Liberal Peacebuilding Research Articles

Frictions and hybridity in Mozambique’s post-war peacebuilding: From civil war to precarious peace

ABSTRACT It has been about three decades since Mozambique transitioned from a brutal civil war and one-party rule to peace and democracy. Although Mozambique has not relapsed into another large-scale civil war, sustainable peace and democracy in the country have become ever more elusive. In 2013, military clashes between Renamo and the Frelimo-led government resumed and prompted a new peace process, whilst poverty and inequalities are rampant, authoritarianism is on the rise, and an Islamic insurgency erupted in the northern region. Accordingly, while some scholars still praise Mozambique’s post-war peacebuilding as successful, others have claimed that peacebuilding failed. This article evades the binary of successful or failed liberal peacebuilding in Mozambique. Instead, it applies the concepts of friction and hybridity to offer an alternative way of reading the 30 years of peace (building) in Mozambique. The article argues that frictions in values and interests between the international/liberal peacebuilders and local (non-liberal) elites have resulted in a negative and unstable hybrid peace, that is, a precarious peace in Mozambique.

Abolishing Military and Cultivating Pacifism in Costa Rica: Reflective but Limited Peace?

Existing literature on peace, security and civil-military relations in Latin America only recently recognises the historical institutional sources of Costa Rican exceptionalism. While the Cold War's security predicament and the military dictatorship are common antecedents for most Central American states, Costa Rican demilitarisation and pacifism origins are unique and incomparable. Rather than treating post-1948 civil war development as exceptionalism, this paper seeks to normalise their success. The paper examines the political development of Costa Ricans in the 1950s and whether José María Hipólito Figueres Ferrer's historic decision to permanently abolish the military after the war helped to explain the institutionalisation process of organic civilian peace. While Costa Rican decisions to abandon its defence rights are always romanticised as "progressive" and an anomaly during the Cold War. The reality of relations between military abolishment, pacifism and democratic peace is multidimensional and complex. To perpetuate illogical pacificism reflections from Costa Rica in the 1950s and prescribes into present arguments for global democratic peace is somewhat imprecise. Drawing from years of research on Security in Latin America, this article reinvigorates Costa Rican exceptionalism. It analyses the cultivation of pacificism of those that have made the right choices in the face of adverse circumstances. Considering the historical institutional approach in researching local peace history, the paper illustrates a critical juncture that set peculiar peace formation, the path-dependent that ends the war, and the eventual decision to abolish the military in Costa Rica. The path dependence on national progress in education, health, and productivity only confirmed the unique political trajectory of Costa Rica, wherein they cannot be easily replicated or comparable. Understanding this distinctiveness should serve as a reminder of any renewed debate of Costa Rican exceptionalism in Central American security or democratic peace theory in liberal peacebuilding.

Rebels with a cause: Introducing the Post-Rebel Electoral Parties dataset

The Post-Rebel Electoral Parties (PREP) dataset offers an important new tool to study the transformation of rebel groups into political parties. It provides longitudinal data on the electoral participation and performance in national elections of political parties formed by armed opposition groups after civil war. Post-rebel electoral parties sit at the center of overlapping research agendas that address how best to build durable peace, and how to build resilient political systems and capable states after devastating conflict. A better understanding of how and why these parties participate and perform in elections over time is critical to any assessment of liberal peacebuilding. These parties – their strategic choices, organizational development, and impact on the political systems in which they participate – are also relevant to the broader study of comparative democratization, political parties, and party systems. Our dataset follows these parties forward through up to three decades of participation in postwar electoral politics. The current version of the data consists of 78 distinct parties derived from 56 conflict actors. The data cover 322 legislative election years and 216 executive elections in 39 countries over 30 years (1990–2021). This article describes the data and articulates the need for and motivation behind the dataset. We then illustrate the relevance of the data by testing the impact of rebel participation on the long-term peace.

Occupied by non-violence: Exploring male Palestinian resistance activists’ use of strategic silences in (re)narrating the Palestinian struggle

Liberal peacebuilding has had its fair share of critiques. Along with highlighting its neo-liberal and Western-centric foundations, scholars have also drawn attention to its disregard for Indigenous peace frameworks. Peacebuilding in Palestine is no exception. Based on ethnographic research in the West Bank, this paper examines Orientalist narratives of Palestinian men embedded within the liberal peacebuilding framework and highlights the way that men engaged in unarmed resistance have navigated this terrain through the adoption of public transcripts which (re)narrate the Palestinian story/experience. I argue that this adoption can be interpreted as an act of critical agency where the silencing of their own beliefs is turned on its head to empower and further their agenda and goals. In this way, representation, knowledge, and silence can be understood as not only tools of colonial control, but also tools for Indigenous resistance to Western discourses, narratives, and representations.

Peace Negotiations as Sites of Gendered Power Hierarchies

Abstract Since the passage of UNSCR 1325, women’s formal inclusion in peace negotiations has been advocated as a means to pursue gender equality and improve peace outcomes. A narrow focus on inclusion and the embodied presence of women, however, does not address the gendered hierarchies embedded within negotiations. This article highlights how gender functions as a power structure that normalizes masculinity as the operating standard within the practice of peace negotiations. By focusing on the centrality of militarization and masculinity to liberal peacebuilding, I suggest three ways negotiations function as patriarchal institutions: the issues centered as essential peace components; the types of violence that “count” as conflict-related; and the actors deemed legitimate for inclusion. While inclusion is a critical aspect of improving gendered peace outcomes, attention to gendered bodies must include recognition of gender as an analytical category that shapes not just who is included but how the process is built.

The end of the security–development nexus? Reflections from counterinsurgency in north-eastern Nigeria

In the light of an increasing shift from international interventionism based on liberal peacebuilding to shorter-term stabilisation efforts, this article questions the persistence of the security–development nexus as a theoretical framework backing military and non-military action in conflict-affected areas. It argues that the nexus has been weakened by the prominence gained by regional and national actors on the African continent trying to enforce ‘African solutions to African problems’. Drawing on interviews with key informants and mobilising relevant primary and secondary literature, the paper explores how ad hoc military coalitions created by African states to respond to crises on the continent are sanctioning the transition from long-term peacebuilding to short-term stabilisation objectives. Analysing the Nigerian government’s counterinsurgency strategy against Boko Haram, we argue that the country has completely dropped the ambition to tackle the root causes of the insurgency, and has instead turned to short-term (and short-sighted) security stabilisation operations in line with the global trend of disengagement from active peacebuilding and development promotion. Thereby, we contend that the adoption of this kind of ‘African solutions to African problems’ equals militarised crisis-management in the continent’s peripheries without advancing sustainable solutions to conflicts.

The Applicability of Hybrid Peacebuilding in Ethno-Religious Conflict: A Case Study of the Uighur-Han Conflict in Xinjiang, China

Abstract This study attempted to examine to what extent hybrid peacebuilding would be applicable in Xinjiang’s ethnic conflict between the Han and Uighurs. After situating hybrid peacebuilding within the liberal peacebuilding literature, for further contextualization, the study then extrapolated key information from several other Asian cases of hybrid peacebuilding. It then overviewed the conflict (the parties involved and their various perspectives), outlined the modern efforts to resolve the conflict, and determined how they remain problematic. Finally, the study qualitatively analyzed the theoretical applicability of hybrid peacebuilding, its potential benefits, and potential drawbacks. The study concluded that hybrid peacebuilding has theoretical potential in Xinjiang, especially in the future, but its current drawbacks hinder its chances of success.

The ECOWAS conflict prevention framework and the critical and emancipatory peacebuilding approach

This paper discusses the ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework from the perspective of the critical and emancipatory peacebuilding approach. The paper argues that the ECOWAS conflict prevention framework is largely guided by the principles of the liberal peacebuilding model which ignores the ‘local’ in peacebuilding. The framework represents a complete departure of the sub-regional body, from an emphasis on conflict resolution to transformative conflict prevention with the overarching objective of ensuring human security instead of state security. When subjecting the framework, however, to the philosophies of the critical and emancipatory peacebuilding approach and the social justice frame, one notices that, in its current form, the framework is inadequate to ensure sustainable peace and security within the sub-region. Its over-reliance on the state as the unit of focus together with its adoption of liberal conceptualization of human security, focus on direct violence, top-down approach, low engagement of local communities to ensure local ownership, and the way these have been implemented make it an apparent elite-based policy. For the framework to have an impact in the sub-region, it must be restructured to make it an empowering policy that engages local actors, communities, resources, and knowledge in the transformative conflict prevention agenda of the sub-region. The framework also needs to be anchored on local ownership and agency and must be made to act as an emancipatory and transformative tool aimed at empowering the people of the sub-region as peacemakers, peacebuilders, and transformative leaders.

“Negotiated Coexistence”: Indian and Chinese Engagement in the Global Governance of Peacebuilding

Abstract A much-discussed theme in international relations is how emerging powers will engage with the declining liberal world order and its various governance regimes. This article examines the engagement of emergent powers with the regime of “peacebuilding.” Empirically, it examines the interaction between India and China, with liberal peacebuilding projects in the peace processes of Nepal and Myanmar respectively. Departing from the theory that emergent powers either displace, or converge with, the liberal world order, this article argues that emergent powers have a “negotiated coexistence” with liberal peacebuilders. Despite competing motivations, this “coexistence” of liberal peacebuilders and emergent powers is negotiated, first, by the agency of conflict-affected states, who invoke plural forms of international engagement, to gain strategic advantage, and secondly, by limited interaction between the two, given the differences in their priorities and modalities of engagement. The differences ensure that emergent powers operate in parallel, yet distinctly, from peacebuilders, rarely crossing each other's path. This limited interaction not only prevents this coexistence from degenerating into instances of potential contestation but also inhibits cooperation. Yet, when emergent powers view their economic and strategic interests being threatened by norms and practices of liberal peacebuilding projects, few instances of contestation emerge.

Contesting liberal peace: Russia's emerging model of conflict management

Abstract Russia has begun to promote itself internationally as a mediator of conflict and as a ‘peacemaker’. Russian officials cite its extensive experience in managing numerous post-Soviet conflicts and its more recent experience of intervention in civil wars in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia considers all these activities forms of ‘peacemaking’, but its approach differs radically from the model of liberal peacebuilding that has dominated international practice in the post-Cold War era. It prioritizes authoritarian stability over justice, human rights and democracy and advocates short-term goals of conflict management over long-term goals of conflict resolution. In this article I explain why Russia's norms of peacemaking and conflict management diverged so markedly from liberal peacebuilding norms. I argue that Russia is no longer simply contesting western norms, but developing its own distinct model of conflict management. This model accepts the use of force as an integral element in peacemaking, engages in ‘coercive’ mediation by authoritative actors, and views the West as a geopolitical and normative opponent. This debate over Russia's approach to peace and conflict also offers wider insights into how Russia challenges the norms and practices that underpin the liberal international order.

Global citizenship education and peace education: toward a postcritical praxis

This paper argues for a postcritical praxis in global citizenship education (GCE) and peace education (PE). The paper begins by critiquing the interlocking fields of GCE and PE as problematically framed around the three key pillars of liberal peace. Then, drawing on postabyssal thinking the paper illustrates that the Western-centricity of liberal peacebuilding is not only colonialist/imperialist but that it is an erasure of the other. The paper argues that in light of this realization epistemological pluralism as a transformative response is wanting. Instead new responses must focus on other ontological possibilities grounded in a postcritical response to postabyssal thought. Before concluding, the paper offers some pedagogic possibilities integrating the ontological for a new postcritical GCE and PE.

Imagining Peace Outside of Liberal Statebuilding: Anarchist Theory as Pathway to Emancipatory Peacefacilitation

Critical scholarship on peace has coined the term liberal peacebuilding and proven that it is unsuccessful, even counterproductive, in achieving that what it sets out to do—foster peace after violent conflict. The dominant part of this endeavor has been statebuilding. This paper adds to a slowly developing literature that starts to ask the question what an alternative to the reliance on statebuilding could look like. By employing anarchist theory, a new theoretical methodology is introduced to International Relations that allows to imagine forms of peace outside the liberal paradigm whilst preventing imperialistic claims. Such an emancipatory peace practice based on anarchism is envisioned as to build on prefigurative politics and direct action, strengthening autonomy, decentralization, and horizontality as well as challenge all structural forms of domination through radical forms of self-determination. Incorporating such an anarchist agenda offers one perspective on what fostering peace outside decontextualized and imposed liberal nation states could be. I argue that challenging statebuilding foreshadows a greater implication an anarchist research agenda promotes, namely, the need to move away from peace building toward emancipatory forms of peace facilitation.

Deconstructing Liberal Peacebuilding: Lessons from the Western Balkans

Deconstructing Liberal Peacebuilding: Lessons from the Western Balkans

Everyday peacebuilding and practices in Kenya, South Sudan, Somaliland and Ghana: introduction

Through an �everyday� lens, the articles presented in this supplementary issue draw together diverse discourses, experiences, theorisations and interpretations of everyday peacebuilding. This introduction seeks to locate peacebuilding as a policy agenda and centres the idea of the everyday lens that is useful in countering the dominant focus of liberal peacebuilding that privileges external actors. The authors do not engage in the philosophical dates of everyday but rather uses it as placeholder for �the local�; more as a referent to a scale of analysis than a substantive characteristic of distinct phenomena in its own right. This, as presented here, is taken to mean quite distinct things to different scholars, as is illustrated in the collection of articles by the various authors in this supplementary issue.

A Challenge to the Liberal Peace? European Union Peacebuilding faces China in Nepal

Abstract How does China’s rising presence in Nepal affect the European Union’s own peacebuilding efforts in the country? As a global peace and security actor, the EU has followed the liberal peacebuilding model that promotes peace by strengthening democratic institutions. China’s rise as a “pragmatic” peacebuilder is often called non-conducive to this approach, but how this dynamic plays out has rarely been studied with detailed case evidence. We narrow this gap using the case of Nepal. Drawing on interviews conducted between 2015 and 2020, we find that China’s rise has decreased the EU’s leverage in promoting peace in the areas of civil society, human rights, and constitution-building. But some setbacks in the peace process were unrelated to China. Instead, they were also linked to the EU’s own reform neglects and policy differences, and to local perceptions about peacebuilders, showing how external and internal challenges jointly affect the EU’s role as peacebuilder.

Illiberal peacebuilding in a hybrid regime. Authoritarian strategies for conflict containment in Myanmar

The post-Cold War period has seen the rise of international liberal peacebuilding, as an overarching framework for international interventions in intrastate conflicts. In contrast, the current period is marked by decline of liberal peacebuilding, and a simultaneous rise of domestic illiberal peacebuilding. This has created a gap between the predominant theoretical and policy framework and the actual form of peacebuilding in many conflict-ridden societies. The present article addresses this challenge through a contextual case study of illiberal peacebuilding in Myanmar. The case study shows how a dominant state actor – the military (Tatmadaw) – has used both coercion and co-optation to contain armed resistance against militarized and centralized statebuilding and thereby strengthen the state's territorial control and authority. While the SLORC/SPDC military junta (1988–2011) sought to contain ethnic armed organizations through military offensives, ceasefire agreements and illiberal peacebuilding, the military based USDP-government (2011–2015) institutionalized a hybrid regime as a framework for political transformation of EAOs, and tolerated a degree of dual territorial, administrative and resource control at the local scale. These clientelist measures failed to address the substantive issues behind Myanmar's multiple and protracted conflicts. They were also combined with military offensives against non-ceasefire groups and war by other means in ceasefire areas. Moreover, the case study demonstrates that the Tatmadaw used its tutelary power to obstructs substantive conflict resolution through negotiated state reforms. Myanmar's peace initiatives during the last three decades should thus be understood as illiberal strategies for containing ethnic armed organizations rather than attempts at substantive conflict resolution.

Authoritarian Governance and Ambiguous Religious Policy: An Uncertain Future for Covenantal Pluralism in Tajikistan

The former Soviet Central Asian republic of Tajikistan has witnessed a conflictual political and social transformation after 1991 leading to a devastating civil war between 1992 and 1997. After the civil war, international efforts of liberal peacebuilding and post-conflict rehabilitation allowed a domestic détente, in which political and, importantly, religious pluralism could flourish unprecedently for the standards of the country. Still, this form of pluralism did not meet the ideal standards of covenantal pluralism as such. In the past decade, moreover, Tajikistan has gradually turned into a consolidated autocracy in which even formal pluralism is suspended. Authoritarian governance, especially in the sphere of religion, has aggravated societal divides and undermined social cohesion in the country. Although the short-term prospects for pluralism in general and covenantal pluralism in particular are dim, a differentiated perspective on the ideal of covenantal pluralism in the longue durée might provide possible starting points for meaningful engagement in Tajikistan bridging religious, societal, and political divides.

How Africa and China may shape UN peacekeeping beyond the liberal international order

Abstract UN peacekeeping became a flagship activity of the liberal international order (LIO) in the post-Cold War era, characterized by globalization, liberal norms and western leadership. Western states' diminished support for LIO UN peacekeeping has left it increasingly open to challenge, but significant changes are only likely if a strong group of states coalesces around an alternative model of UN peacekeeping. This article highlights African actors and China as well positioned to play pivotal roles in such a coalition. African states, who host the preponderance of UN missions and furnish almost half of the UN's uniformed peacekeepers, support globalized UN peacekeeping, show relatively weak support for the most liberal peacebuilding principles and assert the need for African-led solutions to continental crises. China's influence reflects its P5 status, financial and personnel contributions to UN peacekeeping and engagement with regional actors, notably in Africa. Aspiring to global leadership and a ‘new world order’, China endorses globalized UN peacekeeping but proposes a non-liberal (and non-western led) notion of ‘developmental peace’ to guide it. The complementarities between African and Chinese priorities raise the possibility of a profound challenge to LIO peacekeeping. Rather than heralding deglobalization, however, this challenge illustrates that post-LIO international institutions may instead be characterized by deliberalization and dewesternization.

Afghanistan and the Failure of Liberal Peacebuilding

The collapse of the US-aligned Afghan government and the seizure of Kabul by the Taliban in 2021 as the United States withdrew its forces was ultimately caused by a change in US government policy in June 2003. At that point, the George W. Bush administration dropped its aversion to state-building and its plan for a limited intervention designed to rid the country of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The US instead undertook an extended exercise in liberal peacebuilding, involving the creation of an institutionally and coercively powerful centralised Afghan state and a liberal-democratic system. This enterprise was inherently misconceived, largely ignoring Afghan history and culture, as well as the limitations of the US and its partners. The painful experience of the past 18 years indicates that liberal peacebuilding, at least along the lines of the US-led effort in Afghanistan, should not be attempted again.

Peacebuilding with “Chinese Characteristics”? Insights from China's Engagement in Myanmar's Peace Process

AbstractThe unpreceded rise of China, amid the decline of the Western-led liberal world order, has brought questions about how China will engage with the various manifestations of that world order, including human rights, trade, and global peace and security regimes. Through the empirical example of Chinese engagement in Myanmar, this article offers an inductive analysis of China's engagement in the field of “peacebuilding”: a prominent manifestation of the liberal world order in post-conflict states. In doing so, the article first argues that China speaks a distinct vernacular of peace, which is characterized by five core features: a focus on stability, prioritisation of development, conditional adherence to state-centricity, prioritization of regional actors in the making of peace, and an aversion to templates and policies for engaging in peace processes. Secondly, the article also highlights that in deploying these features, Chinese engagement in conflict management in Myanmar not only generates tensions between the various features, but is also seen to overlook local needs, bolster elite control of the state, discount the political context of peace processes, and indeed fluctuate in accordance with Chinese strategic and economic interests: all issues that resonate with the dominant critique of liberal peacebuilding projects. In proffering these arguments, the article cautions that as the Chinese approach to peacebuilding matures and strengthens, the ironing out of these contradictions is likely to be challenging.