Local Self-Governance for the Provision of Security: Vigilantes in Burkina Faso

这个分项目研究安全领域的地方自治。这项研究的重点是西非布基纳法索的义务警员。为了应对农村和城市地区日益增长的犯罪行为，义务警员正在涌现。该项目比较了两种不同形式的义务警员：援引一个百年传统的猎人(Jula：Dozo)和最近出现的“自卫团体”(Groupe d‘Auto-défense)或“森林守护者”(Mooré：koglweogo)。该分项目探讨了义务警员的活动、自我合法化的方式和相互限制。Koglweogo的快速扩张是自2014年以来政治过渡的结果。2014年，一场民众起义推翻了布莱斯·孔波雷27年的S政权。该州目前面临进退两难的境地。一方面，官方执法部门长期以来人手不足。因此，政府支持各种形式的地方警务。另一方面，义务警员破坏了国家对使用武力的垄断。他们任意征收固定罚款，实施体罚和酷刑，并不顾禁令携带枪支。此外，多佐和科格韦戈之间也发生了对抗。因此，目前在公众和媒体上正在上演一场关于义务警员的辩论。这一分项目询问义务警员的监管和干预形式是否替代、辅助、补充或违背国家监管。除了国家之外，义务警员是否构成了新的权力形式或公民社会？个别义务警员团体彼此之间以及与官方执法部门之间有什么关系？该项目还询问义务警员团体在内部是如何组织的，他们的活动如何合法，以及他们在多大程度上被视为“地方”和在当地合法。分项目的目的是对殖民后非洲民族国家中地方自治和自我组织的场合、形式和合法性有区别的理解，这是本研究小组的共同点。这两个经验性案例研究都有助于更精确地或修改诸如“弱小国家”、“治理”、“公民社会”和“义务警员”等概念。

This subproject studies local self-governance in the realm of security. The research focuses on vigilantes in the West African state of Burkina Faso. Vigilantes are emerging in response to increasing criminality in rural and urban areas. The project compares two different formations of vigilantes: hunters (Jula: dozo) who invoke a centuries-old tradition, and “self-defence groups” (groupes d’auto-défense) or “guardians of the forest” (Mooré: koglweogo), who have emerged more recently. The subproject explores the vigilantes’ activities, ways of self-legitimization and reciprocal liminations. The rapid expansion of koglweogo is an effect of the political transition since 2014, when a popular uprising ended Blaise Compaoré’s regime after 27 years. The state is currently faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, official law enforcement has been understaffed for a long time. Therefore, the government supports forms of local policing. On the other hand, vigilantes undermine the state monopoly on the use of force. They levy arbitrarily fixed fines, inflict corporal punishment and torture, and carry firearms in spite of a prohibition. Moreover, there have been confrontations between dozo and koglweogo. Therefore, a debate over vigilantism is currently playing out in the public and in the media.This subproject asks whether forms of regulation and intervention by vigilantes are substitutive, subsidiary, complementary or contrary to state regulation. Do vigilantes constitute new forms of power ‘beside the state’ or of civil society? What is the relationship of the individual vigilante groups with each other and with official law enforcement? The project also asks how vigilante groups are organized internally, how they legitimate their activities and to what extent they are seen as ‘local’ and legitimate on the ground.The subproject’s aim is a differentiated understanding of the occasions, forms and legitimations of local self-governance and self-organization within a post-colonial African nation-state that represents the limited reach of statehood which is the common ground of this research group. Both empirical case studies contribute to a greater precision or a modification of concepts such as ‘weak state’, ‘governance’, ‘civil society’ and ‘vigilantism’.