Rethinking the Liberal Peace: External Models and Local Alternatives

273 Pages·2011·1.832 MB·English

by  Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh

Rethinking the Liberal Peace
This book presents a critical analysis of the liberal peace project and offers possible
alternatives and models.
In the past decade, the model used for reconstructing societies after conflicts has
been based on liberal assumptions about the pacifying effects of ‘open markets’
and ‘open societies’. Yet, despite the vast resources invested in helping to estab-
lish the precepts of this liberal peace, outcomes have left much to be desired. The
book argues that failures in the liberal peace project are not only due to efficiency
problems related to its adaptation in adverse local environments, but mostly due to
problems with the contested legitimacy of turning an ideal into a doctrine for action.
Bringing together leading authors in the field, the book scrutinizes assumptions
about the value of democratization and marketization and realities on the ground by
combining theoretical discussions with empirical evidence from key post- conflict
settings such as Iraq and Afghanistan. It shows the disparities that exist between the
ideals and the reality of the liberal peace project, as seen by external peacebuilders
and domestic actors. The book then proposes various alternatives and modifica-
tions to better accommodate local perspectives, values and agency in attempts to
forge a new consensus.
This book will be of great interest to students of Peacebuilding and Peacekeeping,
Statebuilding, War and Conflict Studies, International Security and International
Relations.
Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh directs a specialization on Human Security as part of the
Master of Public Affairs (MPA) at Sciences Po in Paris and is a Research Associate
with PRIO, Oslo. She is author with Anuradha Chenoy of Human Security: Concepts
and implications (Routledge 2007).
Cass Series on Peacekeeping
General Editor: Michael Pugh
This series examines all aspects of peacekeeping, from the political, operational
and legal dimensions to the developmental and humanitarian issues that must be
dealt with by all those involved with peacekeeping in the world today.
Beyond the Emergency Peacekeeping and Conflict
Development within UN Peace Resolution
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The UN, Peace and Force Managing Armed Conflicts in the
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Mediating in Cyprus Chandra Lekha Sriram
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Oliver P. Richmond Peacekeeping
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Peacekeeping and the UN Agencies Torunn L. Tryggestad
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Recovering from Civil Conflict
Peacekeeping and Public Reconciliation, Peace and
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Caught in the Crossfire Edited by Edward Newman and
Ingrid A. Lehmann Albrecht Schnabel
The Evolution of US Peacekeeping Mitigating Conflict
Policy under Clinton The Role of NGOs
A Fairweather Friend? Edited by Henry F. Carey and
Michael G. MacKinnon Oliver P. Richmond
Peacebuilding and Police Reform
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Peace Operations after 11
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Edited by Thierry Tardy Operations
A New Model in the Making?
Confronting Past Human Rights Peter Viggo Jakobsen
Violations
Justice vs Peace in Times of Transition Kosovo between War and Peace
Chandra Lekha Sriram Nationalism, peacebuilding and
international trusteeship
The National Politics of Edited by Tonny Brems Knudsen and
Peacekeeping in the Post- Cold War Carsten Bagge Laustsen
Era
Edited by David S. Sorensen and Clinton, Peacekeeping and
Pia Christina Wood Humanitarian Interventionism
Rise and fall of a policy
A UN ‘Legion’ Leonie G. Murray
Between Utopia and Reality
Stephen Kinloch- Pichat Political Ethics and the United
Nations
United Nations Peacekeeping in the Dag Hammarskjöld as
Post- Cold War Era Secretary- General
John Terence O’Neill and Manuel Fröhlich
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Statebuilding and Justice Reform
The Military and Negotiation Post- conflict reconstruction in
The role of the soldier–diplomat Afghanistan
Deborah Goodwin Matteo Tondini
NATO and Peace Support Rethinking the Liberal Peace
Operations 1991–1999 External models and local alternatives
Policies and doctrines Edited by Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh
Henning- A. Frantzen

Rethinking the Liberal Peace
External models and local alternatives
Edited by Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh
First published 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2011 Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh for selection and editorial matter, individual
contributors; their contributions
The right of the editor to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
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any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
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without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Rethinking the liberal peace : external models and local alternatives / edited
by Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh.
p. cm.
1. Peace- building. 2. Peace- building—Case studies. 3. Liberalism.
4. Liberalism—Case studies. 5. State- building. 6. State- building—Case
studies. 7. Democratization. 8. Democratization—Case studies. I.
Tadjbakhsh, Shahrbanou, 1965-
JZ5538.R48 2011
303.6’6—dc22 2010042134
ISBN: 978- 0- 415- 60055- 2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 0- 203- 81905- 0 (ebk)
Typeset in Times by
Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Anthony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire
Contents
Preface ix
List of contributors xi
Introduction: liberal peace in dispute 1
SHAHRBANOU TADJBAKHSH
PART I
Theory and critics of the liberal peace 17
1 Open societies, open markets: assumptions and illusions 19
SHAHRBANOU TADJBAKHSH
2 Becoming liberal, unbecoming liberalism: liberal–local hybridity via
the everyday as a response to the paradoxes of liberal peacebuilding 37
OLIVER P. RICHMOND
3 Peace, self- governance and international engagement: from
neo- colonial to post- colonial peacebuilding 57
KRISTOFFER LIDÉN
PART II
Liberal democracy 75
4 The liberal peace: statebuilding, democracy and local ownership 77
DAVID CHANDLER
5 Democracy and security: a shotgun marriage? 89
ROBIN LUCKHAM
viii Contents
6 What’s law got to do with it? The role of law in post- conflict
democratization and its (flawed) assumptions 110
MICHAEL SCHOISWOHL
7 No such thing as cosmopolitanism: Field- dependent consequences in
international administrative governance and criminal justice 128
NICHOLAS DORN
PART III
Market liberalism 145
8 Curing strangeness in the political economy of peacebuilding: traces
of liberalism and resistance 147
MICHAEL PUGH
9 Economic dimensions of the liberal peace and its implications for
conflict in developing countries 164
SYED MANSOOB MURSHED
PART IV
Case studies 179
10 Reconstructing post- 2006 Lebanon: a distorted market 181
CHRISTINE SYLVA HAMIEH AND ROGER MAC GINTY
11 Is liberal democracy possible in Iraq? 195
AMAL SHLASH AND PATRICK TOM
12 Liberal peace and the dialogue of the deaf in Afghanistan 206
SHAHRBANOU TADJBAKHSH
Conclusion: typologies and modifications proposed by critical
approaches 221
SHAHRBANOU TADJBAKHSH AND OLIVER P. RICHMOND
List of acronyms and abbreviations 242
Index 245
Preface
This book results from a multi- year collaboration between some of the chapter
authors (Richmond, Lidén, Pugh, Mac Ginty, Chandler and the Editor) that started
around the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) project on ‘Liberal Peace and
the Ethics of Peacebuilding’ in 2007, coordinated by J. Peter Burgess and Kristoffer
Lidén and funded by the Norwegian Research Council. By then, critiques of liberal
peacebuilding had been abundant, but not much had been done on contestation
from an ethical point of view. This perspective allowed for reflection not only on
efficiency- related questions of the means of liberal peacebuilding, but also on the
legitimacy of its ends. To what extent did notions of power and culture complic-
ate the picture of peacebuilding as a discrete activity of pure altruism? How did
marketization and democratization, the tenets of liberal peace theory in practice,
fare when scrutinized from critical legitimacy questions?
Some of the findings of the PRIO project resulted in a Special Issue on ‘Liberal
Peacebuilding Reconstructed’ of the International Peacekeeping (vol. 16, no. 5,
November 2009). Inspired by these discussions, this Editor also designed a one- year
project between the University of Kabul and the CERI/Sciences Po on perceptions
about Liberal Peace in Afghanistan in 2007. A presentation of the results of that
project was subsequently used as an opportunity to organize a major conference
in June 2008 at the CERI/Sciences Po in Paris. The conference brought together
all the chapter authors of this book together with policy makers from France, Iraq,
Afghanistan, ASEAN, the UN and the EU with the purpose of instigating a debate
between theoreticians and practitioners. The vision behind the preparation of this
book, then, has been to unpack the idea of liberal peace, not only among academics,
but together with those who were supposed to be implementing it or benefiting from
it. Gratitude then goes to Michael Pugh, Editor of the Cass Series on Peacekeeping
at Routledge, and Andrew Humphrys, Senior Editor at Routledge, who believed in
the project and facilitated its publication.
The Editor would like to thank all the chapter authors for their contributions and
patience, and especially Oliver P. Richmond, Michael Pugh and Kristoffer Lidén
for their constant support. Additionally, acknowledgement goes to Patrick Tom
at St Andrews for his assistance in organizing peer reviews, the final editing and
preparing the manuscript for publication. Hitomi Kubo at Sciences Po played an
instrumental role in the preparation of the 2008 conference when we used to run a