On the Origins of Direct Rule: Armed Groups and Customary Chiefs in Eastern Congo

This working paper is adapted from ICTD Working Paper 182, DOI: 10.19088/ICTD.2024.011. This project was supported by Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL), the International Center for Taxation and Development (ICTD), the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the UNU-WIDER project on Institutional Legacies of Violent Conflict. We thank Aimable Amani Lameke, Paulin Bazuzi, Freddy Koleramungu, Desire Cizungu Basibuhe and Sim´eon Lukeno for their exceptional work on this project. We thank Darren Hawkins, Jonathan Homola, Connor Huff, Torben Iversen, Horacio Larreguy, Nathan Nunn, Pia Raffler, Otis Reid, and Mike Ting for helpful comments, discussion, and suggestions. We also thank the participants of the 2022 UNU-Wider workshop on Institutional Legacies of Violent Conflict in Helsinki for comments and suggestions. The paper also benefited from presentations at APSA, FTCP, Harvard, and MPSA. David Ifkovits, Matt Pecenco, and Carlos Schmidt-Padilla provided excellent research assistance. Adama Kabore, Anne-Laure van der Wielen, and Marakuja Kivu Research provided excellent management for this project’s operations. We are especially thankful to Mick Moore, Wilson Prichard, and Patricia Justino for their continuous support, and to Adam Random for tireless administrative support. The study received ethics review and approval from Columbia University (IRB-AAAK0552), Harvard University (IRB14-4223), and The University of California Berkeley (2016-06-8849). All errors are our own. Collecting data in contexts of violence raises important security, safety, and ethical questions (Marchais, Bazuzi and Amani Lameke, 2020, Shesterinina, 2019, Wood, 2006), which we discuss in Annex B. Special provisions were taken to reduce risks to researchers and participants. The project was reviewed and approved by Congolese administrative authorities at the provincial, territory, and village levels. Security and communication protocols were systematically implemented. In addition to direct exposure to risk, interviews which cover sensitive events, and particularly violent events, can trigger traumatic memories among research participants. In addition to the procedure of informed consent that preceded all interviews, there were additional consent forms preceding the most sensitive sections. The research team had considerable experience and their expertise was crucial to ensure that respondents felt safe to discuss sensitive issues. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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