Rebels fight for political power and rebel victories or negotiated settlements of civil wars open up political opportunities for the insurgents. In most post-war contexts, former rebels continue to pursue political careers. The advancement of rebels in the political field is, thus, part of the formation of new elites in the post-war society. Yet rebel careers exhibit strong variance. While some rise to senior political positions, others have to contend with lower level positions or are even completely marginalized.
Starting from the theoretical notion of the post-war social space, the paper develops a conceptual framework to explain this variance, focusing on the political career trajectories of former insurgents. The central hypothesis is that their political careers are formed by the individual capital endowment (in Bourdieu’s sense) and the opportunity structure of the post-war social space. The interplay of these two variables can be analyzed on the basis of four different strategies of establishing and reproducing elite power: positioning, assimilation, closure, and legitimation. Case studies of Liberia and Kosovo, which are based on field work in both countries, serve as a first test to the hypothesis and explain the post-war political careers of former rebels in the two cases with the help of the theoretical conception.
