With regards to the first two objectives, the project aimed to confirm two main hypotheses: first, that the nature of political order depends on the type and extent of international support received by sub-state authorities as well as on the heterogeneity of the international system; and second, that non-state armed actors are able to provide stability at the sub-state level when they receive the right kind of external support. These hypotheses have been covered through two book chapters (one published and one under review), three articles (one published and two in progress), one monograph (under review), and three blog posts.
Altogether, these publications participated towards addressing a gap in the state-building literature and go beyond the literature on “friction,” “hybridity,” and existing socio-historical scholarship on state formation (objective 3). As expected, these findings bridge the internalism of state analyses, scholarship on the international system, and the sociological literature on insurgency and counterinsurgency, while also challenging the “new war” paradigm. These findings address a gap in the state-building literature by focusing on undertheorized interactions between sub-state, state, and international actors and analyzing counterinsurgency strategies as part of the state-building process. These findings go beyond the state of the art in posing that some elements of conflict promote creative processes and produce more “indigenous” kinds of political authority, hence recasting important questions around state formation, state failure, and political order. In addition to this theoretical work, the PI further developed new empirical knowledge on alternative governance networks, state failure, and state formation (objective 4) by using data he had collected during previous fieldwork. This data was used to develop two new publications on rebel governance in Afghanistan: one book chapter in Dutch (which contributed to further establishing his position in the Dutch academic community) and one article published in Small Wars & Insurgencies as part of a special issue on rebel legitimacy. The PI developed further comparative knowledge by co-authoring three articles with experts on Somalia (article in progress), South Sudan and Mozambique (article in progress), and Mali (article in progress). The PI also developed a parallel research agenda on the ethics of fieldwork to reflect the challenges of gathering data in and on extremely violent conflicts, with one co-authored article published in Perspectives on Politics, and one co-authored blog post in The Monkey Cage (The Washington Post).
Since the beginning of this project, six publications have been produced or finalized (three articles and three book chapters), with another seven currently under review (one monograph and one book chapter) or in progress (four articles and one edited volume). This has been accompanied by four blog posts as well as many paper presentations, workshop participations, invited talks, and guest lectures.
