Peacebuilding, the Rule of Law and the Problem of Culture: Assimilation, Multiculturalism, Deployment

Abstract

The technocratic project of building the rule of law in post-conflict peacebuilding is advanced as a guarantor of liberal peace. This ‘rule of law fable’ that correlates peace with technical institutions of western legal systems recalls the colonial and modernisation ethos to engineer African societies in our own image. As such, as in the case of Sierra Leone, practices of law that do not conform to the interventionary conceptualisation of the rule of law are rendered pathological. Specifically, ‘culture’ is positioned as a problem for peacebuilders to solve. There is not, however, a homogeneous response to the problem of culture, but strategic diversity: assimilation, underpinned by liberal claims to cultural neutrality, aims to produce cultural sameness by combating custom and tradition. Accommodation that domesticates local tradition represents a radically depoliticised multiculturalism, while deployment mobilises tradition to encourage ‘buy-in’ to the rule of law project.