Securocratic state-building: the rationales, rebuttals, and risks behind the extraordinary rise of Rwanda after the genocide
本文提出“安全官僚国家建设”概念，分析卢旺达政权在种族灭绝后为何放弃竞争政治、重塑社会并现代化国家经济，揭示其安全优先与统一目标间的根本矛盾。
ABSTRACT Both popular perspectives and theoretical characterizations of Rwanda’s remarkable trajectory following the genocide remain polarized more than a generation after the violence. The country has been hailed as a developmental state and denounced as an authoritarian ‘ethnocracy’. I introduce the concept of securocratic state-building in response to this polarization. The construct is intended to capture, first, the regime’s developmental but non-doctrinaire ambitions, synthesizing liberal and illiberal precepts; and second its prioritization of security over liberty, favouring stability over peace. I then draw on a set of interviews with key Rwandan opinion-makers drawn from across the country’s principal political and social divides to elicit the competing rationales given for each of three grand strategic choices made by the regime: why it eschewed competitive politics; why it sought to re-engineer society and efface ethnicity; and why it moved to modernize the state and the economy. The juxtaposition of these opposing opinions exposes a fundamental tension at the heart of the securocratic state-building model: the regime’s aspiration for unity is at odds with its preoccupation with security. This strategic contradiction, I argue, places a question mark over the long-term sustainability of the Rwanda model.