have focused on the cen-
tral state and its political, economic, and security
capacities to maintain peace (Fearon & Laitin, 2003;
Gleditsch & Ruggeri, 2010; Hegre et al., 2001; Hendrix,
2010). This state-centric approach has linked well-
governed, bureaucratically and economically efficient
states with a lower risk of armed conflicts.
2
Similarly,
past research has identified unconsolidated and unstable
political regimes (Gates et al., 2006; Gleditsch & Rug-
geri, 2010), past armed conflicts (Thies, 2010), reliance
on primary commodities (Collier & Hoeffler, 2004;
Humphreys, 2005), and unequal access to state power
(Cederman, Weidmann & Gleditsch, 2011; Cederman
& Girardin, 2007) as factors that challenge a country’s
stability. Even with the emphasis on good governance
(i.e. bureaucratic and administrative quality and the
state’s capacity to implement policies that benefit the
larger society), the scholarly focus has been constrained
to the state apparatus (Gleditsch & Ruggeri, 2010; Fjelde
& de Soysa, 2009; Hegre & Nygård, 2015; Hendrix,
2010; Thies, 2010).
However, recent literature on governance emphasizes
the presence of multiple forms of governance that coexist
with the state without constituting the modern state
itself (Levi-Faur, 2012). The lack of scrutiny of the role
of these (e.g. traditional governance) in shaping intras-
tate peace is problematic in contexts such as sub-Saharan
Africa, where the formal state capacity is often relatively
low and other forms of organization have remained resi-
lient alongside the state (Englebert, 2000; Herbst,
2000). Despite the challenges related to state capacity,
many of these countries with ‘limited statehood’ also
remain peaceful.
3
The state capacity and conflict onset
literature explains convincingly why bureaucratically
strong and democratically governed states should remain
peaceful. Yet, the challenge is to explain why many states
with limited economic and political institutions also
maintain their civil peace.
Nevertheless, one should not equate the continued
salience of traditional governance solely with the notion
of weak states. Evidence from different parts of develop-
ing countries suggests that traditional governance
remains resilient across contexts (Baldwin, 2015;
Englebert, 2002; Eggen, 2011; Klick, 2016). Generally
governance is performed by a hybridity of state and
1
Wig’s (2016) article is an exception, yet his focus is on the
implications of different types of traditional governance structures.
2
The relationshipbetween military strength and conflictonset is more
dubious: large military spending correlates with corruption and lower
state capacity(Gupta, de Mello & Sharan, 2001;Henderson & Singer,
2000) and bureaucratic and political institutions are found to better
proxy capacity to coerce order (Sepp, 2006).
3
Risse (2012) conceptualizes limited statehood as reduced state
capacity to provide governance across the sovereign territory. A
majority of nation-states are limited in terms of their capacities and
hybrid with regards to the impact of non-state structures.
204 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 56(2)
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