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Ten - Post-War Legitimacy: A Framework on Relational Agency in Peacebuilding
- Edited by Oliver P. Richmond, University of Manchester, Roger MacGinty
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- Book:
- Local Legitimacy and International Peace Intervention
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 17 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 18 June 2020, pp 215-239
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Summary
Introduction
There is increasing interest in the role of legitimacy as an indicator of social and political stability in post-war societies. In this chapter we provide an analytical framework to examine peacebuilding interventions from a legitimacy perspective. The relationship between the state and society is conceived as crucial to international peacebuilding interventions seeking to assist conflict-torn countries toward a self-sustaining peace – or a situation where external support is unnecessary. The literature on peacebuilding primarily has discussed the importance of legitimacy of peacebuilding interventions. However, we argue that contemporary peacebuilding interventions and the scholarly assessments of them have largely overlooked the relationship between the domestic actors involved in, and affected by, the conflict.
Instead of focusing on the principal purpose of peacebuilding processes, which is to build sustainable peace within a country, peacebuilding interventions deal with legitimacy as a tool to justify the peacebuilding agenda and approaches of international actors. The international quest for legitimacy has paradoxically redirected attention away from addressing the important challenge facing domestic peacebuilding processes, namely the peaceful relationship between the domestic state and society. We conceive of peacebuilding as founded in the relational agency between politics and society, i.e. between state and non-state actors (both military and civilian). We define peacebuilding as the process where in a post-war situation the structural-normative setup of the state in relation to society becomes renegotiated through the interactions of domestic state and non-state actors with, or without, the involvement of international or other external actors. We maintain that perceived legitimacy of the relationship between the domestic state and society constitutes the foundation of the social and political post-war order.
In this chapter we begin by discussing the existing peacebuilding literature and practices, before articulating our framework on legitimacy, actors and relational agency in peacebuilding. Thereafter, we present an extended application of the framework on two recent peacebuilding processes. The chapter concludes by stressing the necessity to refocus peacebuilding interventions to the relational dynamics and legitimacy of domestic state and non-state actors.
From liberal peacebuilding to broader peacebuilding
In the early post-Cold War period, the UN Security Council, with newfound confidence, authorised an unparalleled number of multilateral military operations broadly referred to as peace operations to intervene in internal armed conflicts. Concurrently, the UN's ‘Agenda for Peace’ introduced the concept of peacebuilding, which had salient impact on the discourse and practices of international intervention.
Chapter 3 - Liberal State-Building and Environmental Security: The International Community between Trade-Off and Carelessness
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- By Roland Kostić, Uppsala University, Florian Krampe, Uppsala University, Ashok Swain, Uppsala University
- Edited by Ramses Amer, Ashok Swain, Joakim Öjendal
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- Book:
- The Security-Development Nexus
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 15 January 2012, pp 41-64
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Summary
Introduction
Since the early 1990s the international community has been increasingly adopting liberal state-building as part of a wider liberal peacebuilding strategy for addressing the plethora of problems facing post-conflict societies (Chandler 2006; Chesterman 2005; Kostić 2007; MacGinty 2006; Paris 2004). In that sense, liberal state-building is viewed as a peacebuilding measure with the aim to construct or reconstruct the institutions of governance capable of providing citizens with physical and economic security (cf. Paris 2004; Richmond 2006). One of the guiding assumptions has been that the presence of strong state institutions would facilitate macro-economic growth and provide economic and societal security of its citizens (Paris 2004). Such measures, in combinations with strong state institutions and functioning infrastructure, are supposed to bring economic well-being that would in return strengthen the legitimacy of the state among its citizens by means of democratic elections, thus bringing about political moderation and societal integration in previously fragmented societies (Paris 2004).
However, while it has been shown that this type of liberal state- and nation-building fails short of bringing societal integration in multiethnic societies (Kostić 2007, 2008), it does not include in its framework of analysis the environmental problems of post-conflict societies. Economic development projects such as large hydro projects or opencast mining for lignite – as an element of a broader state-building exercise – lead to environmental stress for the communities, and can further exacerbate inter-communal incompatibilities (Swain and Krampe 2011).
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