Questions Before the Sudanese Dialogue Begins: Sudan’s Struggle for Stability — A Crisis of Government or a Crisis of the State?

Ahmed Al-Tijani Al-Shayeb
Sudan’s struggle to achieve stability can no longer be seen as a passing phenomenon tied to a particular government or a temporary political dispute between forces competing for power. Rather, it has become an expression of a deeper crisis concerning the very nature of the state: its ability to generate legitimacy, manage diversity, maintain a monopoly over the legitimate use of force, achieve a balance between the centre and the regions, and establish national institutions capable of enduring regardless of fluctuations in political power.
Hence, as Sudanese people prepare for a new dialogue, the most pressing question is no longer: Why does every new attempt to achieve stability in Sudan falter? Rather, it is: Is Sudan suffering from a crisis of government, or is the crisis fundamentally one of the state itself?
There is no doubt that, since independence, Sudan has experienced recurring crises of political authority. Civilian and military governments have succeeded one another, alliances have shifted, and coups, popular uprisings and political agreements have proliferated. Yet the outcome has remained broadly the same: a repeated inability to build a stable political system capable of managing differences within institutions rather than allowing them to turn into zero-sum conflicts.
However, reducing the problem solely to a crisis of political authority may lead to an incomplete analysis. Governments change, while the structural imbalances that produce the same crisis persist. The problem lies not only in who governs Sudan, but also in how the state through which Sudan is governed is constructed.
At various stages, the Sudanese state has suffered from weak national institutions, imbalances in the distribution of power and wealth, and persistent disparities between the centre and the regions. When national institutions are weak, gaining power becomes an objective that goes beyond administering the state to controlling its resources and institutions. Political competition then gradually turns into a struggle over the state itself.
This is where the danger lies. In a stable state, the government can change without the state itself changing, because institutions endure, constitutional rules govern the transfer of power, the armed forces and other uniformed services remain national institutions, the civil administration operates according to law, and society retains the capacity to protect the state from political collapse.
But when the state itself becomes the object of conflict, the fall of a government or a change in leadership does not necessarily produce stability. Instead, it may open the door to a new cycle of conflict. This is what makes Sudan’s crisis far more complex than a mere disagreement among political forces over who should govern.
The current war has clearly exposed the scale of this structural weakness. When multiple centres of armed power emerge and the state’s ability to monopolise the use of force declines, political conflict can turn into military confrontation at any moment. And when confidence in institutions diminishes, each side becomes more inclined to build its own instruments of protection and influence, leaving the state progressively weaker as competing forces become stronger.
Yet a crisis of the state does not mean that there is no crisis of political authority. On the contrary, the crisis of political authority is part of the broader crisis of the state and one of its manifestations. Political authority not grounded in stable constitutional legitimacy, national institutions, and broad social consensus becomes, by its very nature, an additional source of instability.
Sudan has therefore remained trapped in a vicious circle: political crisis produces institutional weakness; institutional weakness produces a power struggle; the power struggle deepens the crisis of the state; and the crisis of the state then reproduces political crisis.
The nature of Sudan’s political elites has also complicated this cycle. Party, regional and personal calculations have frequently taken precedence over building a long-term national project. At various stages, political forces have also treated the state as an instrument for achieving their own objectives rather than regarding it as a public institution belonging to all Sudanese.
For this reason, Sudan cannot achieve stability merely by reaching a political agreement among the elites, however important such an agreement may be. A political settlement may end a war or regulate a transition, but it is not sufficient on its own to build a stable state. What is required is a shift from settling the question of power to rebuilding the state’s foundations.
This means redefining the relationship between politics and the state so that political competition becomes a contest between programmes and policies rather than a struggle for control over state institutions. It also means building a single national army, national security institutions, an independent judiciary, a professional civil service, and a clear constitutional system that defines the limits of authority and prevents any institution from encroaching upon the powers of others.
The relationship between the centre and the regions remains one of the most important questions confronting the Sudanese state. The marginalisation experienced by large parts of the country has not merely resulted from the policies of particular governments; it has become embedded in the state’s structure itself. Rebuilding the state therefore requires addressing the distribution of power and wealth through constitutional and institutional arrangements, not as a concession granted by the centre to the peripheries, but as an inherent right of citizens and regions.
Equal citizenship should therefore become the foundation of Sudan’s new political compact. Regional, tribal, religious or political affiliation should not determine access to rights or opportunities, nor should the state belong to any particular group, party or institution.
Genuine stability cannot be separated from development. A state that is unable to provide security, education, healthcare and basic services, and which leaves large sections of its population excluded from economic production and opportunity, will remain vulnerable to the recurrence of conflict. Rebuilding the state must therefore go hand in hand with an economic and social project that redistributes development opportunities and addresses the root causes of poverty and marginalisation.
Sudan does not merely need a new government; it needs a new conception of the state — a state that is not built on domination or on the monopolisation of decision-making by a party, organisation or military institution, but on a constitutional compact that defines rights and responsibilities, regulates the peaceful transfer of power, guarantees institutional independence and places everyone under the law.
It would be a mistake to assume that ending the war, important though that is, will necessarily bring Sudan’s crisis to an end. The war may end while the causes that produced it remain. The greatest challenge after the fighting stops will therefore be to prevent the crisis from re-emerging in a different form by addressing its political, institutional and social roots.
Sudan today faces two choices: either to return to the familiar cycle of political conflict, deadlock, military intervention, resistance, temporary settlement and renewed crisis; or to seize this historic moment to rebuild the state on new foundations.
In my view, the correct starting point is to acknowledge that Sudan is simultaneously experiencing a crisis of political authority and a crisis of the state, but that the crisis of the state is the deeper of the two, because it explains much of the repeated recurrence of crises of political authority. Changing governments without reforming the structure of the state will therefore merely postpone the crisis.
Sudan needs a modern national state founded on equal citizenship, constitutional legitimacy, the rule of law, national institutions, peaceful transfers of power, equitable decentralisation, fair distribution of resources, and the state’s monopoly over arms.
Only then can stability shift from a temporary truce between competing forces to a sustainable political and social condition.
What Sudan needs, therefore, is not simply an end to the fighting, nor merely an agreement among the political elites on a new government. The country must finally succeed in answering the larger question:
What kind of state do we want to build?
Without an answer to that question, Sudan will remain vulnerable to changes of government while the underlying crisis persists. But if Sudanese people succeed in building a state that accommodates everyone, a change of government will become a normal political event — not another occasion for the collapse of the state.

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