From “Bush Bureaucracies” to Electoral Competition

• In Event: Democratization in the Shadow of Civil War: Parties, Warriors, and Voters

Abstract

Recently there has been growing interest taken by scholars in the transformation of rebel groups into political parties (Sindre, 2015; Ishiyama and Batta 2011; Manning 2007; Söderberg Kovacs 2007) and also the impact that this transformation has on party systems, democracy and peace duration (Marshall and Ishiyama, 2016; Ishiyama, 2015). This is a welcome addition to the literature, as such work integrates both studies of civil wars and the literature on political party development, crossing existing sub-disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, we extend this literature by seeking to link the recent work on the development of wartime rebel governance (Huang 2016; Berti 2015; Mampilly 2011) with the transformation of armed rebel groups into political parties. In particular, using data from (Florea 2014 and (Matanock 2016), we posit that: 1) rebel groups that have developed organized wartime bureaucracies are more likely to transform into political parties; and that 2) rebel parties that had more extensive wartime bureaucracies are more likely to succeed politically in the post-war electoral environment. We argue that this is because groups that have established more extensive bureaucracies that connect with constituents during the war develop the human and organizational capital to both successfully compete and succeed in an electoral environment after the war. Such electoral participation by rebels groups is also likely to promote a more sustainable peace in the aftermath of civil conflict. Using a data set that includes over 200 rebel groups, we examine whether such groups are more or less likely to transform into a political party, and whether more bureaucratized groups are more electorally successful than less bureaucratized groups. This study sheds light on the characteristics of rebel groups that are more likely to engage in the political process following conflict.

Authors

• John Ishiyama, University of North Texas

• Michael W Widmeier, University of North Texas