The Pitfalls of Peacebuilding from Below

Abstract

One of the important themes in Boutros-Ghali's Agenda for was the connection between democratic practices at all levels of society and the emergence of true peace and security. If the ultimate goal of peacebuilding strategies is to build strong states characterized by autonomy, capacity, and legitimacy, institutionalizing citizen participation at grassroots levels can push each of these goals forward. It can act as a check on elite efforts to capture the peacebuilding processes, enhance the access of state officials to local conditions and knowledge, and, ultimately, provide the state with a broader base of social and political support. Finally, as An agenda for stressed, the promotion of democratic institutions in postconflict societies can also provide a means of enhancing the empowerment of the unorganized, the poor, and the marginalized.1 It is also clear, however, that immediate post-civil war contexts, together with the pacts and peace agreements that emanate from them, work in a contrary direction - privileging elite power, accumulation, and status. Even where citizen involvement is included in locally generated peacebuilding strategies, it is often a constrained involvement, limited to symbolic rather than empowered participation. The question that this article addresses is to what degree external actors can counter these elite-privileging dominant trends.The first decade of Lebanon's postconflict period provides a fascinating period and context within which to investigate this question. Despite its 15-year civil conflict, between 1975 and 1990, that saw the collapse of the country's power-sharing agreement among its numerous Christian and Muslim communities, the emergence of multiple and externally supported armed sectarian factions, and the devastating military interventions of both Syria and Israel, Lebanon has actually had a long tradition of functioning democratic institutions, ones reestablished in the postwar era. It has a constitution that formally guarantees the rights of individuals; an electoral system that ensures the inclusive representation of all major religious communities; and a commitment embedded in the Ta' if accord of 1989 - a set of constitutional amendments that established the political parameters for the postconflict period - to the promotion of social and economic rights of Lebanese citizens. Yet Lebanon's postwar record of protecting the social, civil, and political rights of its citizens has been problematic. Despite democratic political procedures, for example, substantive political participation in postwar decision-making has been extremely narrow, restricted to the particularistic, elite-based, and coercive shadow networks that underline and penetrate the Lebanese polity.2 Its performance with respect to the promotion of socioeconomic rights has been suspect, with vast capital expenditures earmarked for infrastructure and declining expenditures for social development, a combination that has contributed to unprecedented rates of corruption, increased income inequality, and growing rates of poverty.3This article provides a critical examination of donor efforts to tilt the balance of power in favour of greater social participation in Lebanon's initial postconflict decade. The article will begin with a brief overview of the Lebanese political field, focusing on the shadow processes and actors that have reconsolidated their formal power in the postwar era. This will be followed by a brief overview of the relevant literature of inclusive peacebuilding. The heart of the article will then compare two sets of governance promotion initiatives - the first two emanating from local civil society actors themselves in the fields of environment and disability, and the latter two spearheaded by foreign donors in the fields of community development and grassroots conservation. The main argument flowing from the analysis of these four projects will be that donor-initiated peacebuilding strategies, while professing an interest in promoting broad-based, participatory governance processes in postconflict Lebanon, have been more likely, for reasons to be examined below, to facilitate the consolidation and reproduction of elitebased political power. …