Description
The role and relevance of local elites within political systems has been an emerging phenomenon of focus. Works on local authoritarianism have highlighted how local elites can consolidate their local position and subvert the national processes of democracy to ensure their own positions. The warlords literature has highlighted how local elites have worked with a variety of national and international actors to maintain their positions of authority during conflict. However, there remains a paucity of studies that consider the role of local elites within periods of regime transition. Regime transitions seek to reimagine the structures of the political system and as such they threaten the position, authority, and legitimacy of local elites. This is particularly stark in post-conflict regime transitions where national authorities seek to consolidate their own authority and where local elite authority is often established in opposition to the state. As such, it is this papers contention that to survive, local elites seek to shape the trajectories of transition through decisions to cooperate or contest the nationally led regime transition processes.
