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Jessica Piombo, Ph.D.
jrpiombo@gmail.com
Associate Professor
Naval Postgraduate School
Year of PhD: 2003
City: Monterey, California - 93955
Country: United States
About Me:
Jessica Piombo is an Associate Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), where she teaches courses on African politics, U.S. Foreign Policy, comparative politics, and ethnic politics and conflicts. Piombo has been a visiting scholar at the University of the Western Cape, the University of Cape Town, George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, and Stanford University’s Center for African Studies. Her teaching and research specializes on political transitions and post-conflict governance; statebuilding and peacebuilding; mechanisms to manage ethnic conflict; African security; and U.S. foreign policy in sub-Saharan Africa. Piombo joined NPS in 2003 after completing her Ph.D. at the Department of Political Science of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Piombo is the author of Institutions, Ethnicity and Political Mobilization in South Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); editor of The U.S. Military in Africa: Enhancing Security and Development? (First Forum Press, a division of Lynne Rienner, 2015); Interim Governments: Institutional Bridges to Peace and Democracy? (with Karen Guttieri, USIP Press, 2007); and editor of Electoral Politics in South Africa: Assessing the First Democratic Decade (with Lia Nijzink, Palgrave MacMillan, 2005). She has authored numerous articles, reports and book chapters on international assistance to post-conflict states, US aid and security programs in Africa, international mediation, transitional governance, and dynamics of democratization. Piombo has conducted extensive research in South Africa (primary country of expertise), has monitored elections in South Africa and Nigeria, and conducted field research in Cambodia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Laos, Rwanda and Uganda. Piombo has twice won research funding from the OSD Minerva Initiative, university grants open competition. In her most recent research effort, Piombo has been collaborating with Pierre Englebert (Pomona College and The Atlantic Council) on a project that explores the domestic determinants of how regimes confront security threats and how they engage with third party offers of security sector assistance offered. Funded by the OSD Minerva Project, this multi-year collaborative initiative involves fieldwork in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, and other countries (fieldwork has been interrupted by COVID and hopefully will resume in late 2021).
Research Interests
African Politics
Conflict Processes & War
Comparative Political Institutions
Foreign Aid
Comparative Democratization
Peacekeeping
Development
Security Policy
Foreign Policy
My Research:
Piombo is the author of Institutions, Ethnicity and Political Mobilization in South Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); editor of The U.S. Military in Africa: Enhancing Security and Development? (First Forum Press, a division of Lynne Rienner, 2015); Interim Governments: Institutional Bridges to Peace and Democracy? (with Karen Guttieri, USIP Press, 2007); and editor of Electoral Politics in South Africa: Assessing the First Democratic Decade (with Lia Nijzink, Palgrave MacMillan, 2005). She has authored numerous articles, reports and book chapters on international assistance to post-conflict states, US aid and security programs in Africa, international mediation, transitional governance, and dynamics of democratization. Piombo has conducted extensive research in South Africa (primary country of expertise), has monitored elections in South Africa and Nigeria, and conducted field research in Cambodia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Laos, Rwanda and Uganda. In her most recent research effort, Piombo has been collaborating with Pierre Englebert (Pomona College and The Atlantic Council) on a project that explores the domestic determinants of how regimes confront security threats and how they engage with third party offers of security sector assistance offered. Funded by the OSD Minerva Project, this multi-year collaborative initiative involves fieldwork in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, and other countries (fieldwork has been interrupted by COVID and hopefully will resume in late 2021).
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Efforts to build state capacity in developing countries are often predicated on the assumption that external partners can help states improve their effectiveness and earn legitimacy by providing aid for public service provision. In a theorybuilding exercise, this paper advances a typology of aid dynamics in order to afford a granular picture of how development assistance for public service provision interacts with internal governance processes in recipient countries. Developing a conjunctural conceptualization of aid dynamics, we articulate how the impact of foreign aid depends not just on how much money is involved but also on whether donors or recipient governments are more influential in designing and implementing aid programs. We illustrate the descriptive utility of this typology by applying it to our empirical research on aid in the health and education sectors in Cambodia, Laos, and Uganda. We also probe causal expectations emerging from the typology, anticipating that aid for public service delivery has distinct and separate effects on state effectiveness and legitimacy depending on the precise aid conjuncture through which it is conceived and delivered. We conclude with suggestions for further research on the impact of foreign aid on state–society relations through the lens of public service delivery.
While scholars and practitioners alike argue that the pursuit of sustainable peace in post-conflict developing countries requires international interventions to build state capacity, many debate the precise effects that external assistance has had on building peace in conflict-affected states. This paper seeks to clear conceptual ground by proposing a research agenda that disentangles statebuilding and peacebuilding from each other. Recent scholarship has made the case that the two endeavours are geared towards distinct sets of goals, yet few have subjected the causal mechanism underlying those processes or the relationship between them to sustained theoretical and empirical inquiry. Additionally, despite decades of mixed results from international interventions, we lack knowledge of the mechanisms by which external engagement leads to specific outcomes. To address these gaps, this paper offers a causal framework for understanding the effects of aid dynamics on state coherence and the depth of peace. It specifies the variables in that framework, with a view to establishing a new research agenda to advance our understanding of statebuilding and peacebuilding. Finally, it proposes that public service delivery in post-conflict countries offers fertile empirical ground to hypothesize about and test the relationship between state coherence and sustainable peace.
South Africa is in the middle of a period of political and economic unrest unlike anything the country has experienced since the end of apartheid in 1994. In March 2015, students at the University of Cape Town launched the #Rhodesmustfall campaign, aimed at bringing down a statue of the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes. Since then, students have regularly stormed the nation’s universities, labor unions have held strikes, and populist social movements have taken to the streets. The protesters have called for wholesale reform of the country’s economy and directly challenged the ruling African National Congress. And the ANC itself is in crisis, divided between supporters and detractors of South African President Jacob Zuma.
US policy in Africa espouses lofty ideals, such as promoting respect for human rights, good governance, and democracy, which tend to be violated in practice. Washington has a consistent record of backing governments that support US strategic, economic, or military interests, regardless of the governments’ domestic or regional behavior. Current US policy toward Africa is bedeviled by these same dualities—some might say contradictions—that have undermined a true unity of purpose and message. Ultimately, these dualities may undermine the advancement of American interests in the region
Peacemakers are faced with a difficult decision when engaging in negotiations to end conflict: should they adopt a conflict resolution strategy that seeks to address the fundamental drivers of conflict (root causes) or pursue a more limited strategy of conflict termination that seeks to respond to the symptoms of violence? This article investigates this question through a case study of the Burundian civil war of the 1990s. It analyzes externally facilitated peace negotiations in order to explore the types of issues that were brought into the process, to ask when and why certain issues were or were not considered, and to investigate the effects of the choices made in negotiating strategies. The lessons of the Burundi case suggest that fundamental issues must be addressed if a conflict is to be fully resolved rather than just managed. Delaying the resolution of root causes until after peacemakers have exited the situation can enable powerful groups to avoid addressing the issues. After the peacemaking and negotiations process ends, there is less international attention and pressure, so the ability to perpetuate the status quo is enhanced. The difficulty is that the issues that fomented conflict in the first place may prove too sensitive to be introduced into negotiations when the conflict is either ongoing or very recent.
Books Written:
Recent US security policy toward Africa has adopted a multidimensional approach—including the use of military assets to promote economic development and good governance—that has raised questions and generated considerable debate. Can actors like the US military develop appropriate methods to address both US and African interests? What blend of civilian and military programs are most likely to produce the best outcomes? And more fundamentally, is the military the appropriate actor to undertake governance and development projects? The authors of The US Military in Africa explore these questions, providing an insightful combination of conceptual analysis and rich case studies.
An investigation of post-apartheid South Africa, which is notable for a history of politicized ethnicity, a complicated network of ethnic groups and for an expectation that ethnic violence would follow the 1994 political transition that did not occur following democratization.
This edited volume by Karen Guttieri and Jessica Piombo explores various aspects of the newly emerging range of interim regimes, focusing on issues of legitimacy, conflict management, and the increasing participation of the international community in transitions from war to peace.