Constructing the State: Macro Strategies, Micro Incentives, and the Creation of Police Forces in Colonial Namibia*

• DOI: 10.1177/0032329217705352
• Author: Fabian Krautwald,Alexander De Juan,Jan Henryk Pierskalla
• Date: 01 June 2017
• Published date: 01 June 2017
• Subject Matter: Special Issue Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329217705352

Politics & Society

2017, Vol. 45(2) 269 –299

© 2017 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329217705352

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Special Issue Article

Constructing the State:

Macro Strategies, Micro

Incentives, and the

Creation of Police Forces

in Colonial Namibia*

Alexander De Juan

GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies and the University of Konstanz

Fabian Krautwald

Princeton University

Jan Henryk Pierskalla

The Ohio State University

Abstract

How do states build a security apparatus after violent resistance against state rule? This

article argues that in early periods of state building two main factors shape the process:

the macro-strategic goals of the state and administrative challenges of personnel

management. These dynamics are studied in the context of the establishment of police

forces in the settler colony of German Southwest Africa, present-day Namibia. The

empirical analysis relies on information about the location of police stations and a

near full census of police forces, compiled from the German Federal Archives. A

mismatch is found between the allocation of police presence and the allocation of

police personnel. The first was driven by the strategic value of locations in terms of

extractive potential, political importance, and the presence of critical infrastructure,

whereas the allocation of individual officers was likely affected by adverse selection,

which led to the assignment of low-quality recruits to strategically important locations.

Keywords

state building, colonial, security forces, personnel, police, Namibia

Corresponding Author:

Jan Henryk Pierskalla, Department of Political Science, The Ohio State University, 2147 Derby Hall,

154 N Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.

Email: pierskalla.4@osu.edu

*This special issue of Politics & Society titled “The Comparative Politics of Colonialism and Its Legacies”

features an introduction and four papers that form part of a special workshop held at The Ohio State

University, April 2016, organized by Marcus Kurtz and Jan Henryk Pierskalla.

705352PASXXX10.1177/0032329217705352Politics & SocietyDe Juan et al.

research-article2017

270 Politics & Society 45(2)

Enforcing the monopoly of violence is the first and maybe most important step in

constructing a state.1 To achieve that goal, states must establish formal organizations

that act as agents of the state and are endowed with its repressive powers.2 Although

numerous studies have investigated the effects of high or low repressive capacities of

states3 we still know very little about how organizations with sufficient repressive

capacity are constructed in the first place, how their authority is established and solidi-

fied across the territory of a state, and how they are organized internally. The question

is particularly relevant for the study of colonial governments that employed large-

scale violence to squash local resistance to state rule—in particular, settler colonies

with white minorities obsessed with controlling indigenous populations.4 In these

cases colonial governments had to create bureaucratic institutions that could effec-

tively deploy repressive state power against indigenous populations (e.g., to ensure the

forced supply of labor), while simultaneously managing regular affairs of colonial life

(e.g., adjudicate property disputes, etc.). In this article, we investigate the socioeco-

nomic conditions and administrative dynamics that determine how a colonial govern-

ment allocates material and human resources to meet this state-building challenge.

We differentiate between two challenges to the construction of a security apparatus.

The first is the macro-strategic goal to project state power across territory and people,

which is initially expressed via the investment into physical infrastructures, namely,

the construction of police stations, and the accompanying assignment of personnel

strength. The second and related challenge deals with the management of individual

civil servants. We expect the macro-level allocation of material resources and person-

nel numbers to reflect strategic state priorities, such as the protection of economic

extraction sites and of critical infrastructures, or the pacification of restive regions. We

also expect the allocation of human resources to deviate from these strategic state

priorities because of administrative challenges related to internal personnel manage-

ment. Scarcity of human capital, the resulting high bargaining power of skilled police

officers, and their personal preferences for nonhardship positions forced the state to

assign low-quality and inexperienced recruits to the most strategically important loca-

tions in the colony, likely undermining the macro-strategic goals that were driving the

expansion of the colonial police.

To study these processes, we analyze the security forces of the former colony of

German Southwest Africa, present-day Namibia. The colonial police force was estab-

lished in 1907 in the wake of the Herero and Nama uprising, which was put down in a

ruthless counterinsurgency campaign that came to be known as the first genocide of

the twentieth century.5 The establishment of the police was meant to solidify and con-

solidate the German colonial government’s control over territory and indigenous eth-

nic groups in the aftermath of active resistance. As such, it offers an ideal opportunity

to study the dynamics that shape the constitution of a colonial security apparatus, fol-

lowing intense state violence in the presence of a white settler community.

Our empirical analysis relies on multiple original historical data sources. We draw

on detailed colonial maps and annual reports to understand the spatial expansion of the

police station network.6 In addition, a comprehensive dataset of hundreds of personnel

files, compiled from the German Federal Archives, allows us to trace the internal chal-

lenges of human resource management within the police. The data represent a near full