Accounting for variations in rebel institutions of security governance and the 'rebel state' autonomy: the CNDP and M23 rebellions in North-Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (2005-2013)

In the recent literature on civil wars, many agree that the ability of the rebels to establish governance structures has an impact on their political legitimacy during and after the conflict. However, the logic guiding the rebels to put in place structures providing services of general interest to the civilian population under their control vary widely. This paper is based on an in-depth case study of a rebellion that developed in two phases in North Kivu, first as the Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (National Congress for the defense of the People – CNDP) from 2006 to 2009, and later as Mouvement du 23-Mars, or M23 between 2012 and 2013. It studies variations in the structures set up by rebels during the two phases to ensure security provision in the rebel strongholds, and analyzes how security provision by the rebels has impacted differently the “autonomy” of the (rebel-)state, that is the empirical legitimacy resulting from the “embeddedness” of the rebel political institutions in society during and after the conflict. Our main argument is that the establishment by the rebel leaders of governance structures is not enough in itself to ensure the (rebel-)state autonomy, but that the latter is shaped by a complex interplay between domestic, national and international actors. Thus, the paper proposes a heuristic framework entitled “negotiating autonomy” which proposes to analyze rebel governance as a dynamic and partly undetermined negotiation process of state formation between a multiplicity of social forces at play, including rebel troops, civil society, the state challenged by rebels and international actors in presence.