Hard Hearts and Open Minds. Governance, Identity, and Counterinsurgency Strategy

摘要

The premise of most Western thinking on counterinsurgency is that success depends on establishing a perception of legitimacy among local populations. The path to legitimacy is often seen as the improvement of governance in the form of effective and efficient administration of government and public services. However, good governance is not the only basis for claims to legitimacy, especially in environments where ethnic or religious identities are politically salient. This paper raises new questions about the roles of governance and ethnic identities in counterinsurgencies and builds a conceptual and methodological foundation for future research on those questions.