Power/knowledge in international peacebuilding: The case of the EU police mission in Bosnia

Alternatives

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 297-323

  Merlingen, Michael ^a   Ostrauskaite, Rasa ^a  

^a CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY   (Hungary)

Author keywords

Bosnia; European Security and Defence Policy; Foucault; Governmentality; Peacebuilding; Policing

Indexed keywords

EID: 27744517368     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437540503000303     Document Type: Article

References (90)

1. Kevin Stenson, "Beyond Histories of the Present," Economy and Society 27, no. 4 (1998): 333.
2. For a sampling of this voluminous literature, see Elizabeth M. Cousens and Chetan Kumar, eds., Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2001);
3. Michael W. Doyle, Ian Johnstone, and Robert C. Orr, eds., Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997);
4. Tom Keating and W. Andy Knight, eds. Building Sustainable Peace (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2004);
5. Krishna Kumar, ed., Rebuilding Societies after Civil War: Critical Roles for International Assistance (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1997);
6. John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997);
7. Edward Newman and Albrecht Schnabel, eds., Recovering from Civil Conflict: Reconciliation, Peace, and Development (London: Frank Cass, 2002);
8. Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild and Elizabeth M. Cousens, eds., Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002).
9. Cf. Charles-Philippe David, "Does Peacebuilding Build Peace?" in Ho-Won Jeong, ed., Approaches to Peacebuilding (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 18-58;
10. Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan (London: Vintage, 2003);
11. Marina Ottaway, "Rebuilding State Institutions in Collapsed States," Development and Change 33, no. 5 (2002): 1001-1023;
12. Roland Paris, "International Peacebuilding and the 'Mission Civilisatrice,'" Review of International Studies 28, no. 4 (2002): 637-656.
13. See Ted Galen Carpenter, "High-handed Nation Building: The West Brings 'Democracy' to Bosnia," in Gary T. Dempsey, ed., Exiting the Balkan Thicket (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2002), pp. 11-32;
14. David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton (London: Pluto Press, 2000);
15. David Chandler, "The Responsibility to Protect? Imposing the 'Liberal Peace,'" International Peacekeeping 11, no. 1 (2004): 59-81;
16. François Debrix, (1999): Re-Envisioning Peacekeeping: The United Nations and the Mobilization of Ideology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999);
17. Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin, "Travails of the European Raj," Journal of Democracy 14, no. 3 (2003): 60-74;
18. Oliver P. Richmond, "UN Peace Operations and the Dilemmas of the Peacebuilding Consensus," International Peacekeeping 11, no. 1 (2004): 83-101.
19. For work that does bring to light the unspectacular manner in which power pervades peacebuilding, see Vanessa Pupavac, "From Statehood to Childhood: Regeneration and Changing Approaches to International Order," in Michael Pugh, ed., Regeneration of War-Torn Societies (Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 134-153;
20. Vanessa Pupavac, "Pathologizing Populations and Colonizing Minds: International Psychosocial Programs in Kosovo," Alternatives 27, no. 4 (2002): 489-511.
21. See Renata Dwan, ed., Executive Policing: Enforcing the Law in Peace Operations, SIPRI Research Report no. 16 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003);
22. and Annika S. Hansen, From Congo to Kosovo: Civilian Police in Peace Operations, Adelphi Paper no. 343 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
23. Note, however, that the United Nations deployed police officers already in the early 1960s in its peace-keeping operations in Congo, Irian Jaya (West Papua), and Cyprus. Yet the context and purpose of these missions were very different from those of the new-generation civilian police missions of the post-Cold War era. For details of the early UN experience in policing, see E. A. Schmidl, "Police Functions in Peace Operations: A Historical Overview," in Robert B. Oakley, Michael J. Dziedzic, and Eliot M. Gold-berg, eds., Policing the New World Disorder: Peace Operations and Public Security (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2002), pp. 19-40.
24. Council of the European Union, 2675th Council meeting, External Relations, July 18, 2005, Brussels, 10815/05.
25. For an analysis of the operational shortfalls of ESDP police missions and recommendations to overcome them, see Michael Merlingen and Rasa Ostrauskaite, "ESDP Police Missions: Meaning, Context, and Operational Challenges," European Foreign Affairs Review 10, no. 2 (2005): 215-235.
26. Thomas Carothers, "The Rule of Law Revival," Foreign Affairs 77, no. 2 (1998): 95-106.
27. International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), Transition to Democratic Policing ICITAP Development Program, available at www.usdoj.gov/criminal/icitap/transitionToDemocraticPolicing.
28. Charles T. Call and Michael Barnett, "Looking for a Few Good Cops: Peacekeeping, Peacebuilding, and CIVPOL," in Tor Tanke Holm and Espen Barth Eide, eds., Peacebuilding and Police Reform (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 44.
29. See also Charles T. Call and William Stanley, "Protecting the People: Public Security Choices after Civil Wars," Global Governance 7, no. 2 (2001): 151-172;
30. Annika S. Hansen, "Strengthening Indigenous Police Capacity and the Rule of Law in the Balkans," in Michael Pugh and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, eds., The United Nations and Regional Security (London: Lynne Rienner, 2003), pp. 175-191;
31. Rachel Neild, "Democratic Police Reforms in War-torn Societies," Conflict, Security, and Development 1, no. 1 (2001): 21-43;
32. and Oakley, Dziedzic, and Goldberg, eds., note 5. For a different view, see Huggins's study of US police training in Latin America during the Cold War. Martha K. Muggins, Political Policing: The United States and Latin America (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998).
33. Cf. P. A. J. Waddington, Policing Citizens (London: Routledge, 2003).
34. Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power," in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, eds., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982), pp. 214-215.
35. Cf. also Barry Hindess, Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 118-123.
36. Barry Hindess, "Politics and Governmentality," Economy and Society 26, no. 2 (1997): 267.
37. Barry Hindess, "The Liberal Government of Unfreedom," Alternatives 26, no. 2 (2001): 100.
38. Graham Burchell, "Liberal Government and Techniques of the Self," Economy and Society 22, no. 3 (1993): 271.
39. This hybrid political rationality is not unique to peacebuilding. It is a manifestation of the "daemonic" coupling of the political pastorate and liberalism that Foucault regarded as characteristic of modern governmentalities. Indeed, one can even go farther and argue that despotism is an inextricable part of liberalism: There is a pastorate at the very core of liberal freedom. See Mitchell Dean, "Liberal Government and Authoritarianism," Economy and Society 31, no. 1 (2002): 37-61;
40. Hindess, note 14;
41. and Mariana Valverde, "'Despotism' and Ethical Liberal Governance," Economy and Society 25, no. 3 (1996): 357-372.
42. Michel Foucault, "The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom," in James Bernauer and David Rasmussen, eds., The Final Foucault (Boston: MIT Press, 1994), p. 18.
43. Michel Foucault, quoted in Colin Gordon, "Governmental Rationality: An Introduction," in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 18.
44. David Scott, Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999).
45. Stenson, note 1, p. 338.
46. Knaus and Martin, note 4, p. 69.
47. For details, see Michael J. Dziedzic and Andrew Bair, "Bosnia and the International Police Task Force," in Oakley, Dziedzic, and Goldberg, note 5, pp. 253-314.
48. Council Joint Action of March 11, 2002, establishing the EU Police Mission (2002/210/CFSP). The mandate of the EUPM expires at the end of 2005. Preparatory work on a follow-up mission, which will probably last until 2007, is well advanced, both on the ground and in the EU Council.
49. To ensure smooth cooperation between the OHR and the EUPM, the high representative, Paddy Ashdown, was also appointed EUSR.
50. Between 2002 and 2005, the European Commission allocated about 18 million aria to policing reforms in Bosnia.
51. For instance, in contrast to the IPTF, the EUPM cannot decertify Bosnian police officers.
52. The EUPM enhanced the involvement of locals in Bosnian policing reforms by, among other things, setting up a Police Steering Board and working groups for each EUPM reform program. In these fora, the EUPM consults with senior local police officers on its reform priorities and projects and internationals and locals jointly monitor and assess the progress of the mission reforms and elaborate recommendations for improvement.
53. Cf. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin, 1991).
54. Cf. Michel Foucault, "Technologies of the Self," in Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, eds., Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), p. 18.
55. To subject indigenous policing to their gaze, co-locators require, and are given, unimpeded epistemic access to local officers, premises, internal documents, and decision-making processes.
56. For details and analysis of how the European Union "governmentalizes" indigenous police organizations, see book manuscript by Michael Merlingen and Rasa Ostrauskaite, "The EU's Pursuit of Liberal Peace: ESDP Police Missions in the Restless European Elsewhere" (Brussels, Budapest, Sarajevo, 2005), chap. 6.
57. Bosnian police officers who try to resist the disciplinary gaze of colocators can be dismissed by the high representative, against whose decisions there is no recourse.
58. EUFOR Althea is integral to the European Union's engagement in the war on organized crime in Bosnia. For instance, in 2005 EUFOR Althea conducted a series of countrywide anticrime operations, including roadblocks and border surveillance. The OHR, too, is involved in the fight against organized crime as part of its engagement in rule-of-law reforms. Thus, the Rule of Law Department, while significantly smaller than the Rule of Law Pillar that it replaced in October 2004, continues to have an executive mandate. Notably its Anti-Crime and Corruption Unit plays an active role in the war on organized crime.
59. General Affairs and External Relations Council, 10369/03, Presse 166 (Luxembourg, June 16, 2003), p. 15.
60. European Security Strategy: A Secure Europe in a Better World, adopted by the European Council on December 12, 2003.
61. Cf. also the recent Europol report on organized crime, which claims that expanding criminal activities of organized crime groups pose "a challenge for the Union": 2004 EU Organised Crime Report, open version (The Hague, December 2004), p. 4.
62. European Commission, Report from the Commission: The Stabilisation and Association Process for South East Europe - Second Annual Report (Brussels, March 26, 2003), p. 8.
63. Cf. also the commission's Third Annual Report (Brussels, March 30, 2004).
64. European Commission, Report on the Preparedness of BiH to Negotiate a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU (Brussels, November 11, 2003), p. 29.
65. European Commission, 2003, note 36, p. 4.
66. The London Statement "Defeating Organised Crime in South Eastern Europe" (Nov. 25, 2002).
67. Other international actors, including NGOs, dramatize organized crime in the country in similarly stark terms. For instance, in a recent report on organized crime, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting described contemporary life in Sarajevo in the following way: "Mafia shootouts and bombings continue to shake Sarajevo, and people living here say they have not felt so unsafe since the 1992-95 war": Hugh Griffiths and Nerma Jelacic, "Investigation: Will Europe Take on Bosnia's Mafia?" IWPR Balkan Crisis Report (Dec. 3, 2004).
68. For instance, a survey of people's feeling of insecurity in Banja Luka, which was carried out in the context of a Swiss project running from 2001 to 2002, found that "[v]andalism, violence and crime perpetrated by idle youth [were] accentuated as three main security problems." Moreover, "[d]isrespect of traffic rules and irregular vehicle parking [were] marked as the prime problems of the city": Milan Danicic et al., Good Governance in Bosnia and Hercegovina: Police Training for Democracy (Holzkirchen: Felix Verlag, 2003), p. 43.
69. See also the Bosnian victimization survey carried out in 2001, which found that 75 percent of the population felt secure, compared with, say, 77 percent in Belgium and 64 percent in Poland. The survey is quoted by ICMPD and TC Consult, "Financial, Organisational, and Administrative Assessment of the BiH Police Forces and the State Border Service," Final Assessment Report (Sarajevo, 2004), p. 6.
70. For different academic assessments of the criminalized political economy of Bosnia and its western Balkan neighbors, see, for example, the various contributions to the special issue of Problems of Post-Communism 51, no. 3 (2004);
71. Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper, War Economies in a Regional Context: Challenges of Transformation (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2004), chap. 5;
72. and Francesco Strazzari, "Between Ethnic Collision and Mafia Collusion: The 'Balkan Route' to State Making," in Dietrich Jung, ed., Shadow Globalization, Ethnic Conflicts, and New Wars: A Political Economy of Intra-State War (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 140-162.
73. See, for instance, the statistics in ICMPD and TC Consult, note 41, p. 39.
74. Cf. James Q. Wilson, Thinking about Crime (New York: Basic Books, 1975).
75. David Garland, "'Governmentality' and the Problem of Crime," in Russell Smandych, ed., Governable Places: Readings on Governmentality and Crime Control (Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate, 1999), p. 20.
76. The IPTF, too, incited the local police to prioritize the fight against organized crime, notably from 1998 onward. Hence, there is a certain continuity between the IPTF and the EUPM activities in this area. For instance, the IPTF's Special Trafficking Operations Programme (STOP) was followed up by the EUPM Fight and Intervention Against Human Trafficking (FIGHT) project.
77. Due to space constraints, our discussion of EUPM crime-fighting measures is limited to two reform programs. For a comprehensive description and analysis of relevant mission reforms, see Merlingen and Ostrauskaite, note 31, chap. 4.
78. This MOC subproject was closely tied to another crime-police project that contributed to the establishment of a countrywide computer network to handle crime-related intelligence and information.
79. At the time, the institution was called the State Information and Protection Agency.
80. Bosnia's decentralized policing structure is made up of twenty different forces allied to fourteen different legal orders at three different governance levels.
81. Another important player in the digitalization of SIPA's criminal intelligence was the already mentioned International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP) from the United States, which is the principal bilateral police-aid donor in the world.
82. The development of state-level public security agencies is one component in the European Union's two-pronged strategy to change Bosnia's geographically fragmented policing structure. The other track consists in creating a new single structure across the country, a process that is expected to be completed by the end of 2007.
83. There are isolated initiatives to make policing more responsive to local needs (e.g., the Ustikolina community policing project), but overall, these efforts remain underdeveloped.
84. Cf. Waddington, note 11, p. 11.
85. Cf. Steven R. Ratner, "Does International Law Matter in Preventing Ethnic Conflict?" New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 32, no. 3 (2000): 591-698;
86. Thomas Risse, "'Let's Argue!': Communicative Action in World Politics," International Organization 54, no. 1 (2000): 1-39.
87. For an interesting attempt to draw out a dialogical ethics in Foucault's work, see Romand Coles, Self/Power/Other: Political Theory and Dialogical Ethics (London: Cornell University Press, 1992).
88. This is not to say that such a policing model is a panacea. For a critical view of its transformational effects in countries in transition, see Diana R. Gordon, "Democratic Consolidation and Community Policing: Conflicting Imperatives in South Africa," Policing and Society 11, no. 2 (2001): 121-150.
89. Such a reorientation of ESDP police aid does not mean that the local police would be encouraged to go soft on crime. On the contrary, it holds the promise of rendering the indigenous police more effective with regard to certain types of (organized) crime such as trafficking in human beings that can only be tackled by empowering communities to control themselves. Also, by promoting stronger community ties, ESDP missions would contribute to greater police effectiveness by encouraging citizens to provide local officers with the necessary crime-related information that is so crucial to high clear-up rates. However, while such a caring policing style that focuses on issues of justice and the quality of life in local policing, in addition to law and order issues, limits the pastoral power in policecitizen relations, it is by no means beyond power. Policing, as we argued earlier, inevitably generates effects of power as it secures the security of a historically situated, particularistic social order.
90. Nikolas Rose, "Governing 'Advanced' Liberal Democracies," in Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose, eds., Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-liberalism, and Rationalities of Government (London: UCL Press, 1996), p. 54.