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

© 2008 SAGE Publications. Post-print version. 12 month embargo by the publisher. Article will be released May 2009.This paper assesses the discursive environment of post-conflict intervention as a prism through which to view the international politics of the post-Cold War era. I argue that the ‘liberal peace’ is not a single discourse but a tri-partite international discursive environment that dynamically reproduces technical solutions which fail to address the core issues of conflict in a given place. The paper starts from the assumption that over the last twenty years we have seen a shift from an understanding of peace as a state of affairs in a given territory (as explored by Michael Banks in a 1987 paper) to peace as a process of post-conflict intervention; a move from peace to peacebuilding. This ‘liberal peace’ sets a standard by which ‘failed states’ and ‘bad civil societies’ are judged according to ethical, spatial and temporal markers. However, the apparent homogeneity of the model obscures the divisions and mergers which characterise the scholarship and practice of international peacebuilding. The boundaries of the peace debate remain; the political differences latent in Banks’ three concepts are retained in the evolving discourses of democratic peacebuilding, civil society and statebuilding. The paper shows how these three basic discourses are reproduced in international policy analyses and major academic works. Moreover, the discursive mediation of their differences is the dynamic by which the liberal peace is sustained, despite its detachment from the lived experiences of post-conflict environments. It is in this sense that we can comprehend international peacebuilding as a virtual phenomenon, maintained in the verbal and visual representations of international organisations, diplomats and academic policy-practitioners. In light of this disaggregation of the discursive environment, a better, more nuanced understand of the liberal peace can be attained; one that is able to grasp how critics and criticisms become incorporated into that which they seek to critique. The paper concludes with three propositions regarding the nature of world order in the era of the tripartite ‘liberal peace’. During this time coercion, military force and even warfare have become standard and legitimate features of peacefare. The discursive dynamics of international peacebuilding illustrate how peace has become ever more elusive in contemporary international politics

Peacebuilding as Practice: Discourses from Post-Conflict Tajikistan

Note that this is the postprint version, not the preprint.Peacebuilding is a contested concept which gains meaning as it is practised. While academic and policy-relevant elaboration of the concept is of interest to international experts, interpretations of peacebuilding in the Central Asian arena may depart immensely from those envisaged within the western-dominated ‘international community’. This article opens up the dimensions and contingent possibilities of ‘peacebuilding’ through an investigation of two alternative approaches found in the context of Tajikistan. It makes the critique that peacebuilding represents one contextually grounded basic discourse. In the case of Central Asia, and in particular post-conflict Tajikistan, at least two other basic discourses have been adopted by parties to the post-Soviet setting: elite mirostroitelstvo (Russian: peacebuilding) and popular tinji (Tajik: wellness/peacefulness). Based largely on fieldwork conducted in Tajikistan between 2003 and 2005, the argument here is that none of these three discourses is merely an artificial or cynical construct but that each has a certain symbolic and normative value. Consequently, a singular definition of Tajik ‘peacebuilding’ proves elusive as practices adapt to the relationships between multiple discourses and identities in context. The article concludes that ‘peacebuilding’ is a complex and intersubjective process of change entailing the legitimation of new relationships of power

Central Asian statehood in post-colonial perspective

Published version produced with permission of the publisher. The ebook is available to University of Exeter students and staff through MyiLibrary (or search the Library catalogue)

Dictators without Borders

Central Asian dictators close down the space for domestic political opposition. But politics is still present, only it has moved offshore, out of the region

Vice-Chancellors should welcome staff participation in the governance of their university’s international partnerships

Universities and higher education institutions in the UK have a more international profile than at any prior point in their existence. As a consequence, they face entanglement in geopolitical issues. In this post, Andreas Fulda, John Heathershaw and Andrew Chubb argue for the increased involvement of academic staff in decision making surrounding internationalisation and for the greater use of academic expertise in guiding university policies in this area

Peace as complex legitimacy: Politics, space and discourse in Tajkistan's peacebuilding process, 2000-2005.

This dissertation explores the process of building peace in terms of the making of complex legitimacy in post-Soviet, post-conflict Tajikistan. Since 2000, Tajikistan's citizens have seen major political violence end, order across the country return and the peace agreement between the parties of the 1990s civil war hold. Superficially, Tajikistan appears to be a case of successful international interventions based on neoliberal internationalist assumptions. Yet, puzzlingly, the inter-Tajik peace is interpreted in a variety of often contradictory ways and correlates with authoritarian government and the tenure of a new oligarchy. On closer inspection it is evident that neoliberal international interventions in Tajikistan have largely failed to achieve the aims of peacebuilding. However, I argue they have served to facilitate an increasingly authoritarian peace and have indirectly fostered popular accommodation and avoidance strategies, as well as localised resistance. Moreover, this peace is founded upon complex relations of legitimacy. It is the product of discourse (the formation of community through communication), politics (the acquisition of power and authority in that community), and space (the differentiation of that community from other communities). I study the political relations between three discourse/spaces ('selves') of Tajikistan from 2000 to 2005: those of subordinates, elites, and the international community. In addition to the discourse and spaces of neoliberal international peacebuilding, are those of popular tinji (Tajik: 'peacefulness'/ 'wellness') and elite mirostroitelstvo (Russian: 'peacebuilding'). In studying the relationships between subordinate, elite and international actors I show how they both accommodate one another via discursive re-interpretation, and avoid each other by retreating into their own 'hidden' spaces and transcripts. These intrinsically political practices have specific material impacts on people's lives. Moreover, I show how they have constituted new forms of authority, livelihoods and sovereignty. In each of these cases, subordinates resign themselves to power and 'peacefulness' and get on with their lives. These practices constitute peace as complex legitimacy

Transnational uncivil society networks: kleptocracy’s global fightback against liberal activism

What is the global social context for the insertion of kleptocratic elites into the putatively liberal international order? Drawing on cases from our work on Eurasia and Africa, we sketch a concept of ‘transnational uncivil society’ which we contrast to ‘transnational activist networks’ (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). While the latter denotes the liberalising practices of global civil society, the former suggests a specific series of clientelistic relations across borders which open space for uncivil elites. This distinction animates a growing line of conflict in global politics. These kleptocrats eject liberal activists from their own territories and create new spaces to whitewash their own reputations and build their own transnational networks. To do so they hire political consultants and reputation managers, engage in public philanthropy, and forge new relationships with major global institutions. We show how these strategies of reputation-laundering are neither illicit nor marginal, but very much a product of the actors, institutions and markets generated by the liberal international order. We compare and contrast the scope and purpose of civil and uncivil society networks, we explore the increasing globalization of Eurasian and African elites as a concerted strategy to distance themselves from associations with their political oppression and kleptocracy in their home countries, and recast themselves as productive and respected cosmopolitans