The ‘Turn to the Local’: hybridity, local ordering and the new governing rationalities of peace and security interventions in Somalia

Abstract

This thesis explores the potential and the limits of the ‘turn to the local’ in approaches to promote more inclusive forms of order and peace in conflict and post-conflict settings.As a consequence of the apparent limitations of liberal peace approaches that inform international peace and security interventions, recent discursive and practical shifts indicate a move away from imported institution-building and toward working through and upon local societal dynamics and socalled non-state actors. Thereby, logics of hybridity, non-linearity and resilience are incorporated into new governing rationalities of intervention policies. As a result, the concepts of ‘hybrid political orders’, ‘the everyday’ and ‘hybrid peace’- which were introduced into the debate as critiques of the liberal peace and state fragility discourses - no longer stand in univocal critical opposition to the liberal peacebuilding discourse. Rather, in the context of the ‘turn to the local’, hybridity is now both a concept informing critical peace and conflict analysis and a new terrain for policy discourse which opens up ‘the local’ as a key domain for intervention. This thesis examines how the ‘turn to the local’ and the associated approaches to hybrid governance work and are legitimized. It explores the agendas that underpin these emerging shifts and the accompanying dynamics and effects within local settingsThis is explored through case study research focusing on the context of Somalia in which top-down approaches have consistently failed, while sub-national and local actors and institutions have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to craft alternative governance arrangements. International actors have shown increasing interest in engaging local actors and governance arrangements. Somalia is thereby not only an exemplary case with regards to failures of intervention, but is also at the forefront of the less explored rise of localized governance arrangements and the employment and testing of new intervention approaches that work upon and through governance beyond the state. The first case study chapter focuses on local internal approaches in response to violent state collapse beyond conventional statebuilding. The analysis substantiates and elaborates central themes of the ‘hybrid political orders’/’hybrid forms of peace’ literature. The subsequent case study chapters explore what happens when ‘the local’ and notions of hybridity and the everyday are incorporated into intervention rationales. Each case study chapter analyzes a particular aspect of peace and security interventions in the context of the ‘turn to the local’, namely governance, security/justice and counterinsurgency. Taken together, the analysis covers central dimensions of the ‘turn to the local’ as well as different geographical contexts (Somaliland, Puntland and South regions) in Somalia.The findings demonstrate that while decentered and hybrid governance approaches in the context of internal reconstruction have yielded peaceful outcomes, and while the ‘turn to the local’ may open avenues for external engagement that builds on rather than contains or ignores existing practices, emerging policy discourses centering on ‘the local’ also signify new ways of legitimating social engineering informed by liberal peace thinking. Moreover, adding a security-specific angle to the question of hybrid governance, the thesis demonstrates how the ‘turn to the local’ involves new trajectories of counterinsurgent warfare through which military force is injected into the fabric of local communities. The thesis thereby highlights the importance of acknowledging and critically examining the specific geopolitical and policy contexts in which the terms of the debate on ‘hybridity’ and ‘bottom up’ concepts circulate, as well as the different agendas such proposals become entwined with. Through case study analysis it reappraises central aspects of the ways in which peace and security interventions and hybridity, non-state governance and local forms of peace are currently debated and represented. Moreover, whereas scholars have pointed to problems of holding local ‘non state’ actors accountable, the thesis draws specific attention to challenges related to holding international interveners accountable.