African Conflicts and Informal Power

Big Men and Networks

Edited by Mats Utas

In the aftermath of an armed conflict in Africa, the international community both produces and demands from local partners a variety of blueprints on how to reconstruct state and society. The aim is to re-formalize the state after what is viewed as a period of fragmentation and informalization caused by armed conflict. In reality, both African economies and politics are very much informal in character, with informal actors (including so-called ‘Big Men’) often using their positions in the formal structure as a means to reach informal goals.

Through a variety of in-depth case studies–from DRC to Somali to Liberia amongst others–this book shows how important informal political and economic networks are in many of the continent’s conflict areas. More than this, it demonstrated that without a proper understanding of their impacts in areas such as borderlands and in ‘narco-states’ such as Guinne-Bissau, attempts to ‘formalise’ African states, particularly those emerging from wars, will be in vain.

Contents

Introduction: Bigmanity and network governance in African conflicts–By Mats Utas

Part 1: Country case studies

1. Informal political structures, resources and the Ugandan army; military entrepreneurialism in the Ugandan-Congolese borderland–Koen Vlassenroot and Sandrine Perot
2. Big Man Business in the Borderland of Sierra Leone–Maya Mynster Christensen
3. The politics of impersonation: Corps habillés, Nouchis, and subaltern Bigmanity in Côte d’Ivoire–Karel Arnaut
4. Demobilized or remobilized? Liberia’s remaining rebel structures in post-war security settings–Mariam Persson
5. ‘Castles in the sand’: Informal networks and power brokers in the Northern Mali periphery–Morten Böås

Part 2: Thematic case studies

6. Critical states and cocaine connections–By Henrik Vigh
7. African Big Men and international criminal justice: the case of Sierra Leone–By Gerhard Anders
8. Big Man bargaining in African conflicts–By Ilmari Käihkö
9. Intermediaries of peace or agents of war: the role of ex-midlevel commanders in Big Man networks–By Anders Themnér
10. The Big Men commanding conflict resources in Africa: the DRC case–By Ruben de Koning

About the Author

Mats Utas is associate professor and senior researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute. Between 2009 and 2011 he headed the Africa programme at the Swedish National Defence College. He has published in journals such as African Affairs and Journal of Modern African Studies and in edited books on historical warfare, child and youth combatants, media, refugees, gender in war zones, post-war reconstruction and urban poverty. He is the co-author of Navigating youth, generating adulthood: social becoming in an African context (NAI Press, 2006). Utas has conducted extensive fieldwork in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and more recently researched the roles of businessmen in the Somali conflict during fieldworks in Kenya and Dubai.