Resilience to Violent Conflict: Adaptive Strategies in Fragile States

Resilience to Violent Conflict: Adaptive Strategies in Fragile States

Ami C. Carpenter

Abstract

Resilience refers to the ability to rebound, maintain or strengthen functioning during and after a disturbance; to cope successfully in the face of extreme adversity or risk. In many cases where the term ´resilience´ is used, it is applied as a simple descriptor without analysis of why particular systems are resilient even when, by most accounts, they should not be. This paper provides (1) A framework for conceptualizing resilience with regard to vulnerable, fragile, and conflict prone states (in other words, what IS resilience and why is it relevant?) and (2) A small collection of case studies including Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Guinea and others which highlight particular adaptive strategies. The key argument of this research is that the nature of development strategies in such environments must tend towards enhancing the capacity of local communities to self organize, by prioritizing experimentation and local ownership over project designs and outcomes.

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Resilience is probably the second instinct, after survival, of all species.Stockholm Environment Institute

Introduction

Generally speaking, resilience refers to the ability to rebound, maintain or strengthen functioning during and after a disturbance; or to cope successfully in the face of extreme adversity or risk. Resilience is both a metaphor for the durability, strength or adaptive capacity of particular things (people, ideas, institutions, societies, ecosystems) and a theoretical framework for studying the dynamics of this durability, strength, or adaptive capacity in relation to those objects.

This article refers to resilience in this latter capacity, as a framework for studying the dynamics of positive adaptation by local communities in fragile states. In countries at risk of or experiencing violent civil conflict, resilience as a national property is very low.1

However three cases discussed in this paper (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Tanzania) demonstrate that resilience as a subnational property (a pattern) can emerge however; even in the context of widespread violence.

Patterns of resilience are adaptive strategies that are self-organized, sustained with minimal outside support, and associated with outcomes that uphold key social institutions with a positive benefit for cooperation and risk mitigation. The ability of communities to manage the risk of violence successfully depends on collective action and conflict management. Thus adaptive strategies depend on norms and mechanisms that promote cooperative behavior, and are oriented towards maintaining, strengthening, protecting, and resisting interference with these important components of social capital.

This paper argues that these patterns represent positive feedback loops to sources of adaptive capacity at the subnational level. Of particular interest to international development and peacebuilding organizations is whether these patterns represent fruitful entry points for promoting institutional change to strengthen vulnerable states.

State Vulnerability and Resilience

1 Adger, N. Brooks, N., Bentham, G. and Agnew, M.(2004). New Indicators of Vulnerability and Adaptive Capacity. Final Project Report, Tyndall Project

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A vulnerable state is one which is significantly susceptible to crisis in one or more of its subsystems – that is, it is vulnerable to internal and external shocks, and to violent conflict.2 By contrast systemic (or regime) resilience refers to the ability of dominant or reigning institutional arrangements (whatever they may be) to withstand internal and external shocks and risk factors for violent conflict.

Three common ways of viewing state resilience are economic, institutional, and regime. Briguglio’s work on the so-called “Singapore Paradox” equates economic resilience to state resilience,3 while Bardhan’s work on the democratic polity of India describes resilience in terms of state institutions.4 A third conceptualization of resilience is resilience as the longevity of particular regimes. In research on systems (electrical, biological, political) a regime simply refers to existing state of affairs – or more specifically the components of that existing state such its boundaries, or established types and level of control over the way the system works. In a country, the system or regime of concern is the prevailing set of governance arrangements, both formal (state organizations, laws, political parties) and informal (social norms, traditions, codes of honor).

The fundamental breakdown in fragile states is violence, destruction and war, “not decline in school enrollment or per capita GNP.”5 In fragile environments, violence can be triggered by the decline of mediating institutions, decline (or complete lack) of preexisting structures of credible commitment (trust), or “the impact of built-in disincentives of electoral and constitutional systems” which can generate the breakdown of ethnic compromises.6 If the fundamental measure of regime collapse is violence, destruction and war, the fundamental measure of regime resilience is the absence of violence, destruction and war in the face of large shocks. So what accounts for cases where vulnerabilities and risk factors are high, but the fundamental breakdown has not occurred?

2 Conflict Studies Research Centre, Crisis, Fragile and Failed States Definitions, March 2006

3 Briguglio, Lino (2003). Economic Vulnerability and Resilience: Concepts and Measurements. Paper presented at the International Workshop on Vulnerability and Resilience of Small States, organised by theCommonwealth Secretariat and the University of Malta, University Gozo Centre, Malta 1-3 March 20044 Bardhan, Pranab, 1984, The Political Economy of Development in India, Delhi: Oxford University

5 Soltan, Karol (2003). “Rebuilding Constitutional Order”. Working Paper on Fragile States, No. 4. College Park, MD: University of Maryland, Iris Center

6 For an excellent analysis of the political and economic factors interacting with ethnicity to make it a salient variable around which to organize, as well as treatment of historical, geopolitical and social variables in particular cases, see Chapter 9 in Bardhan, Praneb (2005). Scarcity, Conflicts and Cooperation: Essays in the Political and Institutional Economics of Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Books.

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Both USAID and the World Bank have explored this question respectively in the case of Guinea and Haiti. Guinea, despite being surrounded by five countries who have succumbed to civil wars (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea Bissau, and Senegal), and despite exhibiting four risk factors for conflict itself (ethnic heterogeneity, pervasive economic decline & unemployment, a youth bulge, and “lootable” commodities), has not only maintained internal stability, but has been able to adapt and absorb the impact of refugees and returnees from nearby conflict regions.

Likewise Haiti is described as a resilient society7 because rural communities in particular have developed coping mechanisms in response to a legacy of underdevelopment and political instability. “Especially in fragile states, the ability of communities and householders to work and live together is essential to maintaining people’s livelihoods, security and welfare…robust cohesion on the community level has been crucial in preventing Haiti’s institutional-political crisis from deteriorating into broad social collapse or civil war.”

I have two sets of interests regarding resilience in fragile states. The first is to pinpoint, as accurately as possible, the correlates and components of resilience in general – and that includes undesirable patterns like corruption. After all, resilience is not inherently “good’ – corruption is a very resilient institution. Likewise, the resilience of particular regimes (Stalin’s, for example) does not correlate with the characteristics required for development to move forward. Resilience it is simply a property of systems, based on particular features of those systems.8 The following section, Conceptual Background, provides this overview of resilience in general, drawing on research from fields of psychology, sociology, disaster research, and ecology.

The second interest is somewhat more normative in scope: to identify desirable patterns of positive adaptation, which might serve as entry points when the goal is to enhance those particular features. Defining patterns of resilience requires a broad analytical framework for importing this concept into development analyses of fragile or vulnerable states. The analytical framework identifies what we mean by “desirable” and gives us a general idea of what kinds of “patterns” we might be looking for. This framework is described in detail further on, however I note here its three general components:

Positive AdaptationInstead of talking about the resiliency of economies, institutions, or states, I refer to resilience as a pattern of positive adaptation. Positive adaptation can be found in any number of situations – here, I am chiefly interested in positive adaptation to the correlates of fragility: insecurity, poverty, corruption, resource scarcity, environmental degradation, and so on.

7 World Bank Report, “Haiti: Social Resilience and State Fragility: A Country Social Analysis”. Caribbean Country Management Unit, Report No. 36069-HT8 Resilience can also refer to a ‘property’ of individuals, discussed further on in the paper; however individual resilience is too narrow a subject for this inquiry.

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Cooperation and Risk MitigationThe ability to adapt and change depends on the ability to act collectively and resolve conflict among members9 at any level of analysis. In other words, it requires mechanisms to manage violence and maintain or strengthen social capital. It just so happens that most of these mechanisms are non-state, local, and often emergent.

InstitutionsIn other words, adaptive capacity depends on institutions (norms, rules, laws, belief systems, and so on) that have a positive benefit for cooperation and risk mitigation. These institutions take a variety of forms. As with specific coping mechanisms for cooperation and risk mitigation, the institutions supporting these mechanisms tend to emerge in context.

An overview of resilience research over the past four decades sheds further light on these components.

Conceptual Background

The concept of resilience emerged in the 1970s and 1980s in ecology and social studies reflecting an emphasis in both fields on the inherent dynamism of natural and social systems. Today it is referenced on a wide range of issues associated with social and ecological systems, including disaster management, economics, community planning, urban renewal, and development.

Achieving desirable states and outcomes for humanity…will require new integrated and adaptive approaches to social and economic development, where the complex interconnectedness between humans and nature, at all scales, is considered and the existence of uncertainty and surprise accepted as the rule. It is in this context that a focus on resilience becomes relevant.10

Though it is widely used, both the meaning and the proposed measurement of resilience are contested within and between different fields.

Psychological research on individuals conceptualizes resilience in a variety of ways.

As outcomes (acquisition of social skills, emotional development, academic achievement, psychological wellbeing, self-esteem) despite adversity

9 Brooks and Adger, Ibid10 Folke, Carl (2006) "Research program: Resilience and sustainability - integrated research on social-ecological systems http://www.Ecology.Su.Se/projects/projects.Asp?Id=85." Centre of Excellence - Resilience and Sustainability: Integrated Research on Social-Ecological Systems)

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As sustained competence (coping skills, attitudes towards obstacles, environmental protective factors) under stress

As recovery from trauma (resilience in relation to specific risk factors or events)

As the interaction effect (or product) regarding how particular variables moderate between risks and outcomes. Examples of moderating variables include hardiness (which enables people reconceptualize the negative effects of events), collective self esteem, or social humor.11

Systems level research has also generated two conceptualizations of resilience: (1) the ‘buffer capacity’ or the ability of a system to absorb disturbances12 or (2) the rate of recovery from a disturbance. Figure 1 below illustrates these two explanations of resilience.

Figure 1From Adger, Neil W. (2000) Social and Ecological Resilience: Are They Related?

The first conceptualization has to do with the magnitude of shock that a system can absorb and remain in a given state. Social collapse, state collapse, and civil wars are all examples of what resilience researchers refer to as state changes, or regime shifts. Resilient systems are those that can absorb shock and remain their current state – and if this is to be the case, than the state must be one which there is a capability for self-organization, and for capacity building through learning and adaptation.13

11 Suraez-Ojeda & Autler, “Community Resilience: A Social Approach”. In E. Grotberg (Ed) Resilience for today : gaining strength from adversity. p. 19112 Holling, et al (1995) Ibid

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Research on ecological systems generally tend to use this first model, and the cases of Haiti and Guinea above are also explained using this construct: Guinea’s ability to absorb the impact of refugees and returnees, and to buffer the risk factors for violent conflict without collapse, and Haiti’s ability to cope with underdevelopment and political instability without social collapse or civil war.

By contrast, the second model is often highlighted in disaster research, where resilience is defined with respect to actual behaviors (preparation, response and recovery) that decrease recovery time and consequences.14 For instance, Bruneau et al have defined earthquake resilience as “the ability of social units (e.g. organizations, communities) to mitigate hazards, contain the effects of disasters when they occur, and carry out recovery activities in ways that minimize social disruption, and mitigate the effectors of further earthquakes.”15

Other fields use this construct as well. The resilience of cancer cells, for example, is explained as a function of their resistance to treatment.

Concepts and Definitions

Vulnerability refers to susceptibility and risk. Social vulnerability is “the exposure of groups of people or individuals to stress… [which] encompasses disruption to groups or individuals livelihoods and forced adaptation to the changing physical environment…and loss of security.” Vulnerability to shock is both a result of other factors present (such as widespread poverty, or ineffective governance) and it is also a condition that adds to difficulty in ‘escaping’ or ‘breaking free’ of the trap/cycle. A combination of conditions account for this, including geographical difficulties, inequalities between different social or ethnic groups16, governance failures and lack of governing capacity (inability to collect taxes or to provide public goods and services).

13 This definition is widely used by researchers studying social and ecological systems. It is used by the Resilience Alliance, a group of leading researchers on resilience research. Because it is oriented towards both social and ecological systems, and because it encompasses the practical issues of capacity and adaptation, it is comprehensive enough to preclude the need for further definitions according to Adger, N.W. (2000). Social and Ecological resilience: Are they related? Progress in Human Geography 24: 347-64

14 Rose, A. and S. Liao, "Modeling Regional Economic Resilience to Disasters: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis of Water Service Disruptions," Journal of Regional Science, 45(1), 75-112; 2005

15 Bruneau, M., Chang, S. E., Eguchi, R. T., Lee, G. C., O'Rourke, T. D., Reinhorn, A. M., Shinozuka, M., Tierney, K., Wallace, W. A., and von Winterfeldt, D., A Framework to Quantitatively Assess and Enhance the Seismic Resilience of Communities, Earthquake Spectra, forthcoming (emphasis mine).

16 Chua, Amy (2003). World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. New York: Random House Publishing.

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Resilience is often considered to be a loose antonym for vulnerability.17 The relationship is actually slightly more complex. Vulnerability, including defenselessness and insecurity18 is not only a measure of the potential external shocks and impacts, but includes reference to the capacity to cope with these shocks. The capacity to cope is dependent on three things: diversity, redundancy and feedback loops - the very characteristics of resilience.

DIVERSITYThe resilience of systems is enhanced by diversity, of species, functions, responses, human opportunity and economic options. Diverse responses to events and options for dealing with them maintain and encourage adaptation and learning.

REDUNDANCYIn particular, response diversity depends on having multiple avenues for meeting needs or dealing with specific issues. For example, having multiple donors available in one area allows projects to obtain better and longer-term funding than if only one were present. Another example is the multi-layered approach to development adopted by the DAC Network on Conflict, Peace and Development Cooperation, in which multiple and overlapping service providers for justice and security allows better overall “coverage” as individuals make choices based on what they can afford and what they need. Centralizing and integrating functions and institutions does not necessarily increase resilience. With regard to increasing efficiency of governance, it may be counter-productive (albeit counter-intuitive!) to remove apparent redundancies, because this can actually reduce resilience by removing the potential for response diversity.

FEEDBACK LOOPSA “feedback loop" is a pattern of interacting processes where a change in one variable, through interaction with other variables in the system, either reinforces the original process (positive feedback) or suppresses the process (negative feedback).19 For example, climate change researchers are interested in finding negative feedback loops for global warming – that is, feedback loops which counter the warming trend.

Just like climate change researchers who are concerned with off-setting any chain reaction which leads to a greater acceleration of warming, fragile states research is concerned with off-setting (predicting, perhaps) which feedback loops hasten a state's

17 Adger, N., L. Lebel and V. Narain. 2003. Participation and Building Capacity to Climate Change Adaptation. Poverty and Vulnerability Programme, Adaptation Research Workshop Briefing Paper, Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, November 2003

18 Chambers, R. (1989). ¨Vulnerability,Coping and Policy¨. IDS Bulletin, 20, 2: pages 1-719 For example, climate change researchers study feedback loops in climate systems which reinforce warming (positive) or counter it (negative).

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decline, and those which counter it. Most of the main feedback loops in fragile states are positive (reinforcing fragility) such as entrenched corruption or horizontal inequality. There is much research that shows the cyclical nature of these patterns, which lead over time to greater and more instability.

But figuring out how to enhance stability requires a reframing of what we are looking for. Rather than looking for the negative feedback loops to sources of fragility, we are looking for the positive feedback loops to sources of adaptive capacity.20

Since positive adaptation depends on institutions (rules, norms, ways of doing things) that have some impact on cooperation and risk mitigation, and since we are oriented towards discovering patterns (and the institutional context of these patterns), our interest in resilience extends beyond individual resilience. We are interested in systems, regardless of which model is used (resilience = absorptive capacity, or resilience = rate of recovery).

To understand the dynamics of resilience in systems, it is necessary to understand the dynamics of systems themselves. The larger theoretical framework in which resilience is studied views social and ecological systems as complex adaptive systems.

Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) involve a large number of agents that act interdependently with each other to generate emergent, system-wide patterns of behavior for the whole. The CAS is really a metaphor – that is, it helps us think about organizations, political and economic institutions, and whole social systems in a way that emphasizes particular aspects21 - change, dynamism, interdependency and institutions.22

The Adaptive Cycle refers to phase changes in a systems structure and function, and have been noted in ecological, political and economic systems.23 Four phase changes characterize the adaptive cycle: growth, conservation, collapse and reorganization. The collapse and reorganization stages are referred to collectively as the back-loop. Often

20 This is because patterns of fragility have multiple sources, are extremely complex and defy attempts to ‘undo’ them. But most important, it is because the institutions which prop up corruption, severe social discrimination, human rights abuses and poor policy choices emerge in a bottom up, not a top down fashion. 21 Eoyang, G. H., Yellowthunder, L. & Ward, V. (1998). A Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Approach to Public Policy Decision-making. http://www.winternet.com/~eoyang/gstuff/SCTPLSPolicy.pdf

22The following properties of social systems are explainable using CAS models: Economies (e.g. price dynamics, wealth distributions, convergence of economic growth rates among nations); Geography (e.g. city size distributions); Institutions (e.g. hierarchical structures); Politics (e.g. patterns in solving collective action problems); Historical contingency and path-dependence. Arthur, Durlauf & Lane (1997), The Economy as an Evolving Complex System. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.

23 Holling (1986, 2001) focuses specifically on ecosystems, but Westley (2002) applied the adaptive cycle to social systems, Jansen (2002) applied it to institutional systems, and both Gunderson (1985) and Holling et al (2002) have applied it to social-ecological systems.

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when a system encounters a severe enough external disturbance, the structure collapses. In the reorganization phase, a number of things can occur: the system can reorganize and stay within the same regime; it can shift to a different regime with the same state variables, or it can transform into a new regime with different scale, state variables, and feedbacks. 24

According to this model, vulnerable or fragile states by and large are stuck in the backloop: some are stuck in the collapse phase, some slowly progressing through reorganization, while others cycle between reorganization and collapse.25 It is the combination of inherent vulnerabilities alongside existing governance arrangement that is of critical importance in terms of the ability of any particular system to reorganize following collapse. 26 The failure of states to adapt their institutions appropriately leads to (or perpetuates) destructive patterns of political interaction.

At the same time, the actions of society to fill the void left by these missing state functions can either promote collapse or reorganization (hopefully through an orderly change of regime), or recovery (through voluntarily providing public goods). Meagher calls this the ‘wherewithal’ of the fragile country or society to reconstitute missing state functions.27 It is elsewhere referred to as adaptive capacity.

Adaptive Capacity is the property of a social system (for my purposes, a community) to adjust its characteristics of behavior, in order to expand its coping range under existing or future conditions.28 It tends to be emergent and self organized29 but although both intentional and unintentional actions can impact adaptive capacity, Folkes et al maintains

24 For example, the 1991-1992 drought in Zimbabwe (external disturbance) forced farmers to de-stock cattle (release), and re-stocking was not possible given prevailing adverse market conditions. Thus the cattle ranching market in collapsed, and reorganized as wildlife ranches, an example of a new regime with the different scale, variables, and feedback (ranches, animal enclosure, fencing, tourist industry).

25Abel , N., D. H. M. Cumming, and J. M. Anderies. 2006. Collapse and reorganization in social-ecological systems: questions, some ideas, and policy implications. Ecology and Society 11(1): 17. Abel et al find that transitions among the four phases of the adaptive cycle need not occur in order, nor do they necessarily represent a fixed sequence or a ‘cycle’ at all. 26As one example, they describe a failed re-settlement scheme in Shashe-Limpopo, Zimbabwe. In 2001, two commercial ranches were resettled by 300 families and their livestock. In order to accommodate the families, game fences were dismantled – however the government did not deliver on its plans to provide fencing, water and cattle dips. Drought in 2002-2003 attracted cattle from the communal land, and with no fences to keep them out, the reserve grazing was depleted and the livestock starved. “The loss of the settlers’ livestock, the collapse of commercial wildlife enterprises, and the absence of new financial capital investment and subsidies resulted in what has so far been a failed release and reorganization.” See Abel, N., D. H. M. Cumming, and J. M. Anderies. 2006. Collapse and reorganization in social-ecological systems: questions, some ideas, and policy implications. Ecology and Society 11 (1): 17

27 Meagher, Patrick. Service Delivery in Fragile States: Framing the Issues. Fragile States Working Paper # 5. College Park, MD: University of Maryland, ISIS Center, p. 10

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that the “capacity to manage resilience with intent determines whether they can successful avoid crossing into an undesirable system regime or succeed in crossing into a desirable one.” Since human actions dominate social systems, the adaptability30 of these systems is a function of the management of these systems by individuals and groups and has a great deal to do with the ability of humans to imagine the future and to plan forward.31 Adaptive capacity depends on a number of things, including information, resources (financial, social, human, and natural capital), and willingness to adapt among those affected.

Adaptive capacity, therefore, depends on the ability of a society to act collectively, and to resolve conflicts between its members…32

Collective action and cooperation are also referred to as social capital. Broadly, social capital is an instantiated informal norm that promotes cooperation between two or more individuals.

Not just any set of instantiated norms constitutes social capital; they must lead to cooperation in groups and therefore are related to traditional virtues like honesty, the keeping of commitments, reliable performance of duties, reciprocity, and the like.33

Many definitions of social capital (including networks, trust, and civil society) refer to manifestations of social capital rather than social capital itself. In a working paper for the World Bank, Richards et al argue for a broader conception of social capital as the capacity for collective action, or more specifically “any enduring sense of social solidarity or capacity for collective action.”34 In their exploration of community driven conflict prevention and reconstruction projects in Sierra Leone, these authors note that

28 Brooks, N. and Adger, W. N. 2005. Assessing and enhancing adaptive capacity. In B. Lim and E. Spanger-Siegfried (Eds.) Adaptation Policy Frameworks for Climate Change: Developing Strategies, Policies and Measures, pp 165-181. UNDP-GEF. Cambridge University Press

29 Ibid

30 According to Brooks and Adger (Ibid), adaptability is the capacity of actors in the social-ecological system to manage resilience – that is, to handle change so that systemic resilience is not lost.

31Holling, C.S. and Walker, B. (2003). Resilience Defined. Entry prepared for the Internet Encyclopedia of Ecological Economics. http://www.ecoeco.org/publica/encyc_entries/Resilience.pdf32 Ibid, p. 333 Fukuyama, Francis (1999). Social Capital and Civil Society. The Institute of Public Policy at George Mason University. Prepared for delivery at the IMF Conference on Second Generation Reforms

34 Richards, P., Bah, K. and Vincent, J. (2004). Social Capital and Survival: Prospects for Community Driven Development in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone. World Bank, Social Development Papers, page 1

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viewing social capital as networks overlooks the building blocks of agrarian society - families, occupational groups, and sodalities (secret societies).35

The concept of social capital has also been criticized for inadequate treatment of the origin of social conflict, and its limited explanatory power in situations where there are deeply conflicting interests or divisions.36 Most theories could be likewise criticized, because it is difficult to capture the inherent complexity of violent conflict. Social capital can neither explain nor mitigate alone the risk factors that can lead to violent conflict. As a norm, it is impacted by a host of variables and like resilience, it is not inherently ‘good’.

For example, one manifestation of social capital is in-group policing. In-group policing refers to behaviors of ethnic groups in environments where there is high ethnic diversity, to ‘police’ the actions of their own group in order to protect peace. A norm often emerges against ethnic aggression, and offenders (those who aggress against members of a different ethnic group) are punished by members of their OWN group. It is easy to see how this example of social capital leads to greater cooperation between groups. However in times of actual violence, the same mechanism (monitoring and punishing those who do not act in accordance with the prevailing group norm) can lead to a dramatically different outcome, where members of the ethnic group who do NOT commit violent acts are punished.

The processes of enhancing stability in fragile states are themselves change processes; dramatic ones with particular emphasis on institutional change and adaptation. Institutional change is made particularly challenging because of the complex “interplay between the polity and the economy, the many actors who have carrying degrees of bargaining strength in influencing institutional change, and the role of cultural inheritance that appears to underlie the persistence of many informal constraints.”37 This is true even in undemocratic societies; the interaction between governments and interest groups is what establishes the institutions and investment patterns that drive, enable or prevent change in relative and absolute capitals.38

35 Durkheim 1957 Durkheim, Emile (1957), Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.363

Peter Evans, ed. State-Society Synergy: Government and Social Capital in Development . University of California International and Area Studies Digital Collection, Research Series #94, 1997. P. 14 http://repositories.cdlib.org/uciaspubs/research/9437 North, Douglass C. (1990). Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, page 104383

Abel, N., D. H. M. Cumming, and J. M. Anderies. 2006. Collapse and reorganization in social-ecological systems: questions, some ideas, and policy implications. Ecology and Society 11(1): 17.

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Capitals are broadly as human, social, financial, physical and institutional.39 Patterns of change and relative importance of the different capitals are oft-cited determinants of resilience in social-ecological systems. Access to and control over capitals, are related to the concept of the adaptive cycle.

Looking for Patterns of Resilience in Vulnerable States

Whereas the last section sought merely to explain how resilience is currently framed and studied in social and ecological settings, the focus of this section is the more normative task of exploring desirable patterns of adaptive capacity that might serve as entry points when the goal is to enhance those particular features. This task is made somewhat easier by the general framework of concepts and ideas presented above, included the models and frameworks for labeling resilience.

However, there still exists plenty of latitude in terms of how resilience is framed by this particular inquiry. Thankfully, the distinction between different definitions of resilience is somewhat arbitrary.40 What seems to make resilience a useful construct is its applicability to a range a research questions, as long as researchers are clear at the outset what their particular resilience construct is, and why. As earlier, we wish to be broad and non-prescriptive. Causal relationships are not well defined, and much interesting empirical work remains to be done on this issue.

Resilience as Positive Adaptation

It is not the case that conflict and violence always result in the complete breakdown of social, community and psychological functioning. “Human responses to war are not analogous to physical trauma: people do not passively register the impact of external forces (unlike, say, a leg hit by a bullet) but engage with them in an active and problem-solving way.”41 When we talk about resilience in the context of fragility, we are not talking about the resiliency of a pattern (since corruption would count) but rather resilience as a pattern – a pattern of positive adaptation. What accounts for positive adaptation in the midst of extreme adversity?

39 Walker, B. H., J. M. Anderies, A. P. Kinzig, and P. Ryan. 2006. Exploring resilience in social-ecological systems through comparative studies and theory development: introduction to the special issue. Ecology and Society 11(1): 12. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss1/art12404

Kaplan, H.B. (1999). Toward an Understanding of Resilience: A critical review of definitions and models. In M. Glantz and J. Johnson (Eds) Resilience and development: Positive life adaptations. New York: Plenum Press41 Summerfield, D. “War and Mental Health: a Brief Overview.” British Medical Journal 321(2000):232–235 as quoted in Hamber, Brandon (2003). Healing. In D. Bloomfield, T. Barnes and L. Huyse (Eds.) Reconciliation After Violent Conflict. Stockholm, Sweden: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, p. 91

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For one thing, positive adaptation has a competency component.42 In other words, adapting in a positive way implies particular skills, abilities, knowledge, and willingness to use them in the pursuit of particular goals. But to really get at what is meant by positive adaptation refers back to our discussion of adaptive capacity, collective action, and conflict management.

I noted that the fundamental features of adaptive capacity are collective action and cooperation (conflict resolution). Particular institutions (rules, norms, way of doing things) have a positive benefit for cooperation and risk mitigation (including mediating institutions, or mechanisms for credible commitment and accountability), all of which increase the chances of prosocial behaviors and norms.43

The competencies mentioned above (skills, knowledge, awareness, willingness) emerge as adaptive strategies in a context made possible by these cooperation and risk managing institutions. I define a pattern of resilience as occurring when the outcomes associated with particular adaptive strategies serve as a positive feedback loop for strengthening the institutional context.

Pattern of Resilience – An adaptive strategy that is self-organized and sustaining with minimal outside support, whose associated outcomes uphold key social institutions that have a positive benefit for cooperation and risk mitigation.

A number of existing case studies demonstrate the various adaptive strategies undertaken by discrete communities in a variety of fragile environments. Analysis of these case studies finds that patterns of resilience take three general forms.

1. Maintaining (adherence) or strengthening (active enhancement) of existing functional frameworks with positive benefit for cooperation and risk mitigation. Examples include advocacy, relationship building, bridging, leadership on particular issues

2. Preparation for anticipated events. Examples include awareness, education and outreach, contingency planning

3. Resistance to patterns of fragility, or reform of the conditions driving fragility through resistance to new institutions that threaten important elements of social capital: stability and security. (By definition, this is non-violent resistance.)

42 Masten (1994) recommends making this very distinction between “resilient”, “resiliency” and resilience. In Masten, A. S. (1994). Resilience in individual development: Successful adaptation despite risk and adversity. In Wang, M. C. and Gordon, G. W. (Eds.) Educational resilience in inner-city America. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.43 Beauvais, F., and Oetting, E.R. 1999. Drug use, resilience, and the myth of the golden child. In Resilience and Development: Positive Life Adaptations, edited by M.D. Glantz and J.L. Johnson. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, pp. 101-106.

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These are behaviors or strategies which, because they reinforce existing key social institutions, qualify as patterns of resilience. These patterns emerge at the subnational level, in communities, villages, and tribes. The following four cases in Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq and Tanzania were selected to highlight the manifestation of these pattern types (maintaining & strengthening, preparation, and resisting) in response to conflict risk, as well as to re-emphasize the inherent self-organizing quality of these patterns.

Haiti

According to the World Bank, rural and urban communities in Haiti have developed coping strategies in response to underdevelopment (widespread poverty, income inequality) and political instability that have protected against broad social collapse and civil war.

These coping strategies reinforce bonds of mutual trust and accountability, and include religious, cultural and artistic institutions and outlets; a tradition of strong community trust and reciprocity; strong presence of community organizations in service provision, and active local councils at the section communal and commune level (despite lack of financial and material resources).

In rural areas, one pattern of resilience is participation in reciprocal labor groups.

Rural Haitians have a history of undertaking certain types of work that require aconcentrated effort in different kids of reciprocal, collective labor groups, such as the coumbite, the eskwad, and the societé de travail. These groups are important social institutions in rural Haiti, both for mobilizing labor and as social, festive events. Some observers have predicted the demise of these institutions in an ever more impoverished peasant economy, but 2001 data show that as many as 38 percent of cultivators used either coumbites or eskwads, in addition to household members, in their most recent harvest. 44

Another pattern of resilience is reliance on active local councils at the section, communal and commune levels despite the lack of financial and material resources. Aspects of community cohesion seem to have a reinforcing effect for the level of trust in rural communities, which is significantly higher than levels of trust found in urban areas these social mechanisms are lacking.

Another coping mechanism is migration, and migrants have a higher probability of finding work than those who do not migrate. However ¨each year more than 100,000 job seekers enter a metropolitan labor market where there are very few opportunities and a

44 World Bank Report, Social Resilience and State Fragility in Haiti: A Country Social Analysis. April 27, 2006, p. 61

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high rate of unemployment.¨ It is the informal sector in which the majority of new entrants to the Haitian economy find work, ranging from self-employed traders, artisans, and laborers.45

One of the most common activities is the reselling of minute quantities of everyday goods and basic services. Markets and streets are full of people attempting to make a living by selling items such as used clothing, fruit and vegetables, chewing gum, pens, and soap. Others run roadside microenterprises that repair broken machinery, or break rocks for use in house or road construction. These are classic coping strategies in Haiti.

Another characteristic of resilience may be found in the slums that absorb new migrants in urban areas, and that is the redundant network of service providers. Citing recent qualitative studies in 200446, the World Bank study found that urban slums ¨are marked by the strong presence of community organizations in areas such as sanitation, drinking water, healthcare, education, and even electricity provision.¨47

Jaghori District, Afghanistan

Jaghori District is populated entirely by Hazaras, one of the largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan who practice the Shia sect of Islam. The District is surrounded on three sides by Pashtun groups, with whom generations of peaceful relations had been achieved by (1) bringing elders from both sides together to resolve communal disputes and (2) referring difficult conflicts from within each community to a neutral intervenor from the other community.

During the time that the Taliban were establishing control over Afghanistan, the people of the Jaghori District decided proactively to negotiate conditions for their surrender. This process of decision-making was undertaken prior to the arrival of the Taliban, included consideration of other options: mounting a resistance (as many districts had), surrendering outright or fleeing.

Community leaders and representatives met in a shura (the local community structure for discussing and deciding issues) where they discussed with each other, with military commanders, and through consultations with the population, their best options. They

454

Ibid p. 44464

See Egset, Willy (2004). ¨Rural Livelihoods¨, Chapter 7 in Willy Egset and Nathalie Lamaute-Brisson (Eds): Living Conditions in Haiti. Port au Prince: IHSI, AND Lamaute-Brisson, Nathalie (2004). ¨Education¨,Chapter 5 in Willy Egset and Nathalie Lamaute-Brisson (Eds): Living Conditions in Haiti. Port au Prince: IHSI.474

World Bank Report, Ibid, p. 61

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employed the use of multiple strategies both in reaching out to the citizens of Jaghori District, and in forming relationships with the incoming Taliban delegations. The negotiated surrender meant that Jaghori did not suffer extensive battle damage or casualties, nor were relationships damaged with surrounding Pashtun tribes. Local structures, including consultative decision-making through the shuras, education of all children (male and female), and to Shia Islam, maintained their authority and their integrity through out the time that the Taliban were in power.

Several adaptive coping strategies were used to prevent violence during the four years of Taliban control, all of them revolving around the shura. Within the community, religious leaders wielded their authority to discourage young Jaghori fighters from confronting the Taliban, and put them to work ´preserving security´ instead. The shura maintained its control over the behavior of Jaghori´s population to minimize clashes between locals and the Taliban, encouraging people to control their public behavior.

In addition to retaining legitimate authority over the people of Jaghori, religious leaders engaged in ongoing negotiations and consultations with the Taliban. They encouraged the Taliban to moderate their own extreme behavior in the interest of governing Jaghori more easily, and negotiated ongoing education for boys and girls.

Finally, they worked actively to maintain and strengthen their relationships with their Pashtun neighbors, including through the continued association of elders.

Jaghori remained a resilient community, able not only to withstand the adverse impacts of Taliban rule without violence, significant casualties, or destruction, but also to experience no decrease in patterns of resiliency (adherence to traditions, norms of peace and participation, education); and in some instances, able to exert a positive influence or impact on the behavior of the ruling Taliban party as well.

Amara, Iraq

Amara is the capital of the Maysan province in Iraq. It is a rural locale where the regional networks of tribes (a diverse group who are often at odds with each other) have used their authority “often in a nonviolent way” to force Shiite Islamists out. There are particular characteristics of Amara that account for the different trajectory of Amara as opposed to extremely violent central and western Iraq.

The differences reflect, in part, fundamental splits between rural and urban life in Iraq. Maysan, a province of about 920,000, is the countryside. More than 60 percent of its work force is employed in the private sector, mostly farming; in the wealthier, urban areas, a majority is employed in public service. Because it is

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rural, it is smaller and easier to control than the bigger, more fractured communities in the cities, like Basra to the south, Iraq’s second largest city. 48

Amara has only two militias, both Shiite. But the most important factor is the network of tribes. In Maysan, the 14 or so tribes oversee all aspects of daily life, from weddings, to conflict resolution, justice and welfare distribution. They are strong, and they are “the basic building block of society” in the words of one local man.

The tribes united after a business owned by the Kaabi tribe was bombed, and the tribes set down a unified policy for dealing with militia: “surveillance” through informal networks through out the town and punishment for any militia member who attacked a tribe, or the property of a tribe. Following this shift (and gradually, as emphasized by the authors of this article) the number of killings declined significantly. “With the tribes watching in Amara, the stakes for killing were higher, and militia members weighed attacks carefully. The militias themselves seemed intent on preserving the status quo.”49

The tribe has also retained control over institutions of justice (settling disputes their own way, as opposed to imposed, Western legal frameworks), and have mediated for ceasefires between British troops and Mahdi insurgents. Tribal leaders have intervened in a similar fashion in nearby Dhi Qar Province, and it is hypothesized that in Muthana and Dhi Qar (also in rural south), the tribes are playing the same role.50

Rukwa, Tanzania

A surge in armed and unemployed men following the war with Uganda (1979) led to the emergence of self protection groups called Sungusungu. Sungusungu emerged in the context of a weak state to counter the increase in crime51 by providing protection for some communities in Tanzania and deter against cattle theft.

Starting in the early 1980s, and using charismatic leadership, one or two villages in the Kahama district of northern Tanzania organized villagers into a rank-and-file hierarchy to locate and punish cattle rustlers. The organizations soon began to monitor and punish other types of social violations such as adultery, debt disputes, and theft. As discussed below, the Sukuma had

48 Tavernise, Sabrina and Mizher, Qais. ¨In Iraq´s Mayhem, One Town Finds Calm Through its Tribal Links.¨ New York Times, July 10, 2007. Online http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/10/world/middleeast/10amara.html 49 Ibid505

Ibid515

Paciotti, Brian and Mulder, Monique B. (2004). “Sungusungu: The Role of Preexisting and Evolving Social Institutions among Tanzanian Vigilante Organizations”. Human Organization 63: 1, pages 112-124

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preexisting social institutions that provided the foundation for the structure of Sungusungu. Thus, with preexisting social capital, the organizations spread rapidly from village to village as members indoctrinated and socialized villagers into the new system.52

Sungusungu, a system of village-level policing and court organizations, emerged to provide security in the absence of a state able to protect property and resolve disputes. Although they began in discrete areas, Sungusungu organizations diffused across different regions and ethnic groups in Tanzania. The Sungusungu system in Rukwa, however, has been more successful than other systems in providing security and social welfare, maintaining its ¨public-good function to an extent apparently unparalleled elsewhere in the nation.¨53 Specific mechanisms that account for resilience (as a pattern of positive adaptation) of the Sukuma in Rukwa include greater reliance on traditional custom and encouraging between-clan cooperation.

According to Paciotti and Mulder´s study, greater reliance on traditional custom and traditional institutional rules by Sukumu Sungusungu has two primary effects: it reduces interpersonal and intergenerational conflict in Rukwa, and it protects (the pre-established custom of) community control over Simgusungu practices, warding off corruption.

For example, in the study area, soldiers are not allowed to resolve disputes themselves-disputants must bring their cases to Sungusungu. In addition, the council determines Sungusungu fines, with the decisions monitored by the community as a whole. This reduces the likelihood that a few individuals can exploit the power of Sungusungu for their own interests.54

The weakening of institutional rules could result in a change in behavior of Sungusungu organizations, if they turn to profit-seeking for their services. ¨Such a change could alter how public goods are distributed, and modern Sungusungu that generally produce effective public policing could evolve into mafia-style organizations seeking private payment¨.55

In addition, the brand of Sungusungu practied by the Sukuma ¨welcomes individuals from other ethnic groups to the organizationa and encourages them to hold high ranks¨. The between-clan cooperation that this engenders has made

52 Ibid, 113535

Ibid,12054 Paciotti, B. and Mulder, M.B. (2004). Sungusungu: The Role of Preexisting and Evolving Social Institutions Among Tanzanian Vigilante Organizations.¨ Human Organization 63, 117

55 Ibid, 118

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the Sungusungu organization of Rukwa the most successful non-state institution providing security and social welfare, in Tanzania.

Three Patterns of Resilience

We said earlier that patterns of resilience are adaptive strategies that are self-organized and sustaining with minimal outside support, whose associated outcomes uphold key social institutions that have a positive benefit for cooperation and risk mitigation. Furthermore, these patterns tend to take three general forms – Maintaining & Strengthening, Preparation, and Resisting. Elements of all three types can be noted in the vignettes above.

Maintenance & Strengthening of existing institutions with a positive benefit for cooperation and risk mitigation included

Community decision-making fora in Jaghori Establishing relationships at multiple levels with multiple parties in Jaghori Honor norm operating in patron-client networks in Haiti Norm of non-violence in Jaghori Authority over law and order in Amara Reliance on traditional institutions and customs in Tanzania Encouraging between-clan cooperation in Tanzania

Preparation for anticipated events included

Community consultation, planning and decision-making in Jaghori Cooperation and planning between tribal chiefs in Amara, Iraq Training and outreach for new Sungusungu members and organizations

Resistance to patterns of fragility, either through reform of the conditions driving fragility or through resistance to new institutions that threatened important elements of social capital included

Quiet and informal surveillance of militia members in Amara Formal policies on the punishment of militia members who attacked tribal leaders

or members in Amara Dialogue, demands, and diplomacy towards militia leaders in Amara to control

members (as opposed to pursuing vengeance killing or arrests) Nonviolent resistance and secret persistence of religion, education, community

solidarity in Jaghori Reliance on community decision-making in the Rukwa Sungusungu system

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The use of this loose typology can help analysts identify particular, specific elements based on context. As stated, it is not overly prescriptive and this is purposeful. The examples listed above are primarily illustrative. No reference to causal relationships is made, nor are particular factors weighting over others by degree of importance – mostly because there is a lack of research regarding these particular questions.

However, we can note a few key dynamics regarding patterns of resilience. These dynamics have special reference for the question of scalability, which we address towards the end of this section.

Dynamics of Local Adaptive Strategies

Self-Organization

Self-organization is the key to the emergence of local adaptive capacity, which can manifest in patterns of resilience at the subnational scale. The effects of national crisis are felt on the local level, and thus adaptation is ultimately a localized phenomenon.56

Sometimes adaptation is planned, sometimes it is unplanned; sometimes it is reactive and haphazard, sometimes it is conscious.

In all cases, the adaptive capacity that characterizes resilience emerges from resources internal to the system, usually with minimal external assistance. Jaghori District in Afghanistan and Amara in Iraq illustrate demonstrate traditional authoritative structures, arising as a result of local adaptation to changes.

The important point for development work is that external assistance seems to sometimes have a dampening effect on self-organization leading to an actual loss of resilience.57 It seems to have something to with whether or not the subsidy undermines the learning and experimentation process that characterizes sustainable adaptive strategies. An example of this is swamp development in Sierra Leone. Under donor assistance and supervision, many swamps were developed but they were abandoned once the subsidies stopped. “Yet swamps developed by farmers without subsidies, and in their own time, often over several generations, are in more-or-less permanent cultivation today.”58

It also has to do with whether or not the subsidy undermines self-reliance, which is so often associated with resilience. A survey in Zambia found that 70% of people who

56 Brooks and Adger, Ibid, p. 169575

Abel (2006) Ibid585

Richards, P., Bah, K. and Vincent, J (2004). Social Capital and Survival: prospects for community driven development in post-conflict Sierra Leone. Social Development Papers, 12

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received free mosquito bed nets (to protect against malaria) did not use them. By contrast in Malawi, antenatal clinics in the countryside sell bed-nets on a sliding scale (with purchases by rich women helping subsidize sales at much lower cost to poor women), and the nurses who staff these clinics get to keep a percentage of the sale for themselves.

Another example is the ´natural experiment´ created when the Tanzanian state institutionalized Sungusungu in 1989, encouraging the formation of these organizations in urban and rural areas. Lacking ¨adequate social institutions to provide the trust and incentives for individuals to cooperate¨ the Sungusungu organizations operating in culturally diverse urban areas have overall been less effective than the spontaneously emergent Sungusungu organizations of rural Tanzania.

We will return to the question of how development aid can enhance self organization in the next section.

Competencies: Intent and Awareness

We have already noted that positive adaptation has a competency component, and that resilience is often described as having a great deal to do with intentional acts. The cases above reveal that competencies revolve around awareness of the situation and intent to act.

Particular competencies were evident in all cases, but Jaghori gives us a particularly poignant example. The community undertook decision-making processes early (before the Taliban arrived) and proactively. They gave themselves time to conduct this important decision (upon which their collective futures depended) in the same way they conducted other decisions: by community consensus, representation, and participation. Because of this early planning and preparation, they were not only able to negotiate the terms of their surrender and safety, but perhaps more importantly having gained the support of the whole community for doing so, they were able to preserve social cohesion. The Taliban were not able to divide and conquer as they had in other places, because the community did not divide; no one betrayed anyone else for political favors; and trust remained high even as the level of risks increased.

Existing Institutions

It was noted earlier that patterns of resilience are oriented towards protecting and enhancing institutions with a positive effect on cooperation and risk mitigation. In Amara, tribes are the primary institution, embodying law, justice, order and many other aspects of life. It is more than likely that the British Army by acknowledged the regional

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authority of tribal leaders, requesting their support at times, and deferring to their ‘non-western’ models of justice, enhanced the self-organizational ability of the tribes, contributing to their strength. In Tanzania, it is acknowledged that Sungusungu has been so successful among the Sukuma in Tanzania because of pre-existing institutions similar to Sungusungu. Organizations included secret societies, dance societies and male associations, and institutions included membership ties that cut across village and chiefdom boundaries.

Response Diversity

Response diversity is the diversity of responses to disturbance, or diversity of actors contributing to the same function in a particular system. Resilience is enhanced by response diversity.59 With regards to social systems, the role of social redundancy is unclear – however, the case of the Jaghori District provides a clear example of multiple and diverse and redundant strategies on many levels, both in dealings with the Taliban officials, and in communication and coping strategies within the community itself. Negotiating strategies included a combination of information, negotiation, persuasion, secrecy and solidarity. Another example is the use of multiple strategies to continue educating girls. These included working to keep schools open, disguising girls as teachers, teaching girls at home, dressing them as boys, and inviting a spying official to become a teacher.

Tradeoffs

Patterns of resilience (adaptive strategies by communities) arise in response to particular conditions of fragility. They reflect adaptive capacity at sub-national scales, which operate within the national development context. The ability to cope or thrive in the midst of adversity sometimes (usually) requires people to use existing institutional frameworks to get what they need.

In Amara, Iraq, for example, the inability of the central government to provide for conditions of human security led eventually to a unification of the regions tribal leaders

59 This is a general principle of ecological research. Interested readers can reference the following for examples from forests, rangelands, lakes, and coral reefs.

Elmquist, T., Folke, C., Nyström, M., Peterson, G., Bengtsson, J.,Walker, B., and Norber, J. “Response diversity, ecosystem change, and resilience.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment: Vol. 1, No. 9, pp. 488–494

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to force out the militia which had begun to take over the town. These leaders did not always agree, nor cooperated on issues previously – the existence of a new common enemy helped unite them in order to protect their interests. Now, with traditional centers of authority intact, the tribal coalition is able to assert a wider influence over the environment.

The trade-off one often finds with patterns of resilience such as this one, is that what works to preserve social cohesion and social capital within a particular community may not have an upward impact, either on national governance or in surrounding regions of ongoing violence. Patterns of fragility are defined as those in which the interactions and outcomes undermine perceptions of legitimacy and effectiveness of governance, which in turn undermines the authority of the state. However patterns of resilience are not guaranteed to provide the reverse of this.

Tribal authority in Amara is defined as a pattern of resilience because it meets the core criteria of minimizing violence, upholding key social institutions (traditional tribal authority), self-organization, and sustainability with minimal outside support. Tribal leaders in Amara have legitimate authority – that is, both citizens of Amar and the tribal leaders themselves accept the right of traditional tribal rule. Does tribal authority at the local level, though serving a crucial peacekeeping role, have a positive or negative effect on Iraqi’s perceptions of the legitimacy or effectiveness of the national government? It is not clear.

Another related trade-off has to do with social cohesion at the local level (community or regional level), and social cohesion at the national level. In extremely fragile states, where there is a breakdown of law and order, where the central state suffers from a loss of legitimacy perhaps exacerbated by its lack of ability regain control, and where economic disparities are wide and worsening, there may actually be an inverse relationship between local cohesion and a national sense of we-ness. Dynamics of insecurity force perception to local levels, and people’s trusted social networks get narrower.60 Patterns of resilience are the adaptive strategies people use to circumvent and navigate their difficult environment, and they tend to revolve around local leaders, traditional sources of authority, and informal rules and relationships worked out underneath (or alongside of) central authoritative structures.

At the same time, social cohesion experienced at local levels (when it reinforces divisions along class or ethnic lines) can impede the efforts of politicians and interest groups seeking to bring about reforms.61 “A country’s social cohesion is essential for generating

60 De’Estree, Tamara (2003). Dynamics. In S. Cheldelin, D. Druckman and L. Fast (Eds) Conflict. New York: Lexington Publishing

61 Ritzen, J., Easterly, W., Woolcock, M. (1999) On ‘Good’ Politicians and ‘Bad’ Policies: Social Cohesion, Insitutions and Growth. World Bank Policy Research Working Papers.

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the trust needed to implement reforms…Citizens have to trust the government that the short term losses that inevitably arise from reform will be more than offset by long-term gains.”62

The example of Guinea raises this dilemma. One dominant pattern noted in this society is rent-seeking – bribing or inducing officials to permit, authorize, or condemn a proposed action or initiative. While rent-seeking “rarely if ever promote investments that lead to more efficient economic interactions”, within the context of patron-client relationships, it provides internal cohesion for the wider patron-client strategy which provides for much of the social cohesion and service provision in Guinean communities:

A “good” patron will not only provide his/her clients with intermittent though reasonably regular flows of resources, but will also provide political cover, support and succor (insurance) when a client suffers an unpredictable personal set-back or disaster…or necessity of providing a bribe to some other official such as a traffic policeman, a hospital official or a judge…

Social cohesion is an important component of adaptive capacity. Moreover, on at least some level, rent-seeking would appear to be imbued with instrumental legitimacy. Since this ‘legitimacy of ends’ is based on their perceived neutrality and reasonableness63, the finding that Guineans perceive rent seeking to be acceptable so long as it operates according to a moral framework raises some questions.

Likewise, the traditional respect for authority provides a stabilizing influence within Guinea alongside a widespread belief in the ‘divine right’ of rulers. This is described as the main source of resilience in Guinea. Yet “this set of assumptions limits Guinea’s willingness (and capacity) to address core problems linked to the persistent poverty and falling standards of living about which the bulk of the population complains.” Again, there is a trade-off between short-term stability, wherein the worldview of the general population provides a buffer against the adversity of their circumstances, and support for long-term efforts to address core problems.

In the Jaghori District, patterns of resiliency included adherence to traditions, norms of peace and participation, and education for all (maintaining and strengthening). These patterns did contribute to enhanced internal stability of the community, commanding ongoing social cohesion even in the face of very real Taliban threats; and beyond that enabled the active rejection of key (destructive) tenants of Taliban institutions (culture of violence, restrictions on core aspects of social life such as music and art, restrictions on women) through various forms of resistance.

62 Ibid63 Sultan, K. Ibid, p. 9

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Yet even here there are contradictions. On the one hand, resisting these new social conventions did help to improve security: in part through counseling youth not to fight with the Taliban because it would jeopardize the whole community. But another part of resistance was the continuation of key, core aspects of lifestyle in Jaghori: women continued to educate and to be educated, to work in the health profession, often in secret and sometimes in collusion with Taliban officials. In other words, people engaged in a variety of behaviors at great risk to themselves, and in that sense security (individual security, but also the security of students in secret classrooms) was often at great risk.

There is no easy answer to questions about whether patterns of resilience are scalable. Resilience on the national level is controlled by both fast and slow variables: constitutional and structural changes in governance are much slower to change than, for instance, rules of use or access to natural resources. At the same time that these long-term change processes are underway, we can focus on enhancing the adaptive capacity (local and emergent) that underpin patterns of resilience in fragile states.

Development Strategies

Of late, development discourse and practice focuses on institutional capacity building – building up the ability of national organizations to do their jobs well. Particularly important since the late 1990s has been an emphasis on capacity building institutions of good governance in vulnerable states.

The emphasis on strengthening national institutions fits with the general idea of resilient, strong states. Studying how different management systems affect social-ecological resilience have shown specific factors that weaken social-ecological resilience, including breakdown of traditional institutions and authority systems, rapid technological changes, rapid changes in local economies, and poor enforcement or limits on resource access. Conversely, key factors in strengthening resilience are strong institutions, cross-scale communications, political space for experimentation, social justice, and the use of ecological knowledge.64 In this sense, the aim is always enable regimes to shift and transform in ways that support inbuilt conflict management.

Resilience research offers the insight that in addition to long-term, slow moving institutional change, it is important to look for short-term variables of more dynamic change. The way to enhance adaptive capacity is to support locally-driven initiative for particular adaptation strategies65 as well as providing opportunities for scaling up local patterns of resilience. Research highlights four potential avenues for strengthening patterns of resilience in fragile environments.

1. Strengthen Cross-Cutting Social Capital

64 Research cited by Poverty and Vulnerability Programe, GECAFS Project: Resilience and Vulnerability,65 Brooks and Adger, Ibid, 177

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The World Disaster Report stated in 2004 that strengthening social capital should be the key objective of disaster interventions, as opposed to a by-product. But as mentioned previously, social capital is no panacea.

Policymakers also need to be aware that social capital, particularly when associated with groups that have a narrow radius of trust-can produce negative externalities and be detrimental to the larger society.66

Attention should be paid to social capital that connects similar people, but chiefly to social capital that cuts across divides in membership at the local level. This often requires a greater attention to social network analysis. The lack of cross-cutting social capital in Tanzaniás Kuria community (i.e. lack of cooperation between villages) explains why Kuria Sungusungu were vulnerable to a corruption of the organization in which its leadership offered assistance to, and accepted bribes from cattle thieves. More important than protecting a network of communities from thieves is protecting clan boundaries, which sometimes means protecting thieves themselves.

2. Support Self Organization

How can development aid enhance self-organization without smothering it? Supporting self-organization means creating the political space for experimentation. Self-organization occurs through trial and error, learning-as-you-go interactions where people experiment with various methods and figure out what works, and what doesn’t. Jonathon Fox cites research by Hirschman, who discovered that the initiatives that people manage to sustain in fragile environments are usually responses to past failures. Social capitalists emerge as leaders and followers. After all, the most important resource for managing risk (enhancing resilience) is people's own strategies to cope and adapt (World Disaster Report). Survey research in the Democratic Republic of Congo turned up the following priorities for respondents:

Microfinance loans for farming, breeding and trade, and for women Loans to men to help them rebuild houses damaged in the conflict Rebuilding schools Workshops on conflict management Management and development training for women Public property management that promotes social welfare and builds

capacities of people

66 Fukuyama, Francis (1999) Social Capital and Civil Society. Conference Paper, presented at International Monetary Fund Conference on Second Generation Reform.

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The key point here is not radical – the development enterprise has been giving greater support to locally based initiatives for years. The extension of the current approach is this: in addition to prioritizing funding for local projects, it would seem to be extremely important to let the communities themselves determine the project designs, based on their own priorities and internal capabilities.

One way to do this is to support local social entrepreneurs, like the Malawi clinic. Aid that creates opportunities and lets recipients choose how to take advantage of those opportunities according to their own interests and motivations can enhance self-organization and resilience.

There is also a delicate balance between supporting local coping mechanisms and sources of social resilience where they exist, and avoiding over-valuing these mechanisms. Hamber reminds us that “it is often the case that traditional mechanisms are destroyed in the violence. To take the view that only local supports should be used, especially in a context where these may be almost non-existent, could also mean denying people services and relevant supports.”67 One strategy is to look for, build onto and enhance local systems that have already emerged, such as the diversity of service providers in Haiti´s slums. The diversity and redundancy of providers is important, but so is improving access, enhancing maintenance, better coordination, and addressing violent crime.

Another way to support self-organization is to foster diversity and redundancy with regard to project funding. Centralization and coordination are not the most important things here. The most important things are experimentation and local ownership over project design and outcomes. Figuring out what works in specific contexts requires this experimental approach, and local ownership is required in order to strengthen the accountability norm.

Finally, social ecologists maintain that the ability to self-organize is dependent on some minimal level of capital.68 Capital in this sense is a broad construct, and refers to natural, human, social, built and institutional capital. The suggestion is that development must look for not only for the deficiencies and needs in communities, but also for the existing capital: competencies and institutions.

Much more research is necessary on the question of how to subsidize self-organization. Studying the collapse and reorganization of social-ecological systems, Abel et al posit that subsidization should end when self organization becomes apparent. But it is not

67 Hamber, B. Ibid, p. 9168 Abel, Nick, Cumming, David H., & Anderies, John M. (2006). Collapse and Reorganization in Social-Ecological Systems: Questions, Some Ideas, and Policy Implications. Ecology and Society 11 (1): 17

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apparent what this means, and it raises overtly political questions that these authors do not broach.69

3. Bridging

The Orangi Project in Karachi, Pakistan channeled the resources of the urban poor to build a low-cost sewer system, which led to a reduced infant mortality rate of 13% to 3.7% within 10 years – an impressive result. Yet wider resilience involves scaling up protection beyond particular communities.

The focus in development is often to strengthen the voluntary sector. But a strong voluntary sector does not guarantee a high degree of interaction among the various organizations70 and it is this high interaction between the voluntary sector and public and private organizations which creates an enabling environment for poverty reduction and other social priorities.71

Scaling up the relationship between localities and municipalities or regional governance is an important element to enhancing overall (state) resilience. The sustainability of local initiatives ultimately depends on integration within a larger governance structure.

In many countries the voluntary sector concentrates on operating its own projects (Fowler 1992, Bratton 1988 and 1990), improving the situation in microregions but doing little to bring its experience to bear on the government's service delivery or policy making. These projects may be laudable, and their worth to the communities served should not be ignored, but their contribution to the stock of development know-how is meager. A sizeable voluntary sector which also interacts with the public and private sector, is able to achieve a significant multiplier effect on its own efforts (Bratton 1988 and 1990).72

69 Brooks and Adger, Ibid, p. 16970 Clark, John (1993). The Relationship Between the State and the Voluntary Sector. The Global Development Research Centre, URL: http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/state/relationship.htm71 Tandon, Rajesh (1987). "The Relationship between NGOs and Government." Mimeo paper presented to the Conference on the Promotion of Autonomous Development, PARIA, New Delhi.

72 Clark, Ibid

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Bridging organizations, particularly regional ones can enhance resilience.73 External organizations can serve these bridging functions, improving (as in the case above) the relationship between municipal authorities and slum dwellers.

Support for bridging can also help with the timing dilemma associated with policy changes and windows of opportunity. Olsson et al writes “Rapid change…can provide windows of opportunity that trigger the emergence of networks and promote new forms of governance… Windows of opportunity are created with problems, solutions and politics come together at critical times; they can be the result of environmental or fiscal crisis, policy failures, activism or collective social resistance, or slowly changing institutions – but they are typically only open for a limited period of time.74

Since problems, solutions and politics tend to occur in different arenas75 a critical source of capital to support transformation is creating the space for them to come together at critical moments.

Conclusion

Studying state resilience is a contrasting approach to studying fragile states, those with weak or ineffective governing, economic and social institutions. Studying subnational resilience in fragile states gives an accounting of the ability to rebound, maintain or strengthen functioning during and after a disturbance; or to cope successfully in the face of extreme adversity or risk.

Key factors in strengthening resilience are strong institutions, cross-scale communications, political space for experimentation, social justice, and the use of ecological knowledge.76 In developing states, this amounts to a combination of long-term, slow moving institutional change, as well as short-term variables of more dynamic change. The way to enhance adaptive capacity is to support locally driven initiative for particular adaptation strategies77 - in particular, those whose outcomes support a strengthening of the institutional context giving rise to them.

737

Jonathan Fox "How Does Civil Society Thicken? The Political Construction of Social Capital in Rural Mexico." In State-Society Synergy: Government and Social Capital in Development , edited by Peter Evans. University of California Press/University of California International and Area Studies Digital Collection, Edited Volume #94, pp. 119-149, 1997. Fox writes that ‘regional organizations are especially important for representing the interests of dispersed and oppressed groups for three main reasons: overcoming locally confined solidarities, representative bargaining power, and access to information.”

74 Olsson, P., L. H. Gunderson, S. R. Carpenter, P. Ryan, L. Lebel, C. Folke, and C. S. Holling. 2006. Shooting the rapids: navigating transitions to adaptive governance of social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 11(1): 18. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss1/art18/ 1075 Olson et al, Ibid 76 Research cited by Poverty and Vulnerability Programe, GECAFS Project: Resilience and Vulnerability,77 Brooks and Adger, Ibid, 177

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Such local adaptive strategies include maintaining (adherence) or strengthening (active enhancement) of existing functional frameworks with positive benefit for cooperation and risk mitigation (such as advocacy, relationship building, bridging, leadership on particular issues), preparation for anticipated events (awareness, education and outreach, contingency planning), and resistance to patterns of fragility, or reform of the conditions driving fragility through resistance to new institutions which threaten important elements of social capital: stability and security. By identifying these patterns where they exist, international development aid can enhance local adaptive capacity through (1) strengthening crosscutting social capital, (2) supporting self-organization, and (3) and supporting high levels of interaction between public, private and voluntary sectors (bridging).

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