Contestation & elites: implications for security and justice initiatives

Development is a continuous series of social contestations between and within elites and citizens about the purpose, organisation and performance of public authority necessary for societies to progress. These can be peaceful, but at the rough edge of such contestations violence, conflict, crime and ‘terror’ can replace negotiation, demonstration and civil disobedience.

Such ‘rougher’ contestation can be short-lived, as in China in 1989 or Tunisia in 2011, or more long-term, as in Afghanistan, Lebanon and South Sudan. Whether short or long, elite groups typically hold the upper hand in such contestations as they dominate informal and formal positions of power, decision-making and resources. Where contestations turn violent, social trust is typically further reduced and rules become even more biased as well as less impartially enforceable. In consequence, elites face fewer constraints to pursue their aims. They also have more to lose. This is why elites tend to firmly control the sharp tools of contestation – namely those formal and informal organisations and mechanisms that can create security/insecurity and justice/injustice – which they use to protect their own interests. This includes – but is not limited to – state institutions such as the police or military. Yet, these institutions are often only a part of the picture and typically serve different factions of those elements of the elite that rule the state.

If this picture is accurate, many developmental efforts that aim to increase the quality of security and justice outcomes for ordinary citizens suffer from multiple shortcomings (some are set out here and here). One is that such efforts tend to insufficiently reflect that they engage in processes of social contestation that are within a whisker of violence. Another is that they privilege those elite groups that run the state while their legitimacy is often only optically greater than that of others. Such shortcomings prevent security and justice development efforts from working on the basis of realistic change strategies, with the predictable consequence that many efforts have either had a suboptimal effect (e.g. Yemen), done harm (e.g. the DRC) or failed (e.g. South Sudan). A final shortcoming is that security and justice development efforts rarely question the elite interests that security and justice organisations actually protect. This poses an acute challenge to such interventions.

If security and justice organisations and mechanisms protect elite interests, the first step for any pro-development intervention is to identify these interests, find out how they are safeguarded and determine the consequences of the status quo. For example, economic elite interests can include control over natural-resource exploitation, the ownership of property and assets (such as transport networks) that can be used for licit and illicit activities or the extension of exclusive business advantages (such as monopolies and licenses). Socio-political elite interests can include the maintenance of status (such as allocation of patronage or nepotism) or the protection of privileged constituencies or belief sets (for example ethnic or religious).

Where this is the case, better security and justice outcomes for non-elites can only be achieved by understanding such interests as the boundaries of change, at least in the short-term. Interventions should, therefore, be designed to work with these interests to widen the scope for change. In keeping with the logic of social contestation, four programming strategies can help, spanning a continuum from cooptation to opposition: speaking to, altering, diluting and confronting elite interests.

• Working with elites to improve security and justice by building on their interests. One example is the security pact the US is offering Afghanistan: it secures (parts of) the elite and will probably also benefit the general population.
• Trading short-term support of elite interests for the potential of longer-term change. In El Salvador, for example, a truce between government and gangs has been supported to create a window of opportunity for further stabilising measures and reforms, which can influence elite interests in turn.
• Stimulating competition between elites to weaken certain power holders to the benefit of others on the assumption this will improve security and justice in the longer-term. An example is US sponsorship of the Awakening Councils in Iraq to balance the Mahdi army and Al-Qaeda, in part to create more conducive conditions for security and justice development.
• Orchestrating active resistance to elite interests. One example is the Dodd-Frank Act: more stringent requirements on DRC-sourced minerals confront the elite’s interest in maintaining insecurity in the country’s east for self-enrichment.

Which strategy is appropriate in a given context will depend on a country’s political-economy and on the risk appetite and resource envelope (political, financial and human) of those engaging there. Unfortunately, security and justice development efforts are rarely underpinned by any of the strategies outlined above. Yet, they offer a critical starting point for working towards more impartial, objective and accountable security and justice institutions.

The final challenge is that development actors who engage with the sharp tools of social contestation at the rough edge will inevitably face the dilemma of how to deal with bloodshed at some point. This requires not only political pressure and strategies based on elite interests that are sometimes backed by credible threats, but also the ability to tell a story of progress from the rough edge that is hard to convey to those who are so far removed from it.