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Understanding Political Violence offers crucial insights on processes damaging lives and polities in a variety of places across the globe: in Africa, in Latin America, in South East Asia and in the Middle East. By adopting a rich, evidence-based micro-level perspective, the authors provide critical answers to these questions: Who are the perpetrators of political violence? How do they get organized? The book pays particular attention to unconventional combatants such as women and children and details the drivers of their violent mobilization. It also makes considerable theoretical advances in understanding the diversity of forms of organized violence and analyzing its dynamics. The volume's approach is two-pronged: It first details carefully the wide array of factors pushing individuals to embrace political violence, then studies their interactions within armed groups, as leaders or rank and file.

This article studies the bitter diplomatic sequence arising in the fall of 2019 between France and the Sahelian countries where France has been conducting military operations since 2013. Far from being just one more hiccup in the troubled relations between France and its former colonies, the article interprets this sequence as a constitutive effect of French protracted military presence in the Sahel. Specifically, it argues that although France has a rather clear security-driven agenda, its operational moves produced by bureaucratic thinking are questioned by influential sections of Sahelian public opinions who frame the French military presence as a deeply political issue over their country's sovereignty. In addition, being the de facto military guarantor of the security of Sahelian regimes, France constrains the domestic political conversation through the 'red lines' it imposes on actors. This externally-induced distortion of the domestic political landscape eventually places Sahelian authorities in front of a dilemma. Pleasing their foreign patrons might cost them the support of the section of public opinion most attached to national sovereignty, and expose them to nationalist entrepreneurs.

AbstractThe paper contributes to the understanding of the origins of violent non‐legal organisations in West Africa by focusing on the emergence and the evolution of the Oodua People's Congress (OPC), a movement aiming at defending the interests of the Yoruba people in Nigeria. It discusses the causes of its gradual transformation from a self‐determination group ready to use political violence into an agency of local extra‐legal governance tolerated by official federal authorities. This evolution may reflect the normalisation of the OPC in Nigeria's weak democracy. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Le présent article décrit l'évolution d'une milice ethnique du sud-ouest nigérian, l'Oodua People's Congress (OPC) sous la IV e République. Initialement né en réaction face à la répression de la dictature militaire, ce mouvement nationaliste a par la suite redéfini ses activités, se spécialisant dans la lutte contre le crime et le gardiennage. Les enjeux financiers induits par ce changement, renforcés par l'instrumentalisation politique locale du groupe, semblent avoir progressivement transformé l'OPC en une instance de gouvernance informelle de la société yoruba.

The paper describes the recent evolution of the Oodua People's Congress (OPC), an ethnic militia based in Southwestern Nigeria. The nationalist organisation, born in the mid-1990s in reaction to the military repression, progressively evolved into a vigilante group, also performing crime-fighting operations. Rising financial stakes stemming from these activities, reinforced by the instrumentalisation of the OPC by local politicians, have turned the group into a prominent actor of today's Yoruba society's informal governance. (Pol afr/GIGA)

On surface, Nigeria and Mali share fairly similar territorial configurations and historical trajectories. Recurring rebellions supported by mainly nomadic groups raise the question of relations between the centre and peripheries in these states. The purpose of this study is to analyse how these states try "peacemaking", in the absence of "peacebuilding", resulting in short-term hybrid arrangements that are cobbled together. The study integrates ways to make peace and wage war within a common analytical context.