In Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty—a book frequently cited by Dr. Riek Machar in peace dialogues on South Sudan—Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson draw heavily on the framework of German sociologist Robert Michels and his Iron Law of Oligarchy to explain the persistent cycle of conflict in many post-independence sub-Saharan African states.
They argue, convincingly, that instead of leveraging the critical juncture presented by World War II and the wave of decolonization to build inclusive political and economic institutions, most African states reproduced extractive institutions that enriched a narrow elite.
These elites, Acemoglu and Robinson note, “simply took a page out of Robert Michels’ book and repeated and intensified the abuses of their predecessors, often severely narrowing the distribution of political power, dismantling constraints, and undermining the already meagre incentives for investment and economic progress.”
It is this combination of elite greed and grievances, as Paul Collier has similarly argued in The Bottom Billion, that has kept much of the region mired in poverty and instability. Although South Sudan is a recent entrant to the table of independent nations, its trajectory reflects an alarming fidelity to Michels’ Iron Law.
The country appears to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing, repeating the same structural pathologies of its post-colonial predecessors. Even before the formal end of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium—the colonial authority in Sudan—South Sudan had long been marginalized by Khartoum’s Arab-Islamic elite.
The southern region waged a series of protracted liberation wars in resistance to northern domination, beginning with the 1955 Torit Mutiny, evolving through Anyanya I and II, and culminating in the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) led by Dr. John Garang.
What made the SPLM/A historically significant was its ability to unite southerners across ethnic divides in a common struggle against subjugation. The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between Garang’s SPLM and Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party paved the way for a referendum, in which 98.83% of South Sudanese voted for independence, culminating in statehood in July 2011.
However, the hopes of liberation were quickly dashed. Ethnic cleavages, political factionalism, and elite rapacity engulfed the nascent state. The Dinka—South Sudan’s largest ethnic group—consolidated power through the Jieng Council of Elders, asserting a dominant role in the country’s political and economic life.
Their justification lay in a claimed historical loyalty to the liberation struggle. In contrast, Equatorians were accused of fleeing to exile during the war, while the Nuer, under Machar, were blamed for collusion with Khartoum. In December 2013, only two years after independence, a toxic combination of elite infighting, fragmented military allegiances, and the absence of rule-of-law institutions exploded into a devastating civil war.
The SPLM collapsed to use the words of former UNMISS Head Hilde F. Johnson, in her book South Sudan: The Untold Story “like a house of cards”. The conflict was partially contained through Uganda’s military intervention in support of President Salva Kiir, with the UPDF bolstering the Mathiang Anyor militia led by Paul Malong, alongside other loyalist forces including those of Johnson Olonyi and Bapiny Monytuil.
A tenuous peace was brokered in 2015 through the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS), but this collapsed again in July 2016. A second attempt, the Revitalized ARCSS (R-ARCSS), signed in 2018 under IGAD mediation and framed around liberal peacebuilding ideals, brought relative calm and reoriented the country toward transitional governance and institutional restoration.
Yet, recent developments threaten to unravel even this fragile progress. The house arrest of Dr. Riek Machar, the dismissal of SPLM-IO officials such as Governor Gen. Alfred Futuyo and Health Minister Yolanda Awel, and the arrest of several others under the pretext of links to the Nuer White Army attack in Nasir have raised alarms.
These actions risk reigniting ethnic tensions and invite a proxy war, particularly amid accusations that Juba and her ally Kampala supports the RSF militia under Hemedti in the Sudan conflict.
SPLM-IO leaders now suspect that Salva Kiir is grooming Benjamin Bol Mel as his successor—an act that contravenes both the spirit and letter of the peace agreement, which is predicated on power-sharing and liberal pluralism.
Unless South Sudan urgently breaks from Michels’ Iron Law by genuinely investing in inclusive governance and institutional reforms, it risks perpetuating the very cycles of exclusion and violence that its liberation sought to end.
The writer is founder and CEO of the Think Tank Kampala Analytica