Military Patrimonialism and Child Soldier Clientalism in the Liberian and Sierra Leonean Civil Wars

Abstract:

This article uses a Weberian model of patrimonialism to analyze clientalist and "staff roles of child soldiers in the military regimes of the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. It thereby examines institutional aspects of child soldier identity and behavior not addressed in other standard models of child soldiers as coerced victims, revolutionary idealists, or delinquent opportunists. It shifts analytical attention from nation-state patrimonialism to the patrimonial dimensions of rebel regimes. It locates child soldiers within a social organization of domination and reciprocity based on violence structured through patronage ties with military commanders. It identifies child soldier "staff" functions within the administration of a patrimonial regime. A Weberian focus on the institutionalization and strategies of domination and dependency provides a corrective to views that exoticize child soldiers, decontextualize their behavior, or essentialize their "youth" as an explanatory principle.

Résumé: Dans cet article, nous utilisons un modèle wéberien de patrimonialisme afin d'analyser les rôles clientélistes et "l'emploi" tenu par les enfants soldats au sein des régimes militaires des guerres civiles au Libéria et en Sierra Leone. Nous examinons ainsi les aspects institutionnels de l'identité et du comportement de l'enfant soldat qui ne sont pas abordés dans d'autres modèles traditionnels de l'enfant soldat, en tant que victime forcée, idéaliste révolutionnaire, ou opportuniste délinquant. Nous détournons l'attention de l'analyse du patrimonialisme d'étatnation pour nous tourner vers les dimensions patrimoniales des régimes rebelles. Nous situons les enfants soldats à l'intérieur d'une organisation sociale de domination et de réciprocité basée sur une violence structurée par des liens de patronage avec les commandants militaires. Nous identifions les fonctions de "l'emploi" tenu par l'enfant soldat au sein de l'administration d'un régime patrimonial. Une approche wéberienne focalisée sur l'institutionnalisation et les stratégies de domination et de dépendance corrige les approches qui exotisent les enfants soldats, décontextualisent leur comportement, ou essentialisent leur "jeunesse" comme principe d'explication.

Introduction

Child soldiers in the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, which began respectively in December 1989 and March 1991, became entangled in structural forms of domination and dependency characteristic of ties between patrons and clients. In contradiction to the image of childhood as a life stage of protection and nurturance by selfless adults, children caught up in these civil wars experienced a major breakdown of kinship security. Many of them were driven into dependency on exploitative adults who seemed to offer power, protection, and economic opportunity that their kin group, traditional community, or national government could no longer provide. Children's normal dependency on their immediate or extended family was replaced with dependency on non-kin relations of the clientalist type, such as those that typically emerge when ascriptive ties, such as kinship, no longer "serve as an effective vehicle for personal security or advancement" (Scott 1972:101). In particular, many youths became dependent on the patronage of military commanders as a way to transform their physical vulnerability and economic desperation. Patronage also provided them with a response to the political marginalization and economic destitution enforced by the corrupt regimes of the nation-state. As a phenomenon, therefore, child soldiers illustrate a broader principle of youth clientalism in Africa (and elsewhere): the social production of dependency on patronage when local and national structures fail to provide for the social and economic needs of youth.

The concept of a patron-client relationship does not explain completely the social dynamics of child soldier relations with adults. Coercion and cruelty rather than benign reciprocity defined much of the content of these relations. Many children were forcefully recruited into rebel movements, and many young women were forced into domestic and sexual servitude. Some children saw themselves as revolutionaries rebelling against a corrupt government regime. Others became soldiers to protect their community and defend the nation against the "rebels" by joining local civil defense forces. Some saw the military role as a path to sustenance and economic opportunity in a tumultuous war situation of hardship, danger, and desperation. Some young women even speak of the glamour and prestige of assuming a military role, especially as a substitute for economic impoverishment. The civil wars forced many children into the dual role of victim and victimizer, causing both physical harm and psychological trauma (see, e.g., children's therapeutic drawings of the Liberian civil war [Catholic Archdiocese of Monrovia 1992]). The experience of children in the civil wars was a complex life of changing relations between men and women, elders and youths, ritual power and physical force, coercion and persuasion, reciprocity and cruelty, and wealth and military power. The complexity of that world cannot be summed up in one theoretical formula. Nevertheless, the sociological principles of patrimonial politics and patron-client relations provide important theoretical tools for understanding the institutional transformation of child and adult relations during these civil wars.