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This article discusses the emergence of hybrid institutional arrangements in the field of security and justice delivery in the provinces of Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte in the Philippines. It will be argued that these hybrid institutions cannot be explained by pointing at a weak or fragile state. Rather, over the past few decades, the Philippine state has demonstrated an exceptional capacity to incorporate a range of informal practices of justice delivery within formal state institutions. In the type of hybridity that is emerging, formal state institutions serve as avenues through which highly flexible practices of justice and security delivery are being performed. As a result, control over justice and security provision has been transferred from traditional authorities to elected politicians. Rather than being a process of legitimate and sustainable state formation, this has reinforced an authoritarian political order under which access to justice and security is unevenly distributed. Based on these observations, this article puts forward some questions about a defining axiom within the current hybrid political order literature that views the interaction of informal and formal types of public authority as a prime avenue to enable post-conflict reconstruction and state formation.

ABSTRACTIn post‐conflict contexts characterized by large‐scale migration and increasing levels of legal pluralism, customary land tenure risks being deployed as a tool of ethno‐territorialization in which displaced communities are denied return and secure land rights. This thesis will be illustrated through a case study of the Indonesian island of Ambon where a recognition of customary tenure — also called adat — was initiated in 2005 at the end of a high‐intensity conflict between Christians and Muslims. Although a system of land tenure providing multiple forms of social security for the indigenous in‐group, adat in Ambon also constitutes an arena of power in which populations considered as non‐indigenous to a fixed historical territory are pushed into an inferior legal position. The legal registration of customary tenure therefore tends to be deployed to settle long‐standing land contests with a growing migrant community, hereby legally enforcing some of the forced expulsions that were brought about by the recent communal violence.

This article challenges the pervasive notion of rebel groups in the southern Philippines as non-state actors opposing the penetration of the state. Instead, through a historically informed analysis of local politics in two Mindanao provinces with a presence of Muslim and communist armed insurgents, respectively (North Cotabato and Compostela Valley), it will be demonstrated that particularly since the end of the Marcos martial law regime and subsequent democratisation and decentralisation efforts, local state and rebel structures have become increasingly intertwined. On the one hand, this observation can be explained with reference to particular historical-institutional trajectories, which led to the establishment of the local state as a vital instrument for accumulation and for political legitimation. On the other hand, the current situation can only be fully understood when considering the wider set of social structures that cut across the state-rebel divide, prime amongst which those defined by kinship.

In the past decade, a range of international and national NGOs have pointed to the need to complement national-level negotiations with a support for alternative, informal institutions of conflict management in order to reach a sustainable peace in the conflict-affected regions of Central and Western Mindanao. This argument is based on emerging insights into the multi-layered conflict ecology in the region and the fact that classic statist diplomacy can only deal with this complexity to a limited extent. Based on an analysis of existing conflict management practices in the region, we would like to challenge some of the basic premises underlying this 'alternative' and informal approach. Our core argument is that in the case of Mindanao, assuming a rigid distinction between formal and informal actors and practices of conflict mediation is flawed and may actually be counterproductive, as it obscures how informal practices dominate purportedly formal mediation procedures. Moreover, it tends to underestimate how the local executive embodying state power plays a key role in allegedly 'informal' conflict management mechanisms.

"In den letzten Jahren hat eine Reihe von internationalen und nationalen NROs darauf hingewiesen, dass Verhandlungen auf nationalstaatlicher Ebene durch alternative, informelle Institutionen des Konfliktmanagements unterstützt werden müssen, um nachhaltigen Frieden in den Konfliktregionen von Zentral- und West-Mindanao zu erreichen. Dieses Argument basiert auf jüngsten Einsichten über die Vielschichtigkeit der Konfliktdimensionen in der Region und dem Faktum, dass klassische nationalstaatliche Diplomatie im Umgang mit dieser Komplexität begrenzt ist. Basierend auf einer Analyse von bestehenden Praktiken des Konfliktmanagements in der Region möchten wir einige der grundlegenden Prämissen, die diesem 'alternativen' und informellen Ansatz zu Grunde liegen, in Frage stellen. Unser zentrales Argument ist, dass die Annahme einer rigiden Trennung zwischen formellen und informellen AkteurInnen und Praktiken der Konfliktmediation im Fall von Mindanao mangelhaft und möglicherweise sogar kontraproduktiv ist, weil sie verschleiert, wie informelle Praktiken vorgeblich formelle Mediations-prozesse dominieren. Zudem unterschätzt eine solche Trennung, wie die lokale Exekutive als Verkörperung von Staatsmacht eine Schlüsselrolle darin spielt, welche scheinbar 'informellen' Mechanismen des Konfliktmanagements geltend gemacht werden." (Autorenreferat)