Koen Vlassenroot
Biographic Data
| ID | 102073 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Koen Vlassenroot |
| GIVEN NAMES | Koen |
| FAMILY NAME | Vlassenroot |
| SIGNATURE | VLASSENROOT K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3478-132X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 394 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Hériter de l’inclusion, produire de l’inclusivité: Les stratégies d’inclusion comme cout politique caché du partage de pouvoir en RDC
Rural Radicalisms and the Politics of Order: Authority, Precarity, and Globality in Africa
Producing democracy in armed violence settings: Elections and citizenship in Eastern DRC
The article analyses how the 2018 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) contributed to a further opening up of the democratic space and shared expressions and sentiments of citizenship. Through an ethnography of the electoral process in the South Kivu province, we investigate how claiming rights that come with citizenship and how people’s political identity, shape and are being shaped by electoral processes. We introduce the notion of citoyen…
Crisis responses, opportunity, and public authority during Covid‐19's first wave in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan
Discussions on African responses to Covid‐19 have focused on the state and its international backers. Far less is known about a wider range of public authorities, including chiefs, humanitarians, criminal gangs, and armed groups. This paper investigates how the pandemic provided opportunities for claims to and contests over power in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan. Ethnographic research is used to contend that local …
Navigating Social Spaces: Armed Mobilization and Circular Return in Eastern DR Congo
This article discusses the social mobility of combatants and introduces the notion of circular return to explain their pendular state of movement between civilian and combatant life. This phenomenon is widely observed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where Congolese youth have been going in and out of armed groups for several decades now. While the notion of circular return has its origins in migration and refugee studies, we show t…
Violent conflict and ethnicity in the Congo: Beyond Materialism, Primordialism and Symbolism
In this paper, we investigate the nexus between ethnicity and violent conflict in the Congo. We make three interlocking arguments. First, we argue that ethnicity is a defining political resource in the Congo’s politics and violent conflicts, which we call ‘ethnic capital’. Second, we argue that the high political value of this ethnic capital is sustained by engrained discourses and practices of ethnicity. These discourses and practices permeate t…
Courses au pouvoir: The struggle over customary capital in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
This article analyses the production and reproduction of traditional chieftaincy in war-torn eastern DR Congo, through the case of a succession dispute in Kalima (South Kivu). Kalima has gone through two decades of political instability and violent conflict involving a plethora of local, national and regional actors. During this period of uncertainty and upheaval, the institution of traditional chieftaincy has remained politically salient. We arg…
Regulating the old game of smuggling? Coltan mining, trade and reforms in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
This article examines the smuggling of coltan into and out of artisanal mining areas in northern Katanga where the ITRI Tin Supply Chain Initiative (iTSCi), a policy on conflict minerals, tries to improve transparency in trading tin, tantalum (coltan) and tungsten. The article approaches smuggling from a sociology of economic life perspective, closely examining how and why artisanal miners and mine-based middlemen (négociants) helped smugglers (h…
Conflict and insecurity: A sociological perspective on perceptions of insecurity in conflict-affected Democratic Republic of Congo
This article focuses on insecurity perceptions in conflict-affected areas. The authors apply sociological theories on the determinants of perceived security risks and test hypotheses concerning theories on social and physical vulnerability, social disorder and social integration in the area where the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has operated. The study uses data from a survey conducted in 2013 in the territory of Faradje (Haut-Uele) and applies m…
Taxation, Stateness and Armed Groups: Public Authority and Resource Extraction in Eastern Congo
This contribution analyses the role of taxation in the constitution of authority in the conflict-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a multitude of authorities alternately compete and collude over the right to extract resources. Taxation ranges from simple plunder, to protection rackets, to the material reciprocation of the recognition of rights. Focusing on the taxation practices of armed groups, the article argues that taxati…
Armed mobilisation and the nexus of territory, identity, and authority: The contested territorial aspirations of the Banyamulenge in eastern DR Congo
The closely intertwined notions of territory, identity, and authority are at the heart of conflict dynamics in the eastern DR Congo. Focusing on the territorial aspirations of the Banyamulenge community in South Kivu, this article looks at the ways in which the nexus of territory, identity, and authority shapes and is shaped by armed mobilisation. Excluded from a customary chiefdom in the colonial era, the Banyamulenge, a community framed as ‘mig…
Resources, conflict and governance: A critical review
Armed groups and the exercise of public authority: The cases of the Mayi-Mayi and Raya Mutomboki in Kalehe, South Kivu
The state of the Congolese state has been subject to a heated debate, with some arguing that it remains mostly irrelevant outside its capital or even that there is no such thing as Congo. Others contend that there is no lack of state order in Congo, but that this order is characterised by predatory rule and (privatised) extortion. This paper wants to put both claims into perspective and to assess how different actors re-deploy various rationaliti…
Borderlands, Identity and Urban Development: The Case of Goma (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
This paper challenges traditional studies that explore border sites from a central or capital city perspective. Focusing on expressions of identity in the border city of Goma, it illustrates how the struggle for political, social and economic control affects local urban life and has broader implications for regional relationships and realities. The paper suggests that Goma must be understood as a site of change and fluidity rather than (as border…
Social Capital and Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Burundi: The Limits of Community-based Reconstruction
Using an examination of three NGO interventions in post-conflict Burundi, this article questions community-based reconstruction as a mechanism to rebuild social capital after conflicts, particularly when direct livelihood support is provided. The authors demonstrate a general shortcoming of the methodology employed in community-based development (CBD), namely its focus on 'technical procedural design', which results in what may be termed 'supply-…
Livelihoods, power, and food insecurity: Adaptation of social capital portfolios in protracted crises-case study Burundi
The failure of food security and livelihood interventions to adapt to conflict settings remains a key challenge in humanitarian responses to protracted crises. This paper proposes a social capital analysis to address this policy gap, adding a political economy dimension on food security and conflict to the actor-based livelihood framework. A case study of three hillsides in north Burundi provides an ethnographic basis for this hypothesis. While r…
Ugandan military entrepreneurialism on the Congo border
Conflict, state failure and urban transformation in the Eastern Congolese periphery. The case of Goma
Investigating the urban impact of local conflict dynamics 1.1.2.'Non-state' urban development?1.1.3.Informality 1.2.Politico-geographic location: the central role of the periphery 1.2.1.Centrality of the margins: a changing urban order?1.2.2.The urban borderland-angle 1.3.Urban processes of transformation: a conceptual framework 1.3.1.Governance 1.3.2.Navigation 1.3.3.Identity 1.3.4.Landscape 1.4.Outline of the thesis 2. Methodology 2.1.Choice of…
Conflict, state failure and urban transformation in the Eastern Congolese periphery. The case of Goma
Rebels without borders in the Rwenzori borderland? A biography of the Allied Democratic Forces
This article provides a detailed analysis of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan rebel movement that is operating from Congolese soil but so far has attracted very limited scholarly attention. Having its roots in Ugandan Islamic community, it has become part of larger transborder dynamics of rebellion and resistance. It is argued that although its institution is linked to several internal dynamics in Uganda, the movement's character has…
Doing business out of war. An analysis of the UPDF's presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo
This paper analyses how Ugandan army commanders have mobilised transborder economic networks to exploit economic opportunities in eastern DRC during the military intervention of the Ugandan People's Defence Force (UPDF) in Congo's wars (1996-97; 1998-2003). These transborder networks are the starting point of our evaluation of the informal political structures and networks linking Uganda's political centre to Congo's war complex. While it is ofte…
Bundu dia Kongo: Une résurgence des messianismes et de l’Alliance des Bakongo
The Lord’s Resistance Army: Myth and Reality
The Lord's Resistance Army is Africa’s most persistent and notorious 'terrorist' group. Led by the mysterious Joseph Kony, it has committed a series of horrific human rights abuses, including massacres and mutilations. Since the mid 1980s, it has abducted tens of thousands of people, including large numbers of children forced to train as fighters. The IC in 2005 issued warrants for Kony and his top commanders, and the United States is backing a m…
Dynamiques locales et pressions extérieures dans la conflictualité armée au Nord-Kivu: Cas des territoires de Beni-Lubero
Dynamiques locales et pressions extérieures dans la conflictualité armée au Nord-Kivu: Cas des territoires de Beni-Lubero
State and non-state regulation in African protracted crises: Governance Without Government
This article introduces a collection of papers that treat the question of governance in conditions of protracted crises in Subsahara Africa. Contrary to the widespread belief that African conflicts are little more than (undoubtedly complex and intractable) instances of anarchy and chaos, the authors present the reader with tangible evidence of the existence of non-state governance processes by constituencies attempting to manage the perils of lon…
Humanitarian presence and urban development: New opportunities and contrasts in Goma, DRC
This paper examines the impact of the presence of international humanitarian organisations on local urban transformation processes in the city of Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Rather than evaluating the direct effects of humanitarian interventions and strategies, it focuses on the indirect but profound effects of the presence of this 'humanitarian sector'. It argues that the international humanitarian presence became a significant…
The politics of rebellion and intervention in Ituri: The Emergence of a New Political Complex
This article offers an interpretation of the present conflict in Ituri based on social analysis. Other than the conventional accounts which depart from the presence of foreign troops on Congolese soil, reduce the war to a struggle for natural resources or see it as the result of age-old ethnic hatreds, the authors try to place this conflict into its social setting. The central argument of this article is that the outbreak of violence in Ituri has…
Kony's Message: A New Koine?the Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda
The article offers a sketch of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) both in historical perspective and in a wider framework of the world system. The authors discuss the different stages and content of Acholi nationhood, from vague notions in pre-colonial days, through the building of an ethno-military identity during the colonial period, until the Acholi heyday after Obote II. The second period can be described as Acholi-hood on the defensi…
Citizenship, identity formation & conflict in South Kivu: The case of the Banyamulenge
The objectives of this exercise are threefold. First, through a case‐study of the Banyamulenge ethnogenesis, I demonstrate that this ethnicity was never constructed in a vacuum, but in a ‘pre‐imagined’ field. The ‘creation’ of a Banyamulenge identity illustrates perfectly that ethnicities are ongoing processes of continuous change. Ethnicities are dynamic processes that result from the confrontation of a community with its socio‐economic and poli…
Negotiated peace for extortion: The case of Walikale territory in eastern DR Congo
War in the Democratic Republic of Congo has increasingly been explained as a means to get access to natural resources and as a strategy to get control over informal trading networks linking the DRC with global markets. In most of these accounts, the complexity of war economies is underestimated. One element that is often missing is that systems of economic exploitation, which have been developed by armed groups during the Congolese war, tend to p…
Livelihoods, power, and food insecurity: Adaptation of social capital portfolios in protracted crises-case study Burundi
The failure of food security and livelihood interventions to adapt to conflict settings remains a key challenge in humanitarian responses to protracted crises. This paper proposes a social capital analysis to address this policy gap, adding a political economy dimension on food security and conflict to the actor-based livelihood framework. A case study of three hillsides in north Burundi provides an ethnographic basis for this hypothesis. While r…
Taxation, Stateness and Armed Groups: Public Authority and Resource Extraction in Eastern Congo
This contribution analyses the role of taxation in the constitution of authority in the conflict-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a multitude of authorities alternately compete and collude over the right to extract resources. Taxation ranges from simple plunder, to protection rackets, to the material reciprocation of the recognition of rights. Focusing on the taxation practices of armed groups, the article argues that taxati…
Rebels without borders in the Rwenzori borderland? A biography of the Allied Democratic Forces
This article provides a detailed analysis of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan rebel movement that is operating from Congolese soil but so far has attracted very limited scholarly attention. Having its roots in Ugandan Islamic community, it has become part of larger transborder dynamics of rebellion and resistance. It is argued that although its institution is linked to several internal dynamics in Uganda, the movement's character has…
Kivu's Intractable Security Conundrum
The security problems of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continue to puzzle international peace and policy makers. Despite President Joseph Kabila successfully winning the national elections in August and October 2006, the country has not emerged from its security deadlock. This briefing argues that the current strategy of peace building in the DRC leads to the amplification rather than the containment of armed violence. According to Andre…
Doing business out of war. An analysis of the UPDF's presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo
This paper analyses how Ugandan army commanders have mobilised transborder economic networks to exploit economic opportunities in eastern DRC during the military intervention of the Ugandan People's Defence Force (UPDF) in Congo's wars (1996-97; 1998-2003). These transborder networks are the starting point of our evaluation of the informal political structures and networks linking Uganda's political centre to Congo's war complex. While it is ofte…
Navigating Social Spaces: Armed Mobilization and Circular Return in Eastern DR Congo
This article discusses the social mobility of combatants and introduces the notion of circular return to explain their pendular state of movement between civilian and combatant life. This phenomenon is widely observed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where Congolese youth have been going in and out of armed groups for several decades now. While the notion of circular return has its origins in migration and refugee studies, we show t…
Armed mobilisation and the nexus of territory, identity, and authority: The contested territorial aspirations of the Banyamulenge in eastern DR Congo
The closely intertwined notions of territory, identity, and authority are at the heart of conflict dynamics in the eastern DR Congo. Focusing on the territorial aspirations of the Banyamulenge community in South Kivu, this article looks at the ways in which the nexus of territory, identity, and authority shapes and is shaped by armed mobilisation. Excluded from a customary chiefdom in the colonial era, the Banyamulenge, a community framed as ‘mig…
Borderlands, Identity and Urban Development: The Case of Goma (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
This paper challenges traditional studies that explore border sites from a central or capital city perspective. Focusing on expressions of identity in the border city of Goma, it illustrates how the struggle for political, social and economic control affects local urban life and has broader implications for regional relationships and realities. The paper suggests that Goma must be understood as a site of change and fluidity rather than (as border…
War and Social Research: The limits of empirical methodologies in war-torn environments
L’observation empirique dans les situations de conflit est soumise a de nombreuses contraintes dont les plus manifestes sont l’accessibilite et la securite. Cet article remet cependant en cause l’opinion dominante selon laquelle il est impossible de travailler dans un tel contexte (pour des raisons de securite) et recommandant de se limiter a des etudes apres la cessation des hostilites ou la fin du conflit. Il demontre que le caractere dynamique…
Les «maï-maï» et les fonctions de la violence milicienne dans l'est du Congo
Plutôt que d'interpréter les crises violentes qui secouent le continent en termes de « nouveau barbarisme », il faut prendre la mesure de l'espace qu'elles offrent aux groupes sociaux marginalisés pour renégocier leur statut et leur accès aux ressources politiques et économiques. Cette analyse des milices maï-maï dans l'est de la RDC et de l'impact de la violence sur la structure sociale incite à étudier plus précisément le statut de la jeunesse,…
Armed groups and the exercise of public authority: The cases of the Mayi-Mayi and Raya Mutomboki in Kalehe, South Kivu
The state of the Congolese state has been subject to a heated debate, with some arguing that it remains mostly irrelevant outside its capital or even that there is no such thing as Congo. Others contend that there is no lack of state order in Congo, but that this order is characterised by predatory rule and (privatised) extortion. This paper wants to put both claims into perspective and to assess how different actors re-deploy various rationaliti…
Courses au pouvoir: The struggle over customary capital in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
This article analyses the production and reproduction of traditional chieftaincy in war-torn eastern DR Congo, through the case of a succession dispute in Kalima (South Kivu). Kalima has gone through two decades of political instability and violent conflict involving a plethora of local, national and regional actors. During this period of uncertainty and upheaval, the institution of traditional chieftaincy has remained politically salient. We arg…
Négocier et contester l'ordre public dans l'Est de la République démocratique du Congo
Cet article évalue l'impact des forces armées non étatiques sur la vie publique au cours de la guerre en RDC ainsi que les retombées de leur présence et leurs interactions avec les autres groupes, acteurs et institutions en termes de « régulation locale ». Dès le début de la guerre, l'Est du Congo a connu un double processus : les opérations des groupes rebelles ont aggravé le déclin de l'État, mais elles ont également suscité l'émergence de coal…
Les guerres africaines du type fleuve Mano: Pour une analyse sociale
Contre les tenants de l'analyse utilitariste et du choix rationnel, une analyse sociologique des guerres qui se sont produites dans la région du fleuve Mano (et ailleurs en Afrique) instruite par la théorie durkeimienne permet de mieux souligner des dimensions essentielles de ces conflits, portant notamment sur leur occurrence et sur les conditions de leur terme
In the Name of the Father? Christian Militantism in Tripura, Northern Uganda, and Ambon
Although armed groups and political violence referring to Islam have attracted increasing attention since the start of the global war against terror, one particular religion can hardly be described as the main source of inspiration of what is commonly referred to as "terrorist acts of violence." Faith-based violence occurs in different parts of the world and its perpetrators adhere to all major world faiths including Christianity. As such, this a…
Rural Radicalisms and the Politics of Order: Authority, Precarity, and Globality in Africa
Violent conflict and ethnicity in the Congo: Beyond Materialism, Primordialism and Symbolism
In this paper, we investigate the nexus between ethnicity and violent conflict in the Congo. We make three interlocking arguments. First, we argue that ethnicity is a defining political resource in the Congo’s politics and violent conflicts, which we call ‘ethnic capital’. Second, we argue that the high political value of this ethnic capital is sustained by engrained discourses and practices of ethnicity. These discourses and practices permeate t…
Social Capital and Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Burundi: The Limits of Community-based Reconstruction
Using an examination of three NGO interventions in post-conflict Burundi, this article questions community-based reconstruction as a mechanism to rebuild social capital after conflicts, particularly when direct livelihood support is provided. The authors demonstrate a general shortcoming of the methodology employed in community-based development (CBD), namely its focus on 'technical procedural design', which results in what may be termed 'supply-…
Regulating the old game of smuggling? Coltan mining, trade and reforms in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
This article examines the smuggling of coltan into and out of artisanal mining areas in northern Katanga where the ITRI Tin Supply Chain Initiative (iTSCi), a policy on conflict minerals, tries to improve transparency in trading tin, tantalum (coltan) and tungsten. The article approaches smuggling from a sociology of economic life perspective, closely examining how and why artisanal miners and mine-based middlemen (négociants) helped smugglers (h…
Kony's Message: A New Koine?the Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda
The article offers a sketch of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) both in historical perspective and in a wider framework of the world system. The authors discuss the different stages and content of Acholi nationhood, from vague notions in pre-colonial days, through the building of an ethno-military identity during the colonial period, until the Acholi heyday after Obote II. The second period can be described as Acholi-hood on the defensi…
Comprehending and Mastering African Conflicts
War as Exit from Exclusion? The Formation of Mayi-Mayi Militias in Eastern Congo
War as Exit from Exclusion? The Formation of Mayi-Mayi Militias in Eastern Congo In eastern Congo scores of young and marginalized people have been increasingly attracted to the mobilising efforts of new local actors. The inquiry into this phenomenon traces the emergence of the first militias to the end of the eighties. These first generation militias were a result of the growing willingness of marginalized youngsters and school drop-outs to form…
War as Exit from Exclusion? The Formation of Mayi-Mayi Militias in Eastern Congo
In eastern Congo scores of young and marginalized people have been increasingly attracted to the mobilising efforts of new local actors. The inquiry into this phenomenon traces the emergence of the first militias to the end of the eighties. These first generation militias were a result of the growing willingness of marginalized youngsters and school drop-outs to form groups of under-aged combatants acting against eveiy representative of modern po…
Les «maï-maï» et les fonctions de la violence milicienne dans l'est du Congo
Plutôt que d'interpréter les crises violentes qui secouent le continent en termes de « nouveau barbarisme », il faut prendre la mesure de l'espace qu'elles offrent aux groupes sociaux marginalisés pour renégocier leur statut et leur accès aux ressources politiques et économiques. Cette analyse des milices maï-maï dans l'est de la RDC et de l'impact de la violence sur la structure sociale incite à étudier plus précisément le statut de la jeunesse,…
Citizenship, identity formation & conflict in South Kivu: The case of the Banyamulenge
The objectives of this exercise are threefold. First, through a case‐study of the Banyamulenge ethnogenesis, I demonstrate that this ethnicity was never constructed in a vacuum, but in a ‘pre‐imagined’ field. The ‘creation’ of a Banyamulenge identity illustrates perfectly that ethnicities are ongoing processes of continuous change. Ethnicities are dynamic processes that result from the confrontation of a community with its socio‐economic and poli…
Les guerres africaines du type fleuve Mano: Pour une analyse sociale
Contre les tenants de l'analyse utilitariste et du choix rationnel, une analyse sociologique des guerres qui se sont produites dans la région du fleuve Mano (et ailleurs en Afrique) instruite par la théorie durkeimienne permet de mieux souligner des dimensions essentielles de ces conflits, portant notamment sur leur occurrence et sur les conditions de leur terme
Guerres et sociétés
The politics of rebellion and intervention in Ituri: The Emergence of a New Political Complex
This article offers an interpretation of the present conflict in Ituri based on social analysis. Other than the conventional accounts which depart from the presence of foreign troops on Congolese soil, reduce the war to a struggle for natural resources or see it as the result of age-old ethnic hatreds, the authors try to place this conflict into its social setting. The central argument of this article is that the outbreak of violence in Ituri has…
War and Social Research: The limits of empirical methodologies in war-torn environments
L’observation empirique dans les situations de conflit est soumise a de nombreuses contraintes dont les plus manifestes sont l’accessibilite et la securite. Cet article remet cependant en cause l’opinion dominante selon laquelle il est impossible de travailler dans un tel contexte (pour des raisons de securite) et recommandant de se limiter a des etudes apres la cessation des hostilites ou la fin du conflit. Il demontre que le caractere dynamique…
Reshaping Congolese Statehood In The Midst Of Crisis And Transition
This chapter proposes an explanation for the gradual commodification of Congolese sovereignty among different forms of cooperation and conflict, produced by a variety of types of institutions and agents. It gives an introduction to the emergence of authoritarianism and its gradual collapse under President Desire Mobutu, who for a long time succeeded in imposing his dictatorial over Congo's fragmented society. The chapter discusses the period of r…
In the Name of the Father? Christian Militantism in Tripura, Northern Uganda, and Ambon
Although armed groups and political violence referring to Islam have attracted increasing attention since the start of the global war against terror, one particular religion can hardly be described as the main source of inspiration of what is commonly referred to as "terrorist acts of violence." Faith-based violence occurs in different parts of the world and its perpetrators adhere to all major world faiths including Christianity. As such, this a…
State and non-state regulation in African protracted crises: Governance without government
This article introduces a collection of papers that treat the question of governance in conditions of protracted crises in Subsahara Africa. Contrary to the widespread belief that African conflicts are little more than (undoubtedly complex and intractable) instances of anarchy and chaos, the authors present the reader with tangible evidence of the existence of non-state governance processes by constituencies attempting to manage the perils of lon…
De politiek van ‘Civil Society Organisations’ in Kasese en Arua, Oeganda
De politiek van ‘Civil Society Organisations’ in Kasese en Arua, Oeganda
New political order in the DR Congo? the transformation of regulation
It has been said repeatedly: the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) remains only a shadow of its former self, a typical case of state failure and collapse. Closer observation suggests a different image, however: not only has this country demonstrated “a remarkable propensity for resilience” (Englebert, 2003), its administration and regulatory frameworks – which in some domains have not changed since colonial times – have remained large…
New political order in the DR Congo? the transformation of regulation
It has been said repeatedly: the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) remains only a shadow of its former self, a typical case of state failure and collapse. Closer observation suggests a different image, however: not only has this country demonstrated “a remarkable propensity for resilience” (Englebert, 2003), its administration and regulatory frameworks – which in some domains have not changed since colonial times – have remained large…
State and non-state regulation in African protracted crises: Governance Without Government
This article introduces a collection of papers that treat the question of governance in conditions of protracted crises in Subsahara Africa. Contrary to the widespread belief that African conflicts are little more than (undoubtedly complex and intractable) instances of anarchy and chaos, the authors present the reader with tangible evidence of the existence of non-state governance processes by constituencies attempting to manage the perils of lon…
Négocier et contester l'ordre public dans l'Est de la République démocratique du Congo
Cet article évalue l'impact des forces armées non étatiques sur la vie publique au cours de la guerre en RDC ainsi que les retombées de leur présence et leurs interactions avec les autres groupes, acteurs et institutions en termes de « régulation locale ». Dès le début de la guerre, l'Est du Congo a connu un double processus : les opérations des groupes rebelles ont aggravé le déclin de l'État, mais elles ont également suscité l'émergence de coal…
Kivu's Intractable Security Conundrum
The security problems of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continue to puzzle international peace and policy makers. Despite President Joseph Kabila successfully winning the national elections in August and October 2006, the country has not emerged from its security deadlock. This briefing argues that the current strategy of peace building in the DRC leads to the amplification rather than the containment of armed violence. According to Andre…
Negotiated peace for extortion: The case of Walikale territory in eastern DR Congo
War in the Democratic Republic of Congo has increasingly been explained as a means to get access to natural resources and as a strategy to get control over informal trading networks linking the DRC with global markets. In most of these accounts, the complexity of war economies is underestimated. One element that is often missing is that systems of economic exploitation, which have been developed by armed groups during the Congolese war, tend to p…
The Lord’s Resistance Army: Myth and Reality
The Lord's Resistance Army is Africa’s most persistent and notorious 'terrorist' group. Led by the mysterious Joseph Kony, it has committed a series of horrific human rights abuses, including massacres and mutilations. Since the mid 1980s, it has abducted tens of thousands of people, including large numbers of children forced to train as fighters. The IC in 2005 issued warrants for Kony and his top commanders, and the United States is backing a m…
Dynamiques locales et pressions extérieures dans la conflictualité armée au Nord-Kivu: Cas des territoires de Beni-Lubero
Dynamiques locales et pressions extérieures dans la conflictualité armée au Nord-Kivu: Cas des territoires de Beni-Lubero
Humanitarian presence and urban development: New opportunities and contrasts in Goma, DRC
This paper examines the impact of the presence of international humanitarian organisations on local urban transformation processes in the city of Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Rather than evaluating the direct effects of humanitarian interventions and strategies, it focuses on the indirect but profound effects of the presence of this 'humanitarian sector'. It argues that the international humanitarian presence became a significant…
Political science (42 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Law (27 works) · Politics (26 works) · Political economy (19 works) · Economics (18 works) · Democracy (17 works) · Development economics (16 works) · African Studies and Geopolitics (10 works) · Law (10 works)