A theory of democratisation through peace-building

Abstract

This contribution presents a theory of democratisation through peace-building. Peace-building is seen as an interactive process between external peace-builders and domestic elites; whether a post-war state develops into a democracy or not depends to a large extent on the outcome of the bargaining process between domestic elites and peace-builders. It is argued that domestic elites typically face many constraints which make adopting democratic reforms a risky and costly proposition. Also, peace-builders usually have much less leverage over domestic elites than one would expect given their resources and man-power. High adoption costs and low leverage explain the outcome of the interaction between peace-builders and domestic elites often results in a peace which is not democratic. The paper uses an analysis of 19 major peace-building missions for exemplifying the theory.

Keywords:

• Domestic elites
• external actors
• interaction
• peace-building
• post-conflict democratisation

Notes

1. The theory presented here is the result of many collaborative efforts. It builds upon Barnett and Zürcher, ‘The Peace-Builder’s Contract’; Barnett et al., ‘Compromised Peacebuilding’; and Zürcher et al., Costly Democracy.

2. Grimm and Weiffen, ‘Domestic Elites and External Actors’, in this special issue.

3. Doyle and Sambanis, ‘International Peacebuilding’.

4. Fortna, ‘Peacekeeping and Democratization’.

5. Barnett and Zürcher, ‘The Peace-Builder’s Contract’.

6. See, for example, Richmond and Mitchell, ‘Peacebuilding and Critical Forms’; Campbell et al., A Liberal Peace?; Barnett and Zürcher, ‘The Peace-Builder’s Contract’; Barnett et al., ‘Compromised Peacebuilding’; Bonacker et al., Interventionskultur; Hyden, ‘After the Paris Declaration’; Zürcher, ‘Building Democracy’; Manning, The Making of Democrats; Autesserre, Trouble with the Congo; Zürcher et al., Costly Democracy.

7. Mac Ginty, ‘Hybrid Peace’.

8. Darby and Mac Ginty, ‘What Peace, What Process’.

9. Kitschelt and Wilkinson, Patrons, Clients, and Policies; Ilkhamov, ‘Neopatrimonialism’; Eisenstadt and Roniger, Patrons, Clients and Friends; Reno, ‘Shadow States’; Bratton and van de Walle, ‘Patrimonial Regimes’.

10. Peirce and Stubbs, ‘Peacebuilding’.

11. Ibid., 189.

12. Groß, ‘Lean Models, Complex Realities’, in this issue.

13. Bueno de Mesquita and Downs, ‘Intervention and Democracy’.

14. See Narten, ‘Building Local Institutions’; Narten, ‘Post-Conflict Peacebuilding’.

15. Steffek, ‘Legitimation of International Governance’, 249.

16. For details, see Zürcher et al., Costly Democracy.

17. Case studies were contributed by Christof Hartmann, Rachel Hayman, Kristie Evenson, Carrie Manning and Monica Malbrough, Anna Matveeva, Henri Myrttinen, Jens Narten, Hamish Nixon, Sarah Riese, Nora Roehner, Tome Sandevski and Brendan Whitty.

18. Freedom House, ‘Methodology’.

19. Manning and Malbrough, ‘Learning the Right Lessons’; Myrttinen, ‘Timor-Leste’; Narten, ‘Kosovo's Postwar Democratization’; Sandevski, External Democracy Promotion.

20. Hayman, ‘Right Direction’.

21. Zürcher et al. propose a measure of the footprint of a mission consisting of duration, cost, personnel and the intrusions of the mandate; see Zürcher et al., Costly Democracy, 57–81. This definition is used in this article.