Peacebuilding in Africa:
Prospects for security and democracy beyond the state

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By Pierre du Toit Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch

Published in African Security Review Vol 8 No 1, 1999

It is frequently predicted that the modern era with its dominant political institution of the national state is drawing to a close. A diminished position is foreseen for the state, whether through eclipse by other rival institutions, or through the state becoming a lesser unit among a number of contending units of power. The most insistent and persistent endorsement for this prediction comes from the ranks of those who argue that the economic forces of globalisation are relentlessly eroding the position of states. In tandem with these forces are the actions of agents who are deliberately trying to induce this outcome, driven by the ideology of globalisation. Whether these forces will in fact produce the said outcome is a moot point, and one not to be pursued here.¹

The aim of this article is rather to focus on the nature of security in the light of the projected changing status and position of national states, and to consider the implications for African states, with a view to both security and democracy.

A number of considerations guide the analysis. Firstly, the general point of departure is not to consider whether ‘the state’ is about to be terminated, but rather to take up the issue of ‘what form of state will evolve’.² Secondly, ‘security’ and ‘democracy’ will be treated as two distinct concepts, referring to separate phenomena, but the interrelationship between them will be explored.³

National states emerged as the dominant political units in Europe, not by way of amicable social contracts between consenting individuals, but through a ruthless process of elimination, conducted by means of war. Of the 500 or so independent political units in the Europe of 1500, only 25 remained by 1900, all of them national states.⁴ State leaders eliminated rival contenders such as princes, bishops, dukes, brigands and other notables and magnates through the superior capacity for social control which state organisation made possible. Well-documented features of statebuilding in Europe include:

the gradual and simultaneous capacity for extracting resources from, and regulating the social relationships of a resident population within a fixed territory;



redistributing these resources in pursuit of specific policy objectives (mostly in preparation for, or the conduct of war); and



thus penetrating society through special purpose organisations in the form of bureaucracies, which were both distinctive and autonomous from other social units.⁵

The important point here is to note that, by the end of the eighteenth century, states had achieved a virtual monopoly on force, at the expense of the subject populations.⁶ This was followed in the nineteenth century with the marked democratisation of the European state, in part as a response to pressure from subject populations for more rights,⁷ and in part as an incentive offered by state leaders to increase the legitimacy of the states’ demands for rising taxes.⁸

Crucial to the expansion of the legitimacy of the democratised state was its claim to provide public goods to its citizens, in return for compliance with its tax requirements. From the outset, the first and foremost public good that the state could offer, derived from its monopoly on force. It could provide protection, in the form of physical security, to its citizens in return for compliance, or it could withhold protection, or even use its coercive monopoly against its citizens as an alternative to voluntary compliance. This type of monopoly is obviously open to abuse. When the threats were real and credible, state claims were authentic, but, as Tilly argues, a state could also simulate, stimulate, fabricate or otherwise contrive real or imaginary threats with which to influence its citizens, and "[s]omeone who produces both the danger and, at a price, the shield against it is a racketeer’, so to the extent that the threats against which a given government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities, the government has organised a protection racket."⁹

All of this hinged on the credibility of the state’s claim to the monopoly on violence: "A tendency to monopolise the means of violence makes a government’s claim to provide protection, in either the comforting or the ominous sense of the word, more credible and more difficult to resist."¹⁰

The initial link between security and democracy within the institution of the state was consolidated through a number of other factors. Firstly, the coercive monopoly of the state allowed it to protect democratic regimes against hostile and violent anti-democratic forces, both inside and outside its territorial domain. Secondly, the distinctive bureaucracies of the state proved to be able to distribute other public goods as well, and equitably so.

Thirdly, the territorial state provided an answer to the question of ‘who comprises the unit of democracy’. Democratic theory presupposes a proper unit of democracy.¹¹ Sovereign states, territorially defined, and with a monopoly of force, allowed no alternatives. State leaders could therefore declare the population of the territory as the democratic unit, irrespective of any other cultural, economic, historical or demographic considerations. The Jacobins in France, for example, could therefore proceed to make citizens out of a population of the state, of which, at the time of the French Revolution, only about one half spoke French, and only about twelve per cent spoke it competently.¹²

Fourthly, states provided some measure of success in containing the forces of capitalism. The dynamics of cumulative inequality inherent in free enterprise, and the neglect of the public good has been countervailed, in some cases, by the redistributive capacities of states. By defining, and legally and coercively enforcing the distinction between the private and public domain (the ‘commons’), and protecting the commons, through mutual coercion, against free individuals intent on exploiting it, states have contributed to the achievement of the democratic norm of equity.¹³

Finally, the establishment of a system of states created a mutual recognition society which stabilised relations between themselves through a set of rules, codified in international law and diplomatic convention. These regulated the conduct of war and of peace, setting conditions for the recognition of new members, and contributed to the establishment, on a global basis, of new states — each a potential unit of security, and of democracy.

The predicted eclipse of states, as argued from the perspective of the dynamics of the political economy of globalisation is neither persuasive nor a foregone conclusion. Far more compelling is the argument posed from the perspective of security. Martin van Creveld presents this thesis forcefully:

"The most important single demand that any political community must meet is the demand for protection. A community which cannot safeguard the lives of its members, subjects, citizens, comrades, brothers, or whatever they are called is unlikely either to command their loyalty or to survive for very long ... The rise of the modern state is explicable largely in terms of its military effectiveness vis-à-vis other war-making organisations. If, as seems to be the case, that state cannot defend itself effectively against intemal or external low-intensity conflict, then clearly it does not have a future in front of it."¹⁴

Van Creveld traces this decline in the ability of states to provide the most basic of public goods, physical safety, to their loss of the monopoly on war, and the loss of the monopoly on coercive means.

The monopoly on war was lost, first and foremost, through the actions of the states in the centre of the global system of states. "War made the state, and the state made war."¹⁵ That is, until about 1939. World War II, according to Van Creveld, counts as the single decisive event in the breakdown of the state-imposed set of rules of war, with which they built up, and maintained their monopoly on war and on coercive means. These rules serve both to maintain the essential character of war, and the particular character of the state-driven conduct of war. The ultimate purpose of the rules of war is to protect the armed forces that conduct acts of organised violence, and to protect the societies within which these forces are embedded.

War, by definition, involves the killing of people, and Van Creveld states it categorically, that "... [a]lways and everywhere, only that kind of killing that is carried out by certain authorised persons, under certain specified circumstances, and in accordance with certain prescribed rules, is saved from blame and regarded as a praiseworthy act."¹⁶ The most crucial line to be drawn by such rules is between killing as an act of war, and as an act of murder. Where this distinction is not upheld, war cannot be seen to be different from indiscriminate violence, and, under these conditions, societies are bound to succumb.

The rules of war thus serve to provide criteria for recognising the difference between an army and a mob, to guide an army to understand whom they are allowed to attack and kill, for what purpose, under what circumstance, and by what means. Rules also serve to tell losers from winners, and to define what constitutes victory. Finally, and of profound importance, by setting rules for killing, it becomes possible for those who have killed to cope with their deeds, to live with them, and to come to terms with themselves. The rules of war offer redemption for what people have done to one another.¹⁷

In the modern era of state ascendancy, more or less from 1648 to 1939, states established a set of rules centred on the distinction between the state (represented by government), the army (comprising soldiers) and people (civilians). These rules held that:

War is monopolised by states. It comprises organised violence conducted by armies on behalf of governments that represent the state. It is pursued for the state, and against another state.



oldiers are authorised to kill in times of war, and when they do so, it is considered an act of war.



Civilians are distinguished from soldiers. Civilians are non-combatants, and are not authorised to engage in war.



Civilians therefore have to be unarmed, or disarmed.



Civilians are thus not legitimate targets of war for contending armies.



Crime is distinguished from war. Prisoners of war are consequently held under different conditions than those of criminals.

During World War II, the major combatants broke their own rules of war, comprehensively and irreparably. The conduct of the ‘total war’ on an industrial scale blurred the lines between state, army and people. Army and state were merged in the ‘war cabinets’, armies and peoples were merged through mass conscription. The distinctions between civilians and soldiers, and between combatants and non-combatants were eroded through the use of entire urban civilian populations as targets (London, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and by the revolt of civilians against occupation (the resistance in France, Italy and Yugoslavia).

This set the example for the wars of liberation that were soon to follow in the colonies of the major states. Low intensity conflict, from Indochina and Algeria through to its global application, built on this fundamental normative breakdown in the conduct of war.

National liberation movements, representing neither states nor governments, but claiming to represent ‘peoples’, took on armies of states in organised violent conflicts both across and within the borders of states, thus challenging the monopoly on war claimed by the state. They drew on personnel not formally designated as soldiers, such as students, women and children. They operated therefore from the strategic viewpoint that war is not only the business of soldiers: people have the right to revolt and when they do, the distinction between combatant and non-combatant falls away.

This requires the deliberate (re)arming of civilian populations, which makes society a legitimate target, and brings in the use of non-military methods of combat. Physical violence is complemented by acts of civil disobedience intent on disrupting civilian life: strikes, blockades, tax revolts, school boycotts, consumer boycotts, hunger strikes, and more.¹⁸ At times, military projects are financed through criminal methods, thus merging crime and war.

The spread of low intensity conflict received its impetus not only from the self-inflicted breakdown of the rules of war of the state system, but also from two other sources. One is the character of statebuilding in the periphery of the state system, and the other is found in modern technology. To attack and disrupt social systems, both high and low technology is appropriate, but high military technology is obsolete. Aircraft carriers, fighter planes and warships are hardly useful, but petrol bombs, and the ubiquitous pipe bomb, primed with commercial fertiliser and petrol, can create massive social dislocation. In addition, the potential of booby-trapped microchips and computer viruses as future instruments of conflict cannot be disregarded. All of these are essential ingredients of modern industrial society, which cannot be removed from civilians. ‘Civilian’ technology alone, therefore deprives all states from one of the cornerstones of their monopoly on war and security — the unarmed civilian population.

Some states, however, are more vulnerable than others.¹⁹ The vehicle for the globalisation of the European state system consisted of the colonies of the European powers. For various reasons, these colonies were not invested with the resources necessary for effective statebuilding. Very few of the necessary conditions for the construction of strong states have been present in the post-World War II era of decolonisation.²⁰ The general result has been that these new units formed largely weak states at independence, with a low capacity for providing security and, hence were fragile units of democracy. Nonetheless, being a mutual recognition society, these units were recognised as juridical entities by the international system of states, despite their obvious incapacity.²¹

The crucial link between security and democracy lies in the ability of the state to provide security to all its citizens on an equitable basis. In a democratic state, the coercive monopoly of the state is used to provide protection to all citizens as a basic right. This is achieved when the public and private domains can be legally demarcated, and the public domain becomes the terrain for the provision of collective goods such as welfare, and social, political and economic rights. Security, in the form of physical protection, is provided for each citizen against every other, against the arbitrary actions of the state, and against threatening actions from beyond the borders of the state. This protection can be provided by the agencies of the state itself (police and military forces), or can be privatised. Privatised security is tolerable in democratic states only up to a point. As long as private agencies are authorised and licenced by the state, and act under the general auspices of the laws of the state, they may be permitted. However, security cannot be privatised entirely, as it extends only to those customers who can pay for it.²² Democratic states are compelled to provide equitable protection to all citizens. This can only be done if the personnel of the state augment the security provided by the private sector.

The measure of the failure of the state to provide such protection is when the security dilemma arises within the state. This condition emerges when intermingled or adjacent groups of people start to sense that they have to take care of their own security. This condition can arise through a number of circumstances, one of which is a substantial weakening of the state. The dilemma emerges, according to Posen, when "... what one does to enhance one’s own security causes reactions that, in the end, can make one less secure."²³ When groups perceive the state as being incapable or unwilling to provide security, and they start to act of their own volition, security again becomes privatised, or communalised, in a sense.

Such security, however, further undermines the basis for democracy through the elicited spiral of destabilising countermeasures. These countermeasures are likely to emerge when the offensive and defensive capabilities of groups responding to their own insecurity cannot be distinguished by other, proximate groups, and when offensive countermeasures, especially by the second-order category of insecure actors, appear to be more effective. This creates the incentive to seek security through pre-emptive actions.²⁴ The destabilising spiral of events triggered by the security dilemma, as Kaufmann has shown, can lead to state collapse or disintegration once a crucial threshold of escalation has been passed. This two-step threshold entails, firstly, the recognition that, "... once violence [or abuse of state power by one group that controls it] reaches the point that ethnic communities cannot rely on the state to protect them, each community must mobilise to take responsibility for its own security."²⁵ The second step in the Kaufmann threshold is crossed, "... [o]nce a majority of either group comes to believe that the killing of non-combatants of their own group is not considered a crime by the other."²⁶

Both Posen and Kaufmann have argued emphatically that the inability of the state of Yugoslavia to solve the multiple internal security dilemmas that emerged after 1990, has eventually led to its demise and breakup into smaller units. These small mini-states of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia are being built into new units of security, and also into units of democracy. The small size of these units, however, does hold important implications for the quality of democracy they are able to deliver.

Security does not only have to be pursued by ever smaller political units. The security dilemma can also be addressed by constructing larger units. Where the security dilemma emerges between sovereign states in the international arena, the argument has been advanced that security can be gained through larger institutional configurations, such as security regimes.²⁷ Leaving aside the specific character of these international regimes, the general point can be made that democratic states whose citizens are threatened by forces from outside their borders, including non-state actors, may resort to the establishment of larger units of authority in order to regain security.

This may dispose of the threat to security, but their large size, as with the case of very small units, tends to generate problems with the quality of democracy they are able to deliver. Robert Dahl has raised the issue of trade-offs between two aspects of democracy that appear to be inversely related to the size of the democratic unit. He has argued that a general tendency is for democratic units to expand in response to certain kinds of problems. This happens when: "[t]he boundaries of a country ... are much smaller than the boundaries of the decisions that significantly affect the fundamental interests of its citizens."²⁸ Economic prosperity, environ-mental degradation and physical security are examples of such large issues.

The resulting larger transnational unit may well have increased capabilities to make decisions and implement policies able to deal with these problems, but at the expense of other democratic qualities. A larger unit "... reduces the capacity of the citizens of a country to exercise control over matters vitally important to them by means of their national govemment."²⁹ Smaller units (such as Slovenia and Croatia mentioned above) are then likely to produce the opposite trade-off — lower unit capability to deal with issues which impact on citizens from outside their boundaries, but greater citizen control over decisions reached (however insignificant) by their own governments. The adaptive strategy that Dahl favours, is to construct both larger and smaller units, transnational and subnational, and to make concerted efforts at increasing citizen control over the larger units.

Can transnational security regimes develop successfully in Africa, not as an alternative to states, but as an adjunct, contributing to the role of states, both as units of security and of democracy? The prospects are not good. The reason for this is that states serve as the basic building blocks of transnational security regimes.³⁰ The process of state formation and statebuilding in Africa, on the whole, has not produced states strong enough to serve this purpose.

Many African states came to independence through low intensity conflicts waged by liberation movements against colonial powers. Having assumed power in this way, the new state incumbents were left highly exposed and vulnerable to challengers from within, bent on using these very same methods of low intensity conflict against them. Initially, these state leaders held out with the help of other developing states, former colonial powers, and the two post-war superpowers. With such outside help, these states could hold onto their juridical status, in some cases. The Cold War and its superpower rivalry did exacerbate some internal conflicts but, overall, was seen as a stabilising factor in maintaining statehood through the respective support that the superpowers gave to their selected surrogates and allies in Africa. As Clapham puts it, "[t]he end of the Cold War did not so much cause the crises of African statehood which in some cases became increasingly obvious after 1989, as coincide with the failure of a conception of the state in Africa which had already become unsustainable."³¹

African states became ever more vulnerable to insurgency movements, operating within the strategic framework of low intensity conflict. The success of these movements became the conclusive evidence of the decline/demise of African states as units of security, not to speak of units of democracy. These insurgent movements not only rivalled juridical states as units of coercion, but also emerged as competing centres of security and, at times, as competing security rackets. Very few of them held a credible promise of becoming sites of democracy. Where these ‘warlord insurgents’ have succeeded in capturing the political centre, as they did in Liberia and Sierra Leone, they have not attempted to reconstruct and rebuild the state. Instead, as Reno has shown, their response has been to establish a "shadow state."³²

These leaders face an extraordinary security threat. They are confronted with a lack of superpower support for their incumbency and with stringent conditionalities for aid and loans which constrain their access to outside resources. Their domestic threats are from strongmen within their domain, who are able to mobilise deprived, humiliated and exploited civilians and arm them with anything from petrol bombs to military hardware from the unregulated international arms trade. The strategy open to these strongmen is the very same that brought the insurgent warlords to power: low intensity conflict. These new incumbents have responded by circumventing the reconstruction of the territorially defined, bureaucratically organised state. Instead, they have sought security in a unique and destructive way.

Creditor demands and conditionality requirements for smaller, more efficient bureaucracies were met by virtually closing these down. This not only ostensibly fits the demands for ‘leaner’, ‘non-rentseeking’ bureaucracies set by donors, but also provides one of the building blocks of their security arrangement: it denies an institutional base to rival strongmen, and eliminates an expensive trapping of statehood. The state leaders then proceed to privatise some state agencies, such as revenue collection, enter into commercial contracts with foreign firms to exploit valuable economic enclaves (such as diamonds and hardwood timber) and hire mercenary forces to secure this enterprise. The end result is a jurisdiction that does not bother with international boundaries or international treaty obligations. The shadow state is least of all geared to the delivery of security, or any other public goods to the civilian population.

To the contrary, by abandoning the resurrection of the territorial bureaucratic state, the public domain cannot be defined, security is privatised and redefined as a zero-sum good to be gained at the cost of society. Furthermore, the means for delivering any public, collective good is stripped down and virtually dismantled. Security thus defined, makes it "... even more unlikely that a weak state regime will opt for state building strategies that rely upon strong bureaucracies serving popular needs in exchange for popular support."³³ Indeed, the logic of security contained in these arrangements is to intensify exploitation of the resident population, and to remove any and every base of authority available to them. The end result is a parody of the European state model, and a unit of security utterly inhospitable to the establishment of democracy.

Extending democracy beyond the state is likely to be closely linked to the extension of security beyond the institutional boundaries of the state. These new units of democracy should not be seen as alternatives to state structures. Instead, these institutions are bound to require strong, efficient, capable and democratic states as their building blocks. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) provides a promising African start to the evolution of new units of security and democracy beyond the state, in no small part because some of its members are relatively strong states. Shadow states serve as the least promising building block for the evolution of new units of either security or of democracy. Concerted state-building remains the crucial necessary condition for peace-building and for the continued evolution of institutions of security and democracy in Africa.

This article is an edited version of a paper entitled African Prospects for Security and Democracy Beyond the State, presented at a conference on International Peace and Security: The African Experience, jointly sponsored by the South African Military Academy and the Institute for Security Studies, Saldanha, 21-23 September, 1998. It is published in support of Training for Peace in Southern Africa, a project sponsored by the Norwegian government and conducted by the ISS in partnership with ACCORD and NUPI.

P Evans, The Eclipse of the State? Reflections on Stateness in an Era of Globalisation, World Politics, 50, October 1997, pp. 62-87.



M Schoeman, Celebrating Westphalia’s 350th Birthday: Reflections on the State of the State in Southern Africa, The South African Journal of International Affairs, 5(2), Winter 1998, p. 16.



An expanded definition of security runs the risks inherent in the practice of concept stretching. The position taken here is to acknowledge the link between security (understood to refer to the narrow concern with physical safety) and democracy, development, environmental equilibrium, economic prosperity, social well-being, and so on. This point is not disputed. To the contrary, it is vigorously argued in this article that there is a vital link between democracy and physical safety. However, in order to examine this link, the different phenomena are described in terms of separate, distinct concepts. This serves the interests of conceptual clarity and analytical precision. See D Collier & J E Mahon Jr, Conceptual ‘Stretching’ Revisited: Adapting Categories in Comparative Analysis, American Political Science Review, 87(4), December 1993, pp. 845-855.



C Tilly, Reflections on the History of European State-making, in C Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1975, p. 15.



S E Finer, State- and Nation-Building in Europe: The Role of the Military, in Tilly, ibid., pp. 85-163; S E Finer, The History of Government From the Earliest Times, Volume 3: Empires, Monarchies, and the Modern State, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997; J S Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State — Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1988; C Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States: ad 990-1990, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1990.



S E Finer, State-building, State Boundaries and Border Control, Social Science Information, 13(4/5), 1974, pp. 83-88; M Mann, Nation-States in Europe and Other Continents: Diversifying, Developing, Not Dying, Daedalus, 122(3), 1988, pp. 116, 117.



Tilly, 1975, op. cit., p. 38.



G Ardant, Financial Policy and Economic Infrastructure of Modem States and Nations, in Tilly (ed.), op. cit., pp. 164-242.



C Tilly, War Making and State Making as Organized Crime, in P B Evans, D Rueschemeyer & T Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985, pp. 170, 171.



Ibid., p. 172.



R A Dahl, Democracy and its Critics, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1989, pp. 207-209.



K J Holsti, War, Peace, and the State of the State, International Political Science Review, 16(4), 1995, p. 325.



G Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, Science, 162, December 1968, pp. 1243-1248.



M van Creveld, The Transformation of War, Free Press, New York, 1991, p. 199; Tilly, 1975, op. cit., p. 42.



Tilly, ibid.



Van Creveld, op. cit. p. 90.



Ibid., pp. 87-94.



Ibid., pp. 57-62.



W Laqueur, Postmodern Terrorism, Foreign Affairs, 75(5), September/October 1996, pp. 24-36.



Migdal, op. cit., pp. 269-277.



R H Jackson & C G Rosberg, Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and Juridical in Statehood, World Politics, 35, October 1982, pp. 1-24.



M Shaw, Crime in Transition, in M Shaw et al., Policing the Transformation: Further Issues in South Africa’s Crime Debate, ISS Monograph Series, 12, Institute for Security Studies, Halfway House, April 1997, p. 21.



B R Posen, The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict, Survival, 35(1), Spring 1993, p. 28.



Ibid.



C Kaufmann, Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars, International Security, 20 (4), Spring 1996, p. 147.



Ibid., p. 159.



R Jervis, Cooperation under the Security Dilemma, World Politics, 30(2), January 1978, pp. 167-214.



Dahl, op. cit., p. 319.



Ibid.



The author endorses the view held by Anthoni van Nieuwkerk, Response, in H Solomon & M Schoeman (eds.), Security, Development and Gender in Africa, ISS Monograph Series, 27, Institute for Security Studies, Halfway House, August 1998, p. 29.



C Clapham, Africa and the International System: The Politics of State Survival, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, p. 159.



W Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995; W Reno, War, Markets, and the Reconfiguration of West Africa’s Weak States, Comparative Politics, 29(4), July 1997, pp. 493-510; W Reno, African Weak States and Commercial Alliances, African Affairs, 96, 1997, pp. 165-185. See also, R Cornwell, Africa Watch — Sierra Leone: RUF Diamonds?, African Security Review, 7(4), 1998, pp. 73-81.



Reno, 1997, ibid., pp. 166, 167.