Unpacking the liberal peace: The dividing and merging of peacebuilding discourses

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 36, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 597-621

  Heathershaw, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 50349089976     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298080360031101     Document Type: Article

References (150)

1. This article benefited from the comments and criticisms of numerous colleagues, in particular John Darby, Mark Hoffman, Michael Pugh, Oliver Richmond, Peter Wallensteen, two anonymous reviewers and the editors of Millennium: Journal of International Studies. However, any shortcomings are solely the responsibility of the author.
2. In fact Banks' paper outlined four conceptions including peace as harmony. This fourth approach is dismissed by Banks himself, and has been excluded here, as it does not characterise any approaches to peacebuilding within the international community. Michael Banks, 'Four Conceptions of Peace', in Conflict Management and Problem Solving: Interpersonal to International Applications, ed. Denis J. D. Sandole and Ingrid Sandole-Staroste (London: F. Pinter, 1987), 259-74.
3. Oliver Richmond, The Transformation of Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005);
4. Roger MacGinty, No War, No Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
5. Hereafter the idea of 'international community' will be capitalised to International Community to convey its centrality as an identity signifier in peacebuilding discourse.
6. I will continue to use 'peacebuilding' as shorthand for the discourses of international peacebuilding.
7. Michael Lund, What Kind of Peace is Being Built? Taking Stock of Post-Conflict Peacebuilding and Charting Future Directions, a paper for the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada (January 2003), 13.
8. Ibid, 16.
9. For a widener's perspective, see Henning Haugerudbraaten, 'Peacebuilding: Six Dimensions and Two Concepts.' African Security Review 7, no.6 (1998), available from: 〈www.iss.co.za/ASR/7No6/Peacebuilding.html〉, accessed: 12 December 2004;
10. for a reformist perspective, see Lund, What Kind of Peace is Being Built?;
11. for a radical perspective, see Alejandro Bendaña, What Kind of Peace is Being Built? Critical Assessments from the South, paper for the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada, January 2003. Available at: 〈www.action.web.ca〉; accessed: 29 June 2004.
12. Nicole Ball, 'The Reconstruction of War-Torn Societies and State Institutions: How Can External Actors Contribute?', in Fragile Peace: State Failure, Violence and Development in Crisis Regions, ed. Tobias Debiel with Alex Klein (London: Zed, 2002), 37.
13. Michelle I. Gawerc, 'Peace-Building: Theoretical and Concrete Perspectives', Peace and Change 31, no.4 (2006): 435-78.
14. Samuel P Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratisation in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991);
15. Guillermo O'Donnell, and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986);
16. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
17. See, for example, Airat R. Aklaev, Democratisation and Ethnic Peace (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999);
18. Sunil Bastian and Robin Luckham (eds), Can Democracy be Designed? The Politics of Institutional Choice in Conflict Torn Societies (London: Zed Books, 2003);
19. Tobias Debiel and Alex Klein (eds), Fragile Peace: State Failure, Violence, and Development in Crisis Regions (London: Zed, 2002).
20. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Report on the Work of the Organisation from the Forty-Seventh to the Forty-Eighth Session of the General Assembly (New York: United Nations, 1993), no pagination.
21. Banks, 'Four Conceptions of Peace', 271.
22. Michael W. Doyle, 'Liberalism in World Polities', American Political Science Review 80, no. 4 (1986): 1151-69;
23. Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, Making War and Bulding Peace: United Nations Peace Operations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
24. MacGinty, No War, No Peace. 17. Ibid., ch.1.
25. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace (New York: UN, 1992), p. 1.
26. Ibid., 11.
27. Ibid., 32.
28. Ibid., 34.
29. Stephen Gill, 'Globalization, Market Civilization and Disciplinary Neo-liberalism', Millennium. 24, no.3 (1995): 399-423.
30. Aihwa Ong, 'Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
31. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
32. Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception.
33. Eva Bertram, 'Reinventing Governments: The Promises and Perils of United Nations Peace Building', Journal of Conflict Resolution 39, no.3 (1995): 388.
34. Timothy Sisk, 'Democratisation and Peacebuilding: Perils and Promises,' in Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict, ed. Chester Crocker, Fen Osier Hampson and Pamela Aall (Washington: USIP, 2001), 786.
35. Robert Cox, 'Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,' in Approaches to World Order, ed. Timothy J. Sinclair (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 88.
36. See also A.B. Fetherstone, 'Peacekeeping, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding: A Reconsideration of Theoretical Frameworks/ International Peacekeeping 17, no.2 (2000): 190-217.
37. Herman Schmid, 'Peace Research and Politics', Journal of Peace Research 5, no. 3 (1968): 229.
38. Barry Buzan, 'Peace, Power and Security: Contending Concepts in the Study of International Relations', Journal of Peace Research 21, no.2 (1984): 125.
39. Lund, What Kind of Peace?, 22.
40. It is also true that every major UN report on peace operations over the last fifteen years has recommended some kind of institutional change for the UN. These technical solutions indicate the self-referential nature of peacebuilding while leaving unaddressed the broader structures of international order.
41. David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton (London: Pluto Press, 1999);
42. François Debrix, Re-Envisioning Peacekeeping: The United Nations and the Mobilisation of Ideology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999);
43. Michael Pugh, 'Peacekeeping and Critical Theory', International Peacekeeping 11, no.1 (2004): 39-58.
44. Chandler, Bosnia.
45. Stephen J. Stedman, 'Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes', International Security, 22 no.2 (1997): 5-53.
46. Lene Hansen, Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (London: Routledge, 2006).
47. Roland Paris, At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
48. Hansen, Security as Practice.
49. Banks, 'Four Conceptions of Peace'.
50. The term 'meta-ideas' is used with respect to the concept of peace in MacGinty, No War, No Peace, 19.
51. Richmond, The Transformation of Peace, 214.
52. Ibid., 230.
53. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001);
54. Mary Kaldor, 'Reconceptualising Organised Violence', in Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy, ed. Daniele Archibugi, David Held and Martin Köhler (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998): 91-110.
55. Samuel R. Berger and Brent Scowcroft, 'In the Wake of War: Getting Serious about Nation-Building', National Interest 81 (Fall 2005): 49-53.
56. John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
57. Francis Fukuyama, State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).
58. Banks, 'Four Conceptions of Peace', 269.
59. Ibid., 261.
60. Ibid.
61. Simon Chesterman, 'Bush, the United Nations and Nation-Building', Survival 46, no.1 (2004): 101-16;
62. David Chandler, Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-Building (London: Pluto, 2006).
63. Domine Zaum, The Sovereignty Paradox: The Norms and Politics of International Statebuilding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
64. Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management and Transformation of Deadly Conflicts, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Polity, 2005,), xiii.
65. Buzan, 'Peace, Power and Security', 125.
66. Ibid.
67. MacGinty, No War, No Peace, 19-24.
68. Richmond, The Transformation of Peace.
69. Bendana, What Kind of Peace; Fetherstone, 'Peacekeeping'.
70. John Heathershaw, 'Peacebuilding as Practice: Discourses from Post-Conflict Tajikistan', International Peacekeeping 14, no.2 (2007): 219-36.
71. John Heathershaw, 'Seeing like the International Community: How Peacebuilding Failed (and Survived) in Tajikistan', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 2, no. 3 (Autumn 2008).
72. Paris, At War's End.
73. Mary Anderson, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace - Or War (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999).
74. Paris, At War's End.
75. Johan Galtung, 'Three Approaches to Peace: Peacekeeping, Peace-Making and Peace-Building', in Peace, War and Defence - Essays in Peace Research, 2 (Copenhagen: Christian Ejlers, 1975), 282-304;
76. see, Edward E. Azar, and John W. Burton (eds), International Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice (Boulder, CO: Wheatsheaf/L. Rienner Publishers, 1986);
77. John Burton, Conflict: Resolution and Prevention (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990).
78. John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Socidies (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997);
79. Michelle I. Gawerc, 'Peace-Building: Theoretical and Concrete Perspectives', Peace and Change 31, no.4 (2006): 435-78.
80. Lederach, Building Peace, 20.
81. Ibid., 29.
82. Lederach, The Moral Imagination, 5.
83. SMART targets are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-limited.
84. Ben Barber, 'Feeding Refugees, or War? The dilemma of humanitarian aid/Foreign Affairs 76, no.4, (1997): 8-14;
85. Edward N. Luttwak, 'Give War a Chance', Foreign Affairs 78, no.4 (1999): 36-48.
86. Chester Crocker, Fen Osier Hampson, and Pamela Aall (eds), Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1999);
87. Mary Anderson, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace - Or War (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999).
88. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001).
89. Mary Kaldor, 'Reconceptualising Organised Violence', in Re-imagining Political Community: studies in cosmopolitan democracy, ed. Daniele Archibugi, David Held and Martin Köhler, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 107-9.
90. Anderson, Do No Harm.
91. Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (London: Zed Books, 2002).
92. Gawerc, 'Peace-Building', 461.
93. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Supplement to an Agenda for Peace: Position Paper of the Secretary General on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations, 3 January 1995, A/50/60 - S/1995/1,103, 105.
94. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 1.
95. Youssef Cohen, Brian R. Brown and A.F.K. Organski, 'The Paradoxical Nature of State-Making: The Violent Creation of Order', American Political Science Review 75, no.4 (1981): 905.
96. Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
97. Gerald Helman and Steven Ratner, 'Saving Failed States', Foreign Policy 89 (Winter 1992-1993): 3-20;
98. William I. Zartman, Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Boulder, CO; London: L. Rienner, 1995).
99. Charles Call, 'The Fallacy of the 'Failed State', a paper presented at the International Studies Association annual meeting, San Diego, 25 March 2006, 20-21.
100. United States of America, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. 2002 〈www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html〉, September 2002, accessed: 11 November 2005, 1.
101. For a defence of such operations see, Zalmay Khalilzad, 'How to Nation-Build: Ten Lessons from Afghanistan', The National Interest 80 (Summer 2005): pp.19-28;
102. for a critique of their application in Iraq, see Charles Tripp, 'The United States and State-Building in Iraq', Review of International Studies 30, no.4 (2004): 545-58.
103. Chesterman, 'Bush, the United Nations and Nation-Building', 114.
104. Fukuyama, Statebuilding.
105. James F. Dobbins, 'America's Enduring Role in Nation Building: From Germany to Iraq', Survival 45, no.4, (2003-2004): 87.
106. Berger and Scowcroft, 'In Wake of War'.
107. For a discussion of the rise of Statebuilding see, John Heathershaw and aniel Lambach, 'Introduction: Post-Conflict Spaces in International Relations', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 2, no. 3 (Autumn 2008).
108. Paris, At War's End.
109. Ashraf Ghani, Clare Lockhart and Michael Carnahan, Closing the Sovereignty Gap: An Approach to State-Building, Overseas Development Institute, Working Paper 253 (London, September 2005), 5.
110. Ibid., 1, my emphasis.
111. For a rendition of legitimacy as a subjective concept related to identity see, Rodney Barker, Legitimating Identities: The Self-Presentations of Rulers and Subjects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001);
112. for an intersubjective conceptualisation, see David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (London: Macmillan, 1991).
113. Beetham, The Legitimation of Power.
114. Charles-Philip David, 'Does Peacebuilding Build Peace? Liberal (Mis)steps in the Peace Process', Security Dialogue 30, no.1 (1999): 25-41.
115. Lund, What Kind of Peace?, 28.
116. For example, the UN report, A More Secure World, was lead-authored by Stephen Stedman with the assistance of other policy-practitioners. The 2005 Human Security Report was authored by Andrew Mack and colleagues at the University of British Columbia.
117. Stephen Stedman et al., A More Secure World (New York: United Nations, 2004);
118. Andrew Mack et al, Human Security Report (Vancouver: Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, 2005)
119. An interesting discussion of the reasons for this outsourcing of expertise by the International Community is found in Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars, 257-65.
120. United Nations, The Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations ['The Brahimi Report'], 2000, available at: 〈www.un.org/peace/reports/peaceoperations/〉, accessed: 14 June 2004.
121. ICISS was established by the Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chrietien, in September 2000 in response to Kofi Annan's challenge to the UN General Assembly to unite on the question of 'humanitarian intervention' following the Kosovo military intervention of 1999.
122. International Committee on Intervention and State Sovereignty, Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001), xi.
123. Ibid., 9. The commission in fact avoids using the term 'humanitarian intervention' in order to respond to the concern of self-styled humanitarian relief agencies that the term 'humanitarian' is being militarised by such military interventions.
124. Ibid., xii.
125. United Nations, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Report of the Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (New York: UN, 2004), 1 (emphasis added).
126. Ibid., ix.
127. Ibid., 83.
128. Ibid. (emphasis added).
129. John Prendergast, and Emily Plumb, 'Building Local Capacity: From Implementation to Peacebuilding', in Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements, ed. Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elizabeth M. Cousens (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 327-49.
130. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars.
131. Jane Chanaa, Security Sector Reform: Issues, Challenges and Prospects. Adelphi Paper 344 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2002), 27.
132. Ibid., 27.
133. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars, 7.
134. USA, National Security Strategy;
135. Department for International Development (DfID), Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work for the Poor, white paper of the UK Government, July 2006, Cm 6876.
136. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars, 15
137. Ibid., 17.
138. Roland Paris, 'Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism', International Security 22, no.2 (1997): 56;
139. see also, Roland Paris, 'International Peacebuilding and the "Mission Civilisatrice"', Review of International Studies 28, no.4 (2002): 637-56.
140. Paris, At War's End.
141. Paris, At War's End, 235.
142. Ibid.
143. Michael Dodson, 'Postconflict Development and Peace Building: Recent Research', Peace & Change 31, no.2 (2006): 246.
144. Paris quotes extensively and affirmatively from Huntington, Political Development, while raising concerns about his enthusiasm for transition via military government. Paris, At War's End, 185-7.
145. Roland Paris, 'Bringing the Leviathan Back In: Classical Versus Contemporary Studies of the Liberal Peace', International Studies Review 8, no.3 (2006): 425.
146. Paris, At War's End, 179-211.
147. Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute (London: Verso, 2000), 56-7.
148. Michael Ignatieff, 'Nation-Building Lite', New York Times Magazine, 28 July 2002, 26.
149. Richmond, The Transformation of Peace, 185.
150. Tacitus wrote in reporting the speech of Calgacus, a leader of the Britons: 'To robbery, butchery, and rapine they give the lying name of "government"; they create a desolation and call it peace.' See, Tacitus, The Agricola and the Germania (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970), 81. George W. Bush named the United States as a 'peaceful people' when embarking upon war with Iraq.