Philip Roessler
Biographic Data
| ID | 1213237 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Philip Roessler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Philip |
| FAMILY NAME | Roessler |
| SIGNATURE | ROESSLER P |
| AFFILIATIONS | William & Mary |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4935-6468 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 778 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The economic foundations of powersharing: Evidence from Africa
How—and with whom—do rulers share power? Existing research focuses on the strategic logic of powersharing. In this paper, we analyze its economic foundations. Powersharing is modeled as a subnational fiscal contract, in which rulers allocate political representation based on constituencies’ revenue potential. Empirically, we combine historical geospatial data on different types of primary commodity production—mineral point resources and diffuse s…
Elites, the aid curse, and Chinese development finance: A conjoint survey experiment on elites’ aid preferences in 141 low‐ and middle‐income countries
Why do elites in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs) favor some foreign aid projects and partners over others? Research on the “aid curse” and Chinese development finance suggests elites should prefer aid that can be easily captured, with few conditionalities, regulations, or transparency requirements. We administer a conjoint survey experiment across 141 LMICs to elicit the aid preferences of elites who are uniquely close to development pol…
Testing multi‐stakeholder dialogue for better local governance in Niger: An experiment. Can we talk our way out of development problems
The cash crop revolution, colonialism and economic reorganization in Africa
In the 19th and 20th centuries, African economies experienced a significant structural transformation from the slave trades to commercial agriculture. We analyze the long-run impact of this economic transition focusing on the dynamic effects of: shifting geographic fundamentals to favor agro-climatic suitability for cash crops; infrastructural investments to reduce trade costs; and external forward production linkages. Using agro-climatic suitabi…
Foreign Aid and Soft Power: Great Power Competition in Africa in the Early Twenty-first Century
Is foreign aid an effective instrument of soft power? Does it generate affinity for donor countries and the values they espouse? This article answers these questions in the context of Chinese aid to Africa and the competing aid regime of the United States. The study combines data on thirty-eight African countries from Afrobarometer, AidData, and the Aid Information Management Systems of African finance and planning ministries. The authors use spa…
Cash Crops, Print Technologies, and the Politicization of Ethnicity in Africa
What are the origins of the ethnic landscapes in contemporary states? Drawing on a preregistered research design, we test the influence of dual socioeconomic revolutions that spread throughout Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-export agriculture and print technologies. We argue these changes transformed ethnicity via their effects on politicization and boundary-making. Print technologies strengthened imagined communities, leadi…
Foreign Aid and State Legitimacy: Evidence on Chinese and US Aid to Africa from Surveys, Survey Experiments, and Behavioral Games
What are the effects of foreign aid on the perceived legitimacy of recipient states? Different donors adhere to different rules, principles, and operating procedures. The authors theorize that variation in these aid regimes may generate variation in the effects of aid on state legitimacy. To test their theory, they compare aid from the United States to aid from China, its most prominent geopolitical rival. Their research design combines within-co…
Response to Kate Baldwin’s review of Ethnic Politics and State Power in Africa: The Logic of the Coup-Civil War Trap
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Self-Enforcing Power Sharing in Weak States
Power sharing, in which elites from rival societal groups agree to share control of the central government, is a key source of domestic peace, enabling states to escape devastating cycles of exclusion and civil war. Yet the conditions giving rise to inclusive governance are not well understood. In contrast to existing scholarship that emphasizes the importance of external third-party mediation or strong formal institutions, we point to the struct…
Why Comrades Go to War
In October 1996, a motley crew of ageing Marxists and unemployed youths coalesced to revolt against Mobutu Seso Seko, president of Zaire/Congo since 1965. Backed by a Rwanda-led regional coalition that drew support from Asmara to Luanda, the rebels of the AFDL marched over 1500 kilometers in seven months to crush the dictatorship. To the Congolese rebels and their Pan-Africanist allies, the vanquishing of the Mobutu regime represented nothing sho…
Comrades Preparing for War
The chapter analyzes the founding of the coalition of revolutionaries to invade Zaire, symbol of “neo-colonial” Africa. It traces the provisions for war by the Pan-Africanist alliance as they helped create a national liberation movement that could transform abstract ideals into quotidian struggle and political organization. Tasked to front this regime change agenda was Laurent-Désiré Kabila who would develop an extraordinary degree of interdepend…
Comrades Go to War
This chapter traces the trajectory from the unbearable no-man’s-land of waiting for the inevitable to the outbreak of conflict on August 2, 1998, and the ensuing first weeks of fighting. The failure of Joseph Kabila to mediate between his father and James Kabarebe cleared the last obstacle for the bellicose thrust on both sides to take full force. It details how both Kabila and Kagame sought to obtain the support of the regional bellwether, the M…
Winning the War, Losing the Peace
This chapter lays out the book’s central argument. It first addresses the limitations of existing explanations—war for natural resources, spillover of Rwandan genocide, anti-foreign resistance and personalization of power. It then develops the building blocks of the argument, which attributes Africa’s Great War to the type of revolutionary organization and regional alliance the comrades built to liberate Zaire. In contrast to the strong Leninist …
Why Comrades Go to War
The conclusion explores the book’s broader implications. The unraveling of the AFDL happened within the same fifteen-month timeframe that would also see the outbreak of a “war of brothers” between Eritrea and Ethiopia (May 1998) and a violent fall-out between the RPF and Uganda's NRM (August 1999)—on Congolese territory. The fall of Kinshasa in May 1997 marked the last successful violent revolution brought about by liberation movements in Africa …
The Post-Mobutu Order and Politics After Liberation: Liberation Politics and the Outbreak of Africa's Deadliest Conflict
This chapter tells the story of how the post-Mobutu order was consolidated. Kabila wasted no time in purging the Mobutist elite, circulating a revamped currency and building a new army under the leadership of James Kabarebe to consolidate the partnership with the RPF. However, the commitment problem arose almost instantaneously. Many who had sacrificed during the campaign felt short changed by their limited representation in the new order. None f…
Ethnic Politics and State Power in Africa: The Logic of the Coup-Civil War Trap
Why are some African countries trapped in vicious cycles of ethnic exclusion and civil war, while others experience relative peace? In this groundbreaking book, Philip Roessler addresses this question. Roessler models Africa's weak, ethnically-divided states as confronting rulers with a coup-civil war trap - sharing power with ethnic rivals is necessary to underwrite societal peace and prevent civil war, but increases rivals' capabilities to seiz…
Intergroup Violence and Political Attitudes: Evidence from a Dividing Sudan
How do episodes of intergroup violence affect political opinions toward outgroup members? Recent studies offer divergent answers. Some suggest violence deepens antagonism and reduces support for compromise, while others contend it encourages moderation and concessions to prevent further conflict. We argue that violence can fuel both hostility toward the outgroup and acceptance of outgroup objectives and provide evidence from a unique survey of 1,…
The Enemy Within: Personal Rule, Coups, and Civil War in Africa
Why do rulers employ ethnic exclusion at the risk of civil war? Focusing on the region of sub-Saharan Africa, the author attributes this costly strategy to the commitment problem that arises in personalist regimes between elites who hold joint control of the state's coercive apparatus. As no faction can be sure that others will not exploit their violent capabilities to usurp power, elites maneuver to protect their privileged position and safeguar…
Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes
In the wake of the third wave of democratization, competitive authoritarianism has emerged as a prominent regime type. These regimes feature regular, competitive elections between a government and an opposition, but the incumbent leader or party typically resorts to coercion, intimidation, and fraud to attempt to ensure electoral victory. Despite the incumbent's reliance on unfair practices to stay in power, such elections occasionally result in …
Donor-Induced Democratization and the Privatization of State Violence in Kenya and Rwanda
Since the end of the cold war, the proliferation of violent irregular units, including mili tias, paramilitaries, vigilantes, and warlords, has been widely discussed.1 Many claim that this phenomenon is a consequence of the wresting of the monopoly of violence out of the hands of the state by violent groups and communities and signifies a anarchy.2 They see the formation of violent nonstate actors as a by-product of state breakdown. Martin Van Cr…
Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes
In the wake of the third wave of democratization, competitive authoritarianism has emerged as a prominent regime type. These regimes feature regular, competitive elections between a government and an opposition, but the incumbent leader or party typically resorts to coercion, intimidation, and fraud to attempt to ensure electoral victory. Despite the incumbent's reliance on unfair practices to stay in power, such elections occasionally result in …
The Enemy Within: Personal Rule, Coups, and Civil War in Africa
Why do rulers employ ethnic exclusion at the risk of civil war? Focusing on the region of sub-Saharan Africa, the author attributes this costly strategy to the commitment problem that arises in personalist regimes between elites who hold joint control of the state's coercive apparatus. As no faction can be sure that others will not exploit their violent capabilities to usurp power, elites maneuver to protect their privileged position and safeguar…
Intergroup Violence and Political Attitudes: Evidence from a Dividing Sudan
How do episodes of intergroup violence affect political opinions toward outgroup members? Recent studies offer divergent answers. Some suggest violence deepens antagonism and reduces support for compromise, while others contend it encourages moderation and concessions to prevent further conflict. We argue that violence can fuel both hostility toward the outgroup and acceptance of outgroup objectives and provide evidence from a unique survey of 1,…
Foreign Aid and Soft Power: Great Power Competition in Africa in the Early Twenty-first Century
Is foreign aid an effective instrument of soft power? Does it generate affinity for donor countries and the values they espouse? This article answers these questions in the context of Chinese aid to Africa and the competing aid regime of the United States. The study combines data on thirty-eight African countries from Afrobarometer, AidData, and the Aid Information Management Systems of African finance and planning ministries. The authors use spa…
Donor-Induced Democratization and the Privatization of State Violence in Kenya and Rwanda
Since the end of the cold war, the proliferation of violent irregular units, including mili tias, paramilitaries, vigilantes, and warlords, has been widely discussed.1 Many claim that this phenomenon is a consequence of the wresting of the monopoly of violence out of the hands of the state by violent groups and communities and signifies a anarchy.2 They see the formation of violent nonstate actors as a by-product of state breakdown. Martin Van Cr…
Foreign Aid and State Legitimacy: Evidence on Chinese and US Aid to Africa from Surveys, Survey Experiments, and Behavioral Games
What are the effects of foreign aid on the perceived legitimacy of recipient states? Different donors adhere to different rules, principles, and operating procedures. The authors theorize that variation in these aid regimes may generate variation in the effects of aid on state legitimacy. To test their theory, they compare aid from the United States to aid from China, its most prominent geopolitical rival. Their research design combines within-co…
Self-Enforcing Power Sharing in Weak States
Power sharing, in which elites from rival societal groups agree to share control of the central government, is a key source of domestic peace, enabling states to escape devastating cycles of exclusion and civil war. Yet the conditions giving rise to inclusive governance are not well understood. In contrast to existing scholarship that emphasizes the importance of external third-party mediation or strong formal institutions, we point to the struct…
Cash Crops, Print Technologies, and the Politicization of Ethnicity in Africa
What are the origins of the ethnic landscapes in contemporary states? Drawing on a preregistered research design, we test the influence of dual socioeconomic revolutions that spread throughout Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-export agriculture and print technologies. We argue these changes transformed ethnicity via their effects on politicization and boundary-making. Print technologies strengthened imagined communities, leadi…
The cash crop revolution, colonialism and economic reorganization in Africa
In the 19th and 20th centuries, African economies experienced a significant structural transformation from the slave trades to commercial agriculture. We analyze the long-run impact of this economic transition focusing on the dynamic effects of: shifting geographic fundamentals to favor agro-climatic suitability for cash crops; infrastructural investments to reduce trade costs; and external forward production linkages. Using agro-climatic suitabi…
Elites, the aid curse, and Chinese development finance: A conjoint survey experiment on elites’ aid preferences in 141 low‐ and middle‐income countries
Why do elites in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs) favor some foreign aid projects and partners over others? Research on the “aid curse” and Chinese development finance suggests elites should prefer aid that can be easily captured, with few conditionalities, regulations, or transparency requirements. We administer a conjoint survey experiment across 141 LMICs to elicit the aid preferences of elites who are uniquely close to development pol…
Donor-Induced Democratization and the Privatization of State Violence in Kenya and Rwanda
Since the end of the cold war, the proliferation of violent irregular units, including mili tias, paramilitaries, vigilantes, and warlords, has been widely discussed.1 Many claim that this phenomenon is a consequence of the wresting of the monopoly of violence out of the hands of the state by violent groups and communities and signifies a anarchy.2 They see the formation of violent nonstate actors as a by-product of state breakdown. Martin Van Cr…
Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes
In the wake of the third wave of democratization, competitive authoritarianism has emerged as a prominent regime type. These regimes feature regular, competitive elections between a government and an opposition, but the incumbent leader or party typically resorts to coercion, intimidation, and fraud to attempt to ensure electoral victory. Despite the incumbent's reliance on unfair practices to stay in power, such elections occasionally result in …
The Enemy Within: Personal Rule, Coups, and Civil War in Africa
Why do rulers employ ethnic exclusion at the risk of civil war? Focusing on the region of sub-Saharan Africa, the author attributes this costly strategy to the commitment problem that arises in personalist regimes between elites who hold joint control of the state's coercive apparatus. As no faction can be sure that others will not exploit their violent capabilities to usurp power, elites maneuver to protect their privileged position and safeguar…
Intergroup Violence and Political Attitudes: Evidence from a Dividing Sudan
How do episodes of intergroup violence affect political opinions toward outgroup members? Recent studies offer divergent answers. Some suggest violence deepens antagonism and reduces support for compromise, while others contend it encourages moderation and concessions to prevent further conflict. We argue that violence can fuel both hostility toward the outgroup and acceptance of outgroup objectives and provide evidence from a unique survey of 1,…
Ethnic Politics and State Power in Africa: The Logic of the Coup-Civil War Trap
Why are some African countries trapped in vicious cycles of ethnic exclusion and civil war, while others experience relative peace? In this groundbreaking book, Philip Roessler addresses this question. Roessler models Africa's weak, ethnically-divided states as confronting rulers with a coup-civil war trap - sharing power with ethnic rivals is necessary to underwrite societal peace and prevent civil war, but increases rivals' capabilities to seiz…
Why Comrades Go to War
In October 1996, a motley crew of ageing Marxists and unemployed youths coalesced to revolt against Mobutu Seso Seko, president of Zaire/Congo since 1965. Backed by a Rwanda-led regional coalition that drew support from Asmara to Luanda, the rebels of the AFDL marched over 1500 kilometers in seven months to crush the dictatorship. To the Congolese rebels and their Pan-Africanist allies, the vanquishing of the Mobutu regime represented nothing sho…
Comrades Preparing for War
The chapter analyzes the founding of the coalition of revolutionaries to invade Zaire, symbol of “neo-colonial” Africa. It traces the provisions for war by the Pan-Africanist alliance as they helped create a national liberation movement that could transform abstract ideals into quotidian struggle and political organization. Tasked to front this regime change agenda was Laurent-Désiré Kabila who would develop an extraordinary degree of interdepend…
Comrades Go to War
This chapter traces the trajectory from the unbearable no-man’s-land of waiting for the inevitable to the outbreak of conflict on August 2, 1998, and the ensuing first weeks of fighting. The failure of Joseph Kabila to mediate between his father and James Kabarebe cleared the last obstacle for the bellicose thrust on both sides to take full force. It details how both Kabila and Kagame sought to obtain the support of the regional bellwether, the M…
Winning the War, Losing the Peace
This chapter lays out the book’s central argument. It first addresses the limitations of existing explanations—war for natural resources, spillover of Rwandan genocide, anti-foreign resistance and personalization of power. It then develops the building blocks of the argument, which attributes Africa’s Great War to the type of revolutionary organization and regional alliance the comrades built to liberate Zaire. In contrast to the strong Leninist …
Why Comrades Go to War
The conclusion explores the book’s broader implications. The unraveling of the AFDL happened within the same fifteen-month timeframe that would also see the outbreak of a “war of brothers” between Eritrea and Ethiopia (May 1998) and a violent fall-out between the RPF and Uganda's NRM (August 1999)—on Congolese territory. The fall of Kinshasa in May 1997 marked the last successful violent revolution brought about by liberation movements in Africa …
The Post-Mobutu Order and Politics After Liberation: Liberation Politics and the Outbreak of Africa's Deadliest Conflict
This chapter tells the story of how the post-Mobutu order was consolidated. Kabila wasted no time in purging the Mobutist elite, circulating a revamped currency and building a new army under the leadership of James Kabarebe to consolidate the partnership with the RPF. However, the commitment problem arose almost instantaneously. Many who had sacrificed during the campaign felt short changed by their limited representation in the new order. None f…
Response to Kate Baldwin’s review of Ethnic Politics and State Power in Africa: The Logic of the Coup-Civil War Trap
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Self-Enforcing Power Sharing in Weak States
Power sharing, in which elites from rival societal groups agree to share control of the central government, is a key source of domestic peace, enabling states to escape devastating cycles of exclusion and civil war. Yet the conditions giving rise to inclusive governance are not well understood. In contrast to existing scholarship that emphasizes the importance of external third-party mediation or strong formal institutions, we point to the struct…
Foreign Aid and State Legitimacy: Evidence on Chinese and US Aid to Africa from Surveys, Survey Experiments, and Behavioral Games
What are the effects of foreign aid on the perceived legitimacy of recipient states? Different donors adhere to different rules, principles, and operating procedures. The authors theorize that variation in these aid regimes may generate variation in the effects of aid on state legitimacy. To test their theory, they compare aid from the United States to aid from China, its most prominent geopolitical rival. Their research design combines within-co…
Testing multi‐stakeholder dialogue for better local governance in Niger: An experiment. Can we talk our way out of development problems
The cash crop revolution, colonialism and economic reorganization in Africa
In the 19th and 20th centuries, African economies experienced a significant structural transformation from the slave trades to commercial agriculture. We analyze the long-run impact of this economic transition focusing on the dynamic effects of: shifting geographic fundamentals to favor agro-climatic suitability for cash crops; infrastructural investments to reduce trade costs; and external forward production linkages. Using agro-climatic suitabi…
Foreign Aid and Soft Power: Great Power Competition in Africa in the Early Twenty-first Century
Is foreign aid an effective instrument of soft power? Does it generate affinity for donor countries and the values they espouse? This article answers these questions in the context of Chinese aid to Africa and the competing aid regime of the United States. The study combines data on thirty-eight African countries from Afrobarometer, AidData, and the Aid Information Management Systems of African finance and planning ministries. The authors use spa…
Cash Crops, Print Technologies, and the Politicization of Ethnicity in Africa
What are the origins of the ethnic landscapes in contemporary states? Drawing on a preregistered research design, we test the influence of dual socioeconomic revolutions that spread throughout Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-export agriculture and print technologies. We argue these changes transformed ethnicity via their effects on politicization and boundary-making. Print technologies strengthened imagined communities, leadi…
Elites, the aid curse, and Chinese development finance: A conjoint survey experiment on elites’ aid preferences in 141 low‐ and middle‐income countries
Why do elites in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs) favor some foreign aid projects and partners over others? Research on the “aid curse” and Chinese development finance suggests elites should prefer aid that can be easily captured, with few conditionalities, regulations, or transparency requirements. We administer a conjoint survey experiment across 141 LMICs to elicit the aid preferences of elites who are uniquely close to development pol…
The economic foundations of powersharing: Evidence from Africa
How—and with whom—do rulers share power? Existing research focuses on the strategic logic of powersharing. In this paper, we analyze its economic foundations. Powersharing is modeled as a subnational fiscal contract, in which rulers allocate political representation based on constituencies’ revenue potential. Empirically, we combine historical geospatial data on different types of primary commodity production—mineral point resources and diffuse s…
Political science (17 works) · Politics (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Economics (14 works) · Political economy (13 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Development economics (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies (6 works)