The return of the leopard? Patrimonialism and post-transition crisis in Democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract

The article offers an interpretation of the reasons why despite the peace process in course since 2003, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DCR) is still a country with high levels of physical and structural violence. This violence stems from different factors a) the international intervention itself, which can partly foster shared power agreements which reward armed violence and b) the fragmentation of the armed actors, who are reshuffled in complex trans-border formations between political and economic local elites, armed regional actors and other trans-border forces such as multinationals. These formations have mechanisms for control, protection and profit that have in certain cases spawned some regional order and stability, but that in other occasions have given rise to a strong armed violence and instability in their struggle for commodities, that leads to a “not peace, not war” scenario. These formations compete (or insert themselves) in the current reconstruction process in DCR; they reproduce the predatory patrimonialist logics of Mobutu´s regime with an additional scaling up of physical and structural violence in their struggle for the control of commodities or trade networks.