The first of two papers, this analysis explores the magnitude and ramifications of ‘communal’ violence in South Sudan in recent years and challenges those who attempt to portray it as ‘ethnic’ or due to the absence of state control. Linking the increased incidence of violence to national and inter-elite rivalries, it argues that these are playing out at the sub-national and local levels due to changes in South Sudan’s political economy, with elite power being reorganized and transferred away from Juba to the states in response to the continuing decline in oil revenues.  A second (forthcoming) paper will re-evaluate the relationship between oil and conflict in South Sudan.

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