Governing After War explores how wartime processes affects post-war state-building efforts when rebels win a civil war and come into power. Post-war governance is a continuation of war--although violence has ceased, the victor must consolidate its control over the state through a process of internal conquest. This means carefully making choices about resource allocation towards development and security. Where does the victor choose to spend, and why? And what are the implications for ultimately consolidating power and preventing conflict recurrence? The book examines wartime rebel-civilian ties under rebel governance and explains how these ties--along with rebel governing institutions--shape the rebel victors' post-war various resource allocation strategies to establish control at the sub-national level. In turn, successfully balancing resources dedicated toward development and security helps the victor to consolidate power. The book relies on mixed-methods evidence from Zimbabwe and Liberia, combining interviews, focus groups, and archival data with fine-grained census, administrative, survey, and conflict datasets to provide an in-depth examination of subnational variation in wartime rebel behavior and post-war governing strategies. A comparison of Zimbabwe and Liberia alongside four additional civil wars in Burundi, Rwanda, Cote d'Ivoire, and Angola further demonstrates the importance of wartime civilian tie-formation for post-war control. The argument's central insights point to war and peace as part of a long state-building process, and suggest that the international community should pay attention to sub-national political constraints that new governments face. Her findings offer implications for recent rebel victories and, more broadly, for understanding the termination, trajectories, and political legacies of such conflicts around the world.

About the Author
Shelley Liu is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Duke University. Her research examines how citizens relate to the state, and how these citizen-state relationships affect post-conflict development and state-building in developing contexts. Her scholarship has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Journal of Peace Research, Politics & Society, and PLOS ONE.

Reviews
Governing after War is a quantum leap forward in scholarship on post-war politics. Liu does a marvelous job analyzing the political tradeoffs and intense threats that post-war states face, and she develops a counterintuitive theory about how rebel victors balance security and development priorities based on wartime ties with civilians. The multi-method data collection in the two main cases of Zimbabwe and Liberia is creative and rigorous, and the empirics are further supported by an original analysis of four other African countries. Anyone interested in post-war peace building, civil war dynamics, rebel governance, and African politics should read this book. * Scott Straus, University of California-Berkeley *
How do rebel victors of civil wars allocate development and coercive resources after winning control of the state? This penetrating analysis of Zimbabwe and Liberia provides an important answer: ties to civilians during wartime guide rebels' ability to consolidate power and prevent violence recurrence in war's aftermath. Providing the critical link between rebel governance and state building, the book is a must read for scholars of postwar politics. * Sarah Zukerman Daly, Columbia University *
Fundamental to politics is the state, its capacity, and how political actors consolidate control over its institutions. In Governing After War, Shelley Liu compellingly explains sub-national variation in how rebel victors exert and expand state control once conflict is over. Liu argues that rebel victors leverage institutions and civilian connections forged during war to direct resources to key constituencies in ways that reduce the likelihood of conflict recurrence. Artfully weaving quantitative and qualitative evidence, Liu's pioneering work bridges war-time governance with post-war state-building, making it a must-read for scholars in both fields. * Megan Stewart, Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan *
A tremendous advance in the study of post-war politics, Liu offers an insightful and compelling analysis of how rebel victories produce distinct political behaviors. Eschewing the tendency to view statebuilding as unfolding upon a blank canvas, Liu instead shows how behaviors forged amidst the fighting can shape the behavior of the new regime. Combining sophisticated and often surprising logics with extensive ethnographic and other evidence, Liu's contribution is sure to make a mark in the wider fields of conflict resolution and statebuilding. * Zachariah Mampilly, Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, City University of New York *



Book Information
ISBN 9780197696712
Author Shelley X. Liu
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 386g
Dimensions(mm) 147mm * 229mm * 25mm