| Summary/Abstract |
In this special issue we broaden the academic debate on rebel governance by examining additional armed actors – militias, police and foreign intervenors, and the ‘layers’ of governance they add. We develop the notion of ‘multi-layered’ governance to capture the complexity of these cases. We consider ‘mediated stateness’ as a special case of multi-layered governance. We discuss ‘polycentricity’ as an equivalent concept, but deem multi-layered governance more appropriate. The following articles discuss rebels’ legitimation strategies, armed opposition factions, auxiliary armed forces, mediated stateness and intervention by foreign powers to highlight the roles of different actors and the resulting impacts on governance.
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