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Understanding
“The Political Marketplace”
and the Roots of Persistent Conflict
Fletcher Security Review Vol.2 no.1
All Rights Reserved.
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Understanding
and the
Roots of Persistent Conflict
FSR Interviews Professor Alex de Waal
27 January 2015
FSR (2015), Vol.2 no.1
Understanding “The Political Marketplace” and the Roots of Persistent Conflict 1
Alex deWaal is the Executive Director of theWorld Peace Foundation. Considered one of the
foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also
probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa,
and conflict and peace-building. In 1988, he received a D.Phil. in social anthropology at
Nuffield College, Oxford for his thesis on the 1984-5 Darfur famine in Sudan. He was the first
chairman of the Mines Advisory Group at the beginning of the International Campaign to Ban
Landmines. He set up two independent human rights organizations, African Rights (1993)
and Justice Africa (1999), focusing respectively on documenting human rights abuses and
developing policies to respond to human rights crises, notably in Rwanda, Somalia and Sudan.
From 1997 to 2001, he focused on avenues to peaceful resolution of the second Sudanese Civil
War. In 2001, he returned to his work on health in Africa, writing on the intersection
of HIV/AIDS, poverty and governance, and initiated the Commission on HIV/AIDS and
Governance in Africa. During 2005-06, deWaal was seconded to the African Union mediation
team for Darfur and from 2009-11 served as senior adviser to the African Union High-Level
Implementation Panel for Sudan. He was on the list of Foreign Policy’s 100 most influential
public intellectuals in 2008 and Atlantic Monthly’s 27 “brave thinkers” in 2009.
1 The “Political Marketplace” of Conflict
FSR: In your latest book and in other endeavors, you’ve tried to explain much of the conflict
we see in parts of Africa, and perhaps elsewhere, as a product of the “political marketplace.”
Can you explain what you mean by the term?
de Waal: My starting point is that business is politics and politics is business. It would
be incorrect and a simplification to say that politics is all about money, because that would
imply that politics is all about personal enrichment. My analysis, particularly about the Horn
of Africa, but [with] wider resonance and implications in the rest of the world, is that the way
the politics and economics function in these societies, politics and business are fused. In order
to be a businessperson, you also need to be a politician. In order to run a business, one needs
to have certain skills, aptitudes, and capabilities to network and analyze that politicians
have. Similarly, to be a politician, one needs to have the abilities that a businessman has.
Most politicians in conflict zones, be they dictators, or military leaders, or others who have
risen to the top, tend to run their political careers as if they are businesses.
In Sudan the political vernacular has two concepts. It’s almost a pun – [there is] the “political
marketplace”, and the “political budget” which is also [referred to] as “political box”
or “pocket.” And these two interact in the way that political budget involves the funds that
a politician has that he can dispense for whatever purposes he likes. . . Typically [they are
used] either for developing a security apparatus that is loyal to them personally or for patronage
payouts, for renting provisional allegiance of clients. It is in the sphere of payouts that
one has to deal with the political marketplace, in which the intermediaries demand certain
amount of money to maintain allegiance. In a place like Darfur, where the political system
is extremely fragmented, you cannot be a serious political player unless you have an armed
group. The allegiance of that group will be worth a certain amount of money and the price
of that allegiance can go up or down depending on the market conditions.
FSR: So are you saying that the politics in the conflict situation are driven by broader
economic problems?
de Waal: The politics and economics fuse. If you take a small, poor country that has an
open economy, these countries find it extremely difficult to compete in the global economic
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Understanding “The Political Marketplace” and the Roots of Persistent Conflict 2
order for products. Some changes in the small factors like interest rates, or policy changes
in countries like the United States of America (USA) or China can have a huge impact on
[smaller countries] economies, which can be snuffed out in a moment. The key task of a
businessman is to manage those contingencies, and in such situations one cannot think of
long term goals: it’s all about managing short term implications.
In those countries, the most profitable sectors are going to be those where we get rent, either
from minerals or from government, and so the business sector will congregate around the
government as it is the key dispenser and regulator of the resources. The finance that is
available to businesses and political budgets become one and the same. More over, with
political globalization, with global commodities markets, foreign aid flows, and importantly
the global security apparatus, the most important source of revenue [for small, economically
weak countries] can come from the security cooperation with advanced countries like the
USA, France or others. Hence, the political marketplace has two aspects – it is full of the
rent seekers, and it is globally integrated. [Due to regional and global integration], it’s no
longer the case that what happens in one country is insulated from what happens in the
other countries. . .
FSR: In these situations, how do you think the political marketplace interacts with and
responds to global pressures and international intervention?
de Waal: International intervention usually involves both resources and troops. It is the
resources that tend to drive the political marketplace in a conflict zone, and international
troops, particularly peacekeepers, cannot do much in the absence of a political agreement.
The idea of sending United Nations or international troops into a country to enforce peace
rarely works. The key for the dynamics and the prospects for resolution of conflict always
remains in the political sphere. If the political sphere is constituted by the control over
these external rental resources, and if the external intervention is not designed with an
understanding of how that political marketplace functions, then it is likely to be co-opted
into the existing system and the resources will be utilized by the political entrepreneurs and
political business managers for their own reasons.
FSR: How often are their successful monopolists, leaders who gain enough power shut down
the marketplace and push out all other bidders?
de Waal: There will be political leaders who seek monopolies, but the extent to which
they can achieve monopoly or not has a big impact on the dynamics of a country. In some
countries, like Chad, political leaders tend to gain significant monopoly over the resources,
even if it is not absolute.
However, in the countries like Somalia, the efforts of the international community to help its
leaders to establish a monopoly, through aid and peacekeeping force, is still not very effective.
[This is] primarily because the major source of earnings in Somalia – telecommunications
sector and expat remittances–has not been captured by the current political elite. As a
result of this, the barriers for new political entities to enter Somali political sphere are very
low allowing political entrepreneurs to enter the market and establish themselves as legitimate
players with certain influence making the price of loyalty quite high in the Somali political
market. Due to this situation, for those in Somali government a majority of time, skill and
resources are occupied in the effort of managing the dynamics of the political marketplace
rather than on building durable institutions. In my view, the state-building exercise in
Somalia is swimming against the tide of political marketplace.
FSR: In that case, should we be hoping for and encouraging stronger monopolies in order
to create stronger states?
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Understanding “The Political Marketplace” and the Roots of Persistent Conflict 3
de Waal: Creating monopolies and autocracies have two typical problems. One is the
succession problem – the exit options. The barriers to exit for someone who achieves near
monopoly or dominance in the political market can be very high, in that the succession or
handing over of the monopoly to someone else could be very difficult for the simple reason
that the intended successor may lack the skills to maintain the succession. The other problem
is the regional one, where neighboring states could have vested interests in the internal affairs
of a state. This issue often comes up due to the lack of territorially bounded monopolies.
These problems force us to think about if it is possible to build a state at all because in
the globalized economy, most of the trends in the smaller open economies [are] towards
dismantling the state structure and not building them. Each time we see an autocrat who is
trying to regulate the system and there is a transition towards something more democratic,
what we actually see is not a transition towards regular democracy but towards a political
marketplace.
FSR: Can you reflect on the efforts of Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi in swimming [against]
this tide [given the fact that Ethiopia became stronger as a state while neighboring states
were weakening]?
de Waal: Meles Zenawi and Ethiopian transition are very good examples of this as he
theorized and understood this problem very clearly. He thought that democracy is the
nemesis of the political marketplace in Africa. He, however, was not successful in achieving
this in Ethiopia before he died, but what he achieved, in particularly the last 10 years, was
to exercise such a tight control over the allocation of revenue and rent (mainly policy and
aid rents) in order to grow the economy very fast.
Due to this, Ethiopia was getting an annual economic growth of eight to ten percent. If
this had been sustained over the next ten years, it would have brought that country into
the bracket of middle income countries. Meles Zenawi hoped that a growth in such terms
would lead to a transformation of the state. The weakness of this strategy was pursuing
it with a single mind. The tight control exerted over the allocation of resources changed
the nature of government, and the ruling party in particular, into rigid entities, something
like purely implementation agencies. The major difficulty being, nobody else could run that
system as effectively as Zenawi did, giving rise to succession problem. Zenawi was a political
businessman, and because of his specific business skills, he was trying to achieve political
goals by using business strategies. The other side of this issue is that if someone tries to
enter political markets with purely political motives, like establishing an Islamic State or
rooting-out corruption, and do not take the business aspect seriously, they will not succeed.
FSR: Can you elaborate on this point?
de Waal: This issue is highlighted by many case studies. For example, Al Qaeda, according
to its own documents, found that it could not establish itself in Northern Africa as a viable
entity due to the lack of strong presence in businesses. I believe that having strong business
skills is a prerequisite for anyone to successfully establish themselves in the political sphere.
2 The Changing Face of Peacekeeping
FSR: What do you think would be a better way [than current strategies of the international
community] to deal with persistent conflicts across the world?
de Waal: In the societies engulfed in conflicts, one can see that monopolies can create
a certain sense of calm, even if it is for an extended period of time, say 10 years, but to
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Understanding “The Political Marketplace” and the Roots of Persistent Conflict 4
achieve durable peace one has to address the cause for the turbulence itself. Uncertainty is a
common factor even in developed capitalist societies. There is constant innovation going on
and people do not know when the housing rates will go up or interest rates will fall, among
other things. But one has to ensure that the creative destruction of capitalism does not
turn violent, killing people or destroying livelihoods. The answers for this problem lay not
at local or country level but at global level. The two key aspects that fuel violence are oil
and international security cooperation. The counter-terrorism cooperation that is extended
to the peacekeeping operations is actually a driver of instability in these systems.
FSR: What makes intervener countries target particular regimes?
de Waal: I think it is in very few cases that the United States or European nations are
interested in regime change. They are much more interested in the suppression of militant
insurgencies. There is also this agenda of prevention of atrocities. So the major issue is to
stop the involvement of people who have vested interests in such countries. Then multilateral
peacekeeping, or rather peace-enforcing operations become operations with several added
agendas. They are peacekeepers because of their international mandate, not because they
achieve peace.
FSR: Is peacekeeping itself a continuation of conflict?
de Waal: It is becoming so. The classical model of peacekeeping is where UN troops drawn
faraway countries go to monitor and possibly enforce an agreement already reached among
the parties involved. But in the new model of peacekeeping it is neighboring states [which
have vested interests] are sending their troops.
This is also a result of the involvement of countries like the United States and France who
want to fight and defeat certain elements like Al Qaeda and Al Shabab, and others. And
the only [international] troops that are willing to participate in such operations are Western
special forces, who are very confident that they will not have to suffer the casualties, or
those who have vested interests, like neighboring countries. When you have forces that have
considerable capacity to wage a protracted war, peacekeeping merges with war itself. In such
situations, the political budget is derived from defense and military budget.
FSR: To what extent do you believe that the major donor countries are aware of these
issues? Particularly when in the last few years there was a criticism that the United States
was “played” by a lot of countries when it comes to [getting US money for anything that
could be called] a counter-terrorism campaign. Was that in fact accidental? And do you
think is the appropriate policy to avoid a recurrence of such situation in future?
de Waal: At this moment, I don’t think we have clear policy responses and I think policymakers
understand pieces of this. But I have not seen anywhere to integrate this into one
analysis and think where is this going and what kind of response is required. What I hope
to do in my book is to provide that discussion because I don’t have an answer either. Giving
a policy framework will be difficult because I think we are not at a stage where we have the
type of analysis involved to be able to make sensible policies at the moment.
3 The Future – Likely Trends, Necessary Changes, Other
Drivers of Conflict
FSR: You mentioned that political actors are often forced to evolve into political entrepreneurs.
Do you think this process is restricted to conflict zones alone?
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Understanding “The Political Marketplace” and the Roots of Persistent Conflict 5
de Waal: I think we need to see the organized violence or recurrent violence as not solely a
feature of conflict between recognized political and military forces but as a feature of these
systems as a whole, as a part of their governance module. So even in a country that does not
have recognized large-scale violence within its boundaries, these features occur. One of the
paradoxes we have is that on one hand state-building is getting harder . . . and large-scale
violence is actually declining, but on the other hand, the violence that tends to continue
is more intractable. So some 30-40 years ago you could have a peace agreement between
warring states and you knew that the war is over. Now you have a lot of peace agreements
and the wars and attended violence continues. This is also because, in the past, the peace
agreements also tended to be the drafts of the constitution and it would go into legal and
constitutional form and they would be more or less respected by all. Now a peace agreement
is like a bargain in the market and [it] will be only good as long as those particular market
conditions exist. And to preserve an earlier peace agreement, the next one will be called as
an implementation matrix, as a road map to implement the agreement. You can have 10
agreements and the agreements are not a solution to the conflict, they are an extra layer of
the governing of the conflict itself.
FSR: How concerned are you that this model is spreading? Do you think this can be
contained at all?
de Waal: I don’t know if it is spreading across the world. But I think there is a good reason
that this model is spreading. If you see across the conflict-ridden areas–Afghanistan, Syria,
Yemen –t he trend is indicating towards this, and when the trend is towards one way, that
gives a reason to believe that this is a bigger phenomenon. The small open economies may
the ones that are affected by this trend directly now, but others may be following the same
trend, which can be a cause of concern.
FSR: You identified the threat of alternate political structures being incompatible with the
conflict-ridden areas. In such a situation, what should international community do? Should
they disengage from the situation and allow [these areas] to evolve on their own?
de Waal: Disengagement is not possible, it shouldn’t be on the table as an option alt all.
There are different forms of engagement and this is where we need to know more. If you take
politics as business, seriously as a proposition, then you will not ask a businessperson to go
into a new market without having thoroughly understood the nature of that market.
In the same way there are no off-the-shelf recommendations, or even framework for lets say
responding to Islamic State. We need to understand the political market price of that region
and I suspect that the actors in the conflict zones understand it really quite well. If you were
to listen to the discussions of the intelligence and security chiefs they would be talking this
language. But their objectives tend to be short-term security management. When we move
from short-term security management, the long-term issue stabilization of the region is often
neglected as the models we are drawing upon are failing us. We should take seriously the
actual practices of those who manage these systems and try and build a response based on
that system.
FSR: When you say that the other systems we are [relying] upon are not helping the situation,
do you mean that those systems are not understanding the business aspects of the conflicts
involved?
de Waal: Yes, but it is not just the role of money that is involved. Take for example,
a lot of attention has been given to the sources of finance to the Islamic State. People
have been discussing about the ways it is generating money by way of taking hostages, or
receiving money from Qatar, or by liquidating the assets in the region. But I have not seen
FSR (2015), Vol.2 no.1
Understanding “The Political Marketplace” and the Roots of Persistent Conflict 6
anyone look at the other side of the story, which is expenditure. What is its political budget?
What is its security budget? To what extent is it actually producing public goods? These
questions matter because this particular group is not functioning like a regular terrorist
group mainly because it controls territory and is functioning as a territorial insurgent. A
territorial insurgent has to provide public goods. Without understanding these aspects it
will be difficult to analyze the problem itself.
FSR: You advocate that the people who have access to the conflict zones, those who live
in those areas, to study their problems. Considering this as a dangerous preposition for
those involved in the conflict itself, what steps would you suggest to bridge the problem of
communications breakdown between those involved in conflict and the outsiders who want
to resolve it?
de Waal: If you want to find out how a regular market works, you will not get the best
answer by going and asking the most successful businessman in that market for the deepest
secrets of their success. But we know enough about the markets to be able to teach business
management and administration. So I don’t see any reason why we cannot progress further
than where we are in understanding the nature of conflicts.
FSR: You are also involved in another project about global arms industry. Can you to share
some information about that with our readers?
de Waal: Arms spending and defense budget is one of the key elements of the political
budgeting and corruption. Corruption and political budgeting are overlapping categories.
There was an estimate that global arms trade was responsible for 40 percent of the corruption
in the international trade itself. This is primarily a result of the unusual production function
of the arms industry itself. Manufacturers across the world, with an exception of the United
States [whose military provides large enough market to support a domestic arms industry],
can . . . cover the costs only by charging exorbitant rates or by exporting the arms, so there
is an inbuilt incentive to pay bribes to encourage exports to the countries that would be
purchasing those arms. And from the point of purchasing countries, those bribes can play
very important role and will go into the political budgets.
FSR: The board of World Peace Foundation votes every year on the issue of whether world
peace has been achieved or not. How is it looking this year? And also the states that are
capable of [advocating for world peace], are they identifying and preparing for the threats
ahead?
de Waal: The trustees of the foundation take a vote on whether world peace has been
achieved or not every November, and for last 100 years the vote has always been that it has
not been achieved. I suspect it will remain so for a long time to come. Having said that, if
our founder, Edwin Ginn, were alive, according to his three elements – presence of League
of Nations, World Court, and disarmament–he would have said that his objectives were met
to a large extent. But we can never rule out the possibility of future conflicts, which might
spring up at any time. The threats for world peace come from elsewhere. It is no more the
territorial conquest that threatens the world peace, but the military spending of the major
powers are still locked in the past. They still need to make provisions for emerging threats
like global warming, threats of infectious diseases, terrorism, and cyber threats. They still
build submarines and aircraft carriers.
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