The return of plural society: statebuilding and social splintering

Abstract

This article argues that liberal practices of peace- and statebuilding in post-conflict societies contribute to cement ethnic divisions and exacerbate social and spatial splintering. Drawing on historical experiences from colonial policy and from post-colonial international development and statebuilding the article argues that a particular problem lies in the conception and character of the state being promoted. Although liberal peace- and statebuilding have come under accumulating critique over the past decade, the practices and liberal interventionist agenda has consolidated and continued to expand. It has come to increasingly express an authoritarianism and lack of legitimacy and democracy that has recently given rise to a critique in terms of ‘post-liberal’ governance. This article instead argues that the authoritarian and undemocratic nature of governance is an extension of and fully in line with historical liberal practice as well as the theory and ideology of neoliberalism.