Sarah G Phillips
I am Professor of Global Conflict and Development at The University of Sydney (Australia). I am also an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies (Yemen and Lebanon), and a Research Associate at the Developmental Leadership Program (University of Birmingham, UK).
My research draws from years of in-depth fieldwork, and focuses on international intervention in the global south, knowledge production about conflict-affected states, and non-state governance, with a geographic focus on the Middle East and Africa.
I am the author of three books, the latest of which, When There Was No Aid: War and Peace in Somaliland (Cornell University Press, 2020) was awarded the Australian Political Science Association’s biennial Crisp Prize for the best political science monograph (2018-2020). It was also a ‘Best Book of 2020’ at Foreign Affairs, a ‘Book of the Year (2020)’ at Australian Book Review, was shortlisted for the Conflict Research Society 'Book of the Year' Prize (2021), and was a finalist for the African Studies Association’s Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize (2021).
My research draws from years of in-depth fieldwork, and focuses on international intervention in the global south, knowledge production about conflict-affected states, and non-state governance, with a geographic focus on the Middle East and Africa.
I am the author of three books, the latest of which, When There Was No Aid: War and Peace in Somaliland (Cornell University Press, 2020) was awarded the Australian Political Science Association’s biennial Crisp Prize for the best political science monograph (2018-2020). It was also a ‘Best Book of 2020’ at Foreign Affairs, a ‘Book of the Year (2020)’ at Australian Book Review, was shortlisted for the Conflict Research Society 'Book of the Year' Prize (2021), and was a finalist for the African Studies Association’s Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize (2021).
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Papers by Sarah G Phillips
Using Yemen as a primary case, this piece examines the assumptions that underpin the norm of state-monopolised violence, and how they break down when unhinged from their Western origins. It proposes first that a monopoly on violence is not necessarily something that all states strive for all of the time as a function of universally rational self-interest. Second, it suggests that the logic of state-monopolised violence implicitly establishes a clear separation between state and non-state actors, which has been unquestioningly taken up in many scholarly analyses of the norms bound up with statehood (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse, Ropp and Sikkink 1999; Boli and Thomas 1999). This dichotomy is most pronounced when states contend with violent non-state actors (Jo and Bryant 2013, 239). This piece analyses Yemeni discourses about al-Qa’ida to unsettle an assumption that is implicit to Western discourses about what constitutes a state and to the norms constructivism literature: the apparent logical inevitability of the binary distinction between state and violent non-state actors. It suggests instead that state actors may facilitate violent non-state actors that challenge their authority or, at least, that citizens widely interpret them as doing so. Using this ‘situated’ perspective (Epstein 2014), this chapter then deconstructs the dominant discourse, which takes strengthening the state’s monopoly on legitimate force as the only long-term solution to instability and political violence, and yields specific counter-productive counter-terrorism practices and policies. It argues that in conceptualising the links between the coercive capacity of the state and political stability so rigidly, the norm of state-monopolised violence can help to produce the threats to stability it is believed to contain.
The chapter begins by questioning the usefulness of the orthodox failed states narrative from which international policy to “stabilise” Yemen has largely drawn its intellectual justification. It will then analyse the implications of this for understanding processes of rapid political change and responding to them more effectively. To make this case the chapter places USAID’s (United States Agency for International Development)
Yemen Country Strategy 2010-2012: Stabilization Through Development within the context of Yemen’s contemporary political and security dynamics. This strategic document is particularly relevant to the issue of ‘weak’ statehood in the Middle East because it articulates the perceived causes of, and solutions to, this condition as understood by the US Government’s development agency. The chapter will first examine some underlying assumptions of American stabilisation strategies before analysing the unintended consequences of framing rapid political change as an external security threat. It will conclude by suggesting that while Yemen desperately needs development, assistance that is given in the explicit expectation of receiving political or security benefits is likely not to be targeted at the areas of greatest need and thus being perceived as self-serving. From the outset, therefore, this risks undermining the intention of winning “hearts and minds” and encouraging pro-Western sentiment. The chapter will also suggest, however, that there is a performative objective to Western stabilisation strategies: to establish for a domestic audience that complexity can be domesticated, and that power can outmaneuver uncertainty. As the anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom writes, “power rests in part on the very illusion that power exists”, and stabilisation strategies are, in part, about protecting that illusion by being seen to take the risk out of political change.
One explanation for this apparent contradiction is that, since the drone strikes started, the Yemeni government has happened to become weaker, giving al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) the advantage of relatively ungoverned spaces from which to operate. Another is that the drone strikes have killed civilians, giving weight to AQAP’s claim that Yemen is under attack by a foreign power and bolstering the group’s appeal.
There is probably an element of truth to both. But to a significant degree, the problem is also a product of the West’s failure to grasp how Yemenis view AQAP—a failure that both facilitated the group’s expansion and undermined those best placed to contest it: the majority of Yemenis who believe that the group is an elite fabrication.
There are two errors in conventional Western thinking about AQAP. The first is the belief that the government in Sanaa is necessarily motivated to fight groups that violently challenge its rule—and is understood to do so by its population. The second is that AQAP authentically represents a segment of Yemeni society, which gives the group a firm foundation from which to expand its support base.
For Yemenis, though, the line between the state and AQAP is not always clear, and a loss for AQAP is not necessarily a win for the central government. Many believe that competing factions in Yemeni politics stoke the AQAP threat for political advantage. In turn, the fight against AQAP is just a stage on which other domestic power struggles play out. By viewing AQAP as merely a terrorist organization—and not also part of a plotline that has sustained a squabbling elite—the West has been left fumbling around in a domestic confrontation that it continues to misunderstand.
Using Yemen as a primary case, this piece examines the assumptions that underpin the norm of state-monopolised violence, and how they break down when unhinged from their Western origins. It proposes first that a monopoly on violence is not necessarily something that all states strive for all of the time as a function of universally rational self-interest. Second, it suggests that the logic of state-monopolised violence implicitly establishes a clear separation between state and non-state actors, which has been unquestioningly taken up in many scholarly analyses of the norms bound up with statehood (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse, Ropp and Sikkink 1999; Boli and Thomas 1999). This dichotomy is most pronounced when states contend with violent non-state actors (Jo and Bryant 2013, 239). This piece analyses Yemeni discourses about al-Qa’ida to unsettle an assumption that is implicit to Western discourses about what constitutes a state and to the norms constructivism literature: the apparent logical inevitability of the binary distinction between state and violent non-state actors. It suggests instead that state actors may facilitate violent non-state actors that challenge their authority or, at least, that citizens widely interpret them as doing so. Using this ‘situated’ perspective (Epstein 2014), this chapter then deconstructs the dominant discourse, which takes strengthening the state’s monopoly on legitimate force as the only long-term solution to instability and political violence, and yields specific counter-productive counter-terrorism practices and policies. It argues that in conceptualising the links between the coercive capacity of the state and political stability so rigidly, the norm of state-monopolised violence can help to produce the threats to stability it is believed to contain.
The chapter begins by questioning the usefulness of the orthodox failed states narrative from which international policy to “stabilise” Yemen has largely drawn its intellectual justification. It will then analyse the implications of this for understanding processes of rapid political change and responding to them more effectively. To make this case the chapter places USAID’s (United States Agency for International Development)
Yemen Country Strategy 2010-2012: Stabilization Through Development within the context of Yemen’s contemporary political and security dynamics. This strategic document is particularly relevant to the issue of ‘weak’ statehood in the Middle East because it articulates the perceived causes of, and solutions to, this condition as understood by the US Government’s development agency. The chapter will first examine some underlying assumptions of American stabilisation strategies before analysing the unintended consequences of framing rapid political change as an external security threat. It will conclude by suggesting that while Yemen desperately needs development, assistance that is given in the explicit expectation of receiving political or security benefits is likely not to be targeted at the areas of greatest need and thus being perceived as self-serving. From the outset, therefore, this risks undermining the intention of winning “hearts and minds” and encouraging pro-Western sentiment. The chapter will also suggest, however, that there is a performative objective to Western stabilisation strategies: to establish for a domestic audience that complexity can be domesticated, and that power can outmaneuver uncertainty. As the anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom writes, “power rests in part on the very illusion that power exists”, and stabilisation strategies are, in part, about protecting that illusion by being seen to take the risk out of political change.
One explanation for this apparent contradiction is that, since the drone strikes started, the Yemeni government has happened to become weaker, giving al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) the advantage of relatively ungoverned spaces from which to operate. Another is that the drone strikes have killed civilians, giving weight to AQAP’s claim that Yemen is under attack by a foreign power and bolstering the group’s appeal.
There is probably an element of truth to both. But to a significant degree, the problem is also a product of the West’s failure to grasp how Yemenis view AQAP—a failure that both facilitated the group’s expansion and undermined those best placed to contest it: the majority of Yemenis who believe that the group is an elite fabrication.
There are two errors in conventional Western thinking about AQAP. The first is the belief that the government in Sanaa is necessarily motivated to fight groups that violently challenge its rule—and is understood to do so by its population. The second is that AQAP authentically represents a segment of Yemeni society, which gives the group a firm foundation from which to expand its support base.
For Yemenis, though, the line between the state and AQAP is not always clear, and a loss for AQAP is not necessarily a win for the central government. Many believe that competing factions in Yemeni politics stoke the AQAP threat for political advantage. In turn, the fight against AQAP is just a stage on which other domestic power struggles play out. By viewing AQAP as merely a terrorist organization—and not also part of a plotline that has sustained a squabbling elite—the West has been left fumbling around in a domestic confrontation that it continues to misunderstand.