Rising Expectation-Rising Frustration Thesis

• Outsiders imposing their societal thoughts onto other cultures is a consistent issue.

Rising Expectation-Rising Frustration Thesis

• Unfulfilled, rising expectations can create unstable political situations.
• Alexis de Tocqueville suggested this thesis explained why the strongholds of the French Revolution were in regions where living standards had been improving.
• Associated with explanations of revolutions, insurgencies, civil unrest throughout the world, and the urban riots of the 1960s in the United States.
• In the 1950s, the concept described colonized countries' hopes for a better future after postwar decolonization.
• Post-WWII, regions mobilized national liberation movements leading to newly independent countries.
• Nationalist leaders promised the “fruits of independence,” including industrial development, improved education, poverty eradication, and better healthcare.
• Rising expectations represented a break from stagnation and exploitation.
• In the Cold War, the key was determining which developmental model (communism or capitalism) best satisfied rising expectations.
• The theory explains the attractiveness of communism in developing countries and identity conflicts, civil strife, and revolutions in general.
• These are all explained in terms of frustration borne of unfulfilled expectations.
• Modernization causes rapid social mobilization, breakdown of traditional order, and expansion of trans-communication networks.
• Greater demands on the political system cannot be met due to slow economic growth and concern that equitable distribution would further slow growth.
• The revolution of rising expectations was soon replaced by the revolution of rising frustrations, leading to fragmentation and the rise of ethnic sentiments.

Theory of Relative Deprivation

• Relative Deprivation (RD) is the discrepancy between what is expected and what is received, creating a sense of having less than what we feel entitled to.
• People are more inclined to rebel when they perceive an inequity in their condition and receive less than they feel they deserve.
• People must recognize that deprivation exists, become aware that their deprivation is not universal, develop feelings that deprivation is unfair, and realize the necessity of political action to change their conditions.
• Perceived political, economic, and sociocultural disadvantage is the cause of ethnic political action.
• This is the conscious feeling of a negative discrepancy between legitimate expectations and present actualities.
• People must feel they have a right to their goals and perceive that they cannot attain their goals through conventional means.
• Introduced in 1949 and formalized by James Davies (1969) into the J-curve hypothesis.
• Davies illustrated his J-curve hypothesis in 1969 using cases from the French, American, Russian, and Mexican revolutions
• The hypothesis described that revolution/rebellion is likely when a downturn occurs after a long period of rising expectations accompanied by a parallel increase in satisfaction.

J-Curve Hypothesis

• The J-Curve Hypothesis is a graphical representation of how relative deprivation rises when attainments fall short of rising expectations.
• Revolution/rebellion is likely when a downturn occurs after a long period of rising expectations accompanied by a parallel increase in satisfaction.
• When perceptions of need satisfaction decrease but expectations continue to rise, a gap widens between expectations and reality.
• That gap eventually becomes intolerable, setting the stage for rebellion against a social system that fails to fulfill its promises.

Types of Relative Deprivation

• Runciman (1966) distinguished between egoistic and fraternalistic relative deprivation.
• Egoistic Relative Deprivation: A feeling of personally having less than we feel we are entitled to, relative to our personal aspirations or other individuals (comparisons with other similar individuals).
• Fraternalistic Relative Deprivation: A sense that our group has less than it is entitled to, relative to the collective aspirations of other groups (group v.s. group comparisons).
• Black militancy in the US was associated with perceptions of fraternalistic relative deprivation.
• Muslims in India expressed the most extraordinary hostility toward Hindus.

Factors Affecting RD Mobilization

• Strong group identity: Members’ strong identification with the group is necessary for fraternalistic deprivation to influence perceptions and collective action.
• Perceived effectiveness of action: People believe that taking action, e.g., protesting, will redress the imbalance shown in their perceived fraternalistic relative deprivation.
• Perceptions of injustice: Perceptions that you have less than you are entitled to (distributed justice) and that you are a victim of unfair procedures (procedural injustice).
• In-group out-group comparisons: Likelihood for action depends on the similarity of the outgroup.
• RD explains ethnic political mobilization among identity groups across the space of time and place.

Conflict Theory and Conflict Motives: Greed/Grievance Model

• The Economics of Crime Rationale uses a unitary motive framework.
• The Loose Molecule Hypothesis: "Those with the lowest economic opportunities on the legal labor market (the loose molecules) are the ones most likely to be mobilized into rebel activity."
• The principal motivation for both leaders and followers is economic gain.
• People who have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
• Ideological motives (primordialist mystifications) are particularly useful for gathering funds and mobilizing followers, even if leaders are motivated by greed/grievance.
• Greed/grievance is the desire to correct economic/political imbalance.
• Civil war will break out when the potential benefits of fighting exceed the costs of conflict.
• Economic grievances provide the initial motivation that triggers group members into rebellion.
• Ideology provides the basis for group and resource mobilization.
• Once mobilized, grievance alone won’t sustain collective action if:
  • The state offers the group concessions to at least partially address grievances.
  • The states choose to repress dissenters, thus reducing the cost-benefit incentives of mobilization.
• Rebel leaders motivated to seize state control (greed) will use private goods as incentives to recruit and maintain the mass movement, directing the activity through greed incentives.
• Congo Crisis
• Three significant factors increase motivation for group mobilization: Threats/Grievances, Political opportunity, and Resources

Ethnic Threats and Grievances

• Threats/Grievances are internal motivators
• Political opportunity: external incentives
• Resources: both internal and external
• Physical attacks on group members.
• Attacks on the group’s economic/political status.
• Cultural attacks against a group’s right to pursue identity interests.
• Three common interests that can motivate group action:
  • The right to exercise political control over internal community and regional affairs.
  • The ability to control and benefit from the development of the region’s resources.
  • Freedom to protect their own culture and language.
• Denial of these will motivate group action.
• Ethnic mobilization is most successful among highly cohesive groups with a strong shared identity.

Political Opportunity Structures

• States with open Political opportunity Structures encourage more social activity than non-open systems.
• When a Political opportunity Structures in a state changes, social movements become more active.
• Five significant shifts that increase group mobilization:
  • An opening of access to political power
  • Unstable/Shifting ruling alignments
  • Presence of influential allies
  • Divisions among the political elite
  • Strength of the state— the ability to repress collective action
  • Authoritarian centralization v.s. Democratic openness

Resources

• Resources are critical to the likelihood of collective group action:
  • Group members must have a clear common identity reinforced by clear boundary markers between ‘self’ and ‘other.’
  • The group must possess political elites capable and willing to mobilize the group and direct collective action.
  • Organizational capacity, including a coherent ideology, financial resources, and access to media.
  • Possession of unifying symbols is critical; monuments, folk arts, written language.
  • The presence of an ethnic patron, another ethnic group that controls a homeland state or non-state actor.
• Grievances + Political opportunity Structures + Resources = Mobilization.

From Peaceful to Violent Activities

• The shift from civil discord to ethnic rebellion is a function of two state policies:
  • Policies of acceptance: Recognize the opposing group as a valid political opponent entitled to defend itself and have a meaningful say regarding its position vis-a-vis the state
    • Adoption of this policy leads a state to institute minority protections or territorial autonomy, addressing the political goals of the mobilizing group.
    • Identity Group Mobilization + Policies Of Acceptance = Peace.
  • Policies of denial: Reject the idea that the subordinate group is a legitimate political actor
    • States that take this policy option resort to extermination, expulsion, forced assimilation, or institutionalized discrimination.
    • Identity Group Mobilization + Policies Of Denial = Violence.

The North-South Sudanese Conflict

• Sudan is 728,000 Square Miles with a population of 45.6M mostly Sunni Muslim with a small Christian minority.
• South Sudan is 239,285 Square Miles with a population of 10.5M.

Background to Conflict

• 1899-1956 Anglo-Egyptian Condominium.
• European ivory and slave trade and the role of Arabs therein.
• 1933-1945: The Southern policy in force with Northern administrators transferred out.
• A no man’s land was created between the North and South.
• The Arabic language was banned even for colonial officials.
• Arabic dress and the use of Arabic names were discouraged.
• A separate military force, the southern corps, was created in the south.
• The ultimate aim was to split the North and South at independence.

The Southern Policy of H.A. MacMichael

• Opponents argued: the boundary would be complex, the North would be absorbed by Egypt.
• There was African blood in every Northern ethnic group.
• Integrating north and south could help bridge the gap between Muslim and non-muslim, Asian and African, black and brown in the Africa of the future.
• The British caved into Northern pressure in 1946 and officially abandoned the Southern policy.
• Some colonial administrators were aghast at the new policy in the run-up to Sudan's independence.

Troubles from the beginning

• At independence in 1956, the South had 30% of the population but was allocated 22 of 97 legislative seats (22.6%).
• Six southern seats were ‘won’ by northern individuals (the South ended up with 16 seats - 16.4%).
• Cipriano Koryang case, 28, in 1953 and 1958.
• Only 5 (0.5%) positions of assistant distinct commissioner out of 800 posts in the civil service.
• A northern clerk at Juba provincial headquarters was promoted to deputy governor designate and transferred to the north.
• His younger southern assistant was dismissed as nearing the age of retirement.
• August 1955: 500 Northern troops flown to the south, and the Southern corps mutinied.
• Independence January 1st, 1956, amid chaos.
• Promise to consider Southern Federation was drafted by the 46-member CA with only three southerners.

Causes of the Sudanese Conflict

• Dialectics of cultural pluralism and internal colonialism.
• Center-periphery dynamics with Arab Muslims of North-Central Sudan (the Center) and Africans of Southern Sudan, Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile, and Darfur (the Periphery).
• Oil resources, their location, and exploitation.
• Religious and Ethnic Struggles and Islamization politics of fundamentalist governments in Khartoum.
• Race antagonism and failure to establish a governing coalition.
• Societies comprising several cultural groups face an inevitable path to conflict.
• Ethnic nationalism galvanizes such cultural groups to seek control of territory.
• Conflict is a consequence of colonial policy: the colonial administration of North and South as separate entities and the merger of the two at independence without any constitutional guarantees for the South.
• Deep-seated suspicion and misunderstandings resulted in war even before the formal departure of colonialists.
• Rational Instrumentalism for Northerners seeking to maximize their power positions and by Southerners seeking to maximize their material interests.
• Communal identity is the vehicle through which calculating actors mobilize to advance self-interest.
• Elites act instrumentally, while masses follow them out of emotional fear.
• Political actors instrumentally manipulate identities in pursuit of their proximate interests.
• Lack of consensus on constitutive fundamentals of State/plural society thesis.
• Peace and stability are predicated on a consensus on the six constitutive fundamentals.
• The higher the consensus on most, if not all, the better.
• Even in the UK on Parliamentary sovereignty, constitutional monarchy, welfare state, etc…

The 1972 Agreement

• Between Ja’Far Numeiry and Joseph Lagu, with the support of the All-Africa Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.
• The South was accorded regional autonomy and got its own Regional People’s Assembly and a High Executive Council that served as a cabinet.
• 12,000 Anyana soldiers were incorporated into the military to serve in the South.
• The civil war ended, and an 11-year peaceful period followed.
• Al-Turabi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, was made AG in 1979.
• Sharia law was introduced across the country in 1983.
• Intoxicating beverages and gambling are banned.
• Islamic punishment for prescribed crimes was instituted.
• Southern Institutions of self-government were dissolved.
• The South was re-divided into three provinces: Bahr el Ghazal, Equatoria, and Upper Nile.
• Col. Garang defected from the army to constitute and lead SPLM/A.
• SPLA received support from Libya, Ethiopia, and International recognition in 1984.
• The civil war from 1983-2005 resulted in 3.5M lives lost and 5.5M displaced.

IGAD Mediation in the Sudanese Civil War: From the Machakos Framework to the Nairobi CPA

• Kakuma Refugee Camp in Northwest Kenya was set up in 1992 on the arrival of the Sudanese “Lost Boys” to accommodate 23,000 people.
• The refugee population grew to 181,000.

The Mediation Process

• 72 ‘agreements’ in the history of the Sudanese conflict.
• Most significant ones since 1983:
  • Koka Dam [Ethiopia] Declaration of 1986
  • Sudan Peace Initiative/November Accords of 1988
  • Jimmy Carter Nairobi Talks of 1989
  • Frankfurt Agreement of 1992
  • Abija I of 1192, Abuja II of 1993
  • Chukudum Agreement, 1994
  • Khartoum Peace Agreement 1997
• The IGAD Peace Initiative - 1994 was the first to rightly identify the root causes of the conflict and outline six crystal clear options:
  • Self-determination for the South
  • Unity of the Sudan based on the principle of separation of State and Religion
  • Complete equality of all Sudanese guaranteed by law
  • Establishment of a secular and democratic Sudan
  • Fair sharing of national wealth
• In the absence of an agreement on the issue of state and religion, the South had the right to determine its political future, including independence.
• The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development included Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Uganda, and Somalia.

The Machakos Framework

• Signed in July 2002 between SPLM and GOS.
• It called for religious freedom in the South and an eventual referendum on the future of the South regarding self-determination.
• It employed a strategy of third-party mediation, corralled protagonists in a tight process with a hard deadline, and applied International pressure and support to the process.
• The framework addressed self-determination for the South and religious freedom in the South.
• It engendered regional support for the peace process and facilitated continuity of the IGAD initiative.
• The framework agreed to power-sharing in principle, but no definition or clarification was made.
• The north-south border critical to Sharia exemption was not defined.
• No mention of modalities on wealth sharing.
• Some IGAD states, Uganda and Eritrea, had supported and sheltered the rebels.

The Naivasha Protocols

• Signed on May 26, 2004, and was built on the Machakos Framework.
• Supported by IPF:
  • The EU dangled the possibility of an aid package for reconstruction.
  • The US held the promise of a White House signing ceremony.
  • The US suggested removing Sudan from the terrorist list and lifting economic sanctions against Sudan.
• GOS-SPLM signed three protocols:
  • political power and wealth sharing
  • contested regions of Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile, and Abyei
  • Islam and the Future of the South
• After the signing, Garang ordered his soldiers back to the barracks and directed all SPLM representatives outside the South to return to the South and keep vigil on the new developments.

The Nairobi Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)

• Signed in Jan. 2005.
• It agreed to a federal government with a two-chamber central legislature.
• Autonomous regional government for the South for six years and a referendum thereafter to determine its future.
• Power sharing in a transitional six-year government with SPLM leader as First Vice President.
• Wealth sharing, including oil revenue on a 50-50 basis.
• Freedom of religion, Sharia in Muslim North with a secular capital and a secular South.
• Two separate armed forces with a joint coordinating mechanism.
• Trouble: Darfur was left out of this “national consensus.”

Critique of the IGAD Peace Process

• John Young (2007) stated that the dominant peace-building approach used by multilateral organizations and governments is top-down, externally guided, supply-driven, elitist, and interventionist.
• The process lasts transparency and popular participation; most Sudanese, both in the North and South, were denied access to the peace process.
• The process was externally driven, dominated by a handful of Western powers led by the U,S, and that injected their interests into the peace process.
• Democracy and justice did not feature highly in the concerns of the peace process, yet peace is much more than just the cessation of military hostilities; it entails justice, democracy, and peacebuilding endeavors
• Signed protocols did not adequately address fundamental issues of power-sharing, equity, and human rights.
• The security agreements and the instruments they established lacked transparency, accountability, and professionalism.

The Darfur Explosion

• Prolonged droughts and desertification in North Darfur caused tensions over scarce farmland and water resources.
• Administrative boundary changes imposed by the government alienated farming groups
• Decades of economic and political marginalization.

Trigger of the Conflict

• The signing of the Machakos Framework in 2002, which left Darfur out of the peace process.
• Frustration by government inaction on past land conflicts.
• Persistent marginalization and loss of government jobs to Arabs.
• Justice and Equity Movement and Sudan Liberation Movement/Army emerged and launched attacks on several army positions in Darfur.
• Government/Janjaweed retaliation: Money, guns & air support from fighter jets bombed villages in preparation for militia raids
• Rape, killings, & pillaging by Janjaweed.
• Government/Janjaweed conducts scorched earth campaigns.

Why a Proxy Army and the Brutality

• 50% of the Sudanese military from Darfur caused fear of a domino effect from successful insurgency
• JEM is led by Khalil Ibrahim, a disciple of radical Muslim scholar Hassan al-Turabi & former minister.
• SLM/A led by lawyer Abd al-Wahid Mohamed Nur.
• Self-interest for the Janjaweed.

Genocide against the Fur?

• Long delay in granting entry to humanitarian workers & emergency food and medicine.
• It took up to 5 months to get visas and another month in Khartoum to get permission to go to Darfur.
• The Govt revoked the travel permit of a UN official in Nyala.
• The official had strongly complained of a lack of protection for displaced people in meetings with govt officials.
• The government severely limited access to Darfur by foreign journalists.
• During Donnelly’s visit to Kas Camp in 2003, there was testimony of murders, rapes, and bodies dumped into wells to contaminate drinking water with government troops in Toyota Land Cruisers fighting alongside the Janjaweed.

Why the Belated Entry of the UN?

• It took more than a year for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution on Darfur.
• Sanctions were introduced another year later, in March 2005.
• Even then, the sanctions were symbolic, including asset freezes & travel bans
• Abstentions by Algeria, China, Pakistan & Russia weakened the authority of the sanctions.
• State reliance on excessive force against an ethnic/racial group is not unique to Sudan.
• Russia’s scorched earth campaign against Chechens.
• Russia thus opposed diplomatic pressure & sanctions against GOS due to fear of setting a precedent.
• Absence of tools & structures for intervention in ‘internal’ conflicts.
• Other than the ICRC, no international machinery is available for protecting civilian casualties of internal conflicts.
• The UN Secretary General’s representative on IDP human rights is only a voluntary position.
• The Internal Displacement Division within the Coordination Office of Humanitarian Affairs is still non-operational.
• Despite the Genocide Convention, there is no international mechanism for preventing genocide.
• Intervention in internal conflicts remains dependent on calculations of national self-interest.
• Geopolitical concerns of UN Security Council members.
• Algeria & Pakistan, with close ties to Arab & Islamic governments, worked to delay/weaken action against Sudan.
• China, which has a 40% stake in Sudanese oil, abstained from resolutions threatening sanctions against GOS and threatened to veto resolutions if they were “too strong.”
• The US & EU initially argued against too much pressure on GOS lest it used it as a pretext to scuttle the North-South peace process.
• GOS played this card skillfully, using progress in the peace process to deflect attention from Darfur.
• Marginal/secondary status of Africa in global affairs.
• Is it is not in their national/strategic interest to take the political, financial, or military risks needed to stop killings in Africa ?
• Semantic acrobatics by the Clinton Administration over Rwanda in 1994:
• State Department lawyers worried that a finding of genocide might obligate the administration “to actually ‘do something.’”

The politics of oil

• Sudan produces 470,000 barrels of oil per day with 85% of it from the South.
• Blocks 1, 2, & 4 are exploited by Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC) owned by:
  • CNPC of China – 40% (+ Arakis of Canada via Saudi funding)
  • Petronas of Malaysia – 30%
  • ONGC of India – 25%
  • Sudapet of GOS – 5%
• In 1992, US’s Chevron sold its oil interests in Sudan; in 1993, US-SD declared Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism
• 1997: U.S. entities barred by law from dealing with any entity connected to the Sudanese government. Blocks 3 & 7 in Eastern Upper Nile are controlled by Petrodar:
  • CNPC of China – 41% (+ Canada’s Talisman Inc/Arakis)
  • Petronas of Malaysia – 40% (+Swedish Petroleum International Company)
  • Sudapet of GOS – 08% (+ Austrian OMV)
  • Total of France – 06%
  • Gulf Petroleum of Kuwait – 05%
• China, the key player in Sudanese oil exploitation, was thus defensive of Sudan and worked to protect it from any proposed strong sanctions.