How to maintain peace and security in a post-conflict hybrid political order - the case of Bougainville

Journal of International Peacekeeping

Volumn 14, Issue 3-4, 2010, Pages 330-352

  Boege, Volker ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

Author keywords

Bougainville; customary institutions; customary law; hybrid political order; legal pluralism; nonstate policing; Peace Monitoring Group; peacebuilding; state formation

Indexed keywords

EID: 79956256513     PISSN: 18754104     EISSN: 18754112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/187541110X504382     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. See for example, Oliver Richmond's contributions to the 'liberal peace' discourse. Oliver Richmond, The Transformation of Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
2. Oliver Richmond,' A Post-liberal Peace: Eirenism and the Everyday', Review of International Studies, vol. 35, 2009, pp. 557-580
3. Oliver Richmond, 'The Romaticisation of the Local: Welfare, Culture and Peacebuilding', The International Spectator, vol. 44, no. 1, March 2009, pp. 149-169.
4. Oliver Richmond and Jason Franks, Liberal Peace Transitions (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).
5. More recent critiques of liberal peacebuilding and statebuilding are also Ole Jacob Sending, Why Peacebuilders Fail to Secure Ownership and be Sensitive to Context (Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs NUPI Working Papers 755, 2009)
6. Nehal Bhuta, 'Against State-Building', Constellations, vol. 15, no. 4, 2008, pp. 517-542
7. as well as the contributions in the edited volume by Martina Fischer and Beatrix Schmelzle (eds.), Building Peace in the Absence of States: Challenging the Discourse on State Failure (Berlin: Berghof Handbook Dialogue Series No. 8, 2009).
8. Policing is understood as comprising "any organized activity that seeks to ensure the maintenance of communal order, security, and peace through elements of prevention, deterrence, investigation of breaches, resolution, and punishment. As such, it can be authorized and provided by local communities and groups as well as the state". Bruce Baker, Security in Post-Conflict Africa The Role of Nonstate Policing (Boca Raton - London - New York: CRC Press, 2010).
9. Sinclair Dinnen and Abby McLeod, 'Policing Melanesia - International Expectations and Local Realities', Policing and Society, vol. 19, no. 4, December 2009, pp. 333-353, p. 335.
10. For an overview over society and politics on Bougainville see Anthony J. Regan and Helga M. Griffin (eds.), Bougainville Before the Conflict (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2005).
11. Given the complex mixture of issues and actors involved in the Bougainville violence it is tempting to use the 'new wars' terminology to comprehend what happened, and in fact, the Bougainville conflict is exhibiting several features of so-called 'new wars'. However, the Bougainville story also comprises dimensions that cannot be grasped by the concept of 'new wars', see Volker Boege, Bougainville and the Discovery of Slowness: An Unhurried Approach to State-Building in the Pacific (Brisbane: The Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (ACPACS) Occasional Papers Series No. 3, 2006).
12. For an overview see the contributions in Andy Carl and Lorraine Garasu (eds.), Weaving Consensus - The Papua New Guinea - Bougainville Peace Process, Conciliation Resources Accord Issue 12/2002 (London: Conciliation Resources, 2002)
13. BCC, Report of the Bougainville Constitutional Commission. Report on the third and final draft of the Bougainville Constitution, prepared by the Bougainville Constitutional Commission, Arawa and Buka, 2004.
14. Robert Tapi, 'From Burnham to Buin' in Andy Carl and Lorraine Garasu (eds.), Weaving Consensus - The Papua New Guinea - Bougainville Peace Process, Conciliation Resources Accord Issue 12 London: Conciliation Resources, 2002), pp. 24-27.
15. Scott S. Smith, 'The Role of the United Nations Observer Mission' in Andy Carl and Lorraine Garasu (eds.), Weaving Consensus - The Papua New Guinea - Bougainville Peace Process, Conciliation Resources Accord Issue 12 (London: Conciliation Resources, 2002), pp. 54-55.
16. For a comprehensive account of the TMG/PMG see the contributions in Monica Wehner and Donald Denoon, Without a Gun. Australians' Experiences Monitoring Peace in Bougainville, 1997-2001 (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2001).
17. The concept of hybrid political orders has been elaborated by a research team at the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies over the last few years. This concept flowed from a critique of the current mainstream discourse on so-called fragile states and situations as well as its corollary, the promotion of conventional state-building along the lines of the western OECD model state. It is an analytical instrument to grasp the realities of governance in fragile regions of the Global South. In hybrid political orders different types of legitimate authority can be found that co-exist, compete, overlap and blend, and hybrid forms of legitimacy prevail. We use the term 'hybrid' because it is (1) broad enough to encompass a variety of non-state forms of order and governance on the local 'traditional' side (from (neo-) patrimonial to acephalous), because it (2) focuses on the combination of elements that stem from genuinely different societal sources which follow different logics, and because it (3) affirms that these spheres do not exist in isolation from each other, but permeate each other and, consequently, give rise to different and genuine political orders that are characterised by the closely interwoven texture of their separate sources of origin. See Volker Boege, M. Anne Brown, Kevin Clements and Anna Nolan, States Emerging from Hybrid Political Orders - Pacific Experiences (Brisbane: Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Occasional Paper No. 11, September 2008)
18. Volker Boege, M. Anne Brown, Kevin Clements and Anna Nolan, 'On Hybrid Political Orders and Emerging States: What is Failing - States in the Global South or Research and Politics in the West?', Berghof Handbook Dialogue Series No. 8, pp. 15-35 (Berlin: Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, 2009)
19. Volker Boege, M. Anne Brown and Kevin Clements, 'Hybrid Political Orders, not Fragile States', Peace Review, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 13-21
20. Maren Kraushaar and Daniel Lambach, Hybrid Political Orders:The Added Value of a New Concept (Brisbane: Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies Occasional Paper No. 14, December 2009).
21. More detail on current state formation on Bougainville can be found in Volker Boege, A Promising Liaison: Kastom and State in Bougainville (Brisbane: The Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies Occasional Paper No. 12, October 2008).
22. see Bruce Baker and Eric Scheye, 'Access to Justice in a Post-Conflict State: Donor-supported Multidimensional Peacekeeping in Southern Sudan', International Peacekeeping, vol. 16, no. 2, April 2009, pp. 171-185.
23. BCC. Report of the Bougainville Constitutional Commission. Report on the third and final draft of the Bougainville Constitution, prepared by the Bougainville Constitutional Commission (Arawa and Buka, 2004).
24. The same holds true for the Bougainville Correctional Service, which is constitutionally obliged to develop alternative methods of dealing with offenders, to involve the community in its work and to encourage the integration of offenders into the community (Bougainville Constitution, clause 151).
25. A chief from Nagovis: "These policemen get their money only for wearing their uniforms. We chiefs do the work, and the police only comes in later and then claims compensation in Buka" (Interview with chief from Sialeki village Nagovis, Arawa, 27 September 2007), and another chief from Bana: "We solve crime and conflict in our custom system, even bodily harm. We never send anybody to the police" (Interview with chief from Takana village Bana, Arawa,27 September 2007). "The police wear nice uniforms, and they march.They wait for the chiefs to hand the culprits over to them, and then they feed them.That is all.They are there as a decoration. The problems can be sorted out without police in the village" (Interview with a customary leader, Arawa, 29 September 2007).
26. This, again, is very similar to the situation in post-conflict Southern Sudan as described by Baker and Scheye, 'Access to Justice in a Post-Conflict State', pp. 177-178, 180.
27. Dinnen and McLeod, 'Policing Melanesia', p. 344.
28. 'BCC Report', p. 55.
29. 'BCC Report', p. 182.
30. Baker and Scheye, 'Access to Justice in a Post-conflict State', p. 177.
31. Pat Howley, Breaking Spears and Mending Hearts. Peacemakers and Restorative Justice in Bougainville (London - Annandale: Zed Books -The Federation Press, 2002).
32. This also applies to other parts of PNG, see Dinnen and McLeod, 'Policing Melanesia', p. 344
33. it is similar in post-conflict Southern Sudan, see Baker and Scheye, 'Access to Justice in a Post-conflict state', p. 180.
34. Bryn Hughes and Charles Hunt, 'The Rule of Law in Peace and Capacity Building Operations: Moving beyond a Conventional State-Centred Imagination', Journal of International Peacekeeping, vol. 13, no. 3-4, 2009, pp. 267-293.
35. Bruce Baker, 'Grasping the Nettle of Nonstate Policing', in this issue, pp. 276-300.
36. Also Eric Scheye, State-Provided Service, Contracting Out, and Non-State Networks: Justice and Security as Public and Private Goods and Services (Paris: OECD-INCAF, June 2009).
37. "The registering and recording of decisions reached in the non-state system" might be a way to solve this problem. Bruce Baker and Eric Scheye, 'Multi-layered Justice and Security Delivery in Post-conflict and Fragile States', Conflict, Security and Development, vol. 7, no. 4, December 2007, pp. 503- 528, p. 517.
38. Dinnen and McLeod, 'Policing Melanesia', p. 349.
39. Bruce Baker, 'Grasping the Nettle of Nonstate Policing', in this issue, pp. 276-300.
40. Eric Scheye, Pragmatic Realism in Justice and Security Development: Supporting Improvement in the Performance of Non-State/Local Justice and Security Networks (The Hague: Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael, July 2009), p. 41.
41. Dinnen and McLeod, 'Policing Melanesia', p. 349.
42. Bruce Baker's findings on non-state policing in Africa are very similar to the observations on Bougainville, Baker, Security in Post-Conflict Africa.
43. Dinnen and McLeod, 'Policing Melanesia', p. 349.
44. On the same line Baker and Scheye, 'Access to Justice in a Post-conflict State', pp. 182-183.