South Sudan Findings
Key findings from PeaceRep’s research in South Sudan (2021 – 2026)
PeaceRep’s South Sudan research brought together distinct research strands across Coventry University, LSE CCRG and the University of Edinburgh, in collaboration with Detcro.
South Sudan’s political trajectory continues to operate within a framework of formalised political unsettlement where the peace agreement structures the transitional arena without resolving the core questions of authority, succession, and resource allocation. This framework stabilises the rules of coexistence among elites but leaves the settlement inherently provisional, continuously renegotiated through patronage, security alignments, and regional influence. As a result, formal institutions persist, but political order remains contingent, fragile, and driven by the constant recalibration of elite bargains rather than by substantive implementation of the agreement (Pospisil 2025).
The enduring provisionality of political order reflects a deeper fiscal logic: elite bargains are repeatedly reorganised around control of oil rents, taxation sites, customs revenues, checkpoint extraction, and externalised revenue flows, rather than institutional authority. These arrangements have generated a predatory peace in which settlements manage elite coexistence while preserving the coercive revenue systems that make violence profitable (Benson 2022; Benson 2025).
Browse key findings and publications in the tabs below.
Taxation & Civicness in a Political Marketplace
Alongside these political marketplace dynamics, these practices are part of a long-standing revenue complex. From the Anglo-Egyptian era through rebel administration and into the post-independence state, taxation and rent extraction have consistently served as instruments of rule, coercion, and elite payoffs rather than reciprocal public authority (Benson 2024).
South Sudan’s peace settlements have therefore repeatedly reorganised, rather than constrained, coercive revenue systems arranged around oil-backed patronage, armed-group taxation, customs and checkpoint extraction, and the use of public finance to manage elite bargains. Peace processes need to treat fiscal governance and armed actors’ revenue systems as central to the political settlement itself, rather than as technical reforms to be handled after an agreement is signed (Benson 2022; Benson 2025). As the resource base contracts, incentives for short-term, maximal corruption intensify. Politics and the boundary between war and peace increasingly become tactical games, with little strategic planning or long-term vision.
Public Perceptions of Peace
South Sudan’s peace and conflict landscape is uneven and fragile. Peace, however, is not absent, demonstrating that South Sudan can be seen as an amalgamation of various ‘conflictscapes‘, each with specific political economies of violence. Public perception survey waves since 2021 show fluctuations in ‘everyday safety’ and views on whether the country is ‘at peace’, with perceptions closely tied to locality and civic space conditions (Deng et al. 2024a). The survey reflects a patchwork of civic views: many report local insecurity while still backing national transition steps, including elections (Deng et al. 2024b).
South Sudanese conceptions of peace are anchored in safety, justice, and institutions, and are shaped more by longer-term historical experience and rights expectations than by short-term security alone. The more unstable the environment becomes, the more central the idea of a ‘just peace’ is to people’s understanding of what peace should entail.
Local Agreements
To mitigate violence in these conflictscapes, local agreements matter, both as processes and as settlements. Comparative evidence from Yei, Wau, Yambio, Aweil, and Malakal shows that such agreements can defuse violence, regulate mobility, and rebuild social order, especially where trusted intermediaries – chiefs, church leaders, and local civil society organisations – broker dialogue (Pospisil, Wilson et al. 2025). These agreements often act as pre-negotiation or implementation instruments that connect to, but are not subsumed by, national frameworks such as the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS) of September 2018. Some of these local agreements address cattle migration-related conflicts exacerbated by political interference and climate change (Deng et al. 2024; Muorwel, Pospisil, & Monoja 2023). Their durability depends on political will, enforcement, and consistent follow-up. Importantly, many of these local-level settlements hinge on stabilising revenue flows, including reducing predatory taxation at checkpoints, regulating movement-based rents, and temporarily constraining the extractive practices that fuel local violence.
Mediation
South Sudan affirms that executive-led and regionally embedded mediation is the new normal. Kenya’s Tumaini initiative, launched in 2024, illustrates both the speed and convening power of neighbour-led diplomacy, and equally the limits of this approach, where armed leverage is localised and trust is thin. Tumaini created political momentum and positive optics, yet was unlikely to end localised violence as a standalone effort, given its limited representation of all stakeholders, which were also without the relevant backing inside the country and the military geography of non-signatory groups (Magara & Pospisil 2024).
Transition Management and Implementation
Transitional management under the quasi-constitutional framework of the R-ARCSS since 2018 is approaching a critical juncture. The strategy of stabilising the conflict environment while pushing the parties to complete as many tasks as possible under the agreement has reached its natural limits, with an unprecedented economic crisis looming and the post-war leadership nearing the end of its political lifespan. The South Sudan case therefore raises the broader question of whether this approach – actively pursued by the United Nations and bilateral partners – was ever the right one.
The South Sudan experience suggests that peace processes primarily function through process dynamics rather than through comprehensive implementation. For such dynamics to create alternative or positive direction and momentum, there must be a willingness to accept, and in some cases deliberately pursue, disruptive steps, even when they entail risk (Pospisil 2025). In this context, national elections – however imperfect or violence-prone – appear to be the only viable mechanism capable of disrupting the entrenched, kleptocratic, and politically stagnant power-sharing structure created by the peace agreement (Pospisil 2024; Muorwel & Pospisil 2026).
Elections are desired but carry risk; civic space remains limited. For many elites, elections are perceived less as pathways to legitimacy than as moments that may threaten or reconfigure access to revenue networks. Survey evidence shows strong support for elections on the extended timetable, even though two-thirds of respondents anticipate a high risk of election-related violence, with many fearing a return to war. Many feel unsafe discussing sensitive political issues and doubt that parties can campaign freely across the country (Deng et al. 2024a).
PeaceRep analysis cautions that preserving the letter of the R-ARCSS is insufficient if the underlying political economy remains unchanged. The core strategic dilemma is one of transition management, not simply ‘agreement rescue’. Rising violence since 2024 intersects with succession politics and elite reshuffles. The critical choice lies between elite ‘re-cycling’ and genuine generational change capable of reopening the political marketplace to substantive reform (Pospisil 2025).
References
PeaceRep’s key findings series presents a top-line overview of findings from the breadth and depth of the consortium’s data-driven and in-country research between 2021 – 2027. To view all PeaceRep publications, visit the publications database.
Researchers and contributors
Matthew Benson-Strohmayer, Sophia Dawkins, David Deng, Tim Epple, Kido Joseph, Ibrahim Magara, Veronica Igale Monoja, James Kunhiak Muorwel, Christopher Oringa, Jan Pospisil, Robert Wilson.
Citation
Benson-Strohmayer, M. & Pospisil, J. (2026). PeaceRep Key Findings: South Sudan. PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Evidence Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.
References
Benson, M. (2022). Taxation and Civicness in South Sudan: Revenue Reforms for a More Inclusive Democracy (Policy Brief). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh. http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/5116
Benson, M. S. (2025). Predatory Peace: Fiscal Fragmentation and Coercive Statebuilding in South Sudan and Beyond. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 1–22.
Benson, M. S. (2024). Of Rule not Revenue: South Sudan’s Revenue Complex from Colonial, Rebel, to Independent Rule, 1899 to 2023. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 66(3), 673–699.
Deng, D., Dawkins, S., Epple, T., Oringa, C., & Pospisil, J. (2024). Climate Security in South Sudan: Findings from the 2024 Public Perceptions of Peace Survey (PeaceRep and FES Policy Brief). Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, South Sudan Office. https://peacerep.org/publication/climate-security-in-south-sudan-findings-from-the-2024-public-perceptions-of-peace-survey/
Deng, D., Dawkins, S., Oringa, C. and Pospisil, J. (2024). Citizen Trust in South Sudan’s Transition: Findings from the 2024 Public Perceptions of Peace Survey (PeaceRep Policy Brief). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh. http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/5491
Deng, D., Pospisil, J., Dawkins, S. and Oringa, C. (2024). Elections and Civic Space in South Sudan: Findings from the 2024 Public Perceptions of Peace Survey (PeaceRep and FES Research Report). Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, South Sudan Office
Magara, I. and Pospisil, J. (2024). Overloaded? Hope and Scepticism around the Tumaini Peace Initiative for South Sudan. PeaceRep blog. 4 June 2024. https://peacerep.org/2024/06/04/overloaded-hope-and-scepticism-around-the-tumaini-peace-initiative-for-south-sudan/
Muorwel, J. K. & Pospisil, J. (2026). Now or never? : Political conditions for credible elections in South Sudan. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Büro Südsudan.
Muorwel, J. K., Pospisil, J., and Monoja, V. I. (2023). Caught Between Crises in South Sudan: Flood-Induced Migration of Dinka Bor Cattle Herders into the Equatoria Region (PeaceRep and FES Discussion Paper). Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, South Sudan Office. https://peacerep.org/publication/caught-between-crises-in-south-sudan/
Pospisil, J. (2024). Voting out of Transition? Perspectives on the Planned National Elections in South Sudan. #69 Sudan Studies for South Sudan and Sudan
Pospisil, J. (2025). Elite Recyclement or Generational Change: South Sudan’s Critical Juncture. African Affairs, Volume 124, Issue 495, April 2025, Pages 205–218. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adaf021
Pospisil, J., Wilson, R., Joseph, K., & Magara, Ibrahim. (2025). Local Peace Agreements in South Sudan: Exploring Processes at the Margins (PeaceRep Report). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh. http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/6620