G.E. Frerks

Introduction: Armed Groups and Multi-layered Governance

Abstract In this special issue we broaden the academic debate on rebel governance by examining additional armed actors – militias, police and foreign intervenors, and the ‘layers’ of governance they add. We develop the notion of ‘multi-layered’ governance to capture the complexity of these cases. We consider ‘mediated stateness’ as a special case of multi-layered governance. We discuss ‘polycentricity’ as an equivalent concept, but deem multi-layered governance more appropriate. The following articles discuss rebels’ legitimation strategies, armed opposition factions, auxiliary armed forces, mediated stateness and intervention by foreign powers to highlight the roles of different actors and the resulting impacts on governance.

Flood disaster subcultures in The Netherlands: the parishes of Borgharen and Itteren

The Netherlands knows a persistent threat of flooding. To adapt to this dangerous reality, the Dutch have cultivated what disaster research literature has labeled ‘disaster subcultures’ or a set of cultural (tangible and intangible) tools to deal with the recurrent hazard. While there is abundant attention for the way the Dutch ‘coastal’ and ‘low-lying’ communities deal with the recurrent threat of (coastal) flooding, less is known about the way the Dutch ‘high-lands’ deal with the yearly threat of (fluvial) flooding. This article presents the findings of an explorative research endeavor (2011–2013) aimed at discerning if the disaster subculture concept has contemporary relevance in the Netherlands, particularly with respect to flooding, and if so, whether applying this lens would reveal more about the nature of existing disaster subcultures. Because less is known about the Dutch ‘high-lands,’ we chose to look into the existence and attributes of disaster subcultures in the parishes Borgharen and Itteren, which experience a systematic threat of flooding. Our findings suggest that the disaster subculture lens is valuable as it enables the empirical appreciation of disaster subcultures, even in a small country like the Netherlands, and it unveiled elements of these neighboring parishes’ flood reality that otherwise might have gone unnoticed and that seem central to understanding these two parishes’ levels of vulnerability and resilience. It is our contention that the concept ‘disaster subculture’ makes a greater understanding possible of the cultural context from which vulnerability and resilience to specific and recurrent threats emerge.

Rebel Governance and Legitimacy: Understanding the Impact of Rebel Legitimation on Civilian Compliance with the LTTE Rule

Abstract Based on extensive fieldwork in Sri Lanka, we analyze how the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) acquired legitimacy and how legitimation impacts civilian perceptions of the rebels. Despite the LTTE’s reliance on coercion to induce compliance, civilians also supported the LTTE and their imagined state of Tamil Eelam voluntarily. Different LTTE strategies and acts helped creating legitimacy. Effective forms of legitimation were rooted in Tamil nationalism, tradition, charismatic leadership, sacrifices made by LTTE cadres and the people’s need for protection. However, the strong reformative socio-political agenda of the LTTE largely failed to engender legitimacy among the population.

Help or Hindrance? The Contribution of the Resilience Approach to Risk Governance

In recent years, resilience has rapidly become a mainstream notion in addition to disaster vulnerability. The concept of social resilience focuses on the social capacities available beyond the capacities of the formal disaster management sector, and is also redressing the victimising and disempowering effects of the vulnerability notion. While having a number of strong points, the resilience project also carries risks to society. Whether promoting resilience reduces people’s vulnerability to disaster is highly dependent on a person’s socioeconomic standing and the larger socio-economic and political context. Hence, we should be critical about the fiction promoted by the retreating neo-liberal state that everyone can be equally resilient. The emphasis on resilience seems to be the product of a political discourse that seeks to shift the responsibility for mediating the impact of disasters from the state to the society and therefore may engender the same problems and feelings of disenchantment as the neo-liberal project creates in other societal domains and the economy at large. We have to study the potential negative political effects the neo-liberal project inheres in order to fully gauge its impact on vulnerable disaster-stricken individuals and communities, and how it may affect the governance of risk ultimately.

Manoeuvring wars, rebels and governments: the EU’s experience in Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT This article outlines the engagement of the European Union (EU) with the conflict between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. It analyses the EU’s interventions through a Whole-of-Society (WoS) lens encompassing both comprehensiveness and inclusivity. Gradually the EU became a more articulated actor, attaining a certain degree of comprehensiveness. However, volatile conflict dynamics and hostile government responses restricted the inclusivity of its operations. An increasingly shrinking political and civilian space hampered its access to civil society. By default, the EU’s approach became more circumspect and indirect. Only after a change of government in 2015, the EU’s possibilities for constructive engagement improved. Adopting a WoS approach could have remedied some, but not all of the EU’s challenges in the Sri Lankan context.

Conclusion: Pitfalls and Potentials of Exit Studies and practices

Th is chapter presents the main conclusions of this book, organised around three questions: 1) “What is exit?” 2) “How can we understand exit?” and 3) “What can we do about exit?”

Hitting a Moving Target: Evaluating the ‘Exit’ from State-building Missions

Why is it so difficult to say something meaningful about the exit from state building missions? Or to put it otherwise: why is the evaluation thereof so problematic? In this article I reflect on the nature of exit from state-building missions and the challenge of evaluating it. I do this by first discussing the growing importance of evaluation and the conditions required for a proper evaluation as exposed in the professional evaluation literature. I refer here to the notion of evaluability. A key problem is the very basic question of establishing proper evaluation criteria and procedures. It is difficult to determine against what criteria state-building missions need to be evaluated. This is complicated by the dichotomy observed in reality between exit when particular end states have been achieved or exit at a particular end date. Comparing the praxis around the exit from state-building missions with the conditions of evaluability reveals several complications either in relation to the subject of evaluation, the research process needed to collect and analyse the required data, or the context of violent conflict. Improvements of evaluation practice in state-building operations can be achieved by working on a number of the preconditions outlined, by improving the formulation of the objectives and intervention logic of state-building operations. Investing more in narrative types of research endeavor, qualitative case studies, ethnographic approaches and the use of everyday, bottom-up indicators may help understanding the exit from state-building better, in a way that is grounded, and contingent on the local situation, while taking into account the multiple perspectives of the different stakeholders involved.

Who Are They? – Encountering International and Local Civilians in Civil-Military Interaction

This chapter describes the nature of the international and local civilian presence in peace operations, based among others on fieldwork in Afghanistan and Liberia. It describes the tensions between the classical humanitarian principles vis-a-vis the evolving integrated peace operations and whole-of-government approaches that have become increasingly salient nowadays. Isolationist discussions on civil-military interaction therefore seem to be outdated and all stakeholders therefore need to acknowledge the new dynamics and reflect on the implications for themselves. A more strategic understanding between military and civilian partners should be reached prior to deployment. Such multi-level thinking in advance of the mission could resolve many implementation issues that otherwise would arise in the field. What is also required is a further reflection on the nature and quality of local partners. Are they sufficiently democratic and representative of local audiences? How can opportunistic or protagonist organizations be distinguished from the ‘good’ ones? These issues have acquired an added urgency due to the dysfunctional ‘aid bonanzas’ witnessed in a number of post-conflict situations. The increasing levels and new directions that civil-military interaction is taking necessitates a reconsideration of the original viewpoints, if the future challenges are to be met. A discussion with an open mind is needed beyond the doctrines and dogmas of the past at both sides of the civil-military interface.

Introduction. The Dilemma of Leaving: Political and Military Exit Strategies

The introduction to the volume provides an overview of recent issues central to political, military, and academic debates about political and military exit strategies from conflicts and wars. One important concept is the supposed political-military divide, time and again expressed in the dichotomy end states versus end dates. Th e different contributions of the volume show that there exist nuances in this divide, due to different responsibilities and tasks at four levels, i.e., the political, strategic, operational and tactical. The volume reflects the diversity and multi-disciplinary character of the Faculty of Military Sciences, combining academia with military experience.

Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies 2015

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