Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform (GFN-SSR)

Mission without end? Peacekeeping in the African political marketplace

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How can the international community engage successfully in peacemaking and peacekeeping? How can it develop effective exit strategies for such engagements? This article from the journal of International Affairs argues that, in most African conflicts, peace engagement can only be successful if international actors focus on achieving a bargain between elites based on the realities of the political marketplace. If they do not, they risk creating a mission without end.

Existing approaches to peace engagement are based on the assumption that success depends on creating or restoring functioning state institutions. However, since many of Africa’s most difficult conflicts occur in countries in which any such state institutions are subordinated to social affinities and patronage networks, such approaches are often ineffective.

To ensure success, the most important component of any peace engagement should be the achievement of a bargain between elites. This is because the political life of most African countries affected by conflict is organised according to a patrimonial marketplace. This can be understood as an auction of loyalties in which provincial elites seek to extract from a metropolitan centre the best price for their allegiance.

• In the patrimonial marketplace, the best outcome of conflict is an inclusive buy-in of all elites by the best resourced actor in the marketplace – usually the government.
• Angola after the death of Savimbi is a good example of a buy-in, where the ruling party was able to win the support of almost all rival elites for a relatively cheap price.
• This outcome always falls short of stability because all loyalties are provisional pending shifts in the value of allegiances in the political marketplace.
• The other possible outcome of conflict in the patrimonial marketplace is equilibrium, with different centres of patronage controlling comparable levels of resources. However this is rarely feasible. 

In most cases, a successful peace engagement will therefore be one that supports the most inclusive and robust buy-in. This bargain must be sufficiently well grounded in the relative value of the parties to survive the withdrawal of its international sponsors. If it is not, the international actors will be unable to leave. They will be forced to stay indefinitely as guarantors to an artificial bargain. International actors face four major problems in the patrimonial marketplace:

1. International involvement influences the price of loyalty. In the DRC, for example, it has driven down the price of provincial loyalty by endorsing the outcome of a winner-takes-all election.
2. International actors may feel themselves committed to enforcing a peace deal, which domestic players only supported instrumentally and may no longer consider representative of the patrimonial market.
3. Mediators and peacekeepers may attempt to solve every micro-dispute in the overall conflict in the attempt to secure peace. This is unlikely to be successful because their very involvement skews the marketplace.
4. International guarantors may be unaware of their role in the political marketplace. The more they are driven by good intentions, the less likely they are to see the distorting role they are playing.

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