Abstract
What is the relationship between counterinsurgency and institution-building? When do wartime institutions persist once conflict has ended? Classic theories examine how war spurs new institutions within the central state, while extensive research on rebel governance examines how insurgent actors forge new rules to garner civilian compliance and cement control. However, the legacies of armed conflict for state institutions in the theater of war remain relatively neglected. We theorize the process of local counterinsurgent institution-building and the drivers of institutional endurance following counterinsurgency. By analyzing two local counterinsurgent institutions in Nicaragua and a shadow case drawn from Indonesia, we find that while state leaders may generate new institutional arrangements to elicit information and garner resources, institutional persistence is driven by local reappropriation as communities pursue their own postwar governance and development goals. Overall, this paper contributes a new understanding for the divergent postwar paths of local institutions generated amid counterinsurgency.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Nonetheless, even lower intensity conflicts can incentivize elites to support statebuilding under certain conditions (See Flores-Macías 2014).
These conditions are also relevant following rebel victory (See Lewis 2022).
Following Brinks, Levitsky, and Murillo (2019, 8), we define a formal institution as “a set of formal rules structuring human behavior and expectations around a statutory goal by (1) specifying actors and their roles; (2) requiring, permitting, or prohibiting certain behaviors; and (3) defining the consequences of complying or not complying with the remaining rules.”.
Mahoney and Thelen (2009, 15–6) define these terms as follow: “Layering: the introduction of new rules on top of or alongside existing ones … Conversion: the changed enactment of existing rules due to their strategic redeployment.”.
Kurasawa, who was a member of the women’s section of her RT when she lived in Indonesia, witnessed firsthand how the RT head obtained funding from the Project for Eradication of Poverty in Urban Sector for a local road. The RT head also convinced residents to contribute financially, which was a requirement to obtain the funding.
References
Albertus, Michael, and Oliver Kaplan. 2013. Land Reform as Counterinsurgency Policy: Evidence from Colombia. Journal of Conflict Resolution 57 (2): 198–231. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002712446130.
Arjona, Ana. 2016. Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War. Cambridge University Press
Balcells, Laia. 2012. The Consequences of Victimization on Political Identities: Evidence from Spain. Politics & Society 40 (3): 311–347. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329211424721.
Barberena, Eduardo. 2009. “Arquitecto de lucha comunal sin sectarismo.” El Nuevo Diario. Managua. February 28.
Barreto Perez, Pablo Emilio. 2011. “Movimiento Comunal Nicaragüense Más Vigoroso al Cumplir 33 Años.” December 14. https://pabloemiliobarreto.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/movimiento-comunal-mas-vigoroso-al-cumplir-33-anos/.
Bateson, Regina. 2017. The Socialization of Civilians and Militia Members: Evidence from Guatemala. Journal of Peace Research 54 (5): 634–647. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343317721812.
Baumeister, Eduardo. 1998. Estructura y Reforma Agraria en Nicaragua: 1979–1989. Ediciones CDR-ULA.
---. 1985. “The Structure of Nicaraguan Agriculture and the Sandinista Agrarian Reform.” In Nicaragua: A Revolution Under Siege, edited by Richard Harris and Carlos M. Vilas. London: Zed Books.
Bensel, Richard Franklin. 1990. Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Berman, Eli, Joseph H. Felter, and Jacob N. Shapiro. 2018. Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Berman, Eli, and Aila M. Matanock. 2015. The Empiricists’ Insurgency. Annual Review of Political Science 18: 443–464. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-082312-124553.
Boas, Taylor C. 2007. Conceptualizing Continuity and Change: The Composite-Standard Model of Path Dependence. Journal of Theoretical Politics 19 (1): 33–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0951629807071016.
Branch, Daniel. 2010. Footprints in the Sand: British Colonial Counterinsurgency and the War in Iraq. Politics & Society 38 (1): 14–34.
Branch, Daniel, and Elisabeth Jean Wood. 2010. Revisiting Counterinsurgency. Politics & Society 38 (1): 3–14.
Brinks, Daniel M., Steven Levitsky, and Maria Victoria Murillo. 2019. Understanding Institutional Weakness: Power and Design in Latin American Institutions. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Capoccia, Giovanni. 2016. When Do Institutions ‘Bite’? Historical Institutionalism and the Politics of Institutional Change. Comparative Political Studies 49 (8): 1095–1127. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414015626449.
Castillo, Luis Mora. 1991. Participación Popular y Democracia en Nicaragua: ‘De los Comités de Defensa Sandinistas (CDS) al Movimiento Comunal Nicaraguense’ (1979–91). Managua: INIES.
“CDS: Revolution in the Barrios.” Envío 98 (September 1989).
Centeno, Miguel Angel. 2002. Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.
Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios de la Reforma Agraria. 1985. Pantasma: Una Sociedad de Reciente Colonización Campesina Politizada Violentamente por la Guerra. In In Estudio del Bolsón Interno de Las Segovias. CIERA.
---. 1998a. Consideraciones sobre la Situación Económica del Campesinado. CIERA.
---. 1998b. Algunas Consideraciones sobre la Gestión del Estado para la Atención al Campesinado y al Movimiento Cooperativo. CIERA.
Cheng, Christine. 2018. Extralegal Groups in Post-Conflict Liberia: How Trade Makes the State. Oxford University Press
Collins, Joseph. 1985. Nicaragua: What Difference Could a Revolution Make? Food and Farming in the New Nicaragua. San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Studies.
Cruz, José Miguel. 2011. Criminal Violence and Democratization in Central America: The Survival of the Violent State. Latin American Politics and Society 53 (4): 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2011.00132.x.
Dargent, Eduardo, Andreas E. Feldmann, and Juan Pablo Luna. 2017. Greater State Capacity, Lesser Stateness: Lessons from the Peruvian Commodity Boom. Politics & Society 45 (1): 3–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329216683164.
Dirección General de Fomento Campesino y Reforma Agraria. 1982. “Plan de Trabajo de 1982.” Managua: MIDINRADGFCRA.
Dwianto, Raphaella D. 2003. The Existing Form of Urban Locality Groups in Jakarta: Reexamining the RT/RW in the post-New Order Era. In Representing Local Places and Rising Voices from Below, ed. Toshio Mizuuchi, 41–60. Osaka: Osaka City University.
Eck, Kristine. 2018. The Origins of Policing Institutions: Legacies of Counterinsurgency. Journal of Peace Research 55 (2): 147–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343317747955.
Equipo Nitlápan-Envío. 1998. Noticias del mes. Envío, 198. September.
Flores-Macías, Gustavo A. 2014. Financing Security Through Elite Taxation: The Case of Colombia’s “Democratic Security Taxes.” Studies in Comparative International Development 49 (4): 477–500. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-013-9146-7.
---. 2018. The Consequences of Militarizing Anti-Drug Efforts for State Capacity in Latin America: Evidence from Mexico. Comparative Politics 51 (1): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.5129/001041518824414647.
French, David. 2011. The British Way in Counterinsurgency, 1945–1967. New York: Oxford University Press.
Galula, David. 2006. Pacification in Algeria, 1956–1958. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.
Garfias, Francisco, and Emily A. Sellars. 2021. From Conquest to Centralization: Domestic Conflict and the Transition to Direct Rule. The Journal of Politics 83 (3): 992. https://doi.org/10.1086/711175.
Garrard-Burnett, Virginia. 2009. Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala under General Efraín Ríos Montt, 1982–1983. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gilbert, Dennis. 1988. Sandinistas: The Party and the Revolution. New York: Basil Blackwell.
Gilligan, Michael J., Benjamin J. Pasquale, and Cyrus Samii. 2014. Civil War and Social Cohesion: Lab-in-the-Field: Evidence from Nepal. American Journal of Political Science 58 (3): 604–619. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12067.
Goodwin, Jeff. 2001. No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gurman, Hannah, ed. 2013. Hearts and Minds: A People’s History of Counterinsurgency. New York: The New Press.
Gutiérrez, Ivan. 1988. “La Política de Tierras de la Reforma Agraria Sandinista.” In El Debate Sobre la Reforma Agraria en Nicaragua, edited by Raúl Ruben, J.P. Groot, and E.V.K. Fitzgerald, 113–128. Managua: Editorial Ciencias Sociales.
Hazelton, Jacqueline L. 2021. Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Hindley, Donald. 1964. The Communist Party of Indonesia, 1951–1963. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Huang, Reyko. 2016. The Wartime Origins of Democratization: Civil War, Rebel Governance, and Political Regimes. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kaimowitz, David. 1988. “La Planificación Agropecuaria En Nicaragua: De Un Proceso de Acumulación Basado En El Estado a la Alianza Estratégica Con El Campesinado.” In El Debate Sobre la Reforma Agraria En Nicaragua: Transformación Agraria Y Atención Al Campesinado En Nueve Años de Reforma Agraria (1979–1988), edited by Raúl Rubén, J.P. Groot, and E.V.K. Fitzgerado, 47–80. Managua: INIES.
Kalyvas, Stathis N. “Review Symposium: The New U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manuel as Political Science and Political Praxis.” Perspectives on Politics 6(2): 347–360.
Kaplan, Oliver. 2017. Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kilcullen, David. 2006. Counter-insurgency Redux. Survival 48 (4): 111–130.
Kobayashi, Kazuo. 2007. “The ‘Invention of Tradition’ in Java under the Japanese Occupation: The Tonarigumi System and Gotong Royong.” Working Paper Series of the Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development Studies at Ryukoku University 31: 1–30.
Krause, Jana. 2018. Resilient Communities: Non-Violence and Civilian Agency in Communal War. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kreuzer, Peter. 2009. Private Political Violence and Boss-Rule in the Philippines. Behemoth 2 (1): 47–63.
Kurasawa, Aiko. 2009. Swaying Between State and Community: The Role of RT/RW in post-Suharto Indonesia. In Local Organizations and Urban Governance in East and Southeast Asia, ed. Benjamin Read and Robert Pekkanen, 58–83. London: Routledge.
Lake, Milli. 2022. Policing Insecurity. American Political Science Review 116 (3): 858–874. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055421001441.
LaRamée, Pierre M., and Erica G. Polakoff. 1997. The Evolution of Popular Organizations in Nicaragua. In The Undermining of the Sandinista Revolution, ed. Gary Prevost and Harry E. Vanden, 141–206. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
LaRamée, Pierre M., and Erica G. Polakoff. 1990. Transformation of the CDS’s and the Breakdown of Grassroots Democracy in Revolutionary Guatemala. New Political Science 9 (1–2): 103–123. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393149008429636.
Lazarev, Egor. 2019. Laws in Conflict: Legacies of War, Gender, and Legal Pluralism in Chechnya. World Politics 71 (4): 667–709. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887119000133.
Lee, Melissa Lee. 2020. Crippling Leviathan: How Foreign Subversion the State. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan Way. 2022. Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Lewis, Janet. 2020. How Insurgency Begins: Rebel Group Formation in Uganda and Beyond. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Liu, Shelley X. “Control, Coercion, and Cooptation: How Rebels Govern after Winning Civil War.” World Politics 74(1): 37–76 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887121000174.
Logsdon, Martha Gay. 1975. Leaders and Followers in Urban Neighborhoods: An Exploratory Study of Djakarta, Indonesia. Yale University (Ph.D. Diss).
Lupu, Noam, and Leonid Peisakhin. 2017. The Legacy of Political Violence across Generations. American Journal of Political Science 61 (4): 836–851. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12327.
MacKay, Joseph. 2023. The Counterinsurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Mahoney, James, and Kathleen Thelen. 2009. A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change. In Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power, ed. James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, 1–37. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Mampilly, Zachariah. 2011. Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life During War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Mampilly, Zachariah, and Megan A. Stewart. 2021. A Typology of Rebel Political Institutional Arrangements. Journal of Conflict Resolution 65 (1): 15–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002720935642.
Manz, Beatriz. 1988. Refugees of a Hidden War: The Aftermath of Counterinsurgency in Guatemala. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Ministerio de Desarrollo Agropecuario y Reforma Agraria. 1987. Informe de Nicaragua a la FAO 1986. Managua: CIERA-MIDINRA.
Migdal, Joel S. 1988. Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mukhopadhyay, Dipali, and Kimberly Howe. 2023. Good Rebel Governance: Revolutionary Politics and Western Intervention in Syria. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Núñez, Orlando. 1991. La Guerra en Nicaragua. Managua: CIPRES.
---. 1995. La Guerra y el Campesinado en Nicaragua. Managua: CIPRES, Second Edition.
Ortega, Marvin. 1987. “El Cooperativismo Agrario en Nicaragua.” Encuentro: Revista Académica de la Universidad Centroamericana 30: 73–93.
Owens, Patricia. 2015. Economy of Force: Counterinsurgency and the Historical Rise of the Social. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Paglayan, Agustina S. 2022. Education or Indoctrination? The Violent Origins of Public School Systems in an Era of State-Building. American Political Science Review 116 (4): 1242–1257. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000247.
Peters, Robbie. 2013 Surabaya, 1945–2010: Neighbourhood, State and Economy in Indonesia’s City of Struggle. NUS Press
Pierson, Paul. 2000. Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics. The American Political Science Review 94 (2): 251–267. https://doi.org/10.2307/2586011.
Queralt, Didac. 2019. War, International Finance, and Fiscal Capacity in the Long Run. International Organization 73 (4): 713–753. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818319000250.
Robinson, Geoffrey. 2018. The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965–66. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ruben, Ruerd, and Zvi Lerman. 2005. Why Nicaraguan Peasants Stay in Agricultural Production Cooperatives. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 78: 31–47. https://doi.org/10.18352/erlacs.9670.
Ruchwarger, Gary. 1987. People in Power: Forging Grassroots Democracy in Nicaragua. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers.
Schouten, Peer. 2022. Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schwartz, Rachel A. 2023. Rewriting the Rules of Land Reform: Counterinsurgency and the Property Rights Gap in Wartime Nicaragua. Small Wars & Insurgencies 34 (6): 1154–1179. https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2022.2033497.
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Serra, Luis. 1991. El Movimiento Campesino: Su participación política durante la revolución sandinista, 1979–1989. Managua: UCA.
Shenk, Jamie L. 2022. Does Conflict Experience Affect Participatory Democracy after War? Evidence from Colombia. Journal of Peace Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221105112.
Slater, Dan. 2010. Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Slater, Dan, and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2016. The Power of Counterrevolutions: Elitist Origins of Political Order in Postcolonial Asia and Africa. American Journal of Sociology 121 (5): 1472–1516. https://doi.org/10.1086/684199.
Soifer, Hillel David, and Everett A. Vieira III. 2019. “Internal Armed Conflict and State Capacity: Institutional Reforms and the Effective Exercise of Authority.” In Politics After Violence: Legacies of the Shining Path Conflict in Peru, edited David Hillel Soifer and Alberto Vergara, 109–31. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Soifer, Hillel, and Matthias vom Hau. 2008. Unpacking the Strength of the State: The Utility of State Infrastructural Power. Studies in Comparative International Development 43: 219–230. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-008-9030-z.
Spalding, Rose. 1994. Capitalists and the Revolution in Nicaragua: Opposition and Accommodation, 1979–1993. Chapel Hill: UNC Press.
Stewart, Megan A. 2018. Civil War as State-Making: Strategic Governance in Civil War. International Organization 72 (1): 205–226. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818317000418.
Stewart, Megan A. 2021. Governing for Revolution: Social Transformation in Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sullivan, John. 1992. Local Government and Community in Java. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sullivan, John. 1986. Kampung and the State: The Role of Government in the Development of Urban Community in Yogyakarta. Indonesia 41: 63–88.
Sutiyo. 2015. Roles of Neighborhood Group to Promote Participatory Development in Indonesia: Case of Three Villages in Purbalingga District, Central Java Province. Journal of Government and Politics 6 (1): 125–135.
Tilly, Charles. 1990. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 900–1990. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
Thaler, Kai M. 2018. “From Insurgent to Incumbent: State Building and Service Provision after Rebel Victory in Civil War.” Ph.D. Diss. Harvard University. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:40050154.
Thompson, Robert. 1978. Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
United States Department of State and Department of Defense. 1987. The Sandinista Military Build-up: An Update. Publication 9432. Washington, DC: Proquest Digital National Security Archive.
United States Embassy Nicaragua 1986. Agrarian Reform: Who Owns the Land in Nicaragua? Washington, DC: Proquest Digital National Security Archive.
Utting, Peter, Amalia Chamorro, and Christopher Bacon. 2014. “Post-Conflict Reconciliation and Development in Nicaragua: The Role of Cooperatives and Collective Action.” UNRISD Working Paper No. 2014–22. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.
Yashar, Deborah J. 2018. Homicidal Ecologies: Illicit Economies and Complicit States in Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Dipali Mukhopadyay, Dan Slater, and the participants in a 2023 ISA panel on “Statebuilding, Conflict, and Counterinsurgency in Comparative Perspective” for their thoughtful feedback on this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Matsuzaki, R., Schwartz, R.A. When Counterinsurgent Institutions Persist: Unpacking Local Wartime Legacies. St Comp Int Dev (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-024-09427-1
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-024-09427-1