Ethnic Politics and State Power in Africa
The Logic of the Coup-Civil War Trap

This book models the trade-off that rulers of weak, ethnically-divided states face between coups and civil war.

Philip Roessler (Author)

9781107176072, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 December 2016

418 pages, 13 b/w illus. 6 maps 18 tables
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.8 cm, 0.69 kg

'Roessler's work makes important contributions to scholarship in comparative politics and security studies. By placing ethnic politics and the shadow of coups at the core of rulers' strategies for political survival in Africa, the book adds significant depth to our understanding of African politics. Its focus on the importance of rulers' bargaining over state power as a source of con?ict also complements existing explanations of civil war that disproportionately emphasize the role of rebel behaviour.' Juste Codjo, International Studies Review

Why are some African countries trapped in vicious cycles of ethnic exclusion and civil war, while others experience relative peace? In this groundbreaking book, Philip Roessler addresses this question. Roessler models Africa's weak, ethnically-divided states as confronting rulers with a coup-civil war trap - sharing power with ethnic rivals is necessary to underwrite societal peace and prevent civil war, but increases rivals' capabilities to seize sovereign power in a coup d'état. How rulers respond to this strategic trade-off is shown to be a function of their country's ethnic geography and the distribution of threat capabilities it produces. Moving between in-depth case studies of Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo based on years of field work and statistical analyses of powersharing, coups and civil war across sub-Saharan Africa, the book serves as an exemplar of the benefits of mixed methods research for theory-building and testing in comparative politics.

Part I. Motivation and Central Argument: 1. Introduction
Part II. Puzzle and Theory: 2. A meso-level approach to the study of civil war
3. Theories of ethno-political exclusion
4. The strategic logic of war in Africa
Part III. Theory-Building Case Study: 5. Political networks, brokerage and cooperative counterinsurgency: civil war averted in Darfur
6. The strategic logic of ethno-political exclusion: the breakdown of Sudan's Islamic movement
7. Political exclusion and civil war: the outbreak of the Darfur civil war
Part IV. Testing the Argument: 8. Empirical analysis of the coup-civil war trap
9. A model-testing case: explaining Africa's Great War
Part V. Extensions: 10: The strategic logic of peace in Africa
11. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC], Comparative politics [JPB]