From petrodollars to licenses: South Sudan’s post-oil political economy

Abstract

This paper examines the trajectory of South Sudan’s political economy following the dethronement of oil rents as the major source of regime stability. From 2005 to 2012, relations among competing elite actors in South Sudan were organized through a rentier political marketplace in which payments derived from oil rents were used to purchase the loyalty of armed groups. During the same period, marketization and the politics of state-building remade South Sudan’s underlying political economy. With the partial collapse of the country’s oil revenues followed by the outbreak of civil war in 2012 to 2013, it was this transformed political economy that enabled the state to maintain its grip on power, as the government distributed appointments and licenses to local actors, who then used such affordances to tax, raid, and otherwise immiserate the populations under their control. This shift to a political economy predicated on the apportionment of positions and licenses has intensified inequality in South Sudan and enabled continued elite domination. The emergence of a market economy has facilitated the transformation of the political marketplace. While this form of elite domination is likely durable, it will not be peaceful.