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Why do political elites in resource-wealthy autocracies and hybrid regimes pursue regulatory liberalization at certain moments, but not others? Within academic debates over the beneficial or deleterious effects of resource wealth, scholars have used quantitative methods to evidence a resource curse through a positive relationship between oil rents and the regulation of private enterprise. This dissertation charts a departure from this received wisdom using a paired, qualitative comparison of the politics of corporate regulation within the largest oil producers in Africa and the Middle East-Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Drawing from a broader array of legal and bureaucratic reforms, and considering their heterogeneous implementation, I demonstrate that oil rents have played a crucial role in facilitating the liberalization of business creation regulations in the 21st century. Without the necessary oil rents to placate diverse threats to regime stability, particularly during the 2014-2016 oil price downturn, liberalization was inhibited. I term this the rent-conditional reform (RCR) theory. Before applying the RCR theory to the case countries, I explore the politics of corporate regulation within the two cases in historical perspective. Drawing from archival documents, this dissertation illustrates the distinct but parallel politicization of corporate regulation in the 20th century. While corporate regulation was politicized through the introduction of a Western-origin corporate code in Saudi Arabia in the 1930s, it was conversely politicized in Nigeria in the late 1980s through the first indigenous reform of the country's corporate code. Moreover, I forge a theory of interest groups in Nigerian politics to explain the cross-class, cross regional collective action in the corporate regulatory reform and administration processes. Employing interviews with political elites, entrepreneurs, and bureaucrats in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, I build upon these historic analyses to apply the RCR theory to the two cases before, during, and after the 2014-16 oil downturn. Using process-tracing, I argue that crumbling elite cohesion during the downturn disincentivized corporate regulatory liberalization in Nigeria, while the threat of popular unrest in the wake of the Arab Spring provided a parallel disincentive in Saudi Arabia during the same period. Together, the distinct causal processes across the two cases illustrate the applicability of the rent-conditional reform theory across diverse contexts of natural resource rent volatility.

Why has China exhibited seemingly inconsistent or even contradictory positions in its contributions to conflict involvement in different African crises? For example, why did China actively engage in the counter-piracy campaign in the Gulf of Aden but exhibited an indifferent position regarding the Darfur crisis before 2006? This thesis investigates the determinants and logical flow behind China's level of engagement in African conflict involvement. I argue that China's foreign policy is a "two-step" mechanism involving both international and domestic factors, and that Chinese elites perceive external signals and translate them to the policy outcome. Endogenous threats to China's economic interests, international expectations about China's engagements, and the host country's receptiveness to external intervention are China's major considerations in African context. They then interact dynamically to jointly determine China's level of participation. I employ a small-N qualitative approach with controlled comparisons across small-N cases and within-case process tracing. I use existing literature, archival materials, and elite interviews across the Chinese government to test a series of hypothesized contextual relationships. A comparison between controlled pairs across five case studies - the Darfur crisis before and after 2006, the Gulf of Aden counter-piracy campaign before and after the hijacking of the Chinese vessel De Xin Hai, and the South Sudan civil war - allows tracing the mechanism by which the determinants interact with each other and demonstrating the causal relationships between the determinants and the policy outcome. In so doing, this thesis offers a systematic and comprehensive theory to explain how motivations influence China's engagement in African peace and security, contributing to a better understanding of China's foreign policy decision-making process in the African context.

The majority of sovereign states that exist today emerged from decolonization. During the decolonization process, some colonial entities achieved statehood individually, while others did not and became part of a larger state. What explains their divergent outcomes? This dissertation addresses this puzzle by focusing on colonial entities that rejected a project of amalgamation and became independent separately from their neighbors. The main argument of this dissertation is that oil and colonial politics interacted to create states that would otherwise not exist. When faced with a project of amalgamation, (1) oil production during the colonial period and (2) the protectorate system-indirect colonial administration through local rulers with internal sovereignty and protection from internal and external threats provided by the colonizing power-led to the separate independence of colonial areas, while the lack of either of the two conditions resulted in a merger. Based on extensive archival research, I substantiate this argument through two sets of comparative historical analysis of colonial units in Borneo and the Persian Gulf, focusing primarily on Brunei, Qatar, and Bahrain. I also conduct additional case studies on Kuwait and colonial entities in Micronesia, West Indies, and South Arabia to further test the external validity of my theory. After investigating the impact of oil, I extend the discussion to other natural resources. Focusing on coal, precious metals, and natural gas, I propose a theory that explains the varying effects of natural resources on territoriality. Natural resources can lead to amalgamation, separate independence, and secessionism after decolonization, depending on (1) their commercial value and (2) the timing of their discovery. This dissertation contributes to the literature on state formation by identifying previously overlooked factors and to that on the politics of natural resources by revising the existing understanding of the territorial impacts of natural resources.

African governments and their political structures are now increasingly constituted of returning diaspora. The thesis explores the international and domestic political processes through which diaspora return to politics and influence the Somali-speaking subnational and national administrations of the Republic of Somaliland, Puntland Member State of Somalia, and the Federal Government of Somalia from 1985 until 2018. These processes are traced across the three contexts and chronologically from the irredentist fight of the 1980s, through state formation and reconstruction processes after 1991, and up to contemporary politics. In each context, different historical and conflict legacies, state formation processes (including relationships with the international system) and internal elite pacts shape the opportunity structures for diaspora politicians to contest and influence politics. Divergences emerge in trends in leadership succession, including the rise and fall of diaspora administrations, as well as in the forms of alliance building and local resistance that emerge against periods of diaspora rule. This thesis is particularly concerned with how international actors and statebuilding agendas may confer undue legitimacy on diaspora politicians and empower them to challenge existing political arrangements and systems of clan governance. As such, this thesis contributes to key academic debates about clan politics and limited stateness, the symbolic valence of expertise, and the politics of state formation.

Power-sharing arrangements have become the default tool of international actors to resolve a vast range of conflicts worldwide, with a particular concentration in sub-Saharan Africa. Traditionally used to end high-intensity civil wars, recently power sharing has increasingly been used to terminate an array of lower-intensity conflicts, such as election-related violence in Togo in 2006 and Kenya and Zimbabwe in 2008. The thin but emerging scholarship on post-election power sharing is largely negative, maintaining that the model is unlikely to deliver the institutional reforms necessary to resolve the underlying roots of electoral conflicts. Yet the cases of Kenya, and, to a lesser extent, Togo, appear to complicate this narrative, suggesting that post-election power sharing may be able to deliver some key but thorny institutional reforms, such as security sector reform. While the power-sharing model continues to be used worldwide and security reform is widely identified by scholars and practitioners as critical to durable peace, the existing literature has generally ignored the potential link between the two. As such, this dissertation seeks to answer the following questions: Does post-election power sharing lead to security sector reform? Which causal factors are most important in shaping security reform outcomes under post-election power sharing, and through what processes or mechanisms? The two-step integrated theoretical framework presented here forwards a structured contingency approach, positing that a combination of long- and short-term domestic and international factors will drive or stymie reform of the security sector under post-election power sharing in democratizing countries. In short, the theory argues that two main longterm factors, the nature of civil-military relations and the character of external involvement, combined with two short-term mechanisms, the design of the political agreement and the type of political strategy deployed by the parties, will be the most important factors shaping security reform outcomes under post-election power sharing. I demonstrate that post-election power sharing plays a significant role in the causal process of security reform and can deliver some institutional reforms, under certain conditions. The dissertation uses the method of structured, focused comparison to build and apply the theoretical propositions to the cases of Kenya, Togo, and Zimbabwe. Using process tracing and the logic of most-similar comparisons, I conduct two sets of cross- and within-case comparisons, utilizing elite interviews as the primary tool for data collection. I conducted over 100 interviews with key decision-makers in my case countries—including former prime ministers, cabinet ministers, top political party leaders, senior security officials, and international stakeholders.

Angola is currently the fifth-largest diamond producer in the world. Yet neither the politics nor the history of Angola's diamond trade receives much attention either in the Angolan scholarship or the thematic literature on the mining sector more generally. The gap in the literature is significant, for diamond companies produce far more than revenue and profits: for some one hundred years, the diamond sector has governed, policed, defended, and controlled the strategic, diamond-rich provinces of Lunda Sul and Lunda Norte. This thesis explores the historical trajectory of the diamond sector in the Lundas. It concentrates on the powerfully symbiotic relationship between the diamond sector and the state from the colonial period to the present time. Drawing on a wide range of untapped official documents as well as interviews, it argues that the diamond sector has functioned historically as the conduit through which the state projects its power and secures its interests in a strategic but hostile territory. The thesis further shows how the politics of resource control both define the state’s strategies towards the diamond sector and perpetuate the entrenched system of privatised governance that has existed in the Lundas for more than a century. The thesis builds upon both the historical and contemporary literature on the mining sector and the literature on state formation. It challenges the conventional notion that the persistent power of private companies in Africa is the result of state weakness or state absence, underlining instead how state leaders instrumentalise and empower companies according to their changing priorities. It also considers the implications of this case study more broadly through a cross-case analysis of mining politics elsewhere in Africa. In the process, this study provides an original approach to state–mining sector relations that is of relevance to scholars working on the politics and political economy of state-making and of resources extraction in Africa.

This thesis attempts to reconcile the ‘two Rwandas’ which dominate contemporary scholarship, and seem on first glance utterly incommensurable: the inspirational developmental donor darling, and the brutal police state ruled by a shadowy ethnic clique. It argues both sides capture something, but fail to give a fair assessment of the mercurial system of political order constructed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) following the Genocide of 1994. This system is a durably strong state with exceptionally high levels of societal penetration capable of delivering order and other public goods, with a ruling party in a hegemonic position with a degree of medium-term stability, despite (and because of) its illiberal repressive character. Such a system is only possible because of the extremely unusual sociology of the RPF itself, forged in the refugee camps of Uganda and the Ugandan Bush War, and the structural constraints on rule within Rwanda. With these resources, the RPF has successfully made the transition from guerilla movement to hegemonic civilian political party, created bureaucratic institutions of government which penetrate to the lowest level, and hugely profitable ‘party-statals’ which co-exist alongside functioning competitive markets. Such successes are not disconnected from the violence, repression, and extra-judicial coercion which remain crucial to the regime. Analyses which think the positive aspects of Rwanda’s current ‘miracle’ can be mimicked without the accompanying domination and autocracy are engaging in wishful thinking. Crucially, given how distinctive the enabling conditions for Rwanda’s current political dispensation are, the extent to which Rwanda can be a policy exemplar or ‘best-practice’ for other African states to follow is in any case seriously overstated.

There exists a certain consensus among scholars and French diplomats that the golden era of the exceptionally close and amicable relations between France and its former sub-Saharan colonies is over. Nevertheless, the conclusions that these researchers arrive at regarding the current state of France’s African policy are rather different. The aim of the thesis is to determine which of the three paradigms concerning France’s African policy – the incremental adaptation, normalisation or confusion – best describes the French response to the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire under the Gbagbo regime. The contribution of the thesis is the analysis of continuities and changes of this specific Franco-African relationship, also known as Françafrique, within the framework of international relations regime theory. The thesis argues that France’s diplomacy towards the Ivorian crisis and her role in the multilateral conflict resolution strategy, reveal her growing inability to defend the constitutive principle of the Françafrique regime: grandeur. Her pursuit of middle power status through maintaining hegemonic relations to her favourite former colony was considerably challenged by various domestic and systemic factors, among which the Ivorian power struggles and Gbagbo’s duplicitous politics played a considerable part. Moreover, the thesis also points to the persistence of some old rules and decision-making procedures of the Françafrique regime, especially the resilience of informal networks. These old practices collide with France’s growing desire to make her African policy more transparent, coherent and efficient. It is therefore concluded that the coexistence of these opposite tendencies in France’s response to the Ivorian crisis under Gbagbo, as well as the inconsistent resort to the Françafrique principle, rules and decision-making procedures are best explained by the confusion paradigm of France’s African policy.

Intergenerational solidarity and reciprocity are fundamental building blocks of any society. At the same time, socio-generational groups constantly struggle for influence and authority. In Sub-Saharan Africa, disproportionately male, gerontocratic and patrimonial systems governing economic, social and political life lend a special explosiveness to the social cleavage of generation. This dissertation draws on the concept of the generational contract to explore whether Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war (1991-2001) – labelled a ‘revolt of youth’ – catalysed changes in the power-asymmetries between age groups. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2007 and 2010, I argue that youth in post-war Sierra Leone question fundamental norms of intergenerational relations and challenge local governance structures demanding changes to the generational contract. Amidst a strong continuity of gerontocratic dominance and counter-strategies from elders, youth draw on organisational forms and a local rights discourse to create spaces for contestation and negotiation. These openings hold potential for long-term rearrangements of societal relations in the medium to long-term future.

This thesis examines the relationship between political movements and people during the civil war between Angola’s MPLA government and the UNITA rebels in the Central Highlands region. It shows how conflicting ideas about political legitimacy originating in anticolonial struggle informed leaders’ decisions and formed the basis of their efforts to politicise people. Much existing literature sees civil conflict in terms of rebellion against a state, motivated by grievance or by the desire for loot. I argue against such an approach in the Angolan case, since the MPLA and UNITA originated from different strands of nationalism, and neither achieved complete control over Angola’s territory and people. Instead, I draw on constructivist approaches to statehood in analysing the war as a contest in which both sides invoked ideas of the state in asserting their legitimacy. The MPLA state controlled the cities while UNITA established rural bases and a bush capital, Jamba. Violence, often involving the capture of people, occurred at the margins of the areas of influence. Within each zone, each movement controlled public discourse to make its control hegemonic. Each presented itself as the authentic representative of the Angolan nation and condemned the other movement as the agent of foreign interests. These nationalist claims were given substance by processes of state building, more fully realised by the MPLA than by UNITA. Each movement’s claim to statehood served to legitimise its own violence while criminalising the violence of the other side. Public dissent was prohibited in either zone, but people’s responses to politicisation ranged from genuine support, to co-operating only as necessary to avoid punishment, depending largely on their degree of involvement in the state building process. War itself was central to constituting perceptions of common interest, and political actors’ capacity to manipulate perceptions depended largely on military control.