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Hybrid Political Orders, Not Fragile States

Volker Boege , M. Anne Brown & Kevin P. Clements

To cite this article: Volker Boege , M. Anne Brown & Kevin P. Clements (2009) Hybrid Political
Orders, Not Fragile States, Peace Review, 21:1, 13-21, DOI: 10.1080/10402650802689997

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Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 21:13–21
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN 1040-2659 print; 1469-9982 online
DOI: 10.1080/10402650802689997

Hybrid Political Orders, Not Fragile

States
VOLKER BOEGE, M. ANNE BROWN, AND KEVIN P. CLEMENTS

The concept of state fragility that has gained prominence within the
development and security agenda focuses very much on deficiencies and
shortcomings of governance in so-called fragile states. In contrast, the
concept of hybrid political order takes a more positive outlook by
focusing on the strength and resilience of sociopolitical formations that
are present on the ground, that work, and that provide public goods for
people and communities.

I n Western security policy thinking, it has become conventional

wisdom that poor state performance—generally referred to using
terms such as ‘‘weak’’ or ‘‘fragile’’ states, ‘‘failing,’’ or ‘‘failed’’ states—
and violent conflicts are closely related. State fragility is seen to
engender violent conflict, which in turn can lead to state failure or even
collapse. Moreover, regions of state fragility are perceived as providing
breeding grounds and safe havens for transnational terrorism, weapons
proliferation, and organized crime. Hence, state fragility not only
affects the citizens of the state and society in question, but also
neighboring states and the international community at large.
Accordingly, fragile and failed states are seen to ‘‘present one of the
most important foreign policy challenges of the contemporary era,’’
according to Stephen D. Krasner and Carlos Pascual. At the same time,
the fragile states discourse also heavily frames the development policies
and development assistance of major donor countries and multilateral
donor organizations; for them, functioning and effective state institu-
tions are a prerequisite for sustainable development.
In the mainstream Western line of political thinking, fragile states
are thus presented as a challenge to both development and security.
This view is almost universally shared by policy makers and
governments in the developed world and, as a consequence, state-
building in regions of fragile statehood is presented as a central task of
contemporary policies.

13
14 VOLKER BOEGE ET AL.

We argue that this perception of the fragility of states as an

obstacle to the maintenance of peace and to sustainable development
can be misleading, as can its corollary, the promotion of conventional
state-building along the lines of the Western Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) state model.
Rather, alternative explanations for, and assessments of, statehood in
the Global South, and the related causes and forms of violent conflict,
are called for. Further, there is a need to develop alternative non-state-
centric approaches to governance, the control of violence, peace-
building, and development. Widening the perspective and changing the
focus can contribute to a deeper understanding of the issues at stake in
so-called fragile states. It is too short-sighted to see only the problems
(real though they are) without also taking into account the strengths of
the societies in question, acknowledging their resilience, encouraging
indigenous creative responses to the problems, and strengthening their
own capacities for endurance. We therefore posit that rather than
thinking in terms of fragile or failed states, it might be theoretically and
practically more fruitful to think in terms of hybrid political orders.
This re-conceptualization opens new options for conflict prevention
and development, as well as for new approaches to state-building.
The modern Western-style Weberian state, toward which both the
fragile states discourse and the state-building policy are oriented, hardly
exists in reality outside the OECD. Many states in the ‘‘rest’’ of the
world are political entities that do not closely resemble that model state.
These states should not be seen from the perspective of ‘‘incomplete-
ness,’’ nor from the perspective of either ‘‘not yet’’ properly built, or
‘‘already’’ failing, or failed again. Instead of assuming that the complete
adoption of Western state models is the most appropriate avenue for
conflict prevention, security, development, and good governance, we
should focus more attention on models of governance that draw on the
strengths of social order and resilience embedded in community life of
the societies in question and work with the grain of actually existing
institutions on the ground.

M ainstream Western concepts of state-building tend to overburden

the actual state institutions on the ground—‘‘the set of
expectations is simply too great,’’ said Susan L. Woodward—and at
the same time to underestimate the potential of non-state indigenous
institutions and actors. Our research, for example, found that in the
Pacific Island states—and potentially, to greater or lesser degrees, in
other countries of the Global South—state institutions are not the only
institutions that fulfill functions that, in the model Western state, are
clearly state obligations. ‘‘The state’’ often has little relevance to many
HYBRID POLITICAL ORDERS, NOT FRAGILE STATES 15

people in rural areas. In countries like Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, or

Papua New Guinea, non-state customary institutions that have their
roots in the pre-colonial past of those places still play an important role
in the everyday life of the majority of people and communities.
Despite the efforts of colonial administrations and newly
independent post-colonial states to impose state-based modes of
governance on communities, these customary institutions have shown
considerable resilience and adaptive capacity. Contemporary ‘‘custom-
ary institutions,’’ ‘‘customary ways,’’ and so on are, of course, not the
institutions and ways of the pre-contact and pre-colonial past.
Traditional societies everywhere in the world have come into contact
with outside influences; they have not been left unchanged by the
powers of—originally European—capitalist expansion, colonialism,
evangelism, imperialism, and globalization. This holds true even for the
most remote parts of the Global South. In practice, therefore, there are
no clear-cut boundaries between the realm of the exogenous ‘‘modern’’
and the endogenous ‘‘customary’’; instead, processes of assimilation,
articulation, transformation, and/or adoption are at the interface of the
global/exogenous and the local/indigenous, according to Alan Rumsey
and Geoffrey White. Nevertheless the use of the terms ‘‘custom,’’
‘‘customary institutions,’’ and so on is helpful because they expose
specific local indigenous characteristics that distinguish them from
introduced institutions that belong to the realm of the state and civil
society.
Customary law and indigenous knowledge, as well as traditional
societal structures—extended families, clans, tribes, religious brother-
hoods, village communities—and traditional authorities such as village
elders, clan chiefs, healers, big men, and religious leaders determine the
everyday social reality of large parts of the population in so-called
fragile states even today, particularly in rural and remote peripheral
areas. Moreover, state institutions are to a certain extent ‘‘infiltrated’’
and overwhelmed by these ‘‘informal’’ indigenous societal institutions
and social forces that work according to their own logics and rules
within the state structures. This leads to the departure of state
institutions from the Weberian ideal type in post-colonial societies.
Those institutions are captured by social forces that make use of them
in the interest of traditional, mostly kinship-based, entities (wantokism
as it is called in Melanesia; Wantok is translated as one talk, for
[members of] one language group). The state also introduces sites of
centralized power that then become objects of competition. In a way,
the debate about neopatrimonialism, clientelistic networks and patron-
age in postcolonial African states, for example, revolves around this
usurpation of imported formal governance structures by indigenous
16 VOLKER BOEGE ET AL.

informal societal forces. On many occasions, the only way to make state
institutions work is through the utilization of kin-based and other
traditional networks.
On the other hand, the intrusion of state agencies impacts non-
state local orders as well. Customary systems of order are subjected to
deconstruction and re-formation as they are incorporated into central
state structures and processes. Customary institutions and customary
authorities do not remain unchanged; they respond to and are
influenced by the mechanisms of the state apparatus. They adopt an
ambiguous position with regard to the state, appropriating state
functions and ‘‘state talk,’’ but at the same time pursuing their own
agenda under the guise of the statal surface.

T his complex nature of governance is further complicated by the

emergence and growing importance of institutions, movements,
and formations that have their origins in the effects and reactions to
globalization, including warlords and their militias in outlying regions,
gang leaders in townships and squatter settlements, vigilante-type
organizations, ethnically based protection rackets, millenarian religious
movements, transnational networks of extended family relations or
organized crime, or new forms of tribalism. The emergence of these new
forces is a consequence of poor state performance, and their activities
can contribute to the further weakening of state structures. Where state
agencies are incapable or unwilling to deliver security and other public
goods, people will turn to other social entities for support. Some of
these new formations manage to seize power in certain regions of the
territory of a given state (be it a remote mountainous peripheral
location or a squatter settlement in the capital city). They have the
capacity to exert violence on a large scale against outsiders and the
capacity to control violence within their respective strongholds. Their
presence and competition has undermined or substituted the state’s
monopoly over the legitimate use of violence.
Under such conditions, there are often combinations of forces
from the customary sphere—like chiefs, traditional kings, religious
authorities, and their constituencies—and forces from the sphere of the
new formations—like warlords and their militias, ethnic or millenarian
movements or organized crime. The new formations are often linked to
traditional societal entities and attempt to instrumentalize them for
their own goals, such as new forms of power and profit. Customary
checks to corruption, misuse of power, and violence then often become
seriously undermined. The protagonists of the traditional societal
entities such as lineages, clans, ‘‘tribes’’ or religious brotherhoods, on
the other hand, also introduce their own agendas into the overall
HYBRID POLITICAL ORDERS, NOT FRAGILE STATES 17

picture. These agendas are not reducible to political aims—such as

political power, or to economic considerations—such as private gain
and profit, but include concepts such as ‘‘honor,’’ ‘‘revenge,’’ or ‘‘right
to (violent) self-help.’’ Thus non-state traditional actors and institu-
tions, their motives and concerns, as well as their ways of doing things,
blend with private actors and their motives. Clan leaders might become
warlords (or warlords might strive for an authoritative position in the
customary context), or tribal warriors might become private militias,
and a political economy based on extensive use of violence might
emerge. Again, as in the case of the relationship of introduced state
institutions and indigenous customary societal institutions, a situation
of co-existence, overlap, and blending emerges.
These processes of mutual diffusion lead to a situation of a
contradictory and dialectic co-existence of forms of sociopolitical
organization that have their roots in both non-state indigenous societal
structures and introduced state structures—hybrid political orders. In
hybrid political orders, diverse and competing authority structures, sets
of rules, logics of order, and claims to power co-exist, overlap, interact,
and intertwine, combining elements of introduced Western models of
governance and elements stemming from local indigenous traditions of
governance and politics, with further influences exerted by the forces of
globalization and associated societal fragmentation (in various forms:
ethnic, tribal, religious). In this environment, the ‘‘state’’ has no
privileged monopolistic position as the only agency providing security,
welfare, and representation; it has to share authority, legitimacy, and
capacity with other institutions.
We use the term ‘‘hybrid’’ to characterize the following political
orders: because it is broad enough to encompass a variety of non-state
forms of order and governance on the customary side (from neo-
patrimonial to acephalous); because it focuses on the combination of
elements that stem from genuinely different societal sources that follow
different logics; and because it affirms that these spheres do not exist in
isolation from each other, but permeate each other and, consequently,
give rise to different and genuine political orders that are characterized
by the closely interwoven texture of their separate sources of origin.

H ybrid political orders differ considerably from the Western model

state and the way it operates, even in the core governance domains
of security, representation, and welfare. First and foremost, the security
domain—which in the Western Weberian context is seen as being at the
heart of statehood—is structured in a non-state-centric way. The
maintenance of internal security and order is not based on the state
monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force. Rather, state
18 VOLKER BOEGE ET AL.

institutions have to share responsibilities with non-state actors. In

Pacific island countries, for example, the effectiveness and legitimacy of
the law enforcement agencies of the state very much depends on
working relationships with the customary authorities on the ground.
Order and peace in the communities in Pacific societies are usually
provided by village chiefs or clan elders. They deal with disturbances of
order in the local context by applying the customary law of the
particular locality and not the written law of the state. Customary law
in many places is strong and vital, whereas the state judicial system is
weak and difficult to understand and access for community members.
The police only play a marginal role in the vast majority of localities in
Pacific island countries. Police are hardly present on the ground in rural
areas; they often can only become active upon invitation by the chiefs
and elders. The security field is thus characterized by the co-existence
and cooperation of different institutional arrangements. In other
words: hybrid domains of security, rather than a state monopoly of
legitimate physical force, prevail.
When it comes to political representation, another core domain of
political order, one is confronted with different, often competing, forms
of leadership, authority, and legitimacy. Liberal democratic systems of
representation are often well established on paper. This, however, does
not say much about the real processes of leadership selection and
representation. Parliamentary systems often apply logic incompatible
with liberal democratic principles (such as the selection of leaders based
on kin affiliations and patronage, accompanied by hand-out mentalities
and necessitating significant corruption). Legitimate leadership is not so
much grounded in the formal processes of the state system; often
traditional authority (or charismatic authority) is more important than
the legal/rational type of legitimate authority. Office holders in state
institutions often can only enjoy authority if they also hold status in the
customary sphere or are endorsed by traditional authorities. At the
same time, leaders from the customary sphere are often lured into
positions in the central machinery of government, and this internal
form of ‘‘brain drain’’ can seriously weaken customary governance.
Customary leadership, on the other hand, despite sometimes being
arbitrary, self-serving, or parochial, is still generally effective and
legitimate when it comes to governing the affairs of the everyday life in
the local context. Customary forms of governance can be participatory
and consultative. These forms, however, are often very different from
the mechanisms of formal liberal democracy. The competitive dimen-
sion of liberal democratic elections, for example, is alien to Melanesian
custom, which is much more focused on consensus and inclusion. In
such an environment, Western-style elections can have serious negative
HYBRID POLITICAL ORDERS, NOT FRAGILE STATES 19

effects that may lead to social turbulence and escalating conflicts. This
should not be taken to imply that custom is somehow qualitatively
superior to liberal democracy. It generates its own sets of problems and
dilemmas. The differentiation of participation and inclusion in decision
making according to categories such as age, gender, and status is not
compatible with liberal democratic concepts.
Finally, with regard to social services—or the ‘‘welfare’’ dimension
of the state—the capacities and effectiveness of state institutions are
generally weak in developing countries. The most fundamental and
reliable social safety net is often provided by kin groups, based on
customary norms of reciprocity and sharing. Civil society institutions,
most notably churches or other religious institutions, play an important
role in providing basic public goods such as health and education in
hybrid political orders.

U nfortunately, today the hybridity of political order is perceived as

a negative factor (if perceived at all) from the perspective of the
mainstream Western policy and academic discourse on ‘‘fragile’’ states.
This discourse only acknowledges civil society institutions that do not
challenge, but complement state institutions. Non-state actors, how-
ever, that do not fit neatly into civil society roles are more often than
not perceived as ‘‘spoilers’’ whose power and influence has to be
broken. This is not to assert that there are no spoilers, like warlords and
leaders of organized crime; their power definitely will have to diminish
in order to build and maintain legitimate forms of political order. We
want to draw attention, however, to the fact that besides warlords and
gang leaders, there are a variety of non-state authorities—like chiefs,
religious figures, customary kings, big men, and healers—who are often
engaged in confrontation and competition with state institutions, but
who nevertheless have to be reckoned with and engaged with when it
comes to building peace and sustainable political order. Experience
shows that any attempts at peacebuilding and state-building that ignore
or fight hybridity have considerable difficulty in generating effective
and legitimate outcomes.
Strengthening central state institutions is unquestionably impor-
tant, but if this becomes the main or only focus, it threatens to further
alienate local societies by rendering them passive, thereby weakening a
sense of local responsibility for overcoming problems and undermining
local ownership of solutions. Engaging with communities and non-state
informal institutions is as important as working with the agencies of the
machinery of central government.
Recognizing the hybridity of political orders should be the starting
point for any endeavors that aim at peacebuilding, development, and
20 VOLKER BOEGE ET AL.

state-building. The capacities and legitimacy of non-state providers of

security and other public goods have to be acknowledged and integrated
into processes of building political orders beyond the Western model of
the state. It is important to search for ways and means of generating
positive mutual accommodation of state and customary non-state, as
well as civil society institutions—which, in real life are not isolated
domains anyway, but elements of a specific ‘‘messy’’ local sociopolitical
context. Processes of positive mutual accommodation may result in
‘‘states’’ that may still appear ‘‘weak’’ in terms of institutions and
implementation and enforcement capacities. But this very weakness may
become a strength as the state gains legitimacy in the eyes of the people
because it does not attempt to impose its authority on local institutions.
Pursuing such an approach means to stress positive potential
rather than negative features of so-called fragile states. This also entails
perceiving community resilience and customary institutions not so
much as ‘‘spoilers’’ and problems, but as assets and sources of solutions
that can be drawn on in order to forge constructive relationships
between communities and governments, between customary and
introduced political and social institutions. Instead of denouncing
kinship-based societal formations as sources of corruption and
nepotism, and hindrances to accountability and transparency, for
example, one can also look at them as valuable social support networks
that have their own checks and balances, and that can positively
contribute to political order.
The best outcome of such a novel approach to state formation,
based on positive mutual accommodation, would be that new forms of
governance emerge: combining state institutions, customary institu-
tions, and new elements of citizenship and civil society in networks of
governance that are not introduced from the outside, but embedded in
the societal structures on the ground.

RECOMMENDED READINGS
Boege, Volker, M. Anne Brown, Kevin Clements, and Anna Nolan. 2008. ‘‘On Hybrid Political
Orders and Emerging States: State Formation in the Context of ‘Fragility.’’’ Berghof Handbook
Dialogue, No. 8. Berlin: Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management.
Boege, Volker, M. Anne Brown, Kevin P. Clements, and Anna Nolan. 2008. ‘‘States Emerging
from Hybrid Political Orders—Pacific Experiences.’’ The Australian Centre for Peace and
Conflict Studies Occasional Papers Series, No. 11.
Brown, Anne (ed.). 2007. Security and Development in the Pacific Islands. Social Resilience in
Emerging States. Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner.
Engel, Ulf and Gero Erdmann. 2007. ‘‘Neopatrimonialism Reconsidered: Critical Review and
Elaboration of an Elusive Concept.’’ Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 45(1): 95–119.
Englebert, Pierre and Denis M. Tull. 2008. ‘‘Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa: Flawed Ideas
about Failed States.’’ International Security 32(4): 106–139.
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Dr. Volker Boege is Research Officer at the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies,
(ACPACS) at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Current Research interests are
hybrid political orders and peace building, extractive industries and violent conflict, and customary
conflict resolution, with a regional focus on the South Pacific and Southeast Asia. He has
published numerous articles, papers, and books in the areas of peace research and contemporary
German history. Email: v.boege@uq.edu.au

M. Anne Brown is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict
Studies, the University of Queensland, a centre for research and practice. Research and applied
interests focus on building, political community across division, social dialogue processes, conflict
prevention and peace-building, state formation in hybrid states, and changing forms of citizenship.
Publications include Security and Development in the Pacific Islands: Social residence in emerging
states, (ed.,) Lynne Rienner, and Human Rights and the Borders of Suffering: The promotion of
human rights in international politics, University of Manchester Press, Email: anne.brown@uq.
edu.au

Kevin P. Clements is the Foundation Professor of Peace and Director of the National Centre for
Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He is the Secretary
General of the International Peace Research Association. Email:kevin.clements@otago.ac.nz