Abstract
Abstract Peacebuilding policies and practices represent strong attempts by external actors to exercise power in postconflict settings. Yet the extensive theoretical treatments of power in International Relations remain somewhat disconnected from empirical analyses of peacebuilding, and how external actors exercise power is under-conceptualised in the literature. Likewise, the literature on forms of resistance by local actors is seldom examined as an exercise of power in itself, and as part of a multidimensional relationship of power/resistance between external and local actors. This article thus theorises the different dimensions of power/resistance, with a detailed focus on an exemplary case – international efforts at peacebuilding in Burundi – that spans more than twenty years. It deploys a tripartite conception of both to analyse the ways in which different forms of power and resistance can be uncovered in peacebuilding practices, We demonstrate this via an analysis of postconflict peacebuilding in Burundi, and in particular the longer-term efforts of local actors to overtly and covertly bend and fuse peacebuilding practices to their own ends.
Highlights
Postconflict peacebuilding has been part of the core business of multilateral organisations and agencies since the publication of the Agenda for Peace in 1992, and the first systematic attempts at peacebuilding in the Balkans, Timor Leste, and elsewhere
It deploys a tripartite conception of both to analyse the ways in which different forms of power and resistance can be uncovered in peacebuilding practices, We demonstrate this via an analysis of postconflict peacebuilding in Burundi, and in particular the longer-term efforts of local actors to overtly and covertly bend and fuse peacebuilding practices to their own ends
The above analysis illustrates the diverse ways in which local actors deploy different forms of power to resist attempts by external actors to reshape political, social, and economic relations through peacebuilding programmes and policies
Summary
Postconflict peacebuilding has been part of the core business of multilateral organisations and agencies since the publication of the Agenda for Peace in 1992, and the first systematic attempts at peacebuilding in the Balkans, Timor Leste, and elsewhere. As noted by Oliver Richmond and Audra Mitchell, ‘local actors may openly reject international policies or strategies, they may implicitly reject them by failing to comply, foot-dragging, or they may find ways of co-opting them into localized political project by renegotiating them with their sponsors, using their cooperation and compliance as a bargaining tool.’[29] Or, as noted by Ursula Schroeder et al, they may adopt strategies of ‘adoption, adaptation or rejection’, through forms of resistance that can include selective adoption or mimicry of norms, organisational structures or practices (in the security sector), to make them congruent with local beliefs and power constellations, all of which reflects resistance that contests bargaining power, but the productive power of the global norms and practices promoted by external peacebuilders.[30] This is an ongoing process, not a one-shot bargaining interaction, and since ‘the global and the local are in constant confrontation and transformation’ the relationship must be analysed over a longer time frame to capture the frictional or ‘abrasive encounters where ideas, practices, norms, and actors, meet and result in new or unintended outcomes through adaption, disengagement, hesitation, rejection and co-option.’[31] The upshot as noted by David Chandler, is often ‘hybrid. Illustrating how ethnic quotas have become the focus of multileveled power struggles, in 2018 around thirty international NGOs chose to close their operations in the country, thereby removing $280 million from the Burundian economy.[64]
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