Based on extensive fieldwork in Sri Lanka, we analyze how the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) acquired legitimacy and how legitimation impacts civilian perceptions of the rebels. Despite the LTTE's reliance on coercion to induce compliance, civilians also supported the LTTE and their imagined state of Tamil Eelam voluntarily. Different LTTE strategies and acts helped creating legitimacy. Effective forms of legitimation were rooted in Tamil nationalism, tradition, charismatic leadership, sacrifices made by LTTE cadres and the people's need for protection. However, the strong reformative socio-political agenda of the LTTE largely failed to engender legitimacy among the population.

In this special issue we broaden the academic debate on rebel governance by examining additional armed actors-militias, police and foreign intervenors, and the 'layers' of governance they add. We develop the notion of 'multi-layered' governance to capture the complexity of these cases. We consider 'mediated stateness' as a special case of multi-layered governance. We discuss 'polycentricity' as an equivalent concept, but deem multi-layered governance more appropriate. The following articles discuss rebels' legitimation strategies, armed opposition factions, auxiliary armed forces, mediated stateness and intervention by foreign powers to highlight the roles of different actors and the resulting impacts on governance.

This article examines the conditions that foster state-insurgent cooperation in rebel governance. State-insurgent cooperation is puzzling because it can alienate hardliners, undermine the parties' legitimacy, reveal sensitive information, and cause autonomy losses. We propose that conflict parties are more likely to discount these costs when they have overlapping civilian constituencies with high governance provision expectations. Analysing rebel governance in Côte d'Ivoire and Sri Lanka using original data, we find that civilian expectations prompt cooperation even when the parties appeal to separate constituencies. The article nuances existing theories of rebel governance and contributes new knowledge on state-insurgent interactions in civil war.

This article focuses on how the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) insurgency performed de facto sovereignty and public authority in Northeastern Sri Lanka. It is situated within the wider academic debate on governance by state and non-state actors. We venture to unravel the complex linkages between the LTTE's governance practices and legitimation strategies by looking at narratives, performances, and inscriptions. While monopolizing the justice and policing sectors, in other sectors the LTTE operated pragmatically in conjunction with the state. The organization tried to generate and sustain public authority and legitimacy through a variety of violent and non-violent practices and symbols. It ‘mimicked’ statehood by deploying, among others, policing, uniforms, ceremonies, nationalist songs, commemorations of combatants, and the media. This not only consolidated its grip on the Northeast, but also engineered a level of support and compliance. We conclude that the LTTE's governance included practices that were created and carried out independently from the Sri Lankan state, while others took shape within a pre-existing political order and service provision by the state. The article elucidates the LTTE's mimicry of the state, as well as the operation of parallel structures and hybrid forms of state-LTTE collaboration. This facilitates a nuanced understanding of rebel governance beyond a simple state versus non-state binary.

This article focuses on rebel governance and rebel legitimacy during civil war. It investigates how external intervention in support of an incumbent government and withdrawal of external forces shape rebel legitimacy dynamics and rebels' opportunities to govern. It adopts a longitudinal perspective on Afghanistan's Taliban, analyzing three phases of the movement's existence. Moral forms of legitimacy resonated particularly during instances of external intervention, whereas pragmatic forms of legitimacy became more relevant after the withdrawal of external forces and during periods of the Taliban's opponents' ineffective governance. The article is based on a literature review and fieldwork in Afghanistan.