International assistance in protracted crises is typically framed as a response to state weakness, yet in South Sudan it has become embedded within the very structure of governance. The humanitarian–development–peace nexus operates not only as a support system but as a parallel mode of rule: it sustains lives and basic services while simultaneously reshaping incentives, insulating elites from fiscal pressure, and reproducing forms of dependency that are politically produced rather than economically inevitable. Situated within debates on aid effectiveness, critical humanitarianism, and political settlements, the manuscript examines how aid architecture actively shapes, rather than merely responds to, South Sudan’s political economy. Focusing on South Sudan, with comparative reference to Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the study addresses three interrelated questions: how the scale, modality, and conditionality of aid flows influence elite incentives, particularly in relation to taxation, public goods provision, and state-building; how humanitarian systems—through market creation, salary supplementation, and service delivery—substitute for state functions in ways that may entrench rather than reduce dependency; and how the internal political economy of the aid industry, including donor priorities, INGO survival imperatives, and UN bureaucratic dynamics, shapes programming decisions independently of recipient needs. Methodologically, the study combines aid flow analysis using OECD DAC, UN OCHA Financial Tracking Service, and World Bank disbursement data (2005–2023) with interviews involving UNMISS, OCHA, WFP, and bilateral donor officials in Juba. It also draws on institutional ethnography of coordination mechanisms such as the High-Level Revitalization F