State Development in Civil War: Evidence from DR Congo
A Kellogg Work-in-Progress Seminar with Faulty Fellow Rachel Sweet, Assistant Professor of Global Affairs at the Keough School.
This paper draws on original data from rebels’ internal records to examine varied engagement strategies between armed groups and subnational branches of the state apparatus. It identifies and explains variation in these state-rebel relations: rebels sometimes build the fiscal capacity of state institutions, undermine fiscal capacity, or discard state institutions altogether. The paper argues that the political geography of rebel control shapes these distinct outcomes, with consequences for the long-term development of the post-conflict state. Findings recast rebel order not as proto-states or alternatives to the state, but as directly engaging state institutions.
Rachel Sweet
Rachel Sweet is an assistant professor of politics and global affairs at the Keough School of Global Affairs, a core faculty member of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and a concurrent faculty member with the Department of Political Science. She has been a Kellogg Institute faculty fellow since 2020...
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