Issue cover

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2021): Volume 1, Issue 1 (2021)

View Issue TOC

From Guerrilla Administration to Fragile Statehood: Rebel Governance Legacies and the SPLMs Institutional Afterlife, 1983-2023

Abraham Kuol Nyuon
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19549256
Published: April 13, 2026

Abstract

This article develops wartime repertoires as institutional blueprints as an analytical lens for understanding rebel governance and post-conflict state formation: the splm as a political organisation, 1983–2023. It argues that the governance routines created by insurgent movements during war become durable organisational repertoires that shape how post-conflict states tax, adjudicate, command, and distribute authority. Drawing on within-case process tracing drawing on splm archives, new sudan council of churches documentation, oral histories with nasir and torit faction commanders, and ethnographic fieldwork in juba, malakal, and yei., the paper links the theoretical debates identified in rebel governance theory (mampilly; arjona; kasfir); historical institutionalism on path dependence; migdal's 'state-in-society' framework. argues that the governance repertoires developed by armed movements during insurgency are constitutive of not merely antecedent to post-conflict state institutions. to a comparative and historically grounded reading of South Sudan and the related cases assembled in the research design. The article advances three core claims. First, the SPLM/As wartime practices of taxation, military command, local justice, and movement discipline supplied both personnel and institutional habits to the post-2005 state. Second, personalized command and factional brokerage, while effective for insurgent survival, translated into fragmented chains of accountability once embedded inside state ministries and security institutions. Third, rebel governance legacies can be adaptive when they routinize local service delivery and negotiation, but they become pathological when coercive extraction is normalised as the primary technique of rule. The contribution is twofold: it rew

Full Text:

PDF HTML Cover Image

Read the Full Article

The HTML galley is loaded below for inline reading and better discovery.

Open HTML Open PDF

How to Cite

Abraham Kuol Nyuon (2026). From Guerrilla Administration to Fragile Statehood: Rebel Governance Legacies and the SPLMs Institutional Afterlife, 1983-2023. African Peace and Conflict Studies (Broader - Interdisciplinary), Vol. 1 No. 1 (2021): Volume 1, Issue 1 (2021). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19549256
EndNote (RIS) BibTeX

Keywords

Rebel governa nceSPLMpost-conflict statebuildingpath dependencearmed movement institutionalisation

Research Snapshot

Desktop reading view
Language
EN
Formats
HTML + PDF
Publication Track
Vol. 1 No. 1 (2021): Volume 1, Issue 1 (2021)
Current Journal
African Peace and Conflict Studies (Broader - Interdisciplinary)

References

  • Unknown Author (2015). Rebel Governance in Civil War. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781316182468
  • Catherine O. Johnson; Minh Nguyen; Gregory A. Roth; Emma Nichols; Shazia Alam; Degu Abate; Foad Abd-Allah; Ahmed Abdelalim; Haftom Niguse Abraha; Niveen ME Abu-Rmeileh; Oladimeji Adebayo; Abiodun M. Adeoye; Gina Agarwal; Sutapa Agrawal; Amani Nidhal Aichour; Ibtihel Aichour; Miloud Taki Eddine Aichour; Fares Alahdab; Raghib Ali; Nelson Alvis‐Guzmán; Nahla Anber; Mina Anjomshoa; Jalal Arabloo; Antonio Araúz; Johan Ärnlöv; Amit Arora; Ashish Awasthi; Maciej Banach; Miguel A. Barboza; Suzanne Barker‐Collo; Till Bärnighausen; Sanjay Basu; Abate Bekele Belachew; Yaschilal Muche Belayneh; Derrick Bennett; Isabela M. Benseñor; Krittika Bhattacharyya; Belete Biadgo; Ali Bijani; Boris Bikbov; Muhammad Shahdaat Bin Sayeed; Zahid A Butt; Lucero Cahuana-Hurtado; Juan Jesús Carrero; Félix Carvalho; Carlos A Castañeda-Orjuela; Franz Castro; Ferrán Catalá-López; Yazan Chaiah; Peggy Pei-Chia Chiang; Jee-Young J Choi; Hanne Christensen; Dinh‐Toi Chu; Monica Cortinovis; Albertino Damasceno; Lalit Dandona; Rakhi Dandona; Ahmad Daryani; Kairat Davletov; Barbora de Courten; Vanessa De la Cruz‐Góngora; Meaza Girma Degefa; Samath Dhamminda Dharmaratne; Daniel Díaz; Manisha Dubey; Eyasu Ejeta Duken; Dumessa Edessa; Matthias Endres; Emerito Jose A Faraon; Farshad Farzadfar; Eduarda Fernandes; Florian Fischer; Luísa Sório Flor; Morsaleh Ganji; Abadi Kahsu Gebre; Teklu Gebrehiwo Gebremichael; Birhanu Geta; Kebede Embaye Gezae; Paramjit Gill; E. V. Gnedovskaya; Hector Gómez‐Dantés; Alessandra C. Goulart; Giuseppe Grosso; Yuming Guo; Tarun Gupta; Arvin Haj‐Mirzaian; Arya Haj‐Mirzaian; Samer Hamidi; Graeme J. Hankey; Hamid Yimam Hassen; Simon I Hay; Mohamed Hegazy; Behnam Heidari; Nabeel Herial; Mohammad Ali Hosseini; Sorin Hostiuc; Seyed Sina Naghibi Irvani; Sheikh Mohammed Shariful Islam; Nader Jahanmehr; Mehdi Javanbakht (2019). Global, regional, and national burden of stroke, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. The Lancet Neurology, 18(5), 439-458. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1474-4422(19)30034-1
  • Jennifer J. Hardy (2006). Aid and Development in Uganda: A Country Approach. DigitalGeorgetown (Georgetown University Library). https://repository.digital.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/551672
  • Wood, Reed M. (2012). Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during Civil War. By Zachariah Cherian Mampilly. (Cornell University Press, 2011.). The Journal of Politics, 74(4), E37. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022381612000709
  • W.M. Alberico; A. De Pace; M. Ericson; Mikkel B. Johnson; A. Molinari (1988). Spin-isospin nuclear responses with hadronic probes. Physical Review C, 38(1), 109-119. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevc.38.109
  • Adam Lockyer (2010). The Dynamics of Warfare in Civil War. Civil Wars, 12(1-2), 91-116. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698249.2010.484906
  • Woodward, Peter (2005). Oystein H. Rolandsen, Guerrilla Government: political changes in the southern Sudan during the 1990s. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet (pb SEK200 – 91 7106 537 7). 2005, 201 pp.. Africa, 75(4), 635-637. https://doi.org/10.3366/afr.2005.75.4.635
  • Young, John (2012). The Fate of Sudan. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350223134
  • Peter Chonka (2016). The real politics of the Horn of Africa: money, war and the business of power, by Alex de Waal, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2015. Research Portal (King's College London), 337-339. https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2016.1173830#.v5dmzqk2ecm