Winning hearts and minds: legitimacy in the Namibian war for independence

Lieneke Eloff de Visser

Small Wars and Insurgencies, 2013, vol. 24, issue 4, 712-730

Abstract: Efforts at winning hearts and minds (WHAM) impact on and are affected by perceptions of legitimacy. In the Namibian war for independence (1966–1989) efforts of the South African counterinsurgent forces at winning hearts and minds focused mainly on persuading the population to cooperate in exchange for material benefits and services. The article demonstrates that this successfully contributed to a dimension of legitimacy that is conceptualized as pragmatic legitimacy. However, other dimensions of legitimacy are identified in which the South Africans were lacking, that is in moral, legal, and identity-based legitimacy. Furthermore, in areas where control was contested and where the population could not be shielded from insurgent intimidation, it is argued that the effects of coercion outweighed legitimacy altogether.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09592318.2013.857942 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:fswixx:v:24:y:2013:i:4:p:712-730

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/fswi20

DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2013.857942

Access Statistics for this article

Small Wars and Insurgencies is currently edited by Paul Rich

More articles in Small Wars and Insurgencies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().