Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The two most important points argued here are that guerrilla organizations create civilian administrations and that they organize them differently. The issue is to explain the variations among them. A comparison of two Ugandan cases suggests a puzzle, since the guerrillas with less education, professional expertise and government experience invested greater energy and scarce resources into building more extensive, bureaucratic and centralized administration.
Early European state builders adopted administrative innovations under conditions somewhat similar to those of contemporary guerrillas. However, the literature about them suggests that a comparative advantage in surviving constant warfare lay with those who relied more on educated officials, took steps to centralize control and, in certain cases, introduced structures to collect new taxes. Postcolonial African state builders have created administrative structures that have functioned poorly. The literature about them indicates their distinctive performance is the consequence of gaining sovereignty through the protection of the international community rather than through state structures capable of repelling their enemies and responding to intense domestic opposition.
Both the National Resistance Army and the Rwenzururu Kingdom Government in Uganda created administrative structures that connected their guerrilla forces to residents living in their areas of operation, though neither set of leaders had made plans to do so before initiating their rebellions. Until the last three months of the war when they controlled one of Uganda’s four regions, the NRA consistently opted for a limited, decentralized, nonbureaucratic civilian administration with the exception of a few central policy initiatives. It did not collect taxes or keep records. It put civilian management into the hands of elected village officials. The NRA sought assistance internationally to fight its war, but made no effort to gain international recognition before taking power. Immediately after its leader announced its secession from Uganda, the RKG began to build an extensive, centralized, bureaucratic civilian administration, a process that took it almost four years. It collected taxes, kept records and trained its officials. It introduced an unprecedented degree of central control over civilian behavior and disputes. The RKG made repeated efforts to gain international protection, assistance and recognition as a sovereign state, but without any success.
The early European and African state-building literatures suggest hypotheses that help explain these divergent outcomes in guerrilla creation of civilian administration. These hypotheses grow out of guerrrillas’ responses that improve their chances in fighting wars by involving civilians and by gaining support from the international community. The hypotheses are generally responsive to the experience of the NRA and the RKG. Taken together, the hypotheses propose that more extensive and centralized civilian administration occurs where 1) terrain is less accessible, 2) a safe zone is created early, 3) an extensive pre-existing organization is available, 4) reliance is primarily on internal and dispersed resources, 5) no previous state sovereignty exists and 6) the guerrillas realize they cannot defeat or exclude the army of the existing government from the territory they claim. The next step would be to consider additional cases of guerrilla creation of civilian administration in order to decide whether other hypotheses would be more promising, and to begin to test the ones suggested here.