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Abstract
This article undertakes a critical assessment of the local turn in critical peacebuilding scholarship. It comes to the conclusion that the local turn is hampered by a binary and essentialist understanding of the local and the international, which are presented as the only relevant locations of power or resistance. This leads to an ignorance of local elites, provides a romanticised interpretation of hybrid peace governance structures, overstates local resistance and presents an ambivalent relationship to practice. The article recommends a more nuanced understanding of the actors involved in peace- and statebuilding, based on more empirical scholarship and a multidisciplinary approach.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Nick Ross, Deborah Reymond and Lais Menguello for their excellent assistance, as well as Eric Abitbol, Mireille Widmer, two anonymous reviewers and the editors for helpful comments.
Notes
1. Lederach, Building Peace.
2. For an overview, see Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn in Peacebuilding.”
3. Azar, The Management of Protracted Social Conflict; Freire et al., Pedagogy of the Oppressed; Curle, Making Peace; Fisher and Kelman, “Conflict Analysis and Resolution”; and Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.”
4. Bhabha, The Location of Culture; Scott, Weapons of the Weak; and Foucault, Power/Knowledge.
5. UN Secretary-General, An Agenda for Peace.
6. De Soto and Del Castillo, “Obstacles to Peacebuilding”; Hampson, Nurturing Peace; Stedman, “Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes”; Call and Cousens, “Ending Wars and Building Peace”; Walter, “The Critical Barrier”; and Barnett and Zuercher, “The Peace Builder’s Contract.”
7. Lederach, Building Peace.
8. Paris, “Peacebuilding”; Paris, At War’s End; Lund, What Kind of Peace? and Lund, “Why are some Ethnic Disputes settled Peacefully?”
9. David, “Does Peacebuilding build Peace?”; Betts Fetherston, “Peacekeeping”; Duffield, Global Governance; Bendaña, “What Kind of Peace is being Built?”; Pugh “Peacekeeping and Critical Theory”; Richmond, “Understanding the Liberal Peace”; Heathershaw, “Unpacking the Liberal Peace”; Mac Ginty, No War, No Peace; and Jabri, “Peacebuilding.”
10. Autesserre, Peaceland; and Pugh, “Local Agency.”
11. Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn in PeaceBuilding”; and Mac Ginty, Routledge Handbook of Peacebuilding.
12. For a historical contextualisation, see Paffenholz, “Critical Peacebuilding Research”; and Paffenholz, “Civil Society and Peacebuilding.”
13. See, for example, Autesserre, The Trouble with the Congo; and Mac Ginty, International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance. See also the special issue of the Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, including the introduction by McCandless and Tschirgi, “Hybridity and Policy Engagement”; the special issue of Global Governance, including the introduction by Jarstad and Belloni, “Introducing Hybrid Peace Governance”; and Boege, “How to Maintain Peace and Security.”
14. Donais, “Empowerment or Imposition?”; Online Berghof Handbook; and Richmond, “A Pedagogy of Peacebuilding.”
15. Paffenholz, “Civil Society and Peacebuilding.”
16. Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.”
17. Curle, Making Peace.
18. Azar, The Management of Protracted Social Conflict; and Azar, “Protracted Social Conflict.”
19. Fisher and Kelman, “Conflict Analysis and Resolution”; and Belloni, “Civil Society and Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
20. Freire et al., Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
21. Bhabha, The Location of Culture; and Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance.
22. Richmond, A Post-liberal Peace; and Chandler, “Peacebuidling.”
23. Lederach, Building Peace.
24. Paffenholz, “International Peacebuilding goes Local.”
25. Ibid.; Paffenholz, “Civil Society and Peacebuilding”; Mac Ginty, “Hybrid Peace”; and Paffenholz, “Western Approaches to Negotiation and Mediation.”
26. Betts Fetherston, “Peacekeeping.”
27. Miall, “Conflict Transformation.”
28. Paffenholz, Civil Society and Peacebuilding.
29. Paffenholz, “International Peacebuilding goes Local”; and Paffenholz, Peacebuilding.
30. Paffenholz, “International Peacebuilding goes Local.”
31. Call and Cousens, “Ending Wars and Building Peace”; Paris, “Peacebuilding”; and UN Secretary-General, Report of the Secretary-General on Peacebuilding.
32. OECD, Principles for Good International Engagement.
33. Chapman et al., “Evaluation of Donor-supported Activities”; Bennett et al., Aiding the Peace; Böhnke et al., Assessing the Impact of Development Cooperation; Brusset et al., Evaluation Report; and Paffenholz et al., “The German Civil Peace Service.”
34. Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn in PeaceBuilding,” 772.
35. Richmond, “Understanding the Liberal Peace,” 208.
36. Jabri, “Peacebuilding”; Duffield, “Governing the Borderlands”; Autesserre, Peaceland; and Betts Fetherston, “Peacekeeping,” 200.
37. Bendaña, “What Kind of Peace is Being Built?” 5.
38. Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn in PeaceBuilding,” 764.
39. Betts Fetherston, “Peacekeeping”; Richmond, “Understanding the Liberal Peace”; Mac Ginty, No War, No Peace, 33–57; and Bendaña, “What Kind of Peace?”
40. Jabri, “Peacebuilding.”
41. Belloni, “Hybrid Peace Governance”; Boege, “How to Maintain Peace and Security”; and Boege et al., “Hybrid Political Orders.”
42. Mac Ginty, International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance. See this point also made in Heathershaw’s review of Mac Ginty in Heathershaw, “Towards Better Theories of Peacebuilding.”
43. Zaum, “Beyond the ‘Liberal Peace’.”
44. Jabri, “Peacebuilding.”
45. Peterson, “A Conceptual Unpacking of Hybridity.”
46. Sabaratnam, “Avatars of Eurocentrism.”
47. Mac Ginty, Hybrid Peace; and Richmond, A Post-liberal Peace.
48. Höglund and Orjuela, “Hybrid Peace Governance.”
49. Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn in PeaceBuilding,” 770.
50. Ibid.
51. Belloni, “Civil Society and Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina”; Orjuela, “Building Peace in Sri Lanka.”
52. Paffenholz, Civil Society and Peacebuilding, 428.
53. Peterson, “A Conceptual Unpacking of Hybridity,” 12.
54. Kraushaar and Lambach, Hybrid Political Orders, 1.
55. Donais, “Empowerment or Imposition?”
56. Hagmann and Péclard, “Negotiating Statehood”; Belloni, “Hybrid Peace Governance”; and Boege et al., “Hybrid Political Orders.”
57. Belloni, “Hybrid Peace Governance.”
58. Richmond, A Post-liberal Peace.
59. Chopra, “When Peacebuilding contradicts Statebuilding.”
60. Mac Ginty, International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance. See also the opposite view presented in a positive assessment of UNDP’s success in creating such hybrid national infrastructures for peace. Kumar and de la Haye, “Hybrid Peacemaking.”
61. Ibid.
62. Heathershaw, “Towards Better Theories of Peacebuilding,” 277.
63. Kraidy, “Hybridity in Cultural Globalization.”
64. Hoving, “Hybridity.”
65. Bhabha, The Location of Culture.
66. Jabri, “Peacebuilding”; Pugh, “Local Agency”; and Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
67. Debiel et al., “Local Statebuilding in Afghanistan and Somaliland”; and Zahar, “Norm Transmission in Peace- and Statebuilding.”
68. Debiel, et al., “Local Statebuilding in Afghanistan and Somaliland.”
69. Kreutzer, Violence as a Means of Control.
70. Bayart et al., Criminalization of the State in Africa; Bayart, “Africa in the World”; and Bayart, The State in Africa.
71. Bayart et al., Criminalization of the State in Africa.
72. Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works.
73. Ibid., 146.
74. Ibid., 147.
75. Lund, What Kind of Peace? 694.
76. Ibid.
77. Reyntjens and Vandeginste, “Traditional Approaches to Negotiation and Mediation.”
78. Menkhaus, “Somalia’s 20-year Experiment.”
79. Farah, “Roots of Reconciliation in Somaliland.”
80. Scott, Weapons of the Weak.
81. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 95.
82. Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn in PeaceBuilding,” 775; and Jabri, “Peacebuilding,” 15.
83. Jabri, “Peacebuilding.” 15.
84. Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn in PeaceBuilding,” 770.
85. Chandler, “Peacebuilding.”
86. See, for example, Shahrbanou, Rethinking the Liberal Peace.
87. Chandler, “Peacebuilding.”
88. See Hudakova, “Protest in Authoritarian Regimes”, for an overview and typology.
89. Kurtenbach, “Guatemala.”
90. Paffenholz, “Kenya Case Study” Broadening Participation Project. Unpublished. For summary of overall research results see: http://graduateinstitute.ch/files/live/sites/iheid/files/sites/ccdp/shared/Docs/Publications/briefingpaperbroader%20participation.pdf, 2015.
91. Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn in PeaceBuilding,” 774–775.
92. Ibid.
93. Most donors talk about civil society; they mean, however, local NGOs that are mostly supported by INGOs or donors, ie a very specific part of civil society. See Paffenholz, “International Peacebuilding goes Local.”
94. OECD, Development Co-operation Report; OECD, Major Aid Uses by Individual DAC Donors, 2000–2001; and OECD, Major Aid Uses by Individual DAC Donors, 2008–2009.
95. OECD, Ensuring Fragile States are not Left Behind.
96. Paffenholz, “International Peacebuilding goes Local.”
97. For an exception, see ibid.
98. Van Tongeren, “Potential Cornerstone of Infrastructures for Peace?”; Van Tongeren, “Creating Infrastructures for Peace”; and Alihodžic, “Electoral Violence Early Warning.”
99. Kumar and de la Haye, “Hybrid Peacemaking”; Ryan “Infrastructures for Peace”; Kumar, “Building National ‘Infrastructures for Peace’”; and Odendaal, “An Architecture for Building Peace.”
100. Van Tongeren, “Potential Cornerstone of Infrastructures for Peace?”; Kumar and de la Haye, “Hybrid Peacemaking”; Ryan “Infrastructures for Peace”; Kumar, “Building National ‘Infrastructures for Peace’”; Van Tongeren, “Creating Infrastructures for Peace”; Odendaal, “An Architecture for Building Peace”; and Hopp-Nishanka,“Giving Peace an Address?”
101. Kumar and de la Haye, “Hybrid Peacemaking”; Ryan, “Infrastructures for Peace”; Kumar, “Building National ‘Infrastructures for Peace’”; and Alihodžic, “Electoral Violence Early Warning.”
102. See the different debates in the Journal of East African Studies, as well as various ICG reports on Kenya.
103. Chopra, “When Peacebuilding contradicts Statebuilding.”
104. Van Tongeren, “Potential Cornerstone of Infrastructures for Peace?”; Kumar and de la Haye, “Hybrid Peacemaking”; Ryan, “Infrastructures for Peace”; Kumar, “Building National ‘Infrastructures for Peace’”; Van Tongeren, “Creating Infrastructures for Peace”; Odendaal, “An Architecture for Building Peace at the Local Level”; and Hopp-Nishanka, “Giving Peace an Address?”
105. International Crisis Group, Kenya’s 2013 Elections; and International Crisis Group, Kenya after the Elections.