Department of Political and Social Change Seminar Series

Why do armed groups govern and where do the governmental repertoires they draw upon come from? Analysts often fall back on rational choice to provide causal explanations for rebel governance that depoliticise and dehistoricise the field of analysis narrowing the possibility of governmental outcomes. I argue for a different line of enquiry, that armed groups draw upon governance practices that are already known which are recombined, reinterpreted and resignified through processes of mimesis and bricolage. This captures the ways in which the political objectives of armed groups shape the governance practices they draw upon. By adopting a genealogical approach combined with fieldwork in a village tract in eastern Myanmar offers fine-grained resolution into understanding governance and its diverse sources. Such an approach suggests a re-evaluation of how we come to know about, and theorise why armed groups govern. I conclude with some reflections on the way forward for a “new wave” in the study of armed groups.

Speaker
Tony Neil is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change at the Coral Bell School of Asia and Pacific Affairs and a PhD candidate in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics.

Chair
Associate Professor Marcus Meitzner, Department of Political and Social Change, ANU Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs.

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