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After years of using terror as a strategic tool against its ostensible supporters in southern Sudan, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) claims to be moving in a democratic direction. If true, this change would stand as a case of an insurgency responding to global political and normative pressures to democratize, and would signal acceptance of greater reciprocity in social relations in the insurgency-a pattern that fits with broader propositions of state-building scholars. Yet, as this article argues, the SPLA will not achieve its state-building objective because of the effects of international norms on the movement's intentions and pursuits of its interests.
Introduction
Africa's largest country, the Sudan, has been at war for nearly fifty years, displacing over four million people and resulting in more than two million deaths. One of the major forces behind this war is the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and its political body, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).1 After years of using terror as a strategic tool against its ostensible supporters in southern Sudan, the SPLA claims to be moving in a democratic direction. If true, it would stand as a case of a reformist insurgent alternative (at least in the south) to an internationally condemned, repressive northern regime. It would also stand as a case of an insurgency responding to global political and normative pressures to democratize. This would represent a significant extension of global norms to insurgencies in Africa.
Since 1983, the movement has fought to expel the rule of the north from the south through violence. In 1994, the SPLA adopted a second objective, the construction of foundations for democratization in a "new" southern Sudan. Professing agendas reminiscent of liberation insurgencies of the Cold War, the SPLA has established administrative structures that, it claims, will lead to democracy. This stance would signal SPLA acceptance of civilian power and a turn toward greater reciprocity in social relations of the insurgency. It would fit with broader propositions of scholars of state-building, such as Mancur Olson (2000), that reciprocal tics between coercive agents and local producers are more efficient-that is, coercive agencies that accommodate the interests of local people can facilitate their productivity and thus "tax" more, though at a lower rate. This, says Olson, also forms the...