Civicness
Key findings from PeaceRep research on civicness (2021 – 2026)
PeaceRep’s civicness research was led by LSE CCRG in collaboration with the Kyiv School of Economics, the Afghanistan Research Network, the South Sudan Bridge Network, and the Myanmar Policy Institute.
Overview
The concept of ‘civicness’ in conflict studies emerged out of a concern that the term ‘civil society’, with its contemporary association with non-governmental organisations and social movements, is insufficient to capture the range of civic practices and relations present in complex, conflict-affected societies. PeacRep uses civicness to refer to the range of behaviours and activities based on trust – and an implicit social contract – that make stable social relations possible, even in conditions of violent conflict. Civicness has been described in this respect as a logic of authority, which recognises that even in contexts marked by intractable violence, societies do not function by ‘force alone’.
There are always various logics based on non-violence, even if these may be forms of exclusionary identity politics or what Alex de Waal calls ‘political marketplaces’, where politics becomes an exercise in capturing and distributing rents to favoured supporters. Civicness acts as an alternative to these other logics, encompassing the range of collective actions and individual behaviours involved in creating public goods. This can involve any number of activities, from tax inspectors that refuse to engage in corruption, communities insisting on representation in local peace negotiations, or acts of mutual aid and community volunteering.
The PeaceRep programme has developed this body of existing scholarship in two directions. First, through translating the concept of civicness into an explicitly formulated research methodology, which we call civic network research. This is a method of undertaking research in conflict-affected settings based on working with civic activists, drawing on their knowledge bases to develop contextually grounded, high-quality research. Second, we have utilised civicness as a framework for informing our analyses and lines of enquiry in the work of our country teams.
Civic Network Research
Many of the researchers and networks from PeaceRep’s country teams have collaborated on previous research programmes and developed an implicit method of working based on cooperation on the ground with activists seeking rights-based outcomes. On the PeaceRep programme these teams have worked to formalise this into a methodology that we refer to as ‘civic network research’ (Adhikari et al forthcoming). Civic network research starts from the simple assumption that those on the ground who are experiencing the effects of violent conflict and authoritarianism, and engaging in activities to challenge and overcome these conditions, develop critical specialist knowledge bases. Researchers seeking new knowledge and lines of inquiry about these contexts need to draw on these perspectives if they are to develop high quality scholarship about the drivers of violence and the presence of alternative logics which could be built on for rights-based and inclusive outcomes to be secured.
PeaceRep developed the civic network research approach at workshops in Istanbul in June 2024 and Amman in October 2025. These workshops, a supplementary survey and online session revealed diversity in how this research method is practiced across our networks. For some, it meant developing informal networks and relationships with trusted partners; in other cases, it involves more formalised contracting of in-country individuals and institutions; while in other cases we have established networks of local researchers/experts that provide data on their communities.
These methods respond to challenges such as data gaps that arise from attempting to apply traditional methods in fragile and rapidly challenging environments, providing policymakers with granular and grounded contextual knowledge. Civic network research seeks to combine support for inclusive and rights-based outcomes with recognising that the research process may on occasion throw up ‘unfortunate evidence’, which creatively disrupts paradigms and frameworks (including those of the researchers, as well as those of policymakers and practitioners).
Read key findings from civic network research in country contexts in the tabs below.
Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, PeaceRep’s Afghanistan Research Network highlighted the dramatic shrinking of civic space with the collapse of the Republic; the exodus of tens of thousands of Afghans; and the Taliban military takeover, combined with their extreme and repressive policies. Our approach drew on the model of civic network research, drawing in experts and activists with different types of research and expertise to create informed dialogues on this complex and regressive context to support international policymaking.
By drawing together these groupings, we created space for multi-layered, decentralized dialogue and coalition-building among constituencies excluded by the new regime. This offered a reimagining of peace and dialogue practices, identifying how policymakers could break out of the narrow pathways for negotiations with the new regime by engaging this wider range of civic actors and networks that in the long-term will be key constituencies for Afghanistan’s future (Dostyar and Farahi 2023). As our research network drew together colleagues directly impacted and at risk from the Taliban’s takeover, we were actively engaged in the evacuation process as both researchers and engaged citizens. We distilled the knowledge and experience into a lessons learned paper for policymakers, providing a worked illustration of the benefits of civic network research (Halaimzai, Theros, and Kapadia 2023).
PeaceRep research has also played a key, catalysing role in the push to recognise gender apartheid as an international crime against humanity (Mehran 2023). We worked closely with civic partners including the Civic Engagement Project to develop inclusive research-policy-practice outcomes. Our 2023 report was cited in the legal brief establishing the international campaign to end gender apartheid in the same year, and influenced the supportive position taken by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the U.N. Working Group on the Discrimination against Women and Girls, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan, and Amnesty International. Our researchers continue to provide ongoing support to this global policy process.
Somalia
In Somalia, understanding and working with peace activists and peacebuilding networks has been an important part of our work around the Galkayo ‘local’ agreement and its implementation. These ‘civic’ actors and networks have both benefited from an improved peace in the historically divided Galkayo town (Abdirahman 2023), but have also been the target of revenge killings when that peace has been threatened (Majid 2024).
Sustaining the post-agreement peace in contexts such as Galkayo and in Somalia more generally requires engaging with and supporting members of these networks in their different locations, not only in Galkayo town itself but also in state and national capitals and in the diaspora, where different peace and conflict constituencies are based (Majid et al 2025). Civic-led peace initiatives therefore need to grapple with and integrate the different scales (local, national and, indeed, global) that shape the contours of (in)stability present in peace negotiations. Successful bargains can also breed complacency, as policymakers may be tempted to eschew the long-term resourcing that can support peace networks and continued mediation. This includes addressing crucial resource needs such as logistical support, rapid response investments, and institutional backing.
Sudan and South Sudan
Across Sudan and South Sudan, PeaceRep research has traced how civic actors confront militarised, extractive, and predatory forms of rule through practices of civicness that reimagine governance from below. Civicness in the Sudans is not confined to formal civil society organisations but expressed through neighbourhood resistance committees, professional unions, women’s groups, and community networks that uphold “medania”, a civic ethos of public accountability, collective care, and resistance to militarisation. In Sudan, these civic forces emerged most vividly during and after the 2019 revolution. PeaceRep research shows how grassroots actors have resisted elite, externally brokered peace deals that reproduce predatory peace, which is a form of peacemaking that embeds coercive and extractive power rather than dismantling it (Benson-Strohmayer, 2025). These movements instead articulate bottom-up visions of freedom, peace, and justice, grounded in civicness and economic accountability (Makawi & Benson-Strohmayer 2025).
Complementary analysis situates these struggles within the broader logic of predatory rule: the deliberate fragmentation of fiscal authority across military, paramilitary, and commercial networks (Benson-Strohmayer et al. 2025; Benson-Strohmayer forthcoming). We further ground this analysis by showing how Sudan’s sub-national tax system embeds extractive logics and latent civic resistance – illustrating how civic actors, tax collectors, and payers navigate and contest the state’s revenue machinery (Benson, Alneel & Makawi 2022). Civic actors respond to these structures through civic fiscal resistance, popular efforts to reclaim public finance and reconstruct the state’s economic core around justice, transparency, and democratic oversight.
In South Sudan, our research traces the long arc of predatory rule, showing how coercive and extractive revenue practices became embedded technologies of governance (Benson-Strohmayer 2024). This historical foundation underpins subsequent PeaceRep research on predatory peace and civic fiscal resistance, revealing how civic actors in both Sudans contest the economic logics of predation that sustain war and authoritarianism. Parallel PeaceRep research highlights the gendered dimensions of civicness in South Sudan (Tai 2025), documenting how women operate as mediators, educators, and community organisers even while formally excluded from elite peace talks. Taken together, this work reframes the Sudans as crucibles of civic innovation, where agency, economic justice, and accountable governance can emerge even in the face of predatory orders.
Syria
Before the fall of the Assad regime, civicness in Syria expanded gradually despite restrictive conditions, with growing voluntarism and women’s participation laying the groundwork for future social change. Yet, civic actors faced major barriers to international funding and operated under tight political and security constraints (Turkmani et al., 2022). Another study shows the private sector’s traditional social role in supporting deprived families while also highlighting the emerging trend of civic leaders transitioning into social enterprises that promote civic principles and women’s empowerment within local recovery processes (Mehchy et al., 2023).
In post-Assad Syria, civic engagement initially flourished but has since contracted amid securitisation and political exclusion. Despite these challenges, civil society actors continue to promote peacebuilding, inclusion, and women’s participation; efforts that require sustained funding, institutional protection, and formal recognition (Gharibah, 2025 forthcoming). Meanwhile, transitional authorities prioritise large investments and business elites, neglecting collective civic initiatives by micro- and small enterprises, including unions and cooperatives (Dahi and Mehchy, 2025).
Our Mapping Syria project aims to build a database for each governorate in Syria, covering the issues of public authorities, justice, business environment, living conditions, health, and education. In this form of civic network research, we have created a formalised ecosystem of local researchers that are experts on their communities, drawing on these knowledge bases through surveys and semi-structured interviews to develop a granular picture of conditions across Syria. The experts are distributed across 66 geographical units across all governorates, with an estimated total of around 400 experts. This multi-sectoral approach enables a comprehensive understanding of local development, allowing correlations between sectors and deeper analysis within each one. Among the key findings is that, in many areas such as Sweida, military and security actors exert the greatest influence over governance dynamics but are perceived as having low legitimacy, whereas civilian-led entities hold limited influence yet enjoy higher legitimacy among local communities (Turkmani et al, 2022).
Ukraine
Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion has been strongly supported by the voluntary actions of citizens, not only through armed forces mobilisation but also humanitarian relief and everyday societal support systems. To study this process, PeaceRep’s Ukraine and Syria teams worked together to design a version of the methodology originally applied in the Mapping Syria project to the Ukrainian case. Our in-country partner, the Kyiv School of Economics, established a network of 118 local activists spread across 40 territorial communities into a panel providing data on local conditions (Hatsko et al 2023; et al 2024; Darkovich et al 2025). This highlighted high levels of cooperation between activists in the network and local government, with 31% of our network being involved in the implementation of projects at the local level in 2023 (Hatsko et al 2023). Survey data also revealed high levels of engagement and consultation between activists and local government, reflecting the ‘civic state’ aspect of Ukraine’s successful resistance (Hatsko et al 2023; et al 2024; Darkovich et al 2025).
Ukraine’s participatory model of security aligns closely with the concept of ‘civicness’, as a set of behaviours based on mutual obligation towards other citizens that construct an implicit form of social contract (Cooper and Kaldor forthcoming, Cooper et al forthcoming). These networks played a key role in generating public goods, whether through fundraising for the armed forces (Artiukh and Fedirko 2025) or conducting evacuations from occupied territory (Cooper et al 2025; Cooper et al forthcoming).
Our research showed how this voluntary mobilisation of citizens also crossed national borders, with the flow of aid from overseas often blurring the distinction between the military and humanitarian (Czerska-Shaw and Jacoby 2023). These changes have also impacted Ukraine’s wartime state transformation. PeaceRep’s research highlighted how taxation revenue – long a source of popular resentment due to corruption – has proven highly resilient, a sign of the state’s ability to strike a social contract in the throes of the war (Cooper 2023b). This process is, however, a complex tug of war between citizen and state, and Ukraine’s wartime development is far from a linear process of state-building. Ambiguities and tensions are observable in attitudes to conscription (Artiukh and Fedirko 2025) and 2025 saw a return of mass demonstrations against corruption, defying martial law.
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. The findings presented here represent our main contributions to the field, but for the sake of brevity and ease of uptake are not necessarily exhaustive of all PeaceRep work on each thematic and geographic area. Read the individual works linked here for more detailed analysis. To view all PeaceRep publications, visit the publications database.
The list of authors below includes all authors whose work is represented in the key findings.
To cite these findings, use the suggested citation below.
Authors
Khalif Abdirahman, Monalisa Adhikari, Muzan Alneel, Volodymyr Artiukh, Juline Beaujouan, Matthew Benson-Strohmayer, Willow Berridge, Daria Bevziuk, Luke Cooper, Karolina Czerska-Shaw, Joseph Daher, Andrii Darkovich, Sarah Detzner, Aref Dostyar, Tim Epple, Zmarai Farahi, Taras Fedirko, Mazen Gharibah, Sophie Gueduet, Valentyn Hatsko, Iryna Ilnytska, Tamar Jacoby, Mary Kaldor, Nisar Majid, Raga Makawi, Zaki Mehchy, Myanmar Policy Institute, Roksolana Nesterenko, Khrystyna Petrynk, Myroslava Savisko, Nyachangkuoth Rambang Tai, Marika Theros, Reem Turkmani, Florian Weigand
Citation
Abdirahman, K., Adhikari, M., Alneel, M., Artiukh, V., Benson-Strohmayer, M., Beaujouan, J., Berridge, W., Bevziuk, D., Cooper, L., Czerska-Shaw, K., Daher, J., Darkovich, A., Detzner, S., Dostyar, A., Epple, T., Farahi, Z., Fedirko, T., Gharibah, M., Gueduet, S., Hatsko, V., Ilnytska, I., Jacoby, T., Kaldor, M., Majid, N., Makawi, R., Mehchy, Z., Myanmar Policy Institute, Nesterenko, R., Petrynk, K., Savisko, M., Tai, N.R., Theros, M., Turkmani, R., Weigand, F. (2026). PeaceRep Key Findings: Civicness. PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.
References
Abdirahman, K. (2023) Galkayo: Flourishing civil society and improving security (PeaceRep blog). https://peacerep.org/2023/03/01/galkayo-flourishing-civil-society-improving-security/ (Accessed 29 October 2025).
Adhikari, M., Beaujouan, J., Benson-Strohmayer, M., S., Cooper, L., Darkovitch, A., Gueudet, S., Kaldor, M., Theros, M., and Turkmani, R. (forthcoming) Civic Network Research: a methodology for undertaking research in authoritarian and conflict impacted settings.
Adikhari, M., Beaujouan, J., Benson-Strohmayer, M., S., Cooper, L., Darkovich, A., Epple, T., Gharibah, M., Gueudet, S., Kaldor, M., Majid, N., Myanmar Policy Institute, Theros, M., Turkmani, R., and Weigand, F. (2026). Civic Network Research: A New Methodology for Conducting Ethical and Policy-relevant Peace and Conflict Research. PeaceRep Policy Brief. PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.
Artiukh, V., and Fedirko, T. (2025). War and dependent state formation in Ukraine. Focaal, 2025(102), pp. 57-72.
Benson, M. (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.
Benson-Strohmayer, M. (2025). Predatory Peace: Fiscal Fragmentation and Coercive Statebuilding in South Sudan and Beyond. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.
Benson-Strohmayer, M. (forthcoming). Revenue, Resistance and Rule: Civic Fiscal Resistance and Statebuilding in Sudan, 1953-2023.
Benson, M., Alneel, M. & Makawi, R. (2022) The Everyday Politics of Sudan’s Tax System: Identifying Prospects for Reform. PeaceRep Report. Conflict & Civicness Research Group, LSE.
Benson-Strohmayer, M., Makawi, R., Berridge, W. and Detzner, S. (2025). Security, Fragmentation and Civic Futures: Rethinking Reform in Sudan’s Militarised Political Economy. PeaceRep Policy Brief. London: LSE Conflict and Civicness Research Group.
Czerska-Shaw, K. and Jacoby, T. (2023). Mapping Ukrainian Civicness Abroad in the War Effort: A Case Study of Poland (PeaceRep Ukraine Report). Conflict and Civicness Research Group, London School of Economics.
Daher, J. and Mehchy, Z. (2025). Syria’s Economic Transition: From Kleptocracy to Islamic Neoliberalism in a War-Torn Economy (PeaceRep Policy Brief). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.
Darkovich, A., Hatsko, V., Nesterenko, R., Bevziuk, D., & Ilnytska, I. (2025). Mapping Ukraine’s Democratic Space: Part 3 (PeaceRep Ukraine Report). Conflict and Civicness Research Group, London School of Economics.
Dostyar, A. and Farahi, Z. (2023). What Could Shape Conditions for Dialogue in Afghanistan? (Afghanistan Research Network Reflection). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.
Gharibah, M. (2026). Civic Spaces in Syria’s First Year of Transition: Challenges, Ambiguities and Future Opportunities (PeaceRep Report). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.
Hatsko, V., Savisko, M., Darkovich, A., and Petrynka K. (2023). Mapping Ukraine’s Democratic Space in 40 Localities (PeaceRep Ukraine report). Conflict and Civicness Research Group, London School of Economics.
Hatsko, V., Savisko, M., and Darkovich, A. (2024) Mapping Ukraine’s Democratic Space: Part 2 (PeaceRep Ukraine Report). Conflict and Civicness Research Group, London School of Economics.
Majid, N. (2024). The Risks of Peace Activism in Somalia – the Galkayo ‘Local’ Agreement (PeaceRep blog) https://peacerep.org/2024/09/02/the-risks-of-peace-activism-in-somalia-the-galkayo-local-agreement/ (Accessed 29 October 2025).
Majid, N., Abdirahman, K., & Theros, M. (2025). Sustaining the Post-Agreement Peace – Galkayo, Somalia (PeaceRep Policy Brief). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.
Makawi, R. and Benson-Strohmayer, M. (2025). Sudan’s Civic Future: Mapping Medania, Resistance and Democratic Aspirations. PeaceRep Policy Brief. London: LSE Conflict and Civicness Research Group.
Mehchy, Z., Turkmani, R. & Gharibah, M. (2023). The Role of MSMEs in Syria in Poverty Reduction and Peacebuilding: Challenges and Opportunities. PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.
Tai, N. (2025). South Sudanese Women in Peace Negotiations: A Case Study of South Sudan’s Peace Agreements. PeaceRep Working Paper. London: LSE Conflict and Civicness Research Group.
Turkmani, R., Mehchy, Z. and Gharibah, M. (2022). Building Resilience in Syria: Assessing fragilities and strengthening positive coping mechanisms. PeaceRep Report. PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.