Post-Conflict Statebuilding in South Sudan (2005-2013) Institutional Layering, SPLM/A Organizational Structure, and the Historicity of the South Sudanese State

South Sudan's independence in July 2011 was backed by one of the most ambitious international statebuilding efforts of the past few decades. Although the newly independent state faced enormous challenges, it also possessed a few distinctive characteristics that seemingly made it a model case for international statebuilding. And yet a year and a half later, the country slipped into a fierce civil war.;Given the serious obstacles that post-conflict societies face to transition into stable, democratic, and developmental states, the capacity of external interventions to bring about such change isn't surprising. Accordingly, a large number of academic works analyze the discrepancies between the stated goals of international statebuilding efforts and their results, focusing on attributes of the interventions themselves.;This dissertation shifts the focus away from the international intervention and into the nature of the state that emerged in South Sudan following the signing of the 2005 Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Based on historical institutionalism's concept of institutional layering, it argues that the state that emerged in South Sudan was the result of the interaction between three institutional inputs: the international statebuilding blueprint, preexisting state institutions, and rebel group internal organization and structure.;To make its case, this dissertation undertakes a historical inquiry into patterns of state formation and power in Sudan since the emergence of the early Sudanic states and into the twentieth century, on SPLM/A's internal organization and structure, and patterns of local governance in the territories under its control from its inception in 1983 until the signature of the CPA. It illustrates how both inputs had a decisive impact on the nature of the state that emerged in South Sudan by analyzing the process of negotiation of state institutions and of internal security between the signing of the CPA and the outbreak of the civil war.