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Extralegal groups in post-conflict Liberia : how trade makes the state / Christine Cheng.
LIBRA DT636.5 .C44 2018
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Cheng, Christine, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Natural resources.
- Nation-building.
- History.
- Peace.
- Liberia--Politics and government--1980-.
- Liberia.
- Politics and government.
- Liberia--History--Civil War, 1999-2003--Peace.
- Nation-building--Liberia.
- Natural resources--Liberia.
- Physical Description:
- xviii, 365 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2018.
- Summary:
- In the aftermath of the Liberian civil war, groups of ex-combatants seized control of natural resource enclaves in the rubber, diamond, and timber sectors. With some of them threatening a return to war, these groups were widely viewed as the most significant threats to Liberia's hard-won peace. Building on fieldwork and socio-historical analysis, this book shows how extralegal groups are driven to provide basic governance goods in their bid to create a stable commercial environment. This is a story about how their livelihood strategies merged with the opportunities of Liberia's post-war political economy. But it is also a context-specific story that is rooted in the country's geography, its history of state-making, and its social and political practices. This volume demonstrates that extralegal groups do not emerge in a vacuum.
- Contents:
- Part I Extralegal Groups
- 1 How to Study Extralegal Groups p. 49
- Same Car, Different Driver? Warlords, Organized Crime, Mafias, Big Men p. 50
- Conflict Capital p. 54
- The Importance of Time Horizons for Governance Provision p. 60
- Research Design and Methodology p. 62
- The Micro-Level and Meso-Level p. 65
- The Importance of Politics, People, and Place p. 67
- Why Liberia? p. 68
- Gathering Data p. 70
- Limitations p. 72
- 2 Theoretical Framework p. 74
- Post-Conflict Conditions p. 75
- Emergence of Extralegal Groups p. 83
- Development p. 89
- Entrenchment p. 90
- The Functions of Extralegal Groups p. 97
- Part II How Context Matters
- 3 History and Society p. 107
- The Congo-Native Cleavage p. 108
- Pacifying the Interior p. 115
- Firestone: A Model for Extralegal Groups p. 119
- The Open Door Policy p. 124
- 4 Civil War p. 127
- The State Disintegrates p. 128
- Natural Resources p. 130
- Conflict Capital in the Fighting Factions p. 150
- The End of War p. 154
- Part III Economic Sectors
- 5 Rubber p. 161
- Liberia's Rubber Industry p. 163
- The Guthrie Group p. 166
- The Sinoe Group p. 183
- Other Plantations p. 193
- 6 Diamonds p. 203
- Liberia's Diamond Industry p. 206
- The Butaw Oil Palm Company (BOPC) Group p. 214
- 7 Timber p. 227
- Pit Sawing in Liberia p. 230
- UN Sanctions, the FDA Ban, and Post-Conflict Timber p. 234
- Conflict Capital and the Nezoun Group p. 237
- Concessions Uncertainty and Extralegal Groups p. 248
- Part IV Trade Makes the State
- 8 Conclusion: Extralegal Groups are Statebuilders p. 253
- Theoretical Insights p. 254
- Escaping the State of Nature p. 258
- Rethinking the International Community's Approach to Statebuilding p. 271
- Policy Principles for Dealing with Extralegal Groups p. 275
- Beyond Liberia: Extralegal Groups in Other Settings p. 281
- 9 Coda. Research Design Scaffolding p. 285
- Changing the Conversation: The Fiction of Tidy Research p. 286
- The Research Question p. 287
- The Rationale for Showing Your Work p. 289
- Extralegal Groups: Unveiling the Scaffolding p. 291
- Exploring Alternative Explanations p. 299
- Uncovering Biases and Assumptions p. 300.
- Local Notes:
- Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Class of 1924 Book Fund.
- ISBN:
- 9780199673346
- 0199673349
- OCLC:
- 1019665830
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