When Liberal Peacebuilding Fails: Paradoxes of Implementing Ownership and Accountability in the Integrated Approach

Abstract

As a consequence of the popularity of integrated and nationally owned peace processes, aligning external actors to a national peacebuilding strategy has become part of the recipe for success. Using the case of Sierra Leone, this article engages with the question of what constructing such unified peacebuilding agenda in fragile states means politically. Contrasting the purpose of peacebuilding with the practices through which it is carried out, the article argues that the implementation of a unified peacebuilding agenda to a large extent undermines the liberal pretences of peacebuilding. While the integration of government, civil society and donors works to portray a more ordered society in countries where the lack of such order has been a manifest security problem, it also works to undermine the crucial autonomy of and accountability between them.

Keywords:

• peacebuilding
• ownership
• accountability
• integrated approach
• Sierra Leone
• UN

Introduction

The success of peacebuilding today is largely ascribed to national ownership, accountability and integration (UNSC 2010; de Coning 2011, 245–246; Wilén and Chapaux 2011, 531; Andersen and Engedahl 2013, 52)¹. At the same time integrated peace operations can generally be said to succeed in keeping the peace (Fortna 2008; Bellamy, Williams, and Griffin 2010; Maley 2012), but not in translating this into sustainable peace through legitimate, well-functioning and accountable state–society relations (Paris and Sisk 2009; Berdal and Zaum 2013; Andersen and Engedahl 2013). In the combined efforts of achieving national ownership, accountability and integration something seems to go wrong.

Despite the political popularity of the integrated approach it remains poorly understood. There seems to be a marked gap between the degree to which the benefits of integration are held to be self-evident at the policy level, and the success of achieving coherence in practice (de Coning 2011). While it is often assumed that this gap is caused by poor policy implementation (Paris and Sisk 2009), this article argues that the gap between policy and practice is reflective of an inherent paradox in building peace by integration. In face of this paradox, using integration as a cover-up for contradicting interests and value systems is at risk of not only jeopardizing the liberal effects, but also the stabilization purposes of peacebuilding.

That implementation is different from what is described in policy papers is in itself neither particularly new nor surprising. What is interesting here is rather how implementation transforms and reinvents the values of peacebuilding. In the present article, I explore how certain values and hierarchies are inscribed when the international donor community assists the government of Sierra Leone with constructing a unified agenda for peace. The writing of a coherent and comprehensive peacebuilding strategy here crucially defines the purpose of the state and gives rise to a hybridization where the distinction between external and internal become problematically blurred. Taking a deeper look into how the ideals of national ownership, accountability and integration play together in the formulation of a national peacebuilding agenda, the article contrasts the goal of integration with those of ownership and accountability. In this way engaging with the degree of coherence that is achievable between external actors and local actors in a peacebuilding setting, the article deals with one of the most problematic relationships in the comprehensive approach, and one of the most neglected (de Coning 2011).

The article first highlights the purpose of peacebuilding as the establishment of a liberal state, characterized by national ownership and the mutual democratic accountability between state and civil society. Paradoxically, in international peacebuilding this liberal state contract as a relation between state and civil society is to be established through external intervention and made possible by the instantiation of another contract amongst the international donor community. Secondly, the article describes how successful peacebuilding is seen as relying on the integration of all actors under a coherent peacebuilding strategy, and gives an account of how this has been done in the case of the peacebuilding agenda in Sierra Leone. Finally, contrasting the ideals of peacebuilding with the practice of formulating a unified peacebuilding agenda as part of the integrated approach, the dilemmas of seeking to implement accountability and ownership through integration are discussed. The analysis shows that while the idea of peacebuilding rests on a liberal assumption of democratic accountability between the state and civil society, the practice of installing a unified peacebuilding agenda undermines this very same relation by inscribing a much stronger relationship of accountability towards the donor community.

The Double Contract of Peacebuilding

The rising agenda of peacebuilding is frequently described as an enormous international experiment (Ignatieff 2005, 73; Paris and Sisk 2009, 1; Chandler 2010, 37). Such political experimenting requires careful scrutiny and critique—not only because it aims to fundamentally change the social structures of post-conflict societies around the world, but also because it tells us a lot about how international policies are worked through and reflected upon today (Chandler 2010, 2). This section sets out to clarify the values guiding this imperative of long-term structural change.

Imperatives of Peacebuilding

The UN peacebuilding agenda was developed in response to a perceived gap between war and peace. In the aftermath of the so-called new wars, winning the peace had proved vastly more difficult than winning the war (Kaldor 2006; Smith 2005). In light of this, building sustainable peace through post-conflict reconciliation and institutional reform became a main agenda item for the UN.

More importantly, the tendency for countries to fall back into conflict was seen in large part as a consequence of states lacking the capacity or will to protect their populations. In this logic a more full-fledged intervention became necessary to prevent fragile states from constituting a security threat to their own populations (Richmond 2004, 95–96; Collier 2007, 64; Suhrke and Samset 2007; Ghani and Lockhart 2008, 24; Chandler 2010, 3). Additionally, fragile post-conflict states began to be seen not only as a danger to themselves, but also to regional and international security serving as potential havens for terrorism, drug trafficking and international organized crime. According to the UN, not only a moral responsibility for human life, but also our own self-interest explains why we should be concerned to help put these fragile states on a path to peace (UN 2005a).

From the beginning the UN viewed itself as particularly well fitted for undertaking this task (UN 2004, 72). It defines peacebuilding as:

A range of measures targeted to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace and development. Peacebuilding is a complex, long-term process of creating the necessary conditions for sustainable peace. It works by addressing the deep-rooted, structural causes of violent conflict in a comprehensive manner. Peacebuilding measures address core issues that affect the functioning of society and the State, and seek to enhance the capacity of the State to effectively and legitimately carry out its core functions. (UN 2008, 18)

UN peacebuilding, thus, comprises a wide range of political, developmental and humanitarian programmes, as well as mechanisms to prevent the recurrence of violence in order to simultaneously ensure security transition, socio-economic transition and democratic transition. It further requires massive investment, planning and coordination (Chetail 2009, 8; Duffield 2010, 58).

In 2006 the Peacebuilding Commission was established in light of the perceived institutional gap between conflict and peace: ‘there is no place in the United Nations system explicitly designed to avoid State collapse and the slide to war or to assist countries in their transition from war to peace’ (UN 2004, §261). Together with the Peacebuilding Fund (providing financial funding) and the Peacebuilding Support Office (providing technical and political support) the Peacebuilding Commission constitutes the UN peacebuilding architecture (Berdal 2008; Chetail 2009, 16). The commission was created as a subsidiary body of the Security Council to enable the UN to move swiftly and targeted into near-collapsing states (UNGA 2005; UNSC 2005; Chetail 2009, 15). Its main tasks are to develop integrated mission frameworks linking the different dimensions of peacebuilding (political, development, humanitarian, human rights, rule of law, social and security aspects) into a coherent support strategy (Annan 2006; UN 2004). UN peacebuilding, thus, links security and development chronologically by instating a peacebuilding phase between conflict and peace. At the same time, peacebuilding targets human insecurity by addressing a broad and interconnected spectrum of threats (Schirch 2004, 17).

Establishing Peace through Government Ownership and Civil Society Empowerment—the Primary Contract

Since the early 2000s peacebuilding has taken a turn to a strong focus on constructing and strengthening legitimate governmental institutions in countries emerging from civil war (Zoellick 2008; Chandler 2010, 7, 45, 74). In this endeavour the UN has abandoned the value of neutrality and taken on the responsibility to help rebuild a legitimate monopoly of violence in collapsed states. This makes statebuilding a major component of peacebuilding today.

The focus on statebuilding is based on the lesson that rapid elections and bursts of economic privatization can cause more damage than good unless founded in well-functioning governments and institutions. To create this firm foundation a stronger focus on effective, legitimate government institutions and longer deployment of missions have become the answer (Paris 2004; Paris and Sisk 2009, 1–2). Along these lines the Security Council to an increasing extent includes security sector reform and the extension of state authority as elements that are ‘essential to the peacebuilding process’ (UNSC 2010; Andersen 2011, 26–27). Likewise the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations states that, ‘In order to generate revenue and provide basic services to the population, the State must be able to exert control over its national territory’ (DPKO 2008, 27). The goal is the creation of security by virtue of the democratic state that is accountable to, responsible for and capable of providing security for its citizens.

At the same time peacebuilding is seen to require local participation and empowerment. The nurturing of civil society is widely perceived to be the most effective means of controlling state power, holding rulers accountable to their citizens (Jenkins 2001, 4; Lambourne 2009, 35). Also, implementing a policy that involves civil society is deemed pivotal in establishing a culture of peace (Hansen and Stepputat 2006, 301; Chetail 2009, 9; Richmond 2013, 64). Peacebuilding literature often stresses the dangers of relying excessively on a Weberian approach with too strong a focus on state institutions. Instead the need for reconstructing society and social legitimacy on the ground is emphasized (Andrieu 2010, 540). This legitimacy is usually ascribed to civil society, which contrary to the state is seen as legitimately representing the population (UN 2005b; UNSC 2005; Andersen 2011).

In peacebuilding two concepts are therefore seen as vital for creating a well-functioning state, and hence security: the state and civil society. The centrality of the two categories is further stressed by the consequent capitalization of ‘Civil Society’, ‘State’ and ‘Government’ in UN documents (UN 2004, 2005a). Both categories are given strong emphasis in the discourse of peacebuilding where strengthening the democratic contract between state and society is the primary goal of the international community's efforts, stressing that only in protecting its people does the state gain its power and legitimacy (UN 2001, 8; Andersen 2011, 34). Essentially, peace is, thus, defined as a social contract where the state protects and provides basic services to its citizens (Richmond 2008, 287; Chandler 2010, 7; Andersen 2011, 28–29). This represents a fundamentally liberal approach to building peaceful states, where the democratic relation between an accountable state and an active civil society is key. As Zaum (2012, 127) argues:

It is rooted in an understanding of the state as an actor autonomous from society, whose capacity needs to be strengthened to maintain its autonomy from special interests and that needs to be held accountable to ensure that its exercise of power—coercive and otherwise—reflects the needs and interests of the society that it rules.

In sum, the security logic that peacebuilding relies on is an essentially liberal state logic, where the main security threat is the inability of fragile states to protect their citizens and borders. The means for reinstalling peace here becomes the implementation of the liberal state defined by a government that provides both negative and positive security for its population, who in turn provide checks and balances on this government. The key to security in this logic is therefore tied to a strong liberal state supported by liberal institutions and a strong civil society balancing this state.

Building Peace from the Outside—the Second Contract

As a result of the liberal democratic security logic based on a contract between civil society and the state, insecurity or proneness to war is in liberal peacebuilding ascribed to the malfunctioning of the state. Countries with weak governmental institutions are seen not only as particularly vulnerable to civil war, but also as generating international security threats such as the proliferation of weapons, transnational crime, drug smuggling and health threats (Paris and Sisk 2009, 9). In this line of thought it is considered necessary to establish a monopoly of violence, even if it is an internationally managed one.

In peacebuilding, when the monopoly of the state fails another contract steps in to re-establish security, namely one between the UN and the donor states. Like a state depends on the support of its population, the UN depends on support from its member states. Only by virtue of financial support from donor states is the UN able to install an internationally sanctioned monopoly of violence in a collapsed state. And just as the state gains its legitimacy by providing security for its people, the peacebuilding exercise gains its legitimacy through the continued support of international donors (Andersen 2011, 29). Peacebuilding therefore functions as a double contract where the primary contract between the state and its citizens is to be re-erected by another contract between the donor states and the UN.

Two key terms are at the centre of this effort to create peaceful state–society relations: national ownership and mutual accountability. The Peacebuilding Commission continuously stresses that ‘the primary responsibility and ownership for peace consolidation rests with the Government and the people of the host country’ (UNPBC 2008, 27), and that:

Peacebuilding strategies must be coherent and tailored to the specific needs of the country concerned, based on national ownership, and should comprise a carefully prioritized, sequenced, and therefore relatively narrow set of activities aimed at achieving the above objectives. (UNPBSO 2007, 2, my emphasis, see also UNSC 2010)

In addition, it is claimed that ‘only national actors can address their society's needs and goals in a sustainable way’ (UNSG 2009, 6). Besides the value of national ownership, the relation between state and civil society is crucial. Here the idea of mutual accountability is central, where the state is accountable to its population by providing security and social services, while the population on the other hand is responsible for electing the government and following its laws. Interestingly, now that the international contract has stepped in, donors are included in this relation of mutual accountability:

Sustainable peacebuilding requires a strong partnership based on mutual respect and accountability between the Government and the people of the host country and their international partners. (UNPBC 2008, 27, my emphasis)

The idea of peacebuilding is therefore connected to the tradition of liberal peace, but it is also a reinvention of it. Whereas the claim of liberal peace is that liberal states tend to be peace-prone in their relations with each other (Doyle 2005, 463), peacebuilding is concerned with how to build liberal states (Paris 2004, 13–51). Yet for both liberal peace and liberal peacebuilding the pillars that define the end goal of the liberal state are the same: democratic constitutionalism, a commitment to fundamental human rights and transnational interdependence (Rasmussen 2003; Doyle 2005, 463; Richmond 2006, 292, 2008, 292; Danilovic and Clare 2007, 397; Heathershaw 2008, 600; Belloni 2012, 21).² For this reason peacebuilding has been seen as the latest instantiation of the liberal peace.

Crucially, however, peacebuilding reverses the relation between states and the international. Whereas liberal peace claims that liberal states do not go to war with each other—inferring from the state to the international—peacebuilding claims the international necessity of creating liberal states—inferring from the international to the state (Paris 2004). In this manner peacebuilding installs a double contract where an international contract between states is invoked to sustain the primary one between state and civil society.

Building Peace through One Vision

Supporting the two overarching values of national ownership and mutual accountability UN peacebuilding is anchored in the principles of integration and coordination. The perceived need for better integration and coordination was initiated by the Brahimi Report in 2000 and still strongly guides the international community as an overarching concern followed up by the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action stressing ownership, alignment, harmonization, managing for results, inclusive partnerships and mutual accountability (UNSC 2010). These principles were further reinforced by the 2008/24 decision of the Secretary-General on integration:

The Secretary-General reaffirms integration as the guiding principle for all conflict and post-conflict situations where the UN has a Country Team and a multidimensional peacekeeping operation or political mission/office. (Ki Moon 2008)

Institutionally the most marked outcome of this is the UN integrated mission that brings humanitarian and development mandates together with political and military ones (Duffield 2010, 58). In what has been described as perhaps the most sophisticated system to date, the different elements of UN intervention are integrated into a single country-level UN system (de Coning 2011, 248). One of the main purposes of integration and coordination is supporting and aligning international peacebuilding to country-specific national strategies, which is viewed as the most efficient way of supporting a peace constituted by sound state–society relations (Andersen 2011, 34). Because the state and the international donor community ideally share the aim of creating sustainable peace, they should be able to work together in this endeavour.

A recent development in the integrated approach following from the claim of ‘the more integration, the better’ is the integration of external actors' policy plans with those of the local government. Such integration of all donor programmes to a national peacebuilding strategy has been applied in the success stories of peacebuilding in Liberia³ and Sierra Leone (de Coning 2011; Wilén 2012). It has also made its way into the recommendations of the New Deal for Peace, an initiative of an assembly of fragile states, the g7+, which in the name of ownership have taken up the role of defining how they see peacebuilding best carried out:

We will develop and support one national vision and one plan to transition out of fragility. This vision and plan will be country-owned and -led, developed in consultation with civil society and based on inputs from the fragility assessment. Plans will be flexible so as to address short-, medium- and long-term peacebuilding and statebuilding priorities, and they will be the guiding framework for all country-led identification of priorities. They will be monitored, reviewed and adjusted in consultation with key stakeholders on an annual basis. (NewDeal4Peace.org 2013)

The New Deal for Peace moreover designates the establishment of such unified peacebuilding agenda within cooperation with multiple stakeholders and again within the harmonization and aid effectiveness frameworks as defined by OECD/DAC (NewDeal4Peace.org 2013). Integrating external donor strategies to national ones can therefore be seen to represent an increasingly popular move in peacebuilding. It not only displays integration and coherence, but also works to sustain an image of a nationally owned peacebuilding agenda that all actors come together around and agree on.

The Agenda for Change—Integrating for Ownership

In general peacebuilding missions have been heavily criticized for a mismatch of resources and objectives as well as a lack of strategic coherence among peacebuilders themselves (Paris and Sisk 2009, 13). In response to this, in the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL) the peacebuilding experiment has resulted in what would seem both the logical solution and what experts, as well as the UN Secretary-General, have recommended—an integrated approach tying together all development and security measures to put the country on a path to peace (Ricigliano 2003; de Coning 2007, 2010; Ki Moon 2008).

The UN Security Council mandate to UNIPSIL carries both a political and development mandate, enabling UNIPSIL to control and monitor a wide range of political issues.⁴ The mission offers support to resolving tension and threats of potential conflict, monitors and promotes human rights, supports democratic institutions and the rule of law, and consolidates good governance reforms (UNIPSIL 2010a). This happens in close cooperation with the Peacebuilding Commission, and with its status of a model for future peacebuilding the work of UNIPSIL is closely linked to how peacebuilding is thought out and practised as high-level policy.

It was in line with the ideal of national ownership that it was decided that the Sierra Leonean government's Agenda for Change should serve as the national peacebuilding strategy for Sierra Leone to be backed by both the Peacebuilding Commission and the UN Family in Sierra Leone. Clearly stating that, ‘The Joint Vision defines our contribution to implementing the Government's Agenda for Change’ the UN's Joint Vision for Sierra Leone is cast as merely a sub-strategy of the Agenda for Change, outlining how UN agencies, programmes and funds work to support the peacebuilding work of the government of Sierra Leone (PBC 2009; UNIPSIL and UNCT 2009). Towards this end the Joint Vision is remarkable in using the same layout and style as the Agenda for Change, in this way also visualizing its support to the government's combined peacebuilding and poverty reduction strategy paper (see Figures 1 and 2). Linking the political mandate of UNIPSIL with the development and humanitarian mandates of the other UN agencies in Sierra Leone the UN Family in Sierra Leone claims to be ‘one of the few teams to have successfully harmonised its priorities’ (UNIPSIL 2010b). Instead of the donor community having 32 different strategies, in Sierra Leone there is only one national strategy, namely the government's Agenda for Change, serving both as poverty reduction strategy paper and peacebuilding agenda (Government of Sierra Leone 2008).

Figure 1. Cover of the government's Agenda for Change

Source: Government of Sierra Leone (2008).

Figure 2. Cover of the UN's Joint Vision for Sierra Leone

Source: UNIPSIL and UNCT (2009). Original picture is the property of UNICEF.

The Agenda for Change stands out with glossy paper, colour printing and careful design. Combining the national policies of peacebuilding and poverty reduction it signifies a policy agenda of a very broadly defined set of security concerns. It has an immense focus on development, in particular in the shape of poverty reduction. This serves to identify Sierra Leone not so much as a post-conflict country, but as a developing country:

An Agenda for Change reflects our people's belief that the government they elected in a free and fair election will work in partnership with them to improve their social and economic conditions. Sierra Leoneans have on many occasions demonstrated a deep commitment to building a democratic, prosperous and tolerant nation, in which the ties of friendship, citizenship and kinship triumph over divisive efforts of extremists. There is no better way to acknowledge this commitment than to work in partnership with every stakeholder to address widespread poverty, hunger, unemployment, as well as high infant and maternal mortality. (Government of Sierra Leone 2008, foreword)

Development in the areas of good governance, rule of law, human rights, and peace and security, macroeconomic stability, financial and private sector development, and managing natural resources is, when ‘underpinned by measures to consolidate peace’, seen to ‘ensure good governance and develop an enabling environment for economic growth’ (Government of Sierra Leone 2008, foreword). At the same time poverty reduction is clearly stated as the main priority of the government: ‘poverty is widespread in Sierra Leone and as a result, poverty reduction remains the key objective of Government’ (Government of Sierra Leone 2008, 35). This slippage towards development might be seen as a result of uniting the poverty reduction strategy paper and the peacebuilding strategy into one agenda and document. Instead of referring to security threats, the logic in the Agenda for Change identifies ‘risks to development’. The major risks identified are here corruption, illicit drugs, youth unemployment, again issues pertaining more to a well-functioning state than to conventional security concerns. By in this way turning peace and security into a matter of development concerned with furthering human rights, human needs and human development, the Agenda for Change seems to display more of a development agenda than a peacebuilding agenda.

Interestingly, along with this focus on development comes the strong recommendation of control and management mechanisms. The main concern and challenge the report depicts is lack of capacity and funding, and the best way of responding to this concern is monitoring and evaluation. Along these lines the report seeks to ‘develop and implement a comprehensive framework that is result-focused, transparent, efficient, and has local relevance’, to ‘establish the necessary aid modalities’ and ‘provide more detailed breakdown of costs for various interventions’ (Government of Sierra-Leone 2008, foreword). A consequence of bringing the development logic into the peacebuilding agenda of Sierra Leone therefore seems to be that an excessive focus on ensuring aid effectiveness is imported. Here we see how the concern for the people of Sierra Leone is gradually replaced with a concern for answering the donors' demands, as the majority of the ‘efforts to move forward’ in the report are directed to the donor community. Throughout the report this is expressed in an on-going concern with the lack of funding for the government's priorities:

We are mindful of the current global economic downturn, and the challenges it poses for our efforts. These challenges can be overcome by continued partnership, hard work and realization that a threat to human well-being anywhere is a threat to humans everywhere. (Government of Sierra Leone 2008, foreword)

In fact the report concludes with a whole chapter (out of four) on the funding gap (Government of Sierra Leone 2008, 145–176). Using the imperative of a common interest in global human security the report makes a reference to the donors' own interest in supporting the peacebuilding agenda of Sierra Leone. In this way it manages to make the claim that substantial progress has been achieved, while reiterating a call for sustained funding.

This does not, however, mean that liberal concerns are entirely absent from the Agenda for Change, but they are integrated into a larger frame of efficiency and bureaucratic accountability. In relation to the liberal value of mutual democratic accountability the report primarily describes a concern for the incapacity of civil society and parliament ‘to monitor progress and provide checks and balances required for effective implementation of programmes’ (Government of Sierra Leone 2008, 25). This sentence shows how the ideals of liberal democracy and effective implementation are conflated and assumed to work unproblematically towards the same end. Throughout the report this conflation becomes further worked out as the ideal of bureaucratic management characterized by capacity building, monitoring and evaluation becomes the main concern and solution. This is for instance clear in the ‘lessons learned’, which all pertain to lack of management, capacity and monitoring (Government of Sierra Leone 2008, 24–25).

A concern with both civil society and government is also evident as the report prides itself on having integrated the full spectrum of Sierra Leonean society, from central and local government to civil society, development partners, parliamentarians and national consultants into working closely with government in the report-writing process (Government of Sierra Leone 2008, 25–26). According to the report, ‘this gave all Sierra Leoneans the opportunity to contribute to the development of the report’ (Government of Sierra Leone 2008, 26). However, on a more critical note it would also seem to have prevented them from taking a critical stance towards it. Displaying ownership by integrating civil society and government into the same political strategy here seems to work against the purported liberal aim of a civil society to check and balance government policies. To the contrary, a passive civil society might, in fact, work much better towards the ‘effective implementation of programmes’ than an active civil society ‘providing checks and balances’ (Government of Sierra Leone 2008, 25).

In the Agenda for Change we thus witness a conflation of the categories of government and civil society undermining the mutual accountability between them. Instead the accountability of both government and civil society towards the donor community becomes key. Supporting the ownership of both civil society and government by integrating them and aligning them to the donors' standards of accountability here seems to undermine the liberal aims that legitimized peacebuilding in the first place. This suggests that a peacebuilding agenda that simultaneously supports civil society and government ownership, democratic and bureaucratic accountability, might not work so unproblematically towards the same end after all.

Structures of Power and Dependency

One of the most debated issues in the peacebuilding literature is the relationship between top-down approaches targeting the state, and bottom-up approaches targeting civil society (Andrieu 2010; Richmond 2009; Newman, Paris, and Richmond 2009; Goetschel and Hagmann 2009). This section is devoted to a discussion of how these relationships might develop as a consequence of employing a unified peacebuilding agenda. In assessing the impact of peacebuilding this makes three relations important:

1. Relations between the UN and the Sierra Leone government concerned with achieving national ownership;

2. Relations between the UN and civil society providing legitimacy to both the state and the international community;

3. Relations between the UN and their donor partners making the whole exercise possible.

Drawing from experiences of assisting the government of Sierra Leone in writing the Joint Progress Report on the Agenda for Change, I argue that in practice, while both government and civil society were deliberately targeted in this effort, the extent to which it brought about ownership and mutual accountability was severely limited because the main purpose became legitimizing peacebuilding towards the international donor community. This also explains why the somehow odd case of writing a unified vision for peace can be seen as an example of peacebuilding. Writing reports ‘documenting’ national ownership and democratic accountability is, indeed, a substantive part of building peace from the outside. It is exactly through practices like this that the international donor community legitimizes its role in the peacebuilding exercise and gains funds for its future engagement in peacebuilding projects.

UN–Government Relations

Following the success of the Agenda for Change, the Peacebuilding Commission's High-level Special Session on Sierra Leone made the decision to craft an annual peacebuilding report for Sierra Leone (UNPBC 2009). The writing of this report was from the beginning focussed on the ideal of national ownership, which had made the peacebuilding approach in Sierra Leone famous. A report-writing team was set down as a joint venture with the government ‘in the driving seat’ (Field notes, Freetown, July 12, 2010). Government was to draft the report, lead the consultations with donors and civil society, clear the final report, and finally present it in New York. At the same time, including civil society organizations in the consultations served to ensure the participation and endorsement of civil society. In its unique form the report was set out in highly ambitious terms. As a key convener made clear: ‘The potential is a really big win. Failure will mean less money. But you will not fail because it is the first one. Others will want to learn. It sets the example of a best practice’ (Field notes, Freetown, August 11, 2010).

A main idea in the effort to display a well-balanced and nationally owned peacebuilding effort was the aesthetic alignment of the report with the government's Agenda for Change.⁵

Figure 3. Cover of the Joint Progress Report on the Agenda for Change

Source: Government of Sierra Leone (2010).

In terms of both layout and content the report was made to reflect the priorities in the Agenda for Change. Additionally, as an innovative twist, the donor contributions were presented as secondary to, and distinct from, government text—highlighting that they were merely contributions to the government's peacebuilding agenda. Finally, as UN tradition prescribes, the report was to include a section on ‘challenges and recommendations’ (Government of Sierra Leone 2010).

Yet despite these significant strides to put government in the driving seat, while clearly succeeding as a public relations exercise, the report largely failed as an exercise of government ownership. Government representatives generally seemed uninterested and reluctant to contribute to the report writing, and there was a hesitation among UN staff to push their participation too much. In the mission this was explained as the government being paranoid of failure and seeing themselves as unable to produce the kind of text that the UN had in mind. This reluctance by government was to some extent anticipated by the UN which, at the same time as urging the government to take ownership, set the deadlines for the report in order to ‘allow time for the UN staff to improve the report’ (Field notes, Freetown, July 12, 2010). As a last option, if ministries did not manage to contribute any data, the UN had experts on each of the given policy areas able to provide the data from their own files. In this way a successful peacebuilding process monitored and controlled by the government on all promised areas could be displayed should the government fail to provide the information needed.

In reality the government's ownership of the report was limited and consisted mainly in the approval of what the UN had written, rather than in their active creation of it. In the cases where government officials did take ownership and contributed detailed data on their field of expertise, their input was altered by the UN because it was not considered convincing enough in displaying an easily communicable broad and integrated peacebuilding effort. To serve this end the report was vastly abbreviated and the areas of security sector reform, community building, gender empowerment and anti-corruption added to give the report the feel of a more urgent, normatively ambitious and balanced peacebuilding agenda. In a moment of frustration one UNIPSIL staff member explained it in this way: ‘The government had ownership on this process, but we took it over. They just follow the money’ (Personal communication, Freetown, August 21, 2010). Instead the value of ownership was reflected not in the inclusion of the government's work but instead in a constant striving to make the government look as if it had ownership.

Quite a lot of evidence suggests that in face of the task of displaying ownership to the outside world, due to the high stakes of performance, internationals often end up taking over the processes that are proclaimed as examples of ownership (Wilén 2012, 140). In such instances local actors generally lack the time, resources, technical expertise and support systems needed to engage meaningfully with external actors. In fact, the concept of ‘fragile states’ was initially developed in the donor context to refer to countries where the government was unable or unwilling to establish a meaningful relationship with bilateral and multilateral donors (de Coning 2011, 263; OECD/DAC 2013).

When the international community assists local governments in writing unified national peacebuilding plans a number of conditions therefore seem to challenge the aim of local ownership. Strict deadlines, time pressure and the potential win of creating a story of success often result in a reluctance or inability of the external actors to empower local actors. On the other hand the limited resources and capacities of local actors often mean that they cannot live up to the standards of producing a sufficiently impressive and convincing peacebuilding agenda to the international community (de Coning 2011, 262). At the same time the need for ownership rarely comes from inside the recipient state, which is usually not in a position to negotiate with the donors, but rather from strands in the international community, where there is a resistance towards peace operations that are deemed too invasive. In this light, there is also reason to question what interests local governments may actually have in contributing to and spending time on formulating an integrated peacebuilding agenda (Chandler 2006; Bickerton 2007; Wilén 2012, 140).

The UN and Civil Society

Many critiques have been made of the UN's top-down approach and its focus on statebuilding. This is probably why the UN system considers it increasingly important to support the development of a civic culture of democracy, rule of law and tolerant pluralism. So much so that every UN mission and development programme now stresses the importance of local ownership, mirroring what is considered necessary to achieve legitimacy among donor constituencies (Narten 2009, 253, 262). Precisely because of the many voices claiming that civil society must be a key partner in long-term structural change (Hyden 1997, 7–12; Kasfir 1998, 1; Howell 2000, 6–8) civil society was also involved in the process of writing the Joint Progress Report on the Agenda for Change. In fact, engaging civil society was considered a bit of a UN fashion that projects had to live up to in order to be considered novel and up to date. In the case of writing the Joint Progress Report on the Agenda for Change civil society involvement consisted of a two-day meeting, where the civil society organizations were asked to discuss, revise and ‘validate’ the government report (Opening speech by government representative, Government/Civil Society consultations, Freetown, August 19, 2010). Notably, engaging with civil society always involves practices of inclusion and exclusion (Howell 2000, 12)—in this case quite manifestly so. To participate in the consultations 15 civil society representatives⁶ were carefully chosen with the purpose of engaging a productive rather than disruptive group, as well as taking into account the limited funding available for the report.⁷

During the consultations the civil society organizations invited did not attempt to substantially change the report. After all, it was a government report and the government approved and decided its final content. When alterations considered too critical towards government were suggested, government representatives would simply remark that such alterations would not be accepted. Still, the consultations were interpreted as civil society endorsing the report. And maybe they did. Indeed, during the consultations civil society participants themselves soon began to recommend deleting sections that were too critical towards government. As a result, throughout the final report subsections entitled ‘Recommendations emerging from consultations’ were crafted illustrating the inclusion of civil society in the process (Government of Sierra Leone 2010).

In this function civil society served to act in support of government, rather than critically controlling it. As expressed by a government representative: ‘Civil society should work together with Government. You work together for the people, for the country’ (Meeting notes, Ministry of Finance and Development, Freetown, August 12, 2010). This also explains why, at the presentation of the report in New York, a selection of civil society representatives were video-conferenced into the UN General Assembly in support of the report, stressing the inclusiveness of the process (UN 2010):

Images of Civil Society Organisation representatives coming from Freetown via video link further lightened up the hall as their spokesman continued to hammer home the message of inclusiveness in the preparation of the report, being added value to this collective endeavour. (E-mail communication with government representative, 29 September 2010)

The bias towards government inherent in the alignment of all stakeholders to a national peacebuilding strategy in this manner complicates meaningful engagement with the non-state, the local and the informal—elements and structures that we know matter tremendously to everyday life and politics in post-conflict societies. The assumption behind this practice is that the government is able to speak on behalf of the entire population of the state. This assumption is, however, troublesome. Societies that have just undergone a civil war are almost by definition divided (Andersen and Engedahl 2013, 55–56; Paris and Sisk 2009). In a post-conflict setting the parties emerging out of conflict typically represent ambiguous constituencies with conflicting claims of ownership and support. Engagement with some selected division of civil society in such situations may serve to both underestimate and reinforce conflict lines, ultimately undermining the peace process (Paris 2004; Berdal and Zaum 2013).

Quite interestingly the innovative aim of creating a joint report integrating government, donors and civil society in the case of the writing of the Joint Progress Report on the Agenda for Change dissolved the imperative division between government and civil society in the state contract, thereby undermining the democratic accountability between them. Thus, an internal contradiction between the integrated peacebuilding approach and the role ideally played by civil society in the state contract as distinct from and critical of government can be identified. Here the idea of integration in practice works against the mutual accountability between state and civil society as two distinct actors with distinct functions. In this case, the aim to showcase the peacebuilding process in Sierra Leone as inclusive and harmonious seems to counteract the initiative and autonomy of civil society that it was originally meant to support. When, in this way, aligning both government and civil society under the same agenda of ownership the mutual accountability between them is lost.

The UN and the Donors: Selling the Integrated Approach

The whole peacebuilding enterprise relies on funding and consequently on reports like this one explaining to donors why peacebuilding is a good way to spend their money. The lack of funding was, indeed, a major concern in the everyday work of UNIPSIL. Mission staff were frustrated that while doing everything they were asked for by the experts, the Peacebuilding Commission, the UN Security Council and the General Assembly, they found it increasingly difficult to attract donor funding: ‘200 million USD costs four years of peacebuilding, the same as one month of peacekeeping. This is not a lot of money. Moving from peacekeeping to peacebuilding should not mean such huge cutbacks’ (Field notes, Freetown, September 2, 2010).

It therefore made sense to see the report as serving the dual purpose of being a tool for national ownership in the peace process, as well as a call for funding. As one UN staff member explained, ‘this report is not for the PBC⁸ but for Sierra Leone, and to keep momentum behind the Agenda for Change; to gain funding by putting Sierra Leone in the spotlight and internally to support the peacebuilding process' (Personal communication, Freetown, August 17, 2010). Gaining funding for government more than for the mission itself was in fact one of the main achievements that UNIPSIL prided itself of in its focus on government ownership (Dehmer 2012). A major part of this endeavour consisted in telling a convincing story of national ownership and accountability. And part of this story was the narrative of how the impressive Joint Progress Report on the Agenda for Change was actively written by government and subsequently democratically discussed and validated by civil society. The main purpose of writing an integrated agenda for peace here seemed to be displaying an image of a peace process that was accountable and on track, but still in need of sustained funding. This purpose was supported by the internally stated goals of creating a readable and read-worthy report displaying ownership, accountability and integration in the mission.

There is clearly a strong will from international actors to showcase such peacebuilding success stories, yet at the same time the purpose of such showcasing seems directed to the international aid community rather than the local post-conflict context itself (Wilén and Chapaux 2011, 540; Wilén 2012, 139). The new, integrated missions can here be seen as an attempt by the UN to simplify and streamline various offices' activities. From an internal and public relations point of view, this has perhaps been a successful strategy for the UN, but it seems not to have made it any easier for local actors to approach the UN system. The integrated missions may instead add confusion to the already rather complex UN structure in post-conflict settings (Wilén and Chapaux 2011, 547).

Peacebuilders are often aware of this paradox, questioning whether joint reporting actually makes any sense at all. Here a clear schism is evident between the intention of allowing the government ownership and using integrated peacebuilding reports as a means for gaining funding. Likewise a schism between allowing the civil society to be critical and integrating it into the agenda of the government is evident. In the case of writing the Joint Progress Report on the Agenda for Change, while the UN was eager to allow for criticism of the government, in order to provide a more realistic image of the peacebuilding struggles, the government refused to include such criticism—a refusal the mission could hardly deny them, given the mission's commitment to government ownership. Also, civil society organizations critical of the ties and agreements made between the government and international mining companies in Sierra Leone were not invited to participate in the consultations on the Joint Progress Report on the Agenda for Change. In this manner organizations manifestly critical of the government were deliberately excluded from the process.

The UN ultimately depends on its donors in the work it is mandated to carry out. As a consequence the relationship between UNIPSIL and the donors became the most decisive one in the process of writing the Joint Progress Report on the Agenda for Change. As exemplified by how one analyst sees peacebuilding ideally carried out, the working logic therefore becomes that of the donors:

If donors cannot work with a government to build national accountability systems that donors can trust, how can one expect the public to trust in its own government? Recall that the strategic centre of gravity is to build legitimacy through good and effective governance. (Zoellick 2008, 77)

Such a line of accountability undermines what the peacebuilding process was originally aimed at: strengthening the mutual accountability between state and civil society. Instead of carrying out their democratic roles as independent actors each performing their separate function, they become integrated into the same effort of trying to make the state look successful, peaceful and democratic.

The practice of writing a joint peacebuilding agenda here serves primarily to display national ownership and mutual accountability rather than actually creating it. The dependency on donors to the contrary invokes a practice of peacebuilding driven by the UN as an agency that is able to meet the donors' standards in creating an image of a non-conflictual, efficient, integrated and on-track peace process—an image that has little, if anything, to do with relations between the government and the people of Sierra Leone.⁹ Even while the UN mission in Sierra Leone manifestly tried to encourage ownership from the government and civil society, their own dependency on donors made them shift their focus to what the international donor community requested. The primary purpose therefore, more than anything else, became gaining funding for Sierra Leone, resulting in ‘helping’ the government with writing a much more impressive report than they would otherwise have been able to.

Conclusion: Liberal Aims, Illiberal Practices

UN peacebuilding aims to create peaceful and legitimate states embedded in well-functioning state institutions and an empowered civil society. The idea of peacebuilding draws on classical liberal contract theory, but crucially reverses the relation of agency in an exercise that is not driven by the population, but by international donors (Chandler 2010). As the above analysis shows, the government and civil society of Sierra Leone did not take a great deal of ownership in constructing the Joint Progress Report on the Agenda for Change. Yet neither would they seem to have much of an interest in doing so. Instead, we witnessed a self-referential practice between the donors and the UN that seems of little relevance to the aims of peacebuilding, and which neither contributes to the mutual accountability between government and civil society, nor allows them ownership. A closer look at the practices of creating a unified peacebuilding strategy purporting an image of a peacebuilding process on track, yet in need of sustained funding, reveals how peacebuilding to the contrary shifts authority to the international donor community. Here we witness how making the case for sustained funding in many ways works to undermine the ideals of ownership and accountability as the donor community takes over the process and civil society gets integrated under the government's agenda, preventing them from taking a critical stance towards it. In this effort an uncritical alliance between civil society representatives and the state is created to display a clearly integrated and coordinated effort.

This suggests that the practice of building peace through the creation of unified peacebuilding agendas, rather than supporting the autonomy of the state and civil society, actually subverts them—making them dependent on the UN and the international donor community, rather than autonomous and self-sufficient in their own right. In liberal contract theory, which UN peacebuilding rhetorically draws on for legitimacy, security is closely connected to individual freedom and autonomy (Rothschild 1995; McCormack 2007, 87). The logic of peacebuilding reverses this idea of the population as the foundation of the state. Instead a contract with the international community becomes the foundation for this practice. As a consequence the international donor community's standards of success and not the demands of the Sierra Leonean people become decisive. The result is a peacebuilding practice where a major endeavour consists in displaying the peacebuilding process as government-owned, efficient, democratic and civil society-driven—reflecting an accountability that is directed not towards the population of the failed states, but towards the donors.

Notes on Contributor

Lise Philipsen, PhD, is a research assistant at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on the discrepancies between how peacebuilding is legitimized and how it is carried out in practice. In particular, she has studied how peacebuilding is translated in relation to the post-conflict context of Sierra Leone.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the reviewers and editors of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding as well as the research community at the Centre for Advanced Security Theory for excellent comments and feedback. In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to UNIPSIL and the Government of Sierra Leone for allowing me to participate in the writing of the Joint Progress Report on the Agenda for Change and to reproduce images of the reports that frame the peacebuilding efforts in Sierra Leone. The fieldwork in Sierra Leone was sponsored by a grant from the Centre for Advanced Security Theory, University of Copenhagen. The views expressed in the article are solely the responsibility of the author.

Notes

1 The research for this article was conducted during a three-month fieldwork stay at the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL) from July to September 2010. Working in the mission as an intern, I took part in the peacebuilding work of the mission dealing with government, civil society partners and donors. In particular, I assisted in writing the Joint Progress Report on the Agenda for Change. For reasons of confidentiality the data is anonymized.

2 The liberal peace thesis stems from the liberal Kantian argument that peace rests upon democracy, free trade and a set of cosmopolitan values that stem from the notion that individuals are ends in themselves, rather than means to an end. In the 1795 essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant argues that as democratic consciousness develops liberal states will emerge and band together to form a ‘league of peace’ to protect their own security but also to encourage the spread of liberal ideas and promote individual rights internationally (Doyle 1986; Kant [1795] 1990; Williams 2001; Rasmussen 2003; Danilovic and Clare 2007; Hayes 2009).

3 In Liberia it is, however, the World Bank's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper which is elevated to national peacebuilding strategy, rather than as in Sierra Leone an explicit government agenda (de Coning 2011).

4 The UN military mission pulled out in December 2005 and the government of Sierra Leone now supervises the police (Sierra Leone Police) and military (the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces—SLA). The police and military are, however, still receiving some support and training from UNIPSIL and the British International Military Advisory and Training Team (IMATT) (Olonisakin 2008).

5 This report was to my knowledge written in a similar, although less government-based, manner with the assistance of the World Bank.

6 Following these criteria the organizations chosen were: Child Fund SL, Arch Diocese Development Office (ADDO), Action Plus, Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD), Defence for Children Int'l (DCI), Prisons Watch, World Hope International (WHI), Advocacy Movement Network (AMNEt), St. George's Foundation, Coalition for Justice and Accountability (COJA), Society for Democratic Initiatives (SDI), Network Movement for Democracy and Human Rights (NMDHR), National Transparency, Accountability and Human Rights Centre (NATAHR), Children Centre (BEN HIRSCH), Campaign for Good Governance (CGG). Excluded civil society organizations notably include those explicitly critical of government agreements with private mining companies. Also, civil society groups from outside Freetown were excluded due to the cost of transport, accommodation and per diem rates (Field notes, Freetown, August 10, 2010).

7 Not an uncommon practice by donors dealing with NGO's (Howell 2000, 13). Such way of selecting and engaging civil society representatives seems to resemble and sustain what Chatterjee describes as a bourgeois civil society supporting universal values as a career or job strategy towards becoming part of a global civil society elite, rather than in any meaningful way representing the sentiments and concerns of the people (Chatterjee 2004; see also Guyer 1994, 223; Ferguson and Gupta 2002, 993; Englund 2006; Richmond 2008, 288).

8 The Peacebuilding Commission.

9 Relations that surely exist and have their own power dynamics and agency in ways that are, however, outside the scope of this article (Ferguson and Gupta 2002; Taylor 2009; Roberts 2011).