Power/Knowledge in International Peacebuilding: The Case of the EU Police Mission in Bosnia

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Merlingen ◽  
Rasa Ostrauskaite
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Defense Policy ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
International Construction ◽  
Democratic Policing ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
International Peacebuilding ◽  
Liberal Peacebuilding ◽  
The Eu

This article develops the argument that peacebuilding brings into play microphysical and nonsovereign forms of power that circulate through opaque capillaries that link foreign peacebuilders and indigenous populations. It examines the governmentality of liberal peacebuilding and the practices of “unfreedom” it licenses; brings into focus the constellation of social control that is effected by the EU's efforts, in the context of its security and defense policy, to promote democratic policing in Bosnia; and shows how a normatively committed form of governmentality theory can be employed to limit the inevitable political pastorate in the international construction of liberal peace in posthostility societies.

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

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-381
Author(s):  
Julia Strasheim ◽  
Subindra Bogati
Keyword(s):  
Local Perceptions ◽  
China’S Rise ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
China's Rise ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
Security Actor ◽  
Constitution Building ◽  
Liberal Peacebuilding ◽  
The Eu

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.

Disrupting Settler-Colonialism or Enforcing the Liberal ‘Peace’? Transitional (In)justice in Palestine-Israel

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Brendan Ciarán Browne
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Liberal Peacebuilding ◽  
Insight Into

The growing interest in ‘During Conflict Justice’ (DCJ) in areas experiencing ongoing, sustained violent ‘conflict’ has further demonstrated the confluence between transitional justice and liberal peacebuilding approaches. Nowhere so is this more evident than in the case of Palestine-Israel where an ongoing process of Israeli settler-colonialism in historic Palestine continues, with the further spotlighting of ‘justice’ issues that are longstanding and unresolved. This article critiques the application of TJ/DCJ in Palestine-Israel and calls for a radicalisation of its application so as to ensure a platforming of conversation around decolonisation. It does so by critiquing the impact of discourse, specifically the framing of the ‘conflict’ and focuses on the nefarious role of a liberal peace building agenda in Palestine-Israel, a process that has embedded a deeply unjust and inequitable status quo. An insight into several ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ strategies of TJ/DCJ in Palestine-Israel is provided, with the conclusion reached that; any TJ/DCJ praxis that does not platform meaningful conversation around decolonisation in the region will ultimately amount to the individualisation of ‘justice’ whilst failing to address root causes.

Norm Contestation and Normative Transformation in Global Peacebuilding Order(s): The Cases of China, Japan, and Russia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Jütersonke ◽  
Kazushige Kobayashi ◽  
Keith Krause ◽  
Xinyu Yuan
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Rising Powers ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Substantive Content ◽  
Global Norms ◽  
Normative Change ◽  
International Peacebuilding ◽  
Liberal Peacebuilding

Abstract Focusing on the disconnect between mainstream “liberal” peacebuilding and the discourses and practices of “new” and “alternative” peacebuilding actors, this article develops a nonbinary approach that goes beyond norm localization to capture the ways in which major powers influence the nature, content, and direction of normative change. Within the context of their bilateral and multilateral contributions to the “global peacebuilding order,” what forms and types of interventions are conceived by these actors as peacebuilding? How, in turn, has the substantive content of their peacebuilding practices (re)shaped norms and narratives in international peacebuilding efforts? Based on extensive empirical research of the peacebuilding policies and activities of China, Japan, and Russia, this article analyzes the way in which these “top-top” dynamics between norms embedded in the liberal narrative and major powers with competing visions can influence peacebuilding as practiced and pursued in host states. In doing so, it brings together research on global norms and peacebuilding studies and offers a simple yet analytically powerful tool to better understand the evolution of global peacebuilding order(s) and the role of rising powers in (re)shaping global governance.

Introduction Cultures of governance and conflict resolution in the EU and India

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Peter Burgess ◽  
Oliver P. Richmond ◽  
Ranabir Samaddar
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
Regional Organisation ◽  
The Eu

This volume is made up of chapters reflecting results from a European Union Framework project entitled ‘Cultures of Governance and Conflict Resolution in the EU and India’. In it the authors examine the intersection of governance, culture, and conflict resolution in two very different but connected epistemic, cultural, and institutional political settings: the world’s largest democracy and the world’s most ambitious regional organisation, the former resistant to the echoes of British colonialism and eurocentrism, and the latter strongly influenced by British and American thinking on the liberal peace....

scholarly journals EU peacebuilding’s new khaki: Exceptionalist militarism in the trading of good governed for military-capable states

Politics ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 026339572094734
Author(s):  
Marta Iñiguez de Heredia
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
International Order ◽  
International Peace ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
Liberal Peacebuilding ◽  
The Eu

This article explores how European Union (EU) peacebuilding is being reconfigured. Whereas the EU was once a bulwark of liberal peacebuilding, promoting a rule of law–based international order, it is now downplaying the goal of good governance and placing military capacity as central for international peace and security. Several works have analysed these changes but have not theorised militarism, despite war-waging and war-preparation have marked EU peacebuilding’s direction. The article argues that EU peacebuilding continues to expose elements of liberal militarism since its origins but is now changing from what Mabee and Vucetic call a nation-statist to an exceptionalist militarism. This shift implies that peace has ceased to be served by the intervention of sovereignty with a discourse based on the link between order, good governance, and human rights and is now premised on the upholding of sovereignty, even if that means the suspension of rights. The research draws on thematic analysis of EU documents and interviews undertaken with EU and G5 Sahel officials and managers of EU-funded peacebuilding programmes. It also briefly analyses the case of the Sahel as an example of how the build-up of states’ military capacity is strengthening states’ capacity to override human rights and repressing dissent.

The sum of its parts? Sources of local legitimacy

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 522-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birte J Gippert
Keyword(s):  
Field Data ◽  
Local Behaviour ◽  
Effective Functioning ◽  
International Operations ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
International Peacebuilding ◽  
The Eu

The article analyses the sources of local actors’ legitimacy perceptions towards international peacebuilding operations. Local legitimacy perceptions are increasingly recognised as shaping local behaviour towards international peacebuilding, which influences the effective functioning of the operation. Legitimacy debates in peacebuilding are either absent or imported from the literature on domestic legitimacy, without respect to the specific temporal and spatial situation of international operations. The article first explores which legitimacy sources influence local legitimacy perceptions of international peacebuilding operations. It finds that two sources are relevant: output and procedure. Second, it investigates how exactly legitimacy arises from them. In doing so, it demonstrates that output and procedure are umbrella terms comprising several sub-elements which influence legitimacy in different, sometimes contradictory, ways. Finally, the article empirically explores which of the sources are important to local actors’ legitimacy perceptions using field data from the EU peacebuilding operations EULEX in Kosovo and EUPM Bosnia-Herzegovina.

scholarly journals Interrogating the Liberal Peace in East Timor

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Margaret Behrend
Keyword(s):  
East Timor ◽  
Peace Operations ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Sustainable Peace ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
Liberal Peacebuilding

<p>Peace operations from the 1990s have increasingly been driven by the assumption that conflict and social unrest can be ‘solved’ through the establishment and support of liberal structures. Known academically as liberal peace, this approach advocates the liberalisation of politics and economics, and the establishment of rule of law and international human rights norms, claiming such liberal structures offer the necessary foundation to lasting peace. This claim has become unquestioned logic for many of the international bodies and individual actors that participate in the peace industry and has led to a standardised approach to post-conflict situations. However, is this “peacebuilding consensus” justified? Does liberal peace foster sustainable peace? This thesis interrogates the concept and application of liberal peace to assess the extent to which liberal peacebuilding delivers on its claims and provides the foundations of sustainable peace. Due to the enormous size of such a project and the limitations of this thesis, I focus on one case study in my analysis of the liberal peace approach – East Timor. Relying on a single example of peacebuilding allows for a more in depth discussion of efforts, however, it is insufficient to draw broader conclusions about liberal peace. This body of research, therefore, is intended to contribute to existing academic work that evaluates liberal peace. Where this thesis deviates from existing research, however, is in the application of an immanent critique to assess liberal peacebuilding in East Timor...</p>

The Western European Union (WEU)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxime H. A. Larivé
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Defense Policy ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Security ◽  
Gulf Region ◽  
European Continent ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Western European ◽  
The Eu

This empirical and historical analysis of the Western European Union (WEU), an intergovernmental defense organization, contributes to the broader understanding of the construction and integration of European security and defense policy. The WEU was established in 1954 by the Modified Brussels Treaty after the failure of the European Defense Community and at the time of the construction of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Over its lifetime, the WEU was confronted by two major trends: the centrality of collective defense agreement providing security on the European continent enforced by NATO and the construction of a European security and defense policy within the broad integration process of the European Union (EU). The WEU provided a platform for Western European powers, particularly France, the United Kingdom, and Germany, to engage in the construction of a European defense. Historically, these countries had diverging visions ranging from an autonomous force to one that should remain under the NATO auspice. The end of the Cold War accelerated the transfer of the WEU mission to the EU, but the crises in the Gulf region and in the Balkans in 1990s led to a period of activity for the WEU. The institutionalization of the EU, beginning with the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, accelerated the construction of a European defense and security policy within EU structures. The transfer from the WEU to the EU began in the late 1990s and the WEU was dissolved in 2011.

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