title: Unstable Elite Relations and their Reproduction: From Mogadishu to the Afghan Region
Creators: name: Karlsson, Malin
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: Mogadishu
subject: Afghanistan

description: Due to its state centric view, the state failure literature has mostly overlooked that the state is a result of historical power struggles among elites. This oversight renders the literature unable to understand how intra-elite relations are constitutive of situations commonly defined as state failure. This study seeks to redress this oversight, arguing that when there is little elite consensus for how to obtain power, and volatility in the level of autonomy and independence of elites (that is, when elite integration is low and differentiation is fluctuating) the elite structure tends towards destructive means of obtaining power. In other words, the structural characteristics of elites and their agency mutually constitute modes of obtaining power that are incompatible with the western idea of statehood, and as such, display characteristics of what has been defined as state failure. The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to decentralise the state from the state failure literature, and to reveal that western normative understandings which presume the modern state form as the unit of analysis, obscure how power operates among local elites. For this purpose, this study’s theoretical framework is based on relationism which allows the decentralisation of presumed and fixed units such as the ‘state’ from the analysis. The second purpose of this study is to reconstruct the state failure narrative. To do so this study develops a framework for the understanding of the operation of power in ‘unstable’ elite structures. This framework builds on neo-elite theory and shows how power relates to elite integration and differentiation. To examine the operation of power in unstable elite structure, the above-mentioned framework is applied to two seemingly different ‘state failure’ narratives: Mogadishu, Somalia, and Afghanistan as well as its borderlands, including Peshawar in Pakistan. The use of Mogadishu as a relatively local elite structure, and Afghanistan and its borderlands as an exceptionally regional elite structure, allows comprehension of how unstable local elite relations, whether they are receptive to local or regional pressures, are in a symbiotic relation to power which results in violence in the broader society. From the analysis of the Mogadishu and Afghan elite structures, the study finds that, in contrast to the conventional understanding of state failure, power is omnipresent and highly fluid in unstable elite structures. It also finds that when elites form symbolic power, differentiation fluctuates in the elite structure due to clashes between discourses that hamper peace processes and instigate violence. Violent power includes elites’ provision of security to society or the deliberate generation of insecurity to reduce the power of others. This generates financial and symbolic support for the elite while also producing further opportunities for security provision. These violent power formations reproduce the unstable elite structure as they result in markets for militant labour and weapons. The study finds that material power is formed through relations with external or domestic financiers, which, due to elites’ low commitment, eventually deteriorates. When these dependences are fruitful, elite differentiation is reduced. When unsuccessful, differentiation increases and violent conflict between elites escalates. The consequence of this fluctuating differentiation is increased violence the society, more avenues for material power formation, and reproduction of the unstable elite structure. Despite these trends, this study finds no sequencing pattern in differentiation, which shows that state failure is more fluid, due to the ways elites form power, and less causal than the state failure literature suggests.