Political orders that feature protracted sociopolitical contestation and violent conflict typically exhibit a range of ‘coercive organisations’ – actors with the capacity to exert large-scale violence for political purposes and control violence within their respective strongholds or constituencies. Contemporary intrastate conflicts feature at least five different types of coercive organisation, distinguished by their relation to the state and its government: governmental, quasi-governmental, hybrid, anti-regime and anti-state.
These coercive organisations are typically catalysts of violent conflict and manifestations of protracted political contestation, as well as core elements of both wartime and post-conflict political orders. As a result, they have significant influence over processes of state development. However, peacebuilding efforts often overlook this impact or consider it negatively, as they semi-automatically privilege coercive organisations representing ‘the state’. Particularly in contexts of protracted and deep contestation over the nature of political order, such favouritism is unjustified. This is because the state is usually the subject of contestation and because coercive organisations supposedly representing the state often defend the interests of a government that does not necessarily protect state-critical parameters like citizenship, national identity or political and human rights.
To be effective in such contexts, external peacebuilding interventions must demonstrate greater awareness of the multiple roles that each type of coercive organisation plays in times of political crisis and conflict. They must also exercise greater caution in the use of labels such as ‘state’, ´paramilitary’, ‘militia’, ‘rebel’ and ‘terrorist’. Coercive organisations may be partisan, but they can also enjoy greater legitimacy than the state among several different constituencies. Consider, for instance, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria. Coercive organisations can be violent, but they can also be effective vehicles of emancipation and representation. One can think of Hezbollah in Lebanon in this regard. Finally, coercive organisations can sustain political gridlock but also, paradoxically, clamour for progressive political change. Saraya al-Salam in Iraq offers an example.
More specifically, the research conducted for this report suggests that peacebuilding efforts must be based on four insights about the many coercive organisations that have acquired prominence as tools of political (dis)order in contemporary intrastate conflict:
Effective peacebuilding efforts must assess the demerits and merits of coercive organisations based on their interests, constituencies and behaviours in relation to the legitimacy of the political order they seek to realise. Different types of coercive organisation have in common that they promote or resist political change(s) in line with the interests of those who create, run or support them. The protracted nature of the political crisis and/or conflict they originate from, or contribute to, indicates that none of these interests necessarily has greater legitimacy than others and/or should enjoy privileged status. This means that state-centric and state-privileged notions must be removed for analytical purposes and the peacebuilding potential of coercive organisations assessed based on local perceptions, legitimacy and constituency support for their behaviour.
Effective peacebuilding views the violence mobilised by coercive organisations as a manifestation rather than a cause of the breakdown of political order. Coercive organisations demonstrate claims to power and resources of existing elites in relation to other existing elites, of emergent elites or of new social groups that (parts of) the ruling elite refuses to accommodate. Coercive organisations grow and emerge most easily in political orders with both formal and informal components of rule that are mired in deep political contestation and/or blockage because such orders are fragile and prone to fragmentation.
Effective peacebuilding influences coercive organisations on the basis of their behavioural incentives. These incentives are grounded in the domestic political economy interests of coercive organisations, the nature and level of foreign support they receive, and the expectations of their social constituencies. Coercive organisations are not monolithic entities. Different interests, intentions and objectives compete for dominance within each organisation. How they balance out at a particular point in time informs organisational and leadership behaviour. This balance can be influenced, especially in the case of hybrid coercive organisations that simultaneously compete and cooperate with the government.
Specifically in regard to hybrid coercive organisations, effective peacebuilding requires that the aim of external interventions corresponds with the prevailing interaction dynamic between a particular hybrid coercive organisation and governmental coercive organisations. Our research suggests four basic interaction dynamics: cooptation, accommodation, confrontation and gradual capture.
If the primary interaction dynamic between a hybrid coercive organisation and governmental coercive organisations is cooptation of a / several hybrid coercive organisation(s) by the government, peacebuilding interventions must focus on inclusive statebuilding
If the primary interaction dynamic between a hybrid coercive organisation and governmental coercive organisations is temporary accommodation, peacebuilding interventions must focus on preventing conflict
If the primary interaction dynamic is confrontation, peacebuilding interventions must focus on shortening the duration of violent conflict
If the primary interaction dynamic is gradual capture of the government by a / several hybrid coercive organisation(s), peacebuilding interventions must either engage in targeted statebuilding or focus on limiting aid and increasing diplomatic pressure – depending on whether the government is positively re-established or cannibalised.