Abstract
The reintegration of rebels after war is a key security challenge. This article analyses the post-war transformation of rebels as a process of joining the established political elite. The political careers of former rebels vary. While some rise to senior political positions, others fail to consolidate their power. Taking theoretical notions of Pierre Bourdieu as its point of departure, this article outlines the central role of social capital in the post-war political field, which allows for an analysis and explanation of differences in rebel inclusion and exclusion. The article argues that the political careers of rebels are dependent on the accumulation of vertical and horizontal social capital in elite–mass and intra-elite networks. Case studies of Liberia and Kosovo demonstrate the plausibility of our thesis and the fruitfulness of a Bourdieusian approach in studying the political transformation of armed groups. This article contributes to the debate on the post-war reintegration of rebels as well as to the debate on practice approaches in international relations and security studies.
Introduction
The inclusion of former rebels is one of the central challenges after violent conflicts and a key factor defining the success of civil war endings. Armed groups have to be integrated into the political and economic life of the post-war society in order to prevent them from re-engaging in armed conflict. Scholars of peacebuilding and security studies have devoted a great deal of attention to this process. A lot of policy-oriented research has been carried out on disarming and demobilizing former combatants in the context of security sector reform (Muggah, 2009; Dudouet et al., 2012). Another strand of the discussion has focused on the dynamics of transforming armed groups into effective political parties that are capable of participating in the democratic process (Söderberg Kovacs, 2007; Manning, 2008; De Zeeuw, 2008). Other studies have highlighted various forms of political participation of former fighters in policymaking, public debate or political campaigning (Christensen and Utas, 2008; Berdal and Ucko, 2009).
This article contributes to the debate on the post-war reintegration of armed groups by emphasizing a Bourdieusian-inspired field theoretic approach that makes it possible to focus on hitherto neglected aspects of this transformation process and offers an alternative account of the inclusion and exclusion of rebels. Moreover, we apply Bourdieu’s concepts to original case material to show the usefulness of this approach. We start from the assumption that the transformation of former rebels can also be analysed as a process of elite formation or integration into the political class, which may or may not be successful. Elites are ‘persons who are able, by virtue of their strategic positions in powerful organizations, to affect national political outcomes regularly and substantially’ (Field et al., 1990: 152). Rebels may succeed or fail in acquiring these strategic positions and becoming part of the evolving elite settlement. While inclusive elite settlements are a precondition for democratization, exclusive ones produce new inequalities between winners and losers. From a security point of view, excluding rebels is especially problematic as it might turn them into spoilers of the peace process and risks a relapse into violence.
The article proposes Bourdieu’s notion of the political field and social capital to show how the transformation from rebels to elites can be studied and to explain the different post-war political careers of former rebels in two cases. Central to Bourdieu’s notion of the political field is the political or social capital defined by its mobilizing power. A focus on the reproduction of social capital in the political field is particularly useful for understanding the transformation of rebel groups, because it is essential for former rebels to build new alliances with both constituencies and factions in the ruling class in order to consolidate their power. Furthermore, applying a field approach allows us to think relationally; that is, to conceptualize individuals and groups as interconnected and interdependent in networks of relations. More precisely, a field analysis allows us to see whether actors take up positions in opposition to or in alliance with other players in the field (Swartz, 2013: 58, 72). This kind of analysis reveals forms of competition and collusion between actors and allows us to examine the social processes and struggles through which political ties might be formed or broken. A field approach is well suited to an analysis of how social relations are reproduced in ways that favour an inclusion or exclusion of former violent actors and, thus, the formation and reproduction of elite power. While Bourdieu has developed his ideas about the political field with reference to consolidated democracies in western Europe, we seek to demonstrate that this concept can also fruitfully be applied to less developed post-war contexts. Scholars increasingly apply elements of Bourdieu’s thinking to the realm of international politics, demonstrating the potential of his theory for the disciplines of international relations and security studies (Leander, 2011; Adler-Nissen, 2012). By employing Bourdieu’s concepts for an understanding of post-conflict transformation processes, the article also contributes to this body of literature.
We have the following research questions: Why are some rebels able to attain the highest public offices after war, while others achieve only subordinate positions? How can we explain their success or failure in terms of obtaining and maintaining elite positions? Our proposition is that actors in the post-war political field have to build personalized networks in order to gain support and secure access to resources. Thus, the political careers of former rebels differ, depending on their accumulation of vertical and horizontal social capital in elite–mass and intra-elite networks. In the first section, starting from Bourdieu’s theory, we outline elements of the political field of the post-war society with a focus on the role of social capital in that field as our theoretical framework. In the second section, the different career trajectories of rebels in two cases, Liberia and Kosovo, will be analysed. Here, we use the categories of political field and social capital as a research tool, guiding the empirical analysis and explaining dynamics of social mobility based on empirical observations. We present empirical material gathered during field research in both countries. The last section draws a short conclusion and evaluates the potential of Bourdieu’s sociology for an alternative understanding of post-war politics.
Social capital and the political field of the post-war society
Bourdieu understands the political field as an arena of struggle for political power, where all contestants seek political authority (Bourdieu, 1991; Swartz, 2013: 37, 68–69). The political field is stratified and structured around competition for control of the state. Actors in dominant and subordinate positions struggle over the unequal distribution of political capital, which is determined by its mobilizing power. Political capital is a variant of social capital and represents the capability of mobilizing support for a candidate, cause or party (Swartz, 2013: 65). Bourdieu distinguishes between two types of political capital (Bourdieu, 1991: 194–195; Swartz, 2013: 65–66): Personal capital is attached to an individual politician. It may take the form of either professional experience in public service or of ‘heroic’ or ‘prophetic’ capital in the sense of Max Weber’s charisma (Bourdieu, 1991: 194). By contrast, delegated capital represents the resources of an apparatus or party in the form of political offices or instruments of mobilization. Here, political capital is institutionalized and only delegated to the individual politician. All actors also have a specific habitus defined as a practical sense of the stakes, strategies and rules within the political field. Players in the field need a feeling for the political game and knowledge of problems and concepts that allow them to master a specific jargon and political rhetoric (Bourdieu, 1991: 176–179). In his writings, Bourdieu focuses on the antinomies of democratic politics and on the closed character of the French political class. Bourdieu sees a major problem in the fact that professional politicians are entrusted with the expression of the will of their constituencies through the act of delegation but pursue strategies that are more oriented to each other than to their constituencies outside the field (Wacquant, 2005: 13–16; Swartz, 2013: 64–78). As a result, the political field has acquired a relative autonomy from outside interests and electoral sanction.
Applying Bourdieu’s notion to post-war contexts is not straightforward. After a civil war, polarization is strong, elites are divided and military logic predominates. Building peace, democracy and the state means that basic institutions are reformed or re-established. Organizations institutionalizing political capital are weakened while the personal capital involved in obtaining elite positions correspondingly gains in importance. As a result, the political field is typically less rigid and state-centric than in western European contexts. The field is characterized by strongly contested boundaries and rules of the game that weaken its autonomy and allow various actors to potentially refashion the logic of the field. Moreover, several actors emerge as counter-elites and protagonists of change with new political ideas and programmes. Rebel leaders, war economy entrepreneurs, civil opposition politicians, leaders of diaspora groups and prominent dissidents bid for power by striving to convert their various kinds of capital into political capital. Thus, they challenge the members of the established elite and incumbent politicians who strive to maintain their field positions and defend the status quo. However, there are often also continuities. Many of the challengers have been politically active well before the war, often as members of the political establishment. They already have a specific political habitus and are not newcomers to the political field. The result is a reproduction of dominant practices, as the cases of Cambodia and Lebanon exemplify (Roberts, 2001; El-Husseini, 2012). This limits the potential for change. The political field is also challenged through the intervention of external powers, which ranges from mediation in peace negotiations to establishing protectorates with extraordinary governing powers. External actors often try to change the rules of the game by enforcing respect for democratic procedures or by promoting a bureaucratic mode of field reproduction through an emphasis on good governance. They can be considered part of a symbolic struggle in which they are trying to impose their legitimate world view. Peacebuilding missions, however, are often confronted with the resistance of local elites and entrenched power groups, so that compromised forms of peacebuilding and political reform are common. Bosnia and Afghanistan are exemplary cases (Zürcher et al., 2013; Hensell and Gerdes, 2012). This, too, limits the potential for transformation.
While the political field in post-war societies differs in important aspects from the field in consolidated democracies, there are also commonalities. As in every other political field, the agents need to accumulate various kinds of capital. Political actors scramble for the spoils of peace and practices of patrimonializing collective resources are widespread. Early access to economic capital is especially important for politicians in order to reward loyalty and to make credible promises of future patronage and distribution to their supporters (Manning, 2008: 145, 153). With the professionalization of political careers, the cultural capital of mastering the vocabulary of experienced politicians, donors and diplomats becomes equally important. Most important, however, is political or social capital. The post-war political field is characterized by the reproduction of social capital in a way that allows for an accommodation between former enemies as well as between old and new actors.
According to Bourdieu, social capital is ‘the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition – or in other words, to membership in a group’ (Bourdieu, 2005: 101). Social capital exists in the form of connections and personal relations. The amount of social capital an actor owns depends on the size of the network and the number of associates that can be mobilized as well as on the amount of capital possessed by each of those associates. Thus, social capital is group capital, possessed by individuals, to reproduce lasting relationships that can generate material and symbolic profits. People with a lot of social capital are sought after for their connections and influence. They are well known and also worthy of being known (Bourdieu, 2005: 101–103). Hence, social capital is also governed by the logic of knowledge and acknowledgement so that it functions as symbolic capital in the form of prestige, popularity or reputation that confers legitimacy (Bourdieu, 2005: 104, Fn 17; Bourdieu, 1998: 47, 102–104). In the political field, actors need to accumulate social capital in the form of personal relationships in vertical and horizontal networks. We distinguish between two sorts of social capital that are at stake in elite–mass and intra-elite relations:
The first one is vertical social capital accumulated within hierarchal patron–client networks that extend beyond the boundaries of the political field (Swartz, 2013: 69). Such networks are based on dyadic ties between a higher-level patron and lower-level client, who are characterized by unequal status, power or resources. They exchange material privileges and favours and their relationship is characterized by reciprocity and the calculation of mutual advantages (Eisenstadt and Roniger, 1984: 29–50). Typically, the patron has to distribute resources in the form of grants and lucrative jobs among his clients, for which they provide him with political support. The patron thus converts economic capital into social capital. Dyadic patron–client relationships develop into vertically structured networks within the hierarchical order of positions in a field (Clapham, 1982: 18–33; Eisenstadt and Roniger, 1984: 220–245). For aspiring elites, democratic elections and the necessity of attracting votes play a crucial role in the reproduction of social capital. They need to accumulate social capital in the form of relations to opinion leaders and grassroots actors, who deliver votes in exchange for future patronage (Kitschelt and Wilkinson, 2007). The greater the number of clients participating in the distribution of resources, the higher the volume of social and symbolic capital of the patron.
The second form of social capital is the horizontal one, which is mostly reproduced in power circles at the elite level. Ties within these networks are formed on an equal basis as intra-elite connections. Members of the power elite reproduce social capital in order to forge alliances with other strategic groups and factions of the ruling class. The result can be a ‘reciprocal assimilation of elites’ (Gramsci, 1971: 221), which leads to wide co-optation and inclusion of potential rivals. Typical practices feature collaboration in the exploitation of resources and the building of distributive coalitions. This also includes strategies of ‘concatenation’ and ‘straddling’, which refer to the simultaneous possession of posts in different sectors (Bayart, 1993: 150–179). Inclusion in the power elite depends in part on the symbolic capital of individual elites. Representing a large constituency or a wide-ranging network or leading an effective political party, which enjoys wide popular support, constitutes symbolic capital. As a force to be reckoned with, such actors are likely to be co-opted into established networks or electoral coalitions, which facilitates integration into the political class. In this case, as the leader of a large clientele, the patron is converting symbolic capital into horizontal social capital at the elite level in order to gain access to the power elite.
The political inclusion of former rebels is at the heart of most peace processes. If rebels are able to achieve a negotiated settlement or even military victory, the post-war order also gives them opportunities for political careers. They thus become actors in the political field. This is especially true for the political and military leadership as well as higher-ranking officers. Leaders and administrative staff of armed groups are often university-educated and were politically active before the war, not least as members of the political class (Schlichte, 2009: 32–38). However, the probability of success for rebels for reproduction in an elite position is dependent on the accumulation of social capital. At the end of a war, rebels usually have various sorts of capital available, such as the cultural capital of military expertise, the ‘heroic capital’ (Bourdieu, 1991: 194) of warrior charisma or revolutionary legitimacy, the economic capital of the war entrepreneur or the social capital of popular or external support. When a peace agreement acknowledges the political legitimacy of rebels, all these various sorts of capital acquire a symbolic quality in the sense that they become recognized by other actors, such as broader segments of the population, the embattled government or international actors. Thus, they become symbolic capital. Initially, these power resources usually allow rebels to acquire positions in the political field in the form of public offices in an interim government. However, in order to consolidate their positions in the long term, they need to convert these sorts of capital into social capital in the political field. After a war, rebels must accumulate and reproduce social capital by building vertical and horizontal alliances. Moreover, they have to acquire the political habitus of the experienced politician, the patron or ‘big man’ (or woman). They need a practical sense of alliances, allegiances and relations in the political field, as well as a sense of the political clout of other actors (Bourdieu, 1991: 194).
We argue that the central role of social capital can explain the positioning of the actors in the political field and, thus, the different career trajectories of former rebels. This argument applies to cases in which intrastate wars were ended through negotiated solutions or rebel victories and, as a result, rebels were able to take over elite positions. The range of rebel-to-politician transformations is extensive. It includes cases of militarily successful insurgents who were able to acquire strong power positions (Rwanda), cases where rebels gained prominent state positions but had to share power with other elite factions (Afghanistan, Burundi, Kosovo, Bosnia, Lebanon, El Salvador, Mozambique), and cases where they remained marginal political actors (the Philippines, Liberia, Tajikistan). To answer our research question, we selected Kosovo and Liberia as two contrasting cases, which represent two quite different outcomes. In both cases, the rebels had roughly the same initial power position directly at the end of the war, as they were more or less winners and became part of a transitional government. However, while rebels in Kosovo became an established part of the political elite and were able to take over numerous government positions, in Liberia, only a limited number succeeded in acquiring a few mid-level administrative and legislative positions.
The two qualitative case studies will explain the post-war success and failure of rebels with the help of the theoretical vocabulary. We employ Bourdieu’s concepts as a research tool to reconstruct the career trajectories of individuals and groups. For reasons of space, we do this in a very condensed form. The case studies are meant to show the plausibility of our thesis and to demonstrate the fruitfulness of the Bourdieusian approach in studying the political transformation of armed groups. Unless otherwise indicated, the following accounts are based on the authors’ own research during four field trips between 2011 and 2012 to Liberia and Kosovo. We conducted 70 semi-structured interviews with former rebels and members of the elite as well as political observers, and gathered data on biographies and individual careers as well as on the overall elite structure.
From rebels to political elites in Liberia and Kosovo
Rebel careers and the politics of co-optation in Liberia
Over the past few decades, Liberia was the scene of two successive, but interrelated, civil wars. The first one (1989–1996) brought Charles Taylor, the leader of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), to power. In 1997, Taylor was elected President of an internationally recognized government. In the second civil war from 2000 to 2003, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the smaller Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) challenged the Taylor government. LURD and MODEL had their origins in groups that had already fought Taylor before, and neither of them had been able to obtain positions of power in the Taylor regime after 1997. Ethnically, LURD was dominated by the Mandingo, while MODEL’s leadership was almost exclusively Krahn (see below on these groups). The second civil war eventually forced Taylor into exile and a transitional government integrating the warring factions and civilian elites took over. In late 2005, parliamentary and presidential elections were held and the civilian professional, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, subsequently assumed the presidency (Gerdes, 2013: 168–175). Despite their military success, the rebels of LURD and MODEL have not been able to rise to the highest level of power in post-war Liberia. While LURD rebels initially obtained some senior elected and appointed positions, their success is, by and large, defined by the mid-level positions in the civil service that a few leading members secured. Since 2006, the LURD’s share of positions of power has steadily declined. MODEL’s leaders have had even less success in obtaining and retaining elite positions.
Liberia’s post-war political field was shaped by two interdependent factors: the peace negotiations and international intervention. Although the rebels controlled large amounts of territory and were successful in ousting Taylor, they had not been able to achieve a clear military victory. As none of the parties to the war had the military strength and legitimacy that would have allowed it to assert control on its own, they pursued a power-sharing arrangement to be guaranteed by an international force. The resulting National Transitional Government of Liberia (NGTL) integrated representatives of the rebels, the former Taylor government, and actors from political parties and civil society. The rebels received almost a third of the seats in the transitional parliament and almost half of the ministerial posts in the NGTL, including a number of particularly lucrative positions (Gerdes, 2013: 172–174). The transitional government period was perceived by all political actors as a ‘license to plunder’ (Sawyer, 2008: 180) and was characterized by the private appropriation of economic capital at all levels of the state.
Another major player in the political field was the International Contact Group for Liberia (ICGL) 1 , which had already been established during the war. The ICGL eventually not only mediated the peace agreement but also influenced its terms. Importantly, it recognized the rebels as legitimate political actors and, thus, endowed LURD and MODEL with symbolic capital. The international actors directly reinforced the position of the rebel leaders by investing in them the authority to decide which members of their groups would be allocated interim positions. However, the ICGL had also insisted on the inclusion of civilians in the interim government, and imposed restrictions on the eligibility of interim government elites (Hayner, 2007). The Chairman and Vice Chairman had to be civilian politicians and neither they nor senior ministers of the transitional government could stand in the 2005 presidential and legislative elections. External actors tried in other ways to reduce the scope of action of the warring party elites, notably by deciding on a UN assets freeze and travel ban on specific individuals. Thus, the ICGL impacted on the political field by curbing the opportunities for accumulating economic and social capital that could translate into electoral success.
Finally, the former rebel groups were subject to internal factionalism that reduced the ability of their leaders to transform comradeship relationships into social capital in the political field (Gerdes, 2013: 182–187). The leader of MODEL, Thomas Yaya Nimely, had made a successful career in the health sector in the USA, where he had lived for the 20 years before the second Liberian war (IRIN, 2003). He had, however, not been a prominent member of the diaspora nor cultivated connections in Liberia, so that he possessed only limited social capital. He initially integrated with LURD but quickly fell out with its leaders and then focused on mobilizing refugees in Ivory Coast for the fight against Taylor. The Ivorian government, under attack from forces allied with Taylor, became the core force in creating MODEL and supported Nimely’s leadership. However, the relationship between the leader and his commanders from a vastly different social background continued to be marked by suspicion. After the peace agreement, Nimley allocated most of the positions in the interim government to non-members. Only four, including Nimely, obtained senior interim positions (Lidow, 2011).
The leadership of LURD had effectively been divided from the beginning. Aicha Keita had been the core LURD figure all along. Allegedly having had a vision, she warned the former Guinean President, Lansana Conté, of a coup attempt that subsequently took place in 1996. She then became a trusted spiritual advisor of Conté, important business woman and influential personality among Mandingo refugees. Later, the Guinean President was a crucial backer of the LURD, providing them with military hardware, sanctuaries and diplomatic support. As a consequence, Keita was endowed with massive prophetic and social capital. The official leader of LURD, however, was her husband Sekou Conneh, a former mid-level finance ministry official and used car salesman with no political or military experience. He acceded to the position of Commander in Chief and National Chairman of LURD only thanks to the personal capital and connections of his wife to the Guinean President (Lidow, 2011: 163, 194). Conneh’s habitus has been described as ‘neither sophisticated nor overly intellectual’ (Brabazon, 2003: 3). He presented himself not as a leader but rather as a figurehead of LURD, having no personal political ambition apart from removing Taylor from power. Conneh sought to strengthen his military credentials by positioning himself close to LURD commanders. His overall support among the rebel group, however, remained weak and he was unknown among the wider population (Brabazon, 2003: 4). Eventually, he had little heroic capital and far less social capital than his wife. This divergence of effective and formal power underlay the split of LURD in the post-war transition period. In order to run in the subsequent elections, Sekou Conneh did not take a position in the NGTL. Yet, he nominated a relative, who had no relations to the rebels, as Finance Minister. The larger LURD faction lined up behind Conneh’s estranged wife, Keita.
Since the peace agreement stipulated democratic parliamentary and presidential elections after two years, the opportunity to advance to a good position in the political field ultimately depended on the ability to attract votes. The former rebels had to build constituency-defined patronage networks for the legislative elections and to forge alliances to lower-level opinion leaders, intermediaries and grassroots voters. However, they had difficulties in accumulating this social capital, not only beyond their strongholds, but also within their ethnic groups.
The LURD had a relevant, but restricted, potential for electoral success. Their ethnic constituency, the Mandingo, are widely rejected as non-Liberian in the country and form a group apart. They are a small minority comprising, according to different estimates, 2–4% of the population. Crossing ethnic boundaries is more difficult for them than for any other Liberian group. Mandingo elites are unlikely to be voted for by other ethnic groups and have to concentrate on the few constituencies in the northwest dominated by their compatriots. Moreover, accumulating social capital in the elections increasingly required economic capital owing to both formal financial requirements for candidacy, and increasing expectations for patronage. Yet owing to trade sanctions and the dismal state of the Liberian economy, opportunities for acquiring economic capital were limited during the interim period.
LURD leader Sekou Conneh created the Progressive Democratic Party (PRODEM) in 2005. He ran as its presidential candidate in the same year but received only 0.6% of the votes in the first round, which is indicative of his inability to position himself well in Mandingo networks. The organization probably most influential among this ethnic group, the National Mandingo Caucus, which had been created specifically for the elections by a prominent businessman, supported the later President, Johnson Sirleaf. Formerly married to a Mandingo, Johnson Sirleaf is considered more sympathetic to that ethnic group than most other members of the political class. Mandingo business elites dependent on political protection thus considered it more prudent to align with her than to support a weak Mandingo candidate like Conneh. LURD’s larger Aicha Keita faction similarly supported Johnson Sirleaf. Finally, another well-established Mandingo politician, the 1990s warlord Alhadji Kromah, who controlled the All Liberia Coalition Party (ALCOP), attracted a significant share of the group’s votes and fared much better in the 2005 presidential elections. The former LURD rebels did not perform any better in the legislative elections. None of PRODEM’s legislative candidates won a seat in any post-war parliamentary election. The only four LURD-affiliated candidates who succeeded in the 2005 legislative elections ran independently or on the ticket of parties other than PRODEM. Three had held positions in the interim regime and had invested their economic capital in patron–client relations in their home provinces. Yet two representatives lost their seats in 2011, one senator was voted out in 2014, and the remaining one chose not to run again.
MODEL did not succeed in the elections either. Thomas Yaya Nimely, the MODEL leader, could not run in the 2005 elections as he had been interim Foreign Minister. Instead, he initially concentrated on rehabilitating a 45-hectare rubber plantation on family land. He continued to invest in a political career and initially declared his plans to form his own party, but quickly dropped the project and integrated with the Liberty Party, which was then the second biggest opposition formation. This formalized his exclusion from the ruling network. The lack of economic capital and challenges from elites better connected to the President’s circle weakened his position. Nimely came in third and fourth, respectively, in the elections for one senatorial seat in Grand Gedeh County in 2011 and 2014. Just one MODEL commander, who had integrated with the largest opposition party, the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), obtained a representative seat in 2005, which he lost in 2011. At the national level, MODEL’s leaders stood little chance. The Krahn group makes up no more than 5% of the population, so their home constituency is small. While the group is widely associated with violence against civilians in the west of Liberia and enjoys little sympathy there, it has potential for support in eastern Liberia. However, this could be much more effectively mobilized by the CDC’s presidential candidate, George Weah, the famous international football star, who similarly comes from the east.
Thus, the rebels were rather unsuccessful in accumulating vertical social capital in patron–client networks or institutionalizing social capital in political parties. 2 However, the goal behind standing in elections is often not so much winning a mandate as demonstrating political significance or political clout. Proving the possession of, or ability to accumulate, social capital increases chances for co-optation by established elites.
The elite structure of Liberia has long been characterized by the historical ruling oligarchy of the Americo-Liberians. The west African state was founded by ‘free men of color’ from the United States in the 1820s. Until 1980, Liberia was dominated by a small segment of the population subscribing to a notion of ‘civilization’ of US origin, which integrated the upper strata. This notion of civilization featured western education and Christianity as core elements of an elite habitus and became widely accepted as justifying status (Ranard, 2005: 3–5). Although much has changed in the understanding of civilization, education as cultural capital is still a precondition for acceptance into the elite. In historical terms, Muslim Mandingo only became part of the modern, missionary school-dominated education system at a late stage. The same applies to the Krahn, who inhabited one of the most remote, inaccessible regions of Liberia. Thus, both groups have few historically established social and family connections to the elite. Furthermore, they inherited and accumulated less education-related cultural capital than other groups. In recent decades, relative wealth has allowed the Mandingo to make up for historical deficits. The Krahn military president Samuel Doe’s term of office (1980–1990) made it possible for members of his ethnic group to gain government employment and education. Yet the Krahn were predominantly integrated into the state through individual employment in the military, and hardly developed any Big Men ‘straddling’ different sectors of society and managing comprehensive patronage networks. They subsequently found themselves on the losing side of Charles Taylor’s security policy and the post-2003 security sector reform.
In post-war Liberia, the network of the president became increasingly important for the accumulation of social capital and a process of elite assimilation. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected President in 2005, a position she successfully defended in elections in 2011. As a civilian professional with a career in international organizations and the private sector, as well as experience in politics, Sirleaf is nationally and internationally well-connected and has a good reputation (Gerdes, 2013: 198–199). Being one of the strongest candidates in the 2005 elections, she was able to build a broad electoral alliance and attract a large following (Sawyer, 2008: 190). In the years that followed, Johnson Sirleaf consolidated her network of authority in the Unity Party (UP). Affiliation with the party became more important for a political career, indicating the expansion of the President’s personal network and the growing relevance of the UP as an organization controlling social capital. The UP strongly increased its legislative strength in 2009 when a major opposition party was incorporated into it. Only 11 of the (first) 447 individuals nominated for administrative posts by the President after the 2011 elections were not associated with the UP (UN Secretary-General, 2012: 2).
Integration into the President’s network was the only viable option rebel leaders had in order to secure elite status. Both Nimely and Conneh failed in this respect. The habitus of political elites in Liberia informs integration into existing networks, maintaining the autonomy of one’s own power and network, and reconciling these conflicting objectives. When founding his own party, Sekou Conneh followed the model of ALCOP leader Alhadji Kromah, yet the latter successfully defended the position of leader of a Mandingo party. Conneh similarly acted in line with established elite practice when supporting Johnson Sirleaf’s main rival, the populist George Weah, in the second round of the presidential elections in 2005, for strategic reasons. While Conneh supported the President’s bid in 2011, he had failed to prove himself a reliable ally or show political clout and was not co-opted.
Conneh’s illiterate ex-wife and leader of the larger LURD faction, by contrast, supported Johnson Sirleaf early on, and was rewarded with a logging concession. Three of her more educated associates were initially allocated positions as minister, deputy minister and Supreme Court judge, but the former two were relieved of their duties in the years that followed. The number of rebels co-opted decreased as the President consolidated her network of authority. Individuals with a better mix of cultural and social capital succeeded the former rebels. One LURD-affiliated senator was nominated by the President as ambassador to Belgium and abstained from running for office in 2014. Some four LURD executives, reasonably qualified by Liberian standards, succeeded in remaining in the mid-level administrative positions they had obtained when a LURD leader headed their ministry during the interim period. Another well-connected LURD executive, who contested the 2005 senatorial elections in Monrovia and gained a relevant amount of support among the urban Mandingo, obtained a similar position later.
In the medium term, former rebels tended to lose rather than consolidate their elite positions. This indicates processes of social closure, favouring those who accumulated various kinds of capital over the long term, including (sub-)elites of the former Taylor regime. The presidential project of modernization resulted in the heightened importance of professional cultural capital. As quality education and professional (international) careers have historically been much more easily accessible to the privileged sections of the population, individuals from established families have re-emerged. While Liberia’s elite has undergone significant socio-structural change and formerly marginal groups now have political opportunities, the professionalization of the political field in the wake of political stabilization favoured those who had more consistently and successfully pursued civilian careers in (international) organizations, business, civil society and the state than most rebels had done.
The rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army in Kosovo
During the Kosovo war (1998–1999), the Albanian Ushtria Çlirimtare ë Kosovës (Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA) succeeded, with the military intervention of NATO, in overthrowing the Milošević regime in the South Serbian province. The exodus of the Serbian rulers constituted the most recent stage in a process of largely violent circulation of Albanian and Serbian elites since the independence of Serbia from Ottoman rule in 1913 (Cohen, 1989: 335–392). The Kosovo war led to an intervention by the UN and the establishment of a transitional administration (UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK), which placed Kosovo under international rule, in order to oversee the rebuilding of the state. The war also promoted the leaders of the victorious KLA into positions of state power. Since the end of the war, the members of the former rebel group have succeeded in transforming themselves into the new political elites. Members of the KLA have provided four of six prime ministers and one of five state presidents. Furthermore, members of the KLA have been represented in parliament as well as in numerous positions in the government and administration.
At the end of the war, the rebels were massively endowed with the symbolic or heroic capital of the successful warrior. In Kosovo, the KLA was perceived as the winner of the war, which liberated the Kosovar nation from Serb repression and fought for the political independence of Kosovo. The KLA also gained legitimacy among key members of the established Kosovar Albanian political elite, which had, for the most part, condemned organized violence and acted more like a rival of the KLA. The armed group thus enjoyed broad popularity among an overwhelming majority of the population. The KLA also enjoyed international recognition. The meeting of US diplomat Richard Holbrooke with KLA soldiers in 1998 in one of their strongholds had suggested endorsement of the KLA by the United States (Perritt Jr., 2008: 25–35). Moreover, members of the KLA had attended internationally mediated peace talks in 1999 as part of the Kosovar Albanian delegation and received official recognition as a legitimate interlocutor and representative of the Albanian population in Kosovo. Having agreed to the provisions of the so-called Rambouillet Accords, which the Serbian government rejected, the KLA was also able to style itself as interested foremost in a peaceful solution and not in a military intervention by NATO (Perritt Jr., 2008: 150–151). This initial endowment with symbolic capital allowed the rebels to enter the post-war political field, where they could convert it into social capital. 3
The KLA was, from its very beginning, part of more or less wide-ranging and dense local and transnational networks. It had evolved out of several underground nationalist organizations and was initially established by young militants and political activists who had forged connections with each other as students at the University of Prishtina and as political prisoners in jail in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Initially, a clandestine organization, until the end of the war the KLA remained embedded in close-knit familial and local networks based in the rural and poor countryside in Kosovo. Moreover, members of the KLA had close contacts to, or were part of, the large Albanian diaspora community, so that they were able to raise funds among émigré groups (Yannis, 2003: 174–176). After the war, however, the members of the KLA had to accumulate social capital in the political field.
Hashim Thaçi and Ramush Haradinaj stand out as two leading politicians and central figures of the former KLA. Haradinaj had served in the Yugoslav Army and became a popular field commander of the KLA in 1998. After the war, he founded the Aleanca për Ardhmërinë e Kosovës (Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK) in 2000, and became its party chairman. In 2004, he became Prime Minister but resigned only three months later having been indicted for alleged war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He finally returned to Kosovo in 2012 after being acquitted in The Hague to continue a political career as leader of the AAK and member of parliament. Thaçi started his political career as a leader of the student movement in the early 1990s and in 1998 became head of the Political Directorate and speaker of the KLA. He also headed its delegation to the Rambouillet Conference in 1999 and led a short-lived transitional government after the war. Moreover, he took a leading role in the formation of the Partia Demokratike e Kosovës (Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK) and acted as its chairman until 2016. He served as Prime Minister from 2007 until 2014 and became President of Kosovo in 2016.
Haradinaj has been characterized as ‘the rough-and-tumble village boy who made good by having the courage to fight for his beliefs’ (IWPR, 2005), but has also been described as an ambitious, dynamic and committed political leader who had pushed for controversial reforms while Prime Minister. Haradinaj has ‘the habitus of a builder’ as one observer expressed it. In contrast, Thaçi has been characterized as the more pragmatic and canny politician. His habitus is ‘controlled, distant and never transparent’ (Interviews, 15 March 2011 and 19 March 2012). He is described as the central power broker who removed challengers and opponents and pushed former comrades out of the PDK in order to consolidate his power. Moreover, Thaçi is described as a skilful politician, speaking in different languages and conveying different messages to the international community and to local constituencies.
The post-war careers of Haradinaj and Thaçi in the political field were initially strongly affected by the termination of the war and the intervention of external actors. The war led to the fall of the Milošević regime in Kosovo and left an institutional power vacuum. Thus, in the immediate aftermath of the war, there were numerous opportunities for the KLA to move into leadership positions. Directly following the peace negotiations, the KLA was able to establish a self-styled transitional government with Thaçi as ‘Prime Minister’. Other KLA fighters took over central positions in the local administrations and in the socially owned enterprises so that, early on, they were able to secure access to economically important areas (Eyre and Wittkowsky, 2002: 20). The mayors appointed or sponsored by the KLA began a system of taxing cafés, restaurants, hotels, stores and petrol stations. Additional resources were generated by seizing real estate and public services as well as through smuggling practices (Yannis, 2003: 178–189; Briscoe and Price, 2011: 13). Although the transitional government was dissolved after six months following an agreement with international actors, it allowed the rebels a period of accumulation of economic capital that could be converted into vertical social capital within new patronage networks.
The massive intervention by UNMIK did not change this initial power distribution. As the UN decided to pursue a co-opting strategy, the unofficial mayors of the KLA were simply absorbed into the new, formally UN-controlled, local administration. Moreover, the UN decided not to rule without the leaders of the KLA. From the beginning, the goal of the international actors was to integrate influential figures, such as Hashim Thaçi, into the UN-controlled administration in order to ensure stability (Narten, 2006). Consequently, Thaçi succeeded in obtaining de facto immunity from police investigations thanks to his cooperation with the UN. In his time as Prime Minister, Haradinaj also developed very good relations with UNMIK, to the point that the UN Special Representative Søren Jessen-Petersen praised Haradinaj in an official press statement as ‘a close partner and friend’.5 The UN politics of elite accommodation favoured Thaçi and Haradinaj as interlocutors for the international actors and thus made it possible for them to accumulate symbolic capital (Hensell and Gerdes, 2012: 161–164).
Through the establishment of the two political parties, AAK and PDK, Haradinaj and Thaçi also succeeded in institutionalizing social capital. While both parties polled rather poorly in the first municipal and national elections in 2000/2001, since then they have succeeded in continually increasing their share of parliamentary seats, so that they were able to win about 40% of the votes in the last three elections in 2007, 2011 and 2014. The PDK and AAK have also succeeded in building clientelistic networks. The parties not only have connections to a wide variety of commercial businesses, which act as sponsors and financiers of the parties, but also control positions in the public sector, in the large state enterprises and in the profitable ministries with large budgets (Briscoe and Price, 2011: 16–21, 26–32; Marzouk and Collaku, 2010).
The resulting patronage power allows the parties to reach out to new constituencies and by doing so convert economic into social capital. Both parties practise a policy of co-optation to attract new groups of voters and to shed their image as KLA successor parties. Popular personalities, artists, journalists, professors and young, well-educated people from urban centres are systematically recruited to give the parties a progressive and modern face. Here, the former rebels relied on other actors, distinguished by their cultural capital and urban habitus. Thus, the member profile of the PDK in particular has changed. The party has filled various high-level government posts with people who have no war experience. However, the PDK and the AAK only partly function as channels that allow outsiders to rise in politics. The possibilities for new party members to exercise influence remain limited because the former rebels have developed closure mechanisms for protecting their positions by establishing selection rules, ‘gates’ and ‘gatekeepers’. Inner-party democratization is weak, while the control of the party leaders is strong. Thaçi and Haradinaj have led the parties since their founding as unchallenged party chairmen, who de facto decide everything. The parties themselves are characterized by a non-transparent structure and there is no open competition for higher party positions. Of the nine members of the party presidium of the PDK, only two were not members of the KLA. The PDK and, notably, the AKK have the character of clientelistic parties, which are strongly represented in particular regions of Kosovo where the parties have their voter base (Briscoe and Price, 2011: 26). These regions were also originally recruitment areas of the KLA and home to their leaders (IKS, 2011: 59–62). The result has been an institutionalization of social capital in the KLA successor parties, which have become important vehicles for the former rebels: ‘No party, no power’, as one parliamentarian commented (Interview, 9 March 2011).
The successors of the KLA, however, have also had to accumulate horizontal social capital within the established Albanian political class. Owing to the history of resistance in Kosovo, this has proved rather difficult. From the outset, the guerrillas in post-war Kosovo have stood in competition with the old Albanian elite, which had risen in Tito’s Yugoslavia of the 1970s and had belonged to the Communist party (Cohen, 1989: 335–392). This urban elite, established in Prishtina, was comprised of professionals, schoolteachers and intellectuals who had mostly accumulated cultural capital. Members of this elite founded the Lidhja Demokratike e Kosovës (Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK) in 1989. The LDK had dominated the so-called Kosovar ‘shadow state’, which had operated in parallel to the Serbian institutions to provide basic services to the discriminated Albanian population under the Milošević regime. Led by Ibrahim Rugova, the LDK was the main representation of the Albanians until it was challenged by the rising KLA. The LDK advocated a pacifist policy. Hence, it saw the militants of the KLA as a challenge to its power position in the political field. The LDK condemned the armed action of the guerrillas and even denied the existence of the KLA. Thus, while the leaders of the KLA and LDK both belonged to the ethnic Albanian majority and were part of the resistance movement, which followed the same goals, their relations were initially strained and characterized by a struggle over the right methods for achieving these goals. The result was a widening gap between the militants of the KLA and the leadership of the LDK (Perritt Jr., 2008: 25–35, 156–157).
After the war, the LDK attempted to regain its hegemonic position and returning refugees and expatriates expected to resume their places in the state apparatus that were now occupied by KLA fighters or their associates. In the course of the first communal and parliamentary elections in 2000/2001, the LDK was able to achieve significant successes compared with the two successor parties of the KLA. The consequence was fierce competition and polarization between the LDK and the PDK and AAK, which was accompanied by a number of violent attacks. However, the competition among the parties led to a relative decline of the previously dominant LDK and the rise of the successor parties of the KLA, in the course of which the conflicts between the actors have lessened.
Both KLA successor parties have formed coalitions with the LDK and established joint governments. In the context of the UN protectorate, external actors have been able to foster this cooperation among the elites. Thus the UN Special Representative was successful in 2002 in brokering a power-sharing and coalition arrangement between the LDK, PDK and AAK. Moreover, the party elites have close relationships. This can be explained by the social homogeneity of the elites, family ties and shared experiences at university, in the underground and in exile, as well as through the limited significance of political programmes differentiating the actors. Furthermore, the elites share basic political orientations. This applies to central goals such as liberation from Serbian repression, the independence of Kosovo and integration into the European Union. The rapprochement of the political actors has allowed the former leaders of the KLA to accumulate intra-elite social capital. The result has been a reciprocal assimilation of the main party elites and successful integration of the former rebels into the political class. As the LDK is characterized by the same lack of inner-party democracy and transparency as the PDK and AAK, this horizontal integration of party elites is tantamount to a relative social closure of the entire political class.
Conclusion
The inclusion of former rebels after civil war is a key security challenge. We have argued that the political transformation of rebels can be analysed as a process of inclusion or exclusion on the elite level and we have shown how this process can be studied by applying Bourdieu’s notion of the political field and social capital to original case material. In doing so, the article has contributed to the debate on the post-conflict reintegration of armed groups, as well as to the growing body of scholarship that has demonstrated the potential of Bourdieu’s theory for international relations and security studies.
In our empirical case studies, we analysed and explained the different career success of rebels with the help of our theoretical concepts. Former rebels became an established part of the political elite in Kosovo, while they were soon relegated to the sidelines in Liberia. We have explained these differences in terms of the possession of social capital. In order to attract votes, rebels must extend patronage networks and accumulate social capital beyond their original strongholds and old comradeship relationships. In addition, they need to accumulate social capital within elite networks in order to forge alliances with other elite factions and to become part of the power elite. Rebels in Liberia were much less successful in this regard compared with the rebels in Kosovo.
The article sought to demonstrate that applying Bourdieu’s concepts to the transformation of armed groups is particularly useful. Using a field analysis allows us to focus on the reproduction of social capital that plays a central role for the inclusion or exclusion of these groups. It conceptualizes former rebels as interdependent actors in broad networks of relations where they are forming connections with elite factions, constituencies and external powers as part of the same field of action. Moreover, it provides a concrete way of examining whether these players take up positions in opposition to or in alliance with other players and how social ties are forged. As peace processes are always accommodations between a wide range of actors, such a relational perspective is crucial. Bourdieu’s sociology offers promising perspectives for exploring post-war politics. The political transformation after war is often analysed on the basis of broad and clear-cut concepts that are closely related to a normative discourse such as peace, state or democracy. Theorizing post-war politics as part and parcel of field dynamics offers a more nuanced and alternative way of understanding how power and authority are reproduced after war. Bourdieu’s theoretical vocabulary of field, capital and habitus provides an opportunity for rethinking political order with a theoretical understanding that brings many actors into perspective in arenas of conflict. It allows us to map and explore these actors, how they position themselves and the related practices of assimilation and distinction. Doing so throws more light on the power struggles that shape the post-war social space and create the winners and losers of peace.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this article was presented at the 7th European Consortium for Political Research General Conference in September 2013 at the University of Bordeaux, France and at the 55th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association in March 2014 in Toronto, Canada.
Funding
This research was made possible by a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG): Reference HE 6027/1-1.