Weapons of the Weak State: How Post-Conflict States Shape International Statebuilding

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Campbell ◽  
Aila M. Matanock
Keyword(s):  
Weak State ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
International Statebuilding

The uncritical critique of ‘liberal peace’

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (S1) ◽  
pp. 137-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID CHANDLER
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Market Economic ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
Conflict Intervention ◽  
Winner Takes All ◽  
International Statebuilding ◽  
Policy Elites

AbstractFor many commentators the lack of success in international statebuilding efforts has been explained through the critical discourse of ‘liberal peace’, where it is assumed that ‘liberal’ Western interests and assumptions have influenced policymaking leading to counterproductive results. At the core of the critique is the assumption that the liberal peace approach has sought to reproduce and impose Western models: the reconstruction of ‘Westphalian’ frameworks of state sovereignty; the liberal framework of individual rights and winner-takes-all elections; and neo-liberal free market economic programmes. This article challenges this view of Western policymaking and suggests that post-Cold War post-conflict intervention and statebuilding can be better understood as a critique of classical liberal assumptions about the autonomous subject – framed in terms of sovereignty, law, democracy and the market. The conflating of discursive forms with their former liberal content creates the danger that critiques of liberal peace can rewrite post-Cold War intervention in ways that exaggerate the liberal nature of the policy frameworks and act as apologia, excusing policy failure on the basis of the self-flattering view of Western policy elites: that non-Western subjects were not ready for ‘Western’ freedoms.

International Statebuilding as contentious politics: the case of post conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Outi Keranen
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
International Statebuilding

The post-conflict space in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been marked by a multiplicity of statebuilding projects: in addition to the much-analyzed internationally-led statebuilding process, parallel Bosniak, Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat statebuilding trajectories exist. They seek to undermine and challenge the international statebuilding venture by appropriating and adapting the liberal statebuilding processes. This is carried out through the institutions and processes of governance put in place by international statebuilders to subvert the statebuilding trajectory. Focusing on the local appropriation of processes and institutions of governance, the paper maps out the repertoires of contention entailing boycotts, walk-outs, protests and refusals to co-operate in an attempt to explain and understand how local contention vis-à-vis the international statebuilding trajectory is carried out.

scholarly journals Cyclical Youth-Led Conflict as an Early Warning Indicator

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-25
Author(s):  
Michelle Legassicke
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
World Bank ◽  
International Community ◽  
Weak State ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Sustainable Peace ◽  
External Actors ◽  
World Development

The dynamics of conflict are shifting. In the 2011 World Development Report, the World Bank stated that conflicts are now increasingly cyclical and intractable events; 90 percent of the civil wars that occurred in the 2000s were fought within countries that had experienced a domestic conflict in the past 30 years (World Bank, 2011). Countries are more likely to experience cycles of violence due to the persistence of weak state structures that cannot extend their reach into peripheral regions, leading to local instability (Kingston, 2004). Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the international community observed several states – in which external actors provided 50 percent of those states’ overall revenues – relapse into civil war (Call, 2012). Given the significant investment by the international community in peacebuilding projects in post-conflict states – whether democratic reforms, economic reforms, capacity building, or sustainable development – there needs to be a significant increase in research focused on civil war recurrence, as the trajectory of post-conflict states cannot be guaranteed without sustainable peace.

“Belgrade to Belgradians, Not Foreign Capitalists”: International Statebuilding, Contentious Politics, and New Forms of Political Representation in Serbia

2020 ◽  
pp. 088832542090444
Author(s):  
Nemanja Džuverović ◽  
Aleksandar Milošević
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
International Statebuilding

This article belongs to a forthcoming special cluster, “Contention Politics and International Statebuilding in Southeast Europe” guest-edited by Nemanja Džuverovic, Julia Rone and Tom Junes. One of the main criticisms concerning the process of post-conflict transition in Serbia has been the lack of context sensitivity and participation of the local population in the decision-making process, especially regarding the most important issues that were addressed during the political and economic transformation of the country that began in 2001. This criticism became especially pronounced from the beginning of the economic crisis in 2008, when the negative characteristics of international statebuilding became even more apparent, causing increased dependency on international institutions and further economic marginalisation of the most vulnerable groups. By looking at the movement “Don’t Drown Belgrade” and the series of large-scale protests in Belgrade in 2016, the article seeks to explore the main reasons for social discontent with the international-led statebuilding agenda in post-conflict Serbian society and the local strategies employed to resist and subvert this form of statebuilding.

Conjuring the Criminal State: The “State-Idea” in Post-Conflict Reconstruction and International Statebuilding

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel A Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Critical Dimension ◽  
Criminal Organization ◽  
The State ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Alternative Vision ◽  
International Peacebuilding ◽  
International Statebuilding

Abstract A central challenge of post-conflict recovery is the reconstruction of state institutions, which often emerge from war destroyed or otherwise unable to carry out core administrative activities. But scholarship on international peacebuilding and post-conflict politics tends to focus narrowly on the functional aspects of the state, the state-system, to the neglect of another critical dimension: the state-idea, or its symbolic and normative authority. How do internationally backed institution-building efforts shape the ideational foundations of the state following conflict? Drawing on original interviews and archival research from postwar Guatemala, this article illustrates how, paradoxically, postwar peacebuilding and rule of law initiatives that sought to strengthen the capacity of state institutions simultaneously contributed to the discursive construction of the state as a criminal organization. Specifically, the United Nations’ International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), in seeking to combat state-based criminal structures and bolster institutions, transformed long-held conceptions of Guatemala's “weak” or “failed” state into an alternative vision of the state as a powerful complex of clandestine, predatory networks, and practices. In conjuring the state as a criminal organization that appropriates the formal organs of political power for illicit ends, this international statebuilding initiative generated a coherent and durable state-idea that belies key advances in institutional capacity and the rule of law. Overall, this article contributes to growing debates about the unintended, deleterious effects of international statebuilding efforts by demonstrating how distinct ideas of state power come to fill the void between state capacity and legitimacy.

Post Conflict Interactions of Four Chimpanzees

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Sankovic
Keyword(s):  
Post Conflict

Darfur Region's Post-conflict Reconstruction: Basic Needs and Fundamental Challenges

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gubara Said Hassan ◽  
Bandar Seri Begawan
Keyword(s):  
Basic Needs ◽  
Post Conflict

Moving forward or digging deeper?: How induced regulatory mode affects post-conflict motivations

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Webb ◽  
Susan Futerman ◽  
Tory Higgins
Keyword(s):  
Post Conflict ◽  
Regulatory Mode

Helping with post-conflict readjustment

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Daw Holloway
Keyword(s):  
Post Conflict
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