The Cycle of Authoritarian Regime and Conflict in Chad

This paper establishes that states with absolute sovereignty generate sovereignty-based conflicts. There has been limited scholarly effort to analyze the Chadian conflicts through a sovereign-based conflicts, especially by drawing attention how recurring cycles of authoritarian regimes generate and sustain these conflicts. Chad has long been confronted with sovereignty-based conflicts and entrenched authoritarian governance, with the two operating in a mutually reinforcing cycle. Specifically, it argues that authoritarian regimes systematically restrict meaningful participation in democratic processes, promote divided societies, and are not accountable to the electorate. The long-term risks are the ‘conflict trap’ and the ‘authoritarian trap’ in which conflict as well as authoritarian culture increases considerably after the first occurrence of conflict or an authoritarian regime. The paper also considers a third factor, the ‘peace agreement trap’, in which peace agreements merely scratch the surface without dealing with the core issues: ethnic rights and democratic accountability. Peace thus also becomes a source of conflict

Agreement · Armed conflict · Authoritarianism · Democracy · Ethnic conflict · International conflict · Regime change · Sovereignty · African Studies and Ethnography · African Studies and Geopolitics · Political Conflict and Governance