Resilience is “always more” than our practices: Limits, critiques, and skepticism about international intervention

ABSTRACT

This article examines the response to the crisis of liberal statebuilding in conflict-affected societies since the end of the 2000s. It shows how both resilience policy approaches and academic critical understandings are dissatisfied with the implementation of policies and programs, which seem to fail time and again. That is, there is a widespread perception that resilience is “always more” than what current approaches are providing. In consequence, it is assumed that international interventions require even more locally-sensitive initiatives that are in tune with local needs; new and better technologies, for instance, digital maps to assist practitioners in obtaining sheer volumes of information and accurate representations of space; and programs that are open-ended and flexible. The article cautions that by assuming that satisfactory outcomes are yet to come (i.e., that resilience, or a desired outcome such as peace and security, is still lacking), policy and critical approaches are reproducing and legitimizing failure, furthering neoliberal governance and cementing a profound skepticism.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• ownership
• digital maps
• peacebuilding
• critique

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented in the joint COMPASS/UPTAKE workshop that took place at the International Affairs Institute (IAI) in Rome in November 2018. Thanks to all the participants for the very fruitful conversation and, in particular, to Elena Korosteleva and Trine Flockhart for their leadership. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers and Hylke Dijkstra for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Pol Bargués-Pedreny is research fellow at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs) in Spain, working on the Horizon 2020 project on the EU's external action (EULISTCO). He earned his PhD from the University of Westminster, UK, and has worked at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research and the University of Duisburg, in Germany, and at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands. His research interests include international intervention, post-conflict and climate change governance, resilience, new materialism, and critical theories. He is author of Deferring Peace in International Statebuilding: Difference, Resilience and Critique (Routledge 2019); and has co-edited the manuscript Mapping and Politics in the Digital Age (Routledge, 2019).

ORCID

Pol Bargués-Pedreny http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9555-1934

Additional information

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 769886—EU-LISTCO).