Generals of South Sudan's army celebrate during official independence day ceremonies. (Photo: Steve Evans)
Elites in fragile states: from predation to protection
DLP Research Fellow Suda Perera will present findings at an expert discussion on 4 December in The Hague, organised for the Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law. The Platform aims to inform Dutch development policy and its implementation in fragile and conflict-affected settings.
The meeting, All for the few and the few for themselves?, will be attended by around two dozen invitees who will explore how elite interests and coalitions shape the priorities, culture, structure and accountability of security and justice organisations in fragile environments. It will be held at the Conflict Research Unit (CRU) at The Netherlands Institute of International Relations.
Assuming that, in a fragile state, security and justice provision is generally confined to that country’s elite interests, participants will ask what might persuade those elites to offer the same protection to society at large, and support or provide it as a public good?
Suda’s contribution will open the meeting. She will aim to illuminate the bigger picture by presenting key findings from a range of DLP research on the role of leaders and coalitions in development in fragile environments.
Drawing on her own current research for DLP in the DRC, she will talk about elite interest there in maintaining a status quo which supports the politics of predation. Even so, she will argue, there is potential for change through non-state dynamics, and the potential to persuade the non-state elite to work for positive change.
She will also discuss four major DLP research papers. Two (on Yemen; and on Zimbabwe) examine how, even in negotiated settlements, elites may place their own political survival above the public good and so hinder developmental progress.
Two more (on Somaliland; on Medellin, Colombia) show how elite groups can become drivers and even accelerators of change and a profound shift away from predatory leadership, if they buy in to the advantages that development can bring to both themselves and to wider society.
