Civil War, Economic Governance & State - Specialized Research AI at MIT

Civil War, Economic Governance & State
Reconstruction in the Arab Middle East

Steven Heydemann

Abstract: Civil wars currently underway in Libya, Syria, and Yemen demonstrate that patterns of eco-
nomic governance during violent conflict exhibit significant continuity with prewar practices, raising im-
portant questions along three lines. First, violent conflict may disrupt prewar practices less than is often
assumed. Second, continuity in governance highlights the limits of state fragility frameworks for post-
conflict reconstruction that view violent conflict as creating space for institutional reform. Third, conti-
nuity of prewar governance practices has important implications for the relationship between sovereign-
ty, governance, and conflict resolution. Civil wars in the Middle East have not created conditions condu-
cive to reconceptualizing sovereignty or decoupling sovereignty and governance. Rather, parties to conflict
compete to capture and monopolize the benefits that flow from international recognition. Under these con-
ditions, civil wars in the Middle East will not yield easily to negotiated solutions. Moreover, to the extent
that wartime economic orders reflect deeply institutionalized norms and practices, postconflict conditions
will limit possibilities for interventions defined in terms of overcoming state fragility.

If war is the continuation of policy by other means,

then civil war can be seen as the continuation of gov-
ernance, not by other means as Carl von Clausewitz
remarked, but by the same means. The civil wars cur-
rently underway in Libya, Syria, and Yemen demon-
strate that patterns of governance during violent
conflict–the practices used by insurgent and re-
gime forces to maintain order in their areas of con-
trol–differ less from prewar practices than might be
expected. In all three of these Middle Eastern cases,
the legacies of prewar governance are especially ev-
ident in how regime and insurgent forces construct
wartime economic orders to advance their political
agendas. For both researchers and practitioners, the
persistence of prewar governance practices under
conditions of violent conflict raises important ques-
tions, along three distinct but related lines.

STEVEN HEYDEMANN is the Janet
Wright Ketcham 1953 Professor
in Middle East Studies at Smith
College and a Nonresident Senior
Fellow at the Brookings Institu-
tion Center for Middle East Policy.
He is the author of Authoritarianism
in Syria: Institutions and Social Con-
flict (1999), editor of War, Institu-
tions, and Social Change in the Mid-
dle East (2000), and coeditor of
Middle East Authoritarianisms: Gov-
ernance, Contestation, and Regime Re-
silience in Syria and Iran (with Rein-
oud Leenders, 2013).

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First, it challenges understandings of civ-
il war as marking a rupture in governance:
violent conflict may disrupt prewar practic-
es less than is often assumed. Civil wars may
not, as some have argued, give rise to gov-
ernance practices that differ sharply from
those present during peacetime. Further-
more, evidence of continuity also calls into
question the extent to which rebel or insur-
gent forms of governance differ from those
practiced by embattled regimes. The reli-
ance of rebels and regimes on similar modes
of economic governance reduces the likeli-
hood that insurgents will mitigate causes of
violent conflict, such as corruption, preda-
tion, or exclusion, or, as some have claimed,
contribute to the development of inclusive,
participatory postconflict political and eco-
nomic orders.1

Second, continuity between prewar and
wartime practices, especially in the domain
of economic governance, highlights the
limits of state fragility frameworks intend-
ed to improve the performance of poorly
governed states. Typically defined as the re-
sult of dysfunctional institutions that pro-
duce negative social, political, and econom-
ic outcomes, fragility is widely believed to
increase the likelihood of violent conflict.
Fragile states are especially vulnerable to in-
ternal strains that weak and flawed institu-
tions cannot manage or mitigate.2 Violent
conflicts not only signal the breakdown of
such institutions, but create possibilities for
more effective, inclusive, and accountable
postconflict institutions to emerge.

Fostering the development of such in-
stitutions has become a major preoccu-
pation of development and postconflict
practitioners.3 However, the persistence
of prewar norms and practices as well as
the continued reliance of regimes and in-
surgents alike on prewar institutions during
periods of violent conflict raise significant
questions about the usefulness of fragility-
based frameworks. William Reno has
critically and helpfully assessed fragility-

based frameworks, yet does so on the as-
sumption that civil war implies state col-
lapse.4 Civil wars in the Middle East com-
plicate this starting point. Conflict, in some
cases at least, does far less than is argued in
the literature to weaken prewar norms and
practices that are viewed as causes of fra-
gility. As international affairs scholar Ariel
Ahram has noted: “those interested in state
failure tend to misconstrue or ignore . . . the
feasibility and desirability of repairing state
strength.”5 Civil wars in the Middle East
make clear that violent conflict can deep-
en the perceived utility of institutions that
were intentionally structured to support
authoritarian, exclusionary, and predatory
systems of rule. Such conditions challenge
the feasibility of approaches to postconflict
reconstruction that reflect the underlying
assumptions of fragility frameworks. Tanja
Börzel and Sonja Grimm have pointed out
that even in cases in which the European
Union, a powerful external actor, inter-
venes to strengthen institutional effective-
ness in its immediate neighborhood, efforts
often fall short.6 Middle East and North Af-
rica (mena) region experiences reinforce
the view that we reconsider just how fragile
the institutions are that generate outcomes
typically associated with fragility, even in
extreme cases such as Libya and Yemen,
where prewar states ranked very highly on
indicators of weakness.

Third, the continuity of prewar practic-
es affects the relationship between sover-
eignty, governance, and conflict resolu-
tion.7 In the Arab Middle East, where state
boundaries are routinely described as ar-
tificial, violent conflict is often character-
ized as the result of failed nation-building
or, in international studies scholar Benja-
min Miller’s terms, a sharp incongruence
between “the division of the region into
territorial states and the national aspira-
tions and political identifications of the
region’s peoples.”8 Libya, Syria, and Ye-
men are all states in which rigid, unitary

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147 (1) Winter 2018Steven Heydemann

conceptions of sovereignty suppressed
the aspirations and identifications of cit-
izens, and played a role in launching na-
tional uprisings that evolved from protest
movements into violent conflicts.

In all three cases, protracted conflict has
been accompanied by proposals to redefine
the terms of sovereignty, including various
forms of local autonomy, federalism, decen-
tralization, and even state partition.9 How-
ever, civil wars in the Middle East under-
score the difficulties that confront attempts
to advance alternative conceptions of state
sovereignty as solutions to violent conflict.
These alternatives often rest on the assump-
tion that governance and sovereignty are
separable. They assume that the relation-
ship between the two can take a variety of
forms. Yet as evidenced by the determina-
tion with which warring parties in Libya,
Syria, and Yemen struggle to control state
institutions and state functions, governance
becomes a potent measure of a regime’s sov-
ereign standing. And sovereignty itself is far
too significant a resource to dilute through
political frameworks that would weaken
the power of a central authority to govern.
In keeping with the view expressed by Hen-
drik Spruyt, unitary, Westphalian concep-
tions of sovereignty among parties to civ-
il war in the Middle East show few signs of
yielding to formulas that erode the benefits
that international recognition generates for
sovereigns.10

Thus, civil wars in the Middle East have
not created conditions conducive to re-
conceptualizing sovereignty or decoupling
sovereignty and governance. Rather, they
have been accompanied by the weaponiza-
tion of sovereignty, with parties to conflict
competing to capture and monopolize the
benefits that flow from international rec-
ognition. This process has received signif-
icant support, moreover, from the increas-
ing influence in the international system
of authoritarian actors, including Russia,
China, and Iran, who forcefully advocate a

rigid, unitary, centralized, and indivisible
definition of sovereignty. Those who are
recognized internationally as sovereign
thus acquire immediate advantages that
vastly increase the likelihood of their mili-
tary success and weaken their incentives to
compromise or, in some cases, negotiate.

Continuity between prewar and wartime

practices is visible in how both recognized
authorities and insurgent forces in Libya,
Syria, and Yemen manage the challenges
of economic governance. In all three coun-
tries, the descent into civil war has been ac-
companied not by the breakdown of pre-
war, authoritarian, criminal, and predato-
ry economic norms and practices, but by
their redeployment to serve wartime re-
quirements. Despite claims that view vio-
lent conflict as rupturing prewar practice,
such continuity is not surprising. “Con-
flict,” as political scientist Paul Staniland
has noted, “does not play out on a blank
slate that actors can make and remake as
they wish. Instead, the past shapes lead-
ers’ options in the present.”11

The past casts an especially long shadow
on the civil wars examined in this essay, in
which the prewar economic institutions
and practices of authoritarian regimes
turned out to be particularly well-suited to
the requirements of insurgent forces. Yet
research literature on civil war as well as
the prevailing practitioner frameworks for
mitigating violent conflict and rebuilding
war-torn societies and economies have not
taken adequate account of the persistence
of authoritarian norms and practices
during civil war. They overlook the im-
plications for how external actors respond
to some acute forms of violent conflict
and misdiagnose the conflict-resolution
strategies that will be needed to end con-
flict and establish durable peace.

This emphasis on continuity in econom-
ic governance in Libya, Syria, and Yemen is
not to suggest that economies are indiffer-

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesCivil War, Economic Governance & State Recon-struction in the Arab Middle East

ent to conflict, or did not undergo mean-
ingful change as violence escalated and civ-
il war took hold. In all three cases, national
markets have been destroyed by war and re-
placed by patchworks of fragmented, high-
ly localized markets that are nonetheless in-
tegrated into translocal networks of trade
and exchange, including trade between
adversaries across conflict lines.12 Patterns
of international trade have been sharply al-
tered by war. So have overall levels of eco-
nomic productivity and output. In all three
countries, manufacturing and agricultural
sectors have been devastated and oil pro-
duction and exports have declined sharp-
ly, while control over natural resources and
predatory opportunities (smuggling, extor-
tion, human trafficking) generate intense
conflict between opposing factions.13

Moreover, continuity at the level of prac-
tices does not imply continuity in the com-
position or configuration of economic ac-
tors. What is evident, however, from the
experiences of all three countries is that
the economic norms and practices devel-
oped by authoritarian regimes before war
persist during conflict and affect both how
conflicts end and how postconflict polit-
ical economies are organized. In all three
cases, informal economic institutions re-
semble those described by Reno and Vanda
Felbab-Brown: they were pervasive and
personalistic, often exerting more influ-
ence over economic outcomes than formal
state institutions and economic policies.14
In all three, prewar economic norms and
practices included a culture of impunity
for privileged economic actors, predatory
and coercive forms of resource extraction,
porous boundaries between formal and in-
formal economic activity and between lic-
it and illicit practices, as well as dispersed,
diffuse frameworks of economic authori-
ty in which state functions such as regula-
tion and service provision were delegated
to nonstate agents.15 In all three, economic
governance was organized not to ensure the

provision of public goods to all citizens, but
to control and allocate access to what can
only be described as semipublic goods to se-
lect categories of citizens, typically on the
basis of ascriptive criteria.16 These econom-
ic norms and practices were accompanied
by social norms, institutions, and political
practices that further eroded the distinction
between prewar and wartime conditions,
including decentralization of control over
the means of violence and delegation (or de
facto privatization) of the authority to tax
and extract resources from citizens.17
Evidence of continuity in economic gov-

ernance has significant implications along
several dimensions. It matters for how we
think about the relationship between states
and insurgent movements, how insurgen-
cies are organized and sustain themselves,
and the challenges that confront postcon-
flict stabilization and reconstruction. Three
such dimensions are explored in this essay.
First, such evidence calls into question a
foundational assumption of research liter-
ature on rebel governance and on the polit-
ical economy of civil war: that state-based
forms of economic governance are distinct
from those constructed by insurgents, and
that conflict economies exhibit unique at-
tributes that differentiate them from pre-
war conditions of economic “normalcy.”
According to international affairs scholars
Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman,

Recent scholarship has identified several fea-
tures unique to the economies of civil war:
they are parasitic, because they are dominated
by rent-seeking and the extraction and trade
of primary products, rather than by value
adding economic activities; they are illicit,
insofar as they depend heavily on black and
gray markets that operate outside and at the
expense of legal and formal economic activi-
ty of the state; and they are predatory–that is,
they are based on the deliberate and system-
atic use of violence to acquire assets, control
trade, and exploit labor.18

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147 (1) Winter 2018Steven Heydemann

This attempt to draw sharp distinctions
between civil war economies that exhib-
it “unique features” and prewar econo-
mies that engage in “value adding eco-
nomic activities” is difficult to sustain giv-
en how prewar political economies were
organized in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. In
all three, the authoritarian economic or-
ders that existed prior to the onset of civ-
il war–arrangements that government
scholar Daniel Brumberg describes as “pro-
tection rackets”–undermine the claim that
violent conflicts are the cause of predation,
rent-seeking, and a disregard for the long-
term requirements of economic and so-
cial development in what were previously
well-governed economies.19

Not only do wartime economic orders in
Libya, Syria, and Yemen exhibit significant
continuity with prewar practices, they also
display striking similarities across areas of
each country held by regime or opposition
forces. To be sure, there are notable differ-
ences between the wartime economic or-
ders that have emerged in areas under the
control of regimes or recognized authorities
and those in rebel-held territories.20 Not
least, regimes benefit from their standing
as recognized sovereign authorities, with
all the advantages this confers.21 In many
important respects, however, civil war in
Syria, Libya, and Yemen has amplified and
expanded the economic logics and prac-
tices that were commonplace before 2011.
These legacy effects flowing from the polit-
ical economies of prewar authoritarian re-
gimes highlight the extent to which war-
time economic orders are influenced by and
sustain prewar economic practices, none of
which reflected the conditions of advanced
capitalist economies, in which the rule of
law functions, formal institutions of eco-
nomic governance are relevant, and ele-
ments of accountability are present.

Instead, prewar Libya, Syria, and Yemen
can best be defined as corrupt, predatory,
and crony capitalist political economies

with low accountability and transparency
and weak rule of law. In all three, as in oth-
er authoritarian regimes in the mena re-
gion, the political requirements of regime
survival trumped concerns with economic
and social development.22 State elites en-
gaged routinely in illicit practices to en-
rich themselves at public expense. Crim-
inal economic networks were tightly in-
tegrated into and operated as prominent
features of state-regime-business relations
among civilian elites and their bureaucratic
and military counterparts, who often con-
trolled significant business interests in their
own right.23 Economic policy, anchored in
long-term mistrust of the private sector by
regimes, was designed to make private eco-
nomic activity legible to, controllable by,
and subject to the predatory intervention
of state authorities.

These prewar economic practices influ-
enced how wartime economic orders would
take shape once protest movements col-
lapsed into violent conflict. In each case,
prewar systems of economic governance
socialized citizens into economic norms
and behaviors that supported antiregime
mobilization. Over time, citizens honed
economic skills, knowledge, and capaci-
ties that helped launch and sustain anti-
regime protests. These included how to con-
ceal economic resources and activities from
state authorities, and a reliance on clandes-
tine, formally illicit modes of exchange or-
ganized through informal networks based
on family, kin, or other ascriptive ties that
are difficult for outsiders to penetrate.

From 2011 onward, informal networks
facilitated clandestine strategies of popular
mobilization for antiregime protests as vio-
lence escalated.24 They also proved highly
adaptive in the development of formal and
informal insurgent funding networks that
linked armed opposition groups in Syria
to the governments and populations of Gulf
Cooperation Council states. The clandes-
tine and networked character of Syria’s

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesCivil War, Economic Governance & State Recon-struction in the Arab Middle East

prewar economy also enabled communi-
cations flows, enhanced trust among par-
ticipants in the uprising, and eased bar-
gaining and negotiations among adversar-
ies and competitors that have mitigated the
economic effects of war. Adversaries have
negotiated agreements to distribute pow-
er and water supplies across conflict lines
and buy and sell oil, wheat, and other essen-
tial goods–such as vegetables from Idlib to
Deir al-Zour in Syria–across territory con-
trolled by competing armed groups.25

After more than six years of conflict, the
informal economic networks that the As-
sad regime cultivated through local agents,
extending opportunities for private prof-
it through tolerated illicit activities in ex-
change for loyalty and service as regime en-
forcers, had not only endured, but had also
emerged as central to the dispersed strate-
gy of control and coercion that grew stron-
ger as the Syrian state and regime contract-
ed. The most detailed study available of the
transformation of regime-linked criminal
networks into loyalist militias that acquire
semiformal status, even while they benefit
from significant autonomy and have enor-
mous influence over economic and politi-
cal affairs in their areas of operation, pro-
vides compelling evidence of this meta-
morphosis.26 Such arrangements give the
regime flexibility in deploying highly de-
centralized networks of local warlords to
enforce its authority and extract resourc-
es from local populations.27

As in any conflict zone, these conditions
produced opportunities for profit alongside
the vast destruction the war has wrought.
These have emerged, in part, through com-
petition between the regime and opposition
for access to scarce commodities, including
wheat and oil. According to accounts of of-
ficials, the regime has been able to outbid
the opposition. In doing so, it has created
incentives for new networks of mediators
to emerge who broker the transfer of goods
across conflict lines.28

Economic opportunities have also aris-
en in the trafficking of the vast quantities
of goods looted from the homes of those
displaced by war, and by exploiting prewar
illicit trading networks to meet the needs
that conflict has created.29 Researchers at
the London School of Economics, for exam-
ple, have identified a vibrant market in au-
tomobiles that sprang up in Deraa in South-
ern Syria near the Jordanian border–an
area known before the war for its extensive
smuggling networks.30 In the north of the
country, Syrian-Turkish trade is believed
to have returned to prewar levels, through
both formal trade channels and extensive
informal, illicit trade networks that have
thrived despite the militarization of the bor-
der and its periodic closure by Turkey.31 The
Syrian-Lebanese border zone has provided
similar opportunities for trade, smuggling,
refugee flows, and support operations for
insurgent armed groups, exploiting well-
established (and often regime-supported)
illicit trading networks.

Similar evidence of continuity, link-
ages between state and nonstate actors, the
blending of legal and criminal activities,
and the utility of prewar economic practic-
es during episodes of violent conflict are all
evident in the resurgence of human traffick-
ing networks in Libya. Along a key transit
route into Southern Europe, loyalist trib-
al networks closely linked to the Gaddafi
regime were implicated in the rise of hu-
man trafficking that Libya experienced in
the 2000s. In 2008, the Libyan government
agreed to clamp down on trafficking in ex-
change for financial assistance from the
Berlusconi government in Italy. A leading
European think tank described the traffick-
ing activity during this period as “a crimi-
nal activity conducted by specific organi-
sations in connection with the formal state
institutions.”32 When the Gaddafi regime
was overthrown in 2011, human trafficking
surged once again. Yet in the regime’s ab-
sence, illicit trafficking became more high-

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147 (1) Winter 2018Steven Heydemann

ly decentralized, with multiple competing
smuggling networks–linked to warring
factions in Libya’s civil war–battling for
control over key routes.33 As Gaddafi’s loy-
alists lost their privileged access to a broad
range of predatory activities, nearly all par-
ties to the Libyan conflict engaged in racke-
teering, the “protection” of trade, and oth-
er forms of extortion to generate the rev-
enue needed to sustain their participation
in conflict.

Yemen also exhibits persistent patterns
of predatory and illicit practices by state
and nonstate actors that have proven to be
highly functional in sustaining violent con-
flict. As in Syria and Libya, such practices
are widespread, including within the rec-
ognized government led by President Ab-
drabbuh Mansour Hadi. They involve com-
binations of cooperation and competition
among actors across conflict lines, linkages
between state and nonstate actors, blend-
ing of licit and illicit activities, and the mo-
bilization of cross-cutting economic net-
works that emerged during prewar periods
and complicate efforts to map specific ac-
tivities by tribe, region, or sect. For exam-
ple, classified U.S. diplomatic cables re-
leased by Wikileaks include an assessment
from May 2005 from the U.S. Embassy in
Sana’a noting direct participation by a pow-
erful Yemeni general, Ali Mohsen al-Ah-
mar–who defected from the government
of then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh in
early 2011 and was appointed deputy com-
mander of Yemen’s Armed Forces in Jan-
uary 2016 under President Hadi–in a vast
smuggling enterprise.34 Mohsen’s illicit but
sanctioned activities extended across the
country, were supported and sustained by
several units of the armed forces, and relied
on collaboration from wide-ranging net-
works of actors, including tribes formally
identified as regime adversaries. While no-
table for its scale and scope, the predatory
frameworks that Mohsen exploited were
widespread in prewar Yemen.

The escalation of violence in Yemen in
mid-2014, following the collapse of a Na-
tional Dialogue process intended to chart
the country’s transition to a more inclu-
sive, participatory form of rule, amplified
the role of these prewar economic practic-
es. According to Freedom House, the “net-
work of corruption and patronage estab-
lished under Saleh remained entrenched
in public institutions.”35 As violence shat-
tered Yemen’s fragile economy, with frag-
mented state institutions, massive levels
of food insecurity, and more than two mil-
lion Yemenis displaced, illicit, predatory
economic practices have grown in impor-
tance. Armed factions, including Houthi
forces as well as those associated with the
recognized government, are deeply impli-
cated in the smuggling of weapons, food,
and pharmaceuticals, as well as human
trafficking. Indeed, trafficking networks
that previously moved migrants from the
Horn of Africa across Yemen and into Sau-
di Arabia–flows that continue in the midst
of conflict–have diversified and now also
move Yemenis who can afford to leave to
the Horn of Africa.36

In none of the three cases explored here
has conflict led to a significant shift in pre-
war practices of economic governance. In-
stead, practices evident in all three before
the most recent outbreaks of violence have
persisted, providing parties to the conflict–
especially those associated with interna-
tionally recognized sovereign authorities–
with the means to sustain their military ac-
tivities. Middle Eastern cases undermine
claims that violent conflicts cause a rupture
with prewar economic practices, and that
they give rise to political economies that ex-
hibit attributes that are unique in being par-
asitic, illicit, and predatory. Based on evi-
dence from Syria, Libya, and Yemen, such
claims are simply untenable.

The continuity of economic practices also

has important implications for postconflict

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reconstruction. Simply put, whether civil
war ends in a negotiated settlement or mili-
tary victory, local actors have few incentives
to give up wartime economic orders. These
economic orders took shape before the on-
set of conflict, helped make it possible for
local actors to sustain military operations,
delivered significant benefits to designat-
ed sovereigns, and created new categories
of actors with a stake in their perpetua-
tion. These factors complicate approach-
es to postconflict reconstruction that link
the onset of civil war to state fragility, and
find the remedy to fragility in the develop-
ment of state institutions that possess at-
tributes of high-quality governance, but
threaten the power and wealth of leading
actors. In addition, in Libya, Syria, and Ye-
men, as in many other predatory, author-
itarian regimes, the institutional arrange-
ments associated with state fragility are not
the failed outcomes of state-building pro-
cesses that sought, but fell short of achiev-
ing, inclusive, participatory, and develop-
mentally effective forms of governance.
Rather, in Libya under Muammar Gaddafi,
in Syria under Hafez al-Assad and Bashar
al-Assad, and in Yemen under Ali Abdullah
Saleh, state-building reflected the strategic
choices of incumbents who designed gov-
ernance institutions to express exclusion-
ary, repressive, and predatory preferences.
The state institutions that resulted from
such processes did not lack capacity, nor
were they fragile. They provided incum-
bents with the organizational means to
construct durable, repressive-exclusionary
systems of rule, appropriate resources and
redistribute them through mechanisms
that privileged regime loyalists, and con-
solidate social pacts between regimes and
select categories of citizens.37 Conflict is
indeed an indicator of regime dysfunction,
and the limits of the economic and polit-
ical orders on which they rest. Yet if the
Middle East is any example, these indica-
tors have not been read as signals of the

need for reform, either by incumbents or
by most challengers.

When the mass protests of 2011 led to
armed insurgencies and civil war in these
three cases, insurgent forces appropriated
and adapted prewar institutions of econom-
ic governance. In their struggles for con-
trol of the state, powerful insurgent move-
ments–including Ansar al-Sharia in Libya,
the Houthi movement in Yemen, and Ahrar
al-Sham, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and the
Islamic State in Syria–reproduced the au-
thoritarian characteristics associated with
state fragility: exclusion, predation, cor-
ruption, illegality, and informality. When
the Assad regime relinquished authority in
Northeast Syria in 2012 to the Kurdish Dem-
ocratic Union Party (pyd), the pyd imme-
diately “replicated past regime behavior, fo-
cusing on maintaining a secure hold of this
strategic geographical area at the expense of
effective governance.”38 Thus, violent con-
flict in Syria, Libya, and Yemen has not, as
political economist Leonard Wantchekon
has argued, “annihilated the authoritarian
political situation that led to war,” thereby
creating possibilities for political and eco-
nomic reconstruction along more inclu-
sive and participatory lines.39 Unlike cases
in which wartime governance is linked to
processes of democratization, in these three
cases, it has tended to reproduce prewar, au-
thoritarian norms and practices of econom-
ic governance.40

One example of this phenomenon from
each of the cases explored in this essay
should suffice to make the point. In Sep-
tember 2014, an assessment on Yemen pub-
lished by the Atlantic Council expressed
concern that key political actors were re-
producing pre-uprising patterns of gover-
nance:

Instead of reshaping the political order to
bring in new political voices, address cor-
ruption, and introduce responsive and ac-
countable governance, partisan interests
have largely paralyzed the transitional gov-

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ernment, perpetuating the elite-dominated
politics of old Sana’a and its tribal allies.41

In December 2015, the International Cri-
sis Group warned that revolution and the
overthrow of the Gaddafi regime in Libya
had done little to alter the political econo-
my of natural resource management in the
country:

One aspect of the hydrocarbon dispute is a
challenge to the centralised model of polit-
ical and economic governance developed
around oil and gas resources that was cru-
cial to the old regime’s power. But corrup-
tion that greased patronage networks was at
that model’s centre, and corrupt energy sec-
tor practices have increased.42

In the Syrian case, in which prewar state
institutions were more developed and
have experienced less degradation than in
Yemen or Libya, we find even more robust
patterns of institutional continuity and the
persistence of the corrupt, predatory attri-
butes described above, attributes mirrored
in many instances in the governance insti-
tutions created by the opposition.43 As in
Libya and Yemen, conflict has narrowed,
rather than expanded, opportunities for
the reform of state practices.44

From a fragility perspective, these regime
adaptations to wartime conditions have
consequences that are not only counter-
productive, but undermine the capacity of
external actors to uphold their own stan-
dards of accountability, legality, and trans-
parency. In 2016, for example, research-
ers and journalists brought to light the
extent to which un humanitarian assis-
tance programs in Syria had become com-
plicit in the corrupt and predatory norms
that define the regime’s economic gover-
nance.45 Rather than an international in-
stitution moving a “fragile state” toward
norms of good governance, its interven-
tion instead corrupted its own operating
norms and practices.

With neither regimes nor insurgents
committed to economic inclusion, trans-
parency, or accountability, postconflict
processes of economic reconstruction that
draw on recommendations from the state
fragility literature are unlikely to succeed.
Civil wars in the Middle East highlight the
chasm that divides the assumptions under-
lying fragility-based strategies of conflict
resolution from the realities of conflict dy-
namics. Where local actors view existing in-
stitutions as critical for their survival, where
incentives to endorse processes of institu-
tional reform are weak, where internation-
al actors themselves exhibit little commit-
ment to good governance, fragility-based
frameworks face insurmountable obstacles.

Continuity in patterns of economic gov-

ernance from prewar to wartime conditions
also highlights how tightly civil war has
linked sovereignty and governance in the
Middle East, reducing prospects for politi-
cal settlements that envision a decoupling
of the two. In the recent literature on sover-
eignty, limited statehood, and governance,
researchers have identified a wide range
of nonstate governance frameworks that
emerge in which the domestic sovereignty
of states is weak or entirely absent.46 These
frameworks are often presented as expand-
ing opportunities for state-based, nonstate,
and external actors to “share sovereignty,”
address deficits in the provision of public
goods, and resolve violent conflicts.47 Yet
the civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen
have pushed in the opposite direction, nar-
rowing opportunities for flexible concep-
tions of sovereignty to take hold and giving
recognized authorities incentives to sustain
prewar governance practices.

By any measure, these three cases reflect
the attributes of limited statehood. In all
three, nonstate actors have become cen-
trally involved in critical aspects of eco-
nomic governance, and recognized author-
ities have themselves cultivated vast semi-

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autonomous, nonstate economic networks
to extract revenue from war-torn and frag-
mented economies. Nonetheless, civil war
in the Middle East has also increased the
significance regimes and insurgents attach
to unitary, Westphalian conceptions of sov-
ereignty. It has reinforced the imperative of
sovereignty as a weapon that can be wield-
ed against challengers, or used to buttress
the political, diplomatic, and economic re-
sources to which a recognized authority has
access. Even as the functions of econom-
ic governance diffuse and dissipate beyond
the direct control of states, recognized au-
thorities aggressively assert their econom-
ic authority and their exclusive right to un-
dertake the economic functions that legiti-
mate their standing as sovereign. Economic
governance as an expression of sovereignty
not only constrains possibilities for reallo-
cating economic functions as part of a po-
litical settlement, it rewards recognized au-
thorities that behave as if they possess the
economic sovereignty they claim, and hold
fast to rigid, centralized control over eco-
nomic governance.

Thus, sovereignty is fiercely defended in
Libya, Syria, and Yemen by regimes that
claim the legitimacy and authority, as well
as the legal protections and prerogatives,
associated with international recognition.
In all three cases, as in many authoritari-
an regimes, recognized governments in-
vest heavily in domestic institutions that af-
firm their standing as sovereign, including
courts and constitutions.48 They staunchly
defend their claims to sovereignty in their
relations with external actors and exploit
such claims to extract resources from the
international system. They legitimate for-
eign military interventions–by both state
and nonstate actors–as entitlements of
sovereignty. In all three cases, moreover,
internationally recognized authorities le-
gitimate their standing in part through their
capacity to perform the economic gover-
nance functions associated with Westpha-

lian sovereignty.49 They maintain central
banks, issue economic regulations, sign
contracts with other states, invest in pub-
lic works, take on sovereign debt, pay sala-
ries to public-sector employees, even in ar-
eas controlled by insurgents, and insist on
their prerogative to tax.

To be sure, the intensity with which rec-
ognized authorities pursue the roles and
functions of statehood and governmental-
ity bear little resemblance to the reality of
fragmented, contested, and dispersed eco-
nomic control in all three countries. In none
of the three do recognized governments
possess the domestic attributes associated
with sovereignty: they lack exclusive con-
trol over territory, populations, and natural
resources; they do not possess a monopoly
over the legitimate use of violence; and they
do not exercise legal or economic author-
ity throughout the prewar borders of the
state.50 In all three cases, processes of eco-
nomic fragmentation have been accelerated
by regimes that have actively delegated sov-
ereign functions of economic governance
to a variety of nonstate and external actors.
Moreover, rebel movements have adopted
the economic norms and practices of the re-
gimes they seek to displace, deepening the
fragmentation of national economies.

As wartime economic orders take hold
and fragmented, “translocal” markets be-
come consolidated, the prospects for re-
establishing central governments that pos-
sess the attributes of economic sovereignty
are diminished. Yet this has not tempered
the drive for control over formal econom-
ic governance by recognized authorities, or
made them more responsive to proposals
for economic decentralization. In the Ye-
meni case, for example, regime and insur-
gent actors compete for control over na-
tional financial institutions, splintering
authority over the central bank and govern-
ment ministries. In Libya, warring parties
have struggled to assert their authority over
the country’s most significant economic

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institution, the National Oil Company, and
to control the “oil crescent,” in which oil
production is concentrated. In early 2017,
forces associated with General Khalifa
Haftar, who opposes the internationally
recognized Government of National Ac-
cord (gna) based in Tripoli, seized control
of the region. Reflecting the dire implica-
tions of this move for Libya’s recognized
government, Haftar’s actions provoked
sharp criticism from the un and Western
governments for undermining the sover-
eignty of the gna. General Haftar, mean-
while, cultivated support from Russia to
enhance his own claims to sovereign au-
thority, using the control of Libya’s oil-pro-
ducing areas by his forces to strengthen his
bid for international recognition.

In contrast, moderate opposition forc-
es in Syria declined to establish “national”
institutions of economic governance chal-
lenging those of the Assad regime. Such a
course, they argued, would only encour-
age external actors to seek the partition of
the country–an outcome that Syria’s ex-
perience of colonial rule placed beyond the
scope of legitimate possibilities. Instead,
highly localized wartime economic orders
have emerged, with controlling militias ex-
erting significant authority over economic
activities in a given area, relying on a famil-
iar repertoire of informal, illicit economic
practices to generate revenue. The Islam-
ic State, however, explicitly mimicked the
economic forms of a modern state to bol-
ster its claims to sovereignty as an Islamic
caliphate, even while engaging in predatory
and criminal practices of economic gover-
nance that resembled those of regimes and
rebels alike.

Indeed, rebel-controlled local econo-
mies have proliferated in all three coun-
tries, as armed groups imposed their au-
thority over economic activities in areas
under their control and adopted combina-
tions of coercion, criminality, and cooper-
ation with local populations to extract the

revenues needed to sustain themselves in
power and continue to wage war.

These trends hold significant implica-
tions for the relationship between gover-
nance, limited statehood, and sovereignty.
On the one hand, the tenuousness of do-
mestic sovereignty in all three of the civ-
il wars examined here has amplified and
hardened the determination of recog-
nized authorities to defend their sovereign
standing. It reinforces their refusal to con-
template alternatives to a rigid, unitary,
and centralized conception of sovereign-
ty. It also drives continuity in prewar gov-
ernance practices, especially with respect
to economic governance, which becomes
a marker of their capacity to fulfill their
responsibilities as sovereign and fend off
competing claims from rivals. On the other
hand, the sovereign standing of recognized
authorities also empowers them to engage
with impunity in a wide range of illicit, cor-
rupt, and predatory economic practices, de-
volve authority over economic governance
to nonstate actors, and otherwise exploit
limited statehood to their own advantage.
Thus, under wartime conditions, gover-
nance, sovereignty, and limited statehood
become more tightly coupled. Civil wars in
the Middle East offer few prospects for strat-
egies of conflict resolution that rest on de-
coupling governance and sovereignty, or on
the acceptance of flexible, plural, decentral-
ized conceptions of sovereignty. In all three
of the cases, proposals have been advanced,
calling for various forms of decentraliza-
tion, federalism, or local autonomy with-
in existing state borders, and for power-
sharing arrangements at the national level.
Yet in each of these cases, leading political
actors on all sides have rejected such pro-
posals as threats to the integrity and sover-
eignty of the nation, or as conspiratorial at-
tempts by imperial powers to redraw state
boundaries or partition and thus weaken
Arab states. In the Syrian case, for example,
the Assad regime, the opposition Syrian Na-

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tional Coalition, and the opposition High-
er Negotiation Committee have all rejected
proposals for political arrangements that
they believe would compromise the sover-
eignty and integrity of the Syrian state. In
all three cases, sovereignty claims empow-
er external spoilers, embolden recognized
governments and insurgents to adopt hard-
line positions, and encourage political ac-
tors to prefer military solutions to political
compromises in resolving violent conflicts.

Across the Arab Middle East, violent con-

flicts have wreaked unfathomable damage,
bringing levels of death, destruction, and
displacement not seen since World War II.
Their effects will be felt for generations.
For scholars, officials, and practitioners,
moreover, the region’s civil wars pose sig-
nificant challenges. They test the limits of
current practice in postconflict reconstruc-
tion. They also test the limits of key find-
ings in the research literature on civil war. In
three major respects, civil wars in the Mid-
dle East call into question assumptions that
have shaped theory and practice concerning
the political economy of civil wars, on one
hand, and the options available for building
pathways out of conflict and toward post-
conflict reconstruction and social repair, on
the other hand. All three challenges to con-
ventional wisdom flow from observed con-
tinuities in governance norms and practices
between prewar and wartime conditions.
First, the experience of violent conflict in
the Middle East suggests that civil war does
not mark a rupture or breakdown of prewar
practices of economic governance. Nor can
we view rebel economic governance as ex-
hibiting attributes that distinguish it from
those of regimes. Rather, conflict is marked
by high levels of continuity between prewar
and wartime practices of economic gover-
nance, with high levels of similarity in the
behavior of both regimes and insurgents.
Second, the continuity of governance
practices between prewar and wartime con-

ditions weakens the claims of practitioners
who embrace the notion of state fragility,
view conflict as signaling the breakdown of
a prewar institutional order, and link pros-
pects for postwar reconstruction to reforms
designed to endow postwar institutions
with the capacities associated with ideal-
ized notions of good governance (trans-
parency, inclusion, accountability, and par-
ticipation). Civil wars in the Middle East
highlight how remote and implausible such
notions are as guides to feasible strategies
for ending violent conflict. They also under-
score the robustness of prewar institution-
al arrangements, and the extent to which
they are seen as assets by warring parties.
Third, continuity in governance prac-
tices sheds light on the limits of efforts to
treat governance and sovereignty as sepa-
rable or loosely coupled under conditions
of limited statehood. It calls attention to
the imperative that recognized authori-
ties face to assert and defend a rigid, uni-
tary, and Westphalian conception of sover-
eignty, and the extent to which continuity
in the provision of governance becomes a
marker of sovereignty. Under such condi-
tions, there is little reason to be optimistic
about peace-building strategies that would
require recognized authorities to compro-
mise their claims to sovereignty.

This analysis of the implications of con-
tinuity in prewar and wartime governance
practices in three civil wars currently un-
derway in the Middle East leads to sobering
conclusions. Governance practices institu-
tionalized by authoritarian regimes prior to
conflict have proven decisive in shaping im-
portant wartime behaviors of regimes and
insurgents in all three cases. Degrees of con-
tinuity vary in ways yet to be explored. With
respect to economic governance in partic-
ular, however, the emergence of wartime
economic orders has produced similar gov-
ernance strategies across conflict lines, with
armed actors relying heavily on coercion,
predation, criminality, the selective allo-

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147 (1) Winter 2018Steven Heydemann

cation of public goods, and the dispersion
of sovereign economic functions to exter-
nal and nonstate actors. Under these con-
ditions, we should anticipate that civil wars
in the Middle East will not yield easily to
negotiated solutions. We should also ex-
pect that the eventual outcomes of con-
flict are unlikely to produce durable peace,
political stability, or economic well-being
for citizens. In addition, the extent to which
repressive and exclusionary wartime eco-
nomic orders reflect institutionalized eco-
nomic norms and practices, and have em-
powered armed actors whose interests
are served by the continuation of conflict,
make these cases poor candidates for exter-
nal interventions defined in terms of over-
coming state fragility. They are also likely

to feature the abuse of sovereignty norms
to exacerbate maximalist claims by regimes
and insurgent challengers alike.

Pathways out of civil war in such cases
are particularly elusive. They are likely to
require diplomatic, financial, and military
strategies that create incentives for embat-
tled regimes and insurgent challengers to
end violence and accept meaningful com-
promises in the interest of securing their
minimal requirements, and these may well
include the absence of transitional justice
and accountability for perpetrators, as well
as power-sharing arrangements that ac-
commodate all warring parties to differing
degrees. As violent conflicts in Libya, Syria,
and Yemen rage on, however, such out-
comes still appear stubbornly out of reach.

endnotes
1 Didier Péclard and Delphine Mechoulan, “Rebel Governance and the Politics of Civil War,”

Working Paper (Basel, Switzerland: Swiss Peace Foundation, 2015).

2 U.S. Agency for International Development, Measuring Fragility: Indicators and Methods for Rat-
ing State Performance (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Agency for International Development, 2005);
and Robert I. Rotberg, ed., When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 2003).

3 Michael Woolcock, “Engaging with Fragile and Conflict-Affected States: An Alternative Ap-
proach to Theory, Measurement and Practice,” Working Paper No. 286 (Helsinki: World In-
stitute for Development Economics Research, 2014); and William J. Burns, Michèle Flournoy,
and Nancy Lindborg, U.S. Leadership and the Challenge of State Fragility (Washington, D.C.: United
States Institute of Peace, 2016).

4 William Reno, “Fictional States & Atomized Public Spheres: A Non-Western Approach to

Fragility,” Dædalus 146 (4) (Fall 2017).

5 Ariel Ahram, “Learning to Live with Militias: Toward a Critical Policy on State Failure,” Journal

of Intervention and State Building 5 (2) (2011): 179.

6 Tanja A. Börzel and Sonja Grimm, “Building Good (Enough) Governance in Postconflict So-
cieties & Areas of Limited Statehood: The European Union & the Western Balkans,” Dædalus
147 (1) (Winter 2017).

7 This theme is addressed by several other authors in this issue of Dædalus. See also Thomas Risse,
ed., Governance without a State? Policies and Politics in Areas of Limited Statehood (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2011); and Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1999).

8 Benjamin Miller, “Balance of Power or the State-to-Nation Balance: Explaining Middle East

War-Propensity,” Security Studies 15 (4) (2006): 658–705.

9 Nicholas Sambanis, “Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War: An Empirical Critique of the The-
oretical Literature,” World Politics 52 (4) (2000): 437–483; Chaim Kaufmann “When All Else

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Fails: Ethnic Population Transfers and Partitions in the Twentieth Century,” International Se-
curity 23 (2) (1998): 129–156; and Nicholas Sambanis and Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl, “What’s
in a Line? Is Partition a Solution to Civil War?” International Security 34 (2) (2009): 82–118.
10 Hendrik Spruyt, “Civil Wars as Challenges to the Modern International System,” Dædalus 146

(4) (Fall 2017).

11 Paul Staniland, Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

University Press, 2014), 218.

12 Wolfram Lacher, “Libya: A Jihadist Growth Market,” in Jihadism in Africa: Local Causes, Regional
Expansion, International Alliances, ed. Guido Steinberg and Annette Weber (Berlin: Stiftung Wis-
senschaft und Politik, 2015), 31–50.

13 International Crisis Group, The Prize: Fighting for Libya’s Energy Wealth, Middle East and North Af-

rica Report No. 165 (Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2015).

14 Reno, “Fictional States & Atomized Public Spheres”; and Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Organized
Crime, Illicit Economies, Civil Violence & International Order: More Complex Than You
Think,” Dædalus 146 (4) (Fall 2017).

15 Masha Hedberg, “Top-Down Self-Organization: State Logics, Substitutional Delegation, and
Private Governance in Russia,” Governance 29 (1) (2016): 67–83; and Béatrice Hibou, The Force
of Obedience: The Political Economy of Repression in Tunisia (Cambridge: Polity, 2011).

16 April Alley, “The Rules of the Game: Unpacking Patronage Politics in Yemen,” Middle East Jour-
nal 64 (3) (2010): 385–409; and Dirk Vandewalle, Libya Since Independence: Oil and State Building
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998).

17 Ariel Ahram, Proxy Warriors: The Rise and Fall of State-Sponsored Militias (Stanford, Calif.: Stan-
ford University Press, 2011); Adnan Naseemullah, “Shades of Sovereignty: Explaining Polit-
ical Order and Disorder in Pakistan’s Northwest,” Studies in Comparative International Develop-
ment 49 (4) (2014): 501–522; and Janet Roitman, Fiscal Disobedience: An Anthropology of Economic
Regulation in Central Africa (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).

18 Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman, eds., The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed

and Grievance (Boulder, Colo.: Lyne Rienner Publishers, 2003), 2–3 (emphasis mine).

19 Daniel Brumberg, “Transforming the Arab World’s Protection-Racket Politics,” Journal of De-

mocracy 24 (3) (2013): 88–103.

20 Zachariah C. Mampilly, Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during War (Ithaca, N.Y.:

Cornell University Press, 2011).

21 Nelson Kasfir, “Domestic Anarchy, Security Dilemmas, and Violent Predation: Causes of Failure,”

in Rotberg, ed., When States Fail: Causes and Consequences.

22 Steven Heydemann, “Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World,” The Saban Center
for Middle East Policy Analysis Paper No. 14 (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution,
2007).

23 Bassam Haddad, Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stan-

ford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2012).

24 Reinoud Leenders and Steven Heydemann, “Popular Mobilization in Syria: Opportunity and
Threat, and the Social Networks of the Early Risers,” Mediterranean Politics 17 (2) (2012): 139–159.
25 The People Demand Change interview with Qutaiba Idlibi, Washington, D.C., August 19, 2016.
26 Cody Roche, “Assad Regime Militias and Shi’ite Jihadis in the Syrian Civil War,” Belling-
Cat, November 30, 2016, https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2016/11/30/assad-regime
-militias-and-shiite-jihadis-in-the-syrian-civil-war/; and Raja Abdulrahim, “In Syria, Patch-
work of Forces Control Regime-Held Areas,” Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2017, https://www
.wsj.com/articles/in-syria-patchwork-of-forces-control-regime-held-areas-1488882600.

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27 Tobias Schneider, “The Decay of the Syrian Regime is Much Worse than You Think,” War
On The Rocks, August 31, 2016, http://warontherocks.com/2016/08/the-decay-of-the-syrian
-regime-is-much-worse-than-you-think/.

28 Hamad al-Mahmoud, “The War Economy in the Syrian Conflict: The Government’s Hands-
Off Tactics,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, December 15, 2015, http://carnegie
endowment.org/2015/12/15/war-economy-in-syrian-conflict-government-s-hands-off-tactics
-pub-62202.

29 Erika Solomon, “Syria Crisis: In Homs ‘Sunni Markets’ Sell Looted Goods,” Reuters, June 19,
2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/homs-sunni-markets_n_1608009?utm_hpref=tw.
30 Rim Turkmani, Ali A. K. Ali, Mary Kaldor, and Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Countering the Logic
of the War Economy in Syria: Evidence from Three Local Areas (London: London School of Econom-
ics and Political Science, 2015), http://www.securityintransition.org/wp-content/uploads
/2015/08/Countering-war-economy-Syria2.pdf.

31 Omer Karasapan, “The Impact of Syrian Businesses in Turkey,” The Brookings Institution,
March 16, 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2016/03/16/the-impact
-of-syrian-businesses-in-turkey/.

32 Mattia Toaldo, “Migrations through and from Libya: A Mediterranean Challenge,” Working

Paper 15/14 (Rome: Istituto Affari Internazionali, 2015), 3.

33 Atlantic Council interview with Karim Mezran, Washington, D.C., January 12, 2017.
34 U.S. Embassy Sana’a, “royg Insiders Increasingly Frustrated with Saleh Clan,” Wikileaks Cable:
05sanaa1352_a, May 23, 2005, https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05SANAA1352_a.html.
35 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World: Yemen,” https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom

-world/2016/yemen.

36 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Yemen Situation: Regional Refugee and Migrant Re-
sponse Plan (Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2015), http://reporting
.unhcr.org/node/9982.

37 Steven Heydemann, “Social Pacts and the Persistence of Authoritarianism in the Middle East,”
in Debating Arab Authoritarianism, ed. Oliver Schlumberger (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 2007), 22–38; and Steven Heydemann and Reinoud Leenders, eds., Middle East Au-
thoritarianisms: Governance, Contestation, and Regime Resilience in Syria and Iran (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 2013).

38 Kheder Khaddour, How Regional Security Concerns Uniquely Constrain Governance in Northeast Syria
(Beirut: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2017), 1, http://carnegieendowment
.org/files/CMEC_66_Khaddour_Jazira_FInal_Web.pdf.

39 Leonard Wantchekon, “The Paradox of ‘Warlord’ Democracy: A Theoretical Investigation,”

American Political Science Review 98 (1) (2004): 18.

40 Reyko Huang, The Wartime Origins of Democratization: Civil War, Rebel Governance, and Political Re-

gimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

41 Danya Greenfield and Svetlana Milbert, “Protests in Yemen Expose Weak Governance and Poor
Economic Planning,” Atlantic Council, September 2, 2014, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/
menasource/protests-in-yemen-expose-weak-governance-and-poor-economic-planning.

42 International Crisis Group, The Prize.
43 Schneider, “The Decay of the Syrian Regime is Much Worse Than You Think.”
44 Steven Heydemann, “Tracking the Arab Spring: Syria and Arab Authoritarianism,” Journal of

Democracy 24 (4) (2013): 59–73.

45 Nick Hopkins and Emma Beals, “un Pays Tens of Millions to Assad Regime under Syria Aid
Programme,” The Guardian, August 29, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/
aug/29/un-pays-tens-of-millions-to-assad-regime-syria-aid-programme-contracts.

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46 Risse, Governance without a State?
47 Aila M. Matanock, “Governance Delegation Agreements: Shared Sovereignty as a Substitute
for Limited Statehood,” Governance 27 (4) (2014): 589–612; and Stephen Krasner and Thomas
Risse, “External Actors, State-Building, and Service Provision in Areas of Limited Statehood:
Introduction,” Governance 27 (4) (2014): 545–567.

48 Reinoud Leenders, “Prosecuting Political Dissent Courts and the Resilience of Authoritari-
anism in Syria,” in Middle East Authoritarianisms: Governance, Contestation, and Regime Resilience in
Syria and Iran, ed. Steven Heydemann and Reinoud Leenders (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 2013), 169–199; and Tom Ginsberg and Alberto Simpser, eds., Constitutions in
Authoritarian Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

49 Thomas Risse, “Governance under Limited Sovereignty,” in Back to Basics: State Power in the
Contemporary World, ed. Martha Finnemore and Judith Goldstein (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013), 78–104.

50 Krasner, Sovereignty.

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147 (1) Winter 2018Steven Heydemann
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