![Sample our Global Development journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5929/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Global-Development.jpg"})
Abstract
Over the past two decades there has been a rapid increase in funds for local civil society actors in fragile states. Current peace-building and development efforts strive for the recreation of a vibrant, active and ‘liberal’ civil society. In the case of Sierra Leone, paradoxically, this growing support has not strengthened civil society actors based on that liberal idea(l). Instead of experiencing enhanced proactive participation stemming from the civil sphere, Sierra Leone’s civil society appears to be largely depoliticised. Drawing on empirical data gathered over the past four years, this article offers three interrelated causal explanations of why this phenomenon occurred during the country’s peace-building phase from 2002 to 2013. First, Sierra Leone’s civil society landscape has become instrumentalised to serve a broader liberal peace-building and development agenda in several ways. Second, Western idea(l)s of participatory approaches and democracy are repeatedly challenged by the legacies of colonial rule and socially entrenched forms of neo-patrimonialism. Third, abject poverty and the lack of education affect activism and agency from below.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank all interviewees in Sierra Leone. Their stories, experiences, narratives and work laid the groundwork for this article. Mark Hoffman, Kieran Mitton, David Keen, David Harris and anonymous reviewers provided useful comments and remarks.
Notes
1. For the purposes of this article the concepts of ‘civil society’ and ‘civil sphere’ are used interchangeably. A critical discussion on the appropriation of both terms to the sub-Saharan African region can be found in Datzberger, “Civil Society in sub-Saharan African Post-conflict States.”
2. More details about how qualitative and quantitative data were collected over the past four years are provided in the empirical section.
3. UN News Centre, “Sierra Leone is a Success Story built on Steady Progress.” New York, March 26, 2014.
4. Jantzi and Jantzi, “Development Paradigms.”
5. See, for instance, Lidén, “Building Peace”; Mac Ginty, International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance; and Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn in Peace Building.”
6. Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness, “Istanbul Framework for CSO Development Effectiveness”, http://cso-effectiveness.org/istanbul-principles,067, accessed September 1, 2014.
7. Ferguson, Global Shadows.
8. Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn in Peace Building.”
9. The New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States was endorsed during the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectivness in Busan, Korea (November 29 – December 1 2011). For more information see: http://www.newdeal4peace.org.
10. Ibid.
11. Debiel and Sticht, Towards a New Profile?
12. ICAI, DFID’s Support for Civil Society Organisations.
13. See http://www.un.org/en/civilsociety/, accessed January 4, 2015.
14. World Bank, Civil Society Background 2014. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/CSO/0,,contentMDK:20093161~menuPK:220423~pagePK:220503~piPK:220476~theSitePK:228717,00.html.
15. See, for instance, Paffenholz, Civil society & Peacebuilding.
16. See, for instance, Richmond, “A Post-liberal Peace”; Nadarajah and Rampton, “The Limits of Hybridity”; and Wennmann, Aid Effectiveness.
17. Mac Ginty, “Gilding the Lily?”; and Narten, “Dilemmas of Promoting Local Ownership.”
18. This point was also put forward by Paffenholz, Civil Society & Peacebuilding, 55.
19. Paris, “Saving Liberal Peacebuilding.”
20. Paffenholz, Civil Society & Peacebuilding, 56.
21. Datzberger, “Civil Society in sub-Saharan African Post-conflict States”; Lewis Civil Society in Non-Western Contexts; and Williams and Young, “Civil Society and the Liberal Project.”
22. See, for instance, Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works; Chatterjee The Politics of the Governed; Comaroff and Comaroff, Civil Society and the Political Imagination; Ferguson, Global Shadows; Harbeson et al., Civil Society and the State in Africa; Kaviraj and Khilnani, Civil Society; Lewis, Civil Society in Non-Western Contexts; and Mamdani, Citizen and Subject.
23. Datzberger, “Civil Society in sub-Saharan African post-conflict States.”
24. Ibid.
25. Cf. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, 19.
26. Barkawi and Laffey, Democracy, Liberalism, and War.
27. As for instance argued by Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works.
28. See, for instance, Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture; and Güneş-Ayata and Roniger, Democracy, Clientelism and Civil Society.
29. Lumumba-Kasongo, Liberal Democracy and its Critics.
30. Goetschel and Hagmann, “Civilian Peacebuilding”; Holmén, Snakes in Paradise; Howell and Pearce, Civil Society and Development; and Verkoren and van Leeuwen, “Complexities and Challenges for Civil Society Building.”
31. Jaeger, “‘Global Civil Society’.”
32. Denney, “Ebola cannot easily be cured but West Africa Crisis may have been Preventable.” Guardian, July 8, 2014.
33. Cubitt, “Constructing Civil Society”; and Cormack-Hale “Partners or Adversaries?”
34. Because of the unpredictable nature inherent in both the institutional life of INGOs and CSOs and their funding allocations from donors, it is acknowledged that the mapping is not fully complete and is therefore subject to change.
35. In many interviews the wartime period was described as the key moment for CSOs and civil movements to arise. Apart from numerous local civilian initiatives to negotiate peace at grassroots level, to report human rights abuses or to provide humanitarian assistance and relief, Sierra Leone’s broader civil sphere also mustered a will of steel to bring the conflict to an end. One of the most prominent examples includes the May 2000 demonstrations outside RUF rebel leader Foday Sankoh’s house, in which about 30,000 people participated.
36. Cormack-Hale, “Partners or Adversaries?,” 141–142.
37. Cubitt, “Constructing Civil Society,” 101.
38. Interview, lecturer, Fourah Bay College, Freetown, August 15, 2012.
39. Interview, Head of Department, Fourah Bay College, Freetown, August 18, 2012.
40. Gardner, “Fourah Bay College: The Decline of Sierra Leone’s Oxford in the Bush.” February 18, 2014, in blog by Mats Utas. https://matsutas.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/fourah-bay-college-the-decline-of-sierra-leones-oxford-in-the-bush-by-tom-gardner/, accessed June 10, 2015.
41. Interview, Head of Department, Fourah Bay College.
42. “Sierra Leone Editor arrested for comparing President to Rat.” Reuters, October 21, 2013. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/21/us-leone-rat-idUSBRE99K0QN20131021.
43. http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2014#.UyQ12ZyluQE, accessed November 15, 2014.
44. Oxfam, Civil Society Engagement.
45. Interview, director, Freetown, July 8, 2011.
46. Oxfam, Civil Society Engagement.
47. Cormack-Hale, 150.
48. Cubitt, 107.
49. Cf. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject; and Ekeh “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa.”
50. Harris, Sierra Leone.
51. Piot, Remotely Global.
52. Interview, director, Freetown, July 4, 2011.
53. Maslow, “Theory of Human Motivation.”
54. Interview, director, Freetown, July 31, 2012.
55. Jantzi and Jantzi, “Development Paradigms.”
56. OECD, Civil Society and International Devleopment.
57. UNDP, Human Development Reports: Sierra Leone. http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/SLE, accessed April 16, 2015.
