This report seeks to inform UK and international policy and practice with the objective of reducing levels of armed conflict and building sustainable post-war transitions. The report was commissioned by the UK Stabilisation Unit and synthesizes the findings of 21 desk-based case studies written by country experts. The case studies provide an evidence base for examining the relationship between elite bargaining, the dynamics of armed conflict and the effects of external interventions on these processes. The report argues that interventions can be ineffectual, or counter-productive, when interveners fail to analyse and engage effectively with underlying configurations of power and processes of elite bargaining in conflict-affected states. In response, the authors provide a framework for analysts and policymakers to decipher patterns of elite authority, trajectories of transition, and the effects of external interventions on these dynamics. http://www.sclr.stabilisationunit.gov.uk/publications/elite-bargains-and-political-deals/1586-synthesis-paper/file

The report finds that though an understanding of underlying power relations is an essential starting point for effective policy and practice, external interveners often lack this context-specific knowledge base. Instead, interventions are focused on brokering peace agreements and strengthening the formal institutions of government – constitutional reform, the rule of law, electoral democracy – in the hope that these will provide a mechanism for ‘taming’ political behaviour and managing violent conflict. However, in many contexts, power and violence are not contested or managed through such formal mechanisms. Rather, violent conflict stabilises only when the allocation of benefits, opportunities and resources (such as political positions, business prospects) is consistent with how power is distributed in society. Where powerful elites are excluded or their interests ignored, the prospects for stabilising violent conflict and sustaining peace diminish. This report focuses on elite bargains – defined as discrete agreements, or a series of agreements, that explicitly re-negotiate the distribution of power and allocation of resources between elites. Such agreements play a crucial role in managing violence and shaping post-war transitions.

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Authors and Project Director:

Christine Cheng is Lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London. She is the author of Extralegal Groups in Post-Conflict Liberia and co-editor of Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Selling the Peace? Dr Cheng holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford (Nuffield) and an MPA from Princeton University (Woodrow Wilson School). She has worked and consulted for the UN, the World Bank, the UK Stabilisation Unit, Global Affairs Canada, Chatham House, Environment Canada, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Jonathan Goodhand is Professor in Development Studies at SOAS. He studied at the Universities of Birmingham and Manchester, with qualifications in education as well as development -BA PGCE(Birmingham) MSc (Manchester) and PhD (Manchester). He worked for some years managing humanitarian and development programmes in conflict situations in Afghanistan/Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and has extensive experience as a researcher and advisor in South and Central Asia for a range of NGOs and aid agencies, including DFID, SDC, ILO and UNDP. His research interests include the political economy of aid and conflict, NGOs and peacebuilding and ‘post conflict’ reconstruction.

Ed Hadley is Conflict and Stabilisation Advisor for the UK Stabilisation Unit. He has worked for the UK government on foreign policy and conflict issues for 15 years. After posts at the Assessments Staff of the Cabinet Office and National Security Secretariat, he worked for the Foreign Office for five years as a Senior Research Analyst on Afghanistan, with a particular focus on the Taliban insurgency. In 2015, he moved to the Stabilisation Unit, where he continues to focus on Afghanistan and South Asia. Mr Hadley is the co-lead for the Stabilisation Unit's Elite Bargains and Political Deals Project.

Patrick Meehan works in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. His research explores the political economy of violence, conflict and development, and engages specifically with the relationship between illicit drug economies, statebuilding and peacebuilding, with a primary focus on Myanmar’s borderlands with China and Thailand. He is a Co-Investigator on a major new research project funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund, entitled 'Drugs and (dis)order: Building sustainable peacetime economies in the aftermath of war’, which focuses on Afghanistan, Colombia and Myanmar. He has also conducted research consultancy for The UK Government (Stabilisation Unit), the World Bank, Conciliation Resources and Christian Aid. 

Discussants:

Mark Bryson-Richardson is Director of the UK Government’s Stabilisation Unit, a cross-government civil–military–police team that serves as a centre of expertise for the British government on conflict, stability, security and justice issues.  He has served in this role since 2014. He started his career at the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office looking at Gibraltar’s relations with the European Union, then went on to study Arabic in preparation for his first stint in Sudan, which was briefly interrupted to support the British government’s involvement in Pakistan and Afghanistan after 11 September 2001.  He spent the next 15 years overseas in Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq, and working in the UK on the Middle East Peace Process and Libya. He is a Trustee for PACT (UK), an international Development NGO. 

Diane Corner was deputy head of mission at MINUSCA, the UN's peacekeeping operation in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) from 2014-17 where se had responsibility for political affairs, human rights, DDR, SSR, mine clearance, and the protection of civilians. Upon her return to the UK, Ms Corner returned to the  Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where she had previously worked for 32 years. She has served as British High Commissioner to Tanzania and United Kingdom Representative to the East African Community (2009-2013), and British Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and non-Resident Ambassador to the Republic of Congo (2013-present). Ms Corner was also Acting High Commissioner to Sierra Leone (2008-2009), Deputy High Commissioner to Zimbabwe (2001-2003), and Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy Office in Berlin (1994-1998). She is currently completing the MA in War Studies at King's College London.

Sir Lawrence Freedman was Professor of War Studies at King's College London from 1982 to 2014, and was Vice-Principal from 2003 to 2013. Before joining King's he held research appointments at Nuffield College Oxford, IISS and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. In 1996, he was appointed Official Historian of the Falklands Campaign in 1997. He was knighted in 2003. In June 2009 he was appointed to the Chilcot Inquiry which critically examined Britain's involvement in the 2003 Iraq War.  Lawrence Freedman is author of numerous books on nuclear strategy and the Cold War. His most recent book is Strategy: A History (2013), which was awarded the W J McKenzie Book Prize by the Political Studies association. His most recent book is The Future of War: A History (2017).