A strong argument in the literature on rebel governance sees cooperation with civilians a key component for the success of rebel groups’ political agendas. Coercion, in fact, may work only until territorial control is contested. Conversely, once control is secured, it may alienate civilian support and imperil the group’s achievements. The key challenge here is how to build governance structures able to provide public goods.
One factor affecting the development of such governance structures is the presence of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), since INGOs perform essential functions. Ensuring INGOs collaboration may increase rebels’ international/local legitimacy. However, compared to their increasing engagement, we know fairly little about the ways in which INGOs interact with conflict security governances. This shortage is striking, since choices related to protection influence both the quality of governance and the local level of violence. Thus the paper will address the following question: which factors influence the definition and selection of specific security strategies?
Drawing on two different sets of theories, the paper will advance a theoretical framework aiming to explain how INGOs decide their posture in conflict areas. It will compare two competing hypotheses, the first based on the learning theories of organizations; the second drawn on studies of governance in areas of limited statehood and rebel governance. Both hypotheses assume firstly that – to be operative – organizations must purchase security from the market for force. Secondly, that organizations have a set of strategies - avoidance, acceptance, alliance, fortress and engagement.
For the first perspective, the ‘purchase’ spawns from a constant monitoring of the conflict, thus strategies result from a ‘learning process’. The strategy is the explanandum, while the learning - the intermediate variable – is determined by experience, context and knowledge. For the second perspective, NGOs strategies are considered as contractual choices constrained by and adaptive to structural governance imperatives.
This micro-level focus on NGOs officers allows to explore the processes driving the NGO interaction, to understand the dynamics behind arrangements of public goods, and shedding lights on the impacts on local governance.
