The fallacy of constructing hybrid political orders: a reappraisal of the hybrid turn in peacebuilding

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the recent academic and policy interest in hybridity and hybrid political orders in relation to peacebuilding. It is sceptical of the ability of international actors to manufacture with precision hybrid political orders, and argues that the shallow instrumentalization of hybridity is based on a misunderstanding of the concept. The article engages in conceptual-scoping in thinking through the emancipatory potential of hybridity. It differentiates between artificial and locally legitimate hybrid outcomes, and places the ‘hybrid turn' in the literature in the context of the continued evolution of the liberal peace as it struggles to come to terms with crises of access and legitimacy.

About the authors

Roger Mac Ginty is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, and the Department of Politics, at the University of Manchester.

Oliver Richmond is Professor of International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, and the Department of Politics, University of Manchester. He is also International Professor, School of International Studies, Kyung Hee University, Korea.

Notes

1. K. Krause, ‘Hybrid Violence: Locating the Use of Force in Postconflict Settings’, Global Governance, Vol.18, 2012, pp.39–56; R. Luckham and T. Kirk, ‘Understanding Security in the Vernacular in Hybrid Political Contexts: A Critical Survey', Conflict, Security and Development, Vol.13, No.3, 2013, pp.339–59; K. Meagher, T. De Herdt and K. Titeca, Unravelling Public Authority: Paths of Hybrid Governance, Wageningen: IS Academy, 2014.

2. J.T. Checkel, ‘The Constructive Turn in International Relations Theory', World Politics, Vol.50, No.2, 1998, pp.324–48; A. Acharya, ‘How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism', Review of International Studies, Vol.58, No.2, 2004, pp.235–79.

3. T. Donais, ‘Empowerment or Imposition? Dilemmas of Local Ownership in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Processes’, Peace & Change, Vol.34, No.1, 2009, pp.3–26; D. Chandler, Resilience: The Governance of Complexity, London: Taylor and Francis, 2014.

4. A. Bellamy, ‘The Responsibility to Protect', Ethics & International Affairs, Vol.24, No.2, 2010, pp.143–69.

5. N. Tschirgi, ‘Securitization and Peacebuilding', in R. Mac Ginty (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Peacebuilding, London: Routledge, 2013, pp.197–210.

6. A.K. Jarstad and R. Belloni, ‘Introducing Hybrid Peace Governance: Impact and Prospects of Liberal Peacebuilding', Global Governance, Vol.18, 2012, pp.1–6; O.P. Richmond, A. Björkdahl and S. Kappler, ‘The Emerging EU Peacebuilding Framework: Confirming or Transcending Liberal Peacebuilding', Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol.24, No.3, 2011, pp.449–69.

7. O.P. Richmond and J. Franks, Liberal Peace Transitions: Between Statebuilding and Peacebuilding, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009; R. Mac Ginty, ‘Hybrid Peace: The Interaction between Top–Down and Bottom–Up Peace', Security Dialogue, Vol.41, No.6, 2010, pp.391–412.

8. Chandler (see n.3 above).

9. T. Asad (ed.), Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, New York: Humanity Books, 1973.

10. T. Diez, ‘Normative Power as Hegemony', 2011 EUSA Biennial International Conference, Boston, MA, 2011; O.P. Richmond, ‘Beyond Local Ownership and Participation in the Architecture of International Peacebuilding', Ethnopolitics, Vol.11, No.4, 2012, pp.354–75.

11. J. Comaroff and J.L. Comaroff, Theory from the South, London: Paradigm, 2012; R. Mac Ginty, ‘Everyday Peace: Bottom–Up and Local Agency in Conflict-Affected Areas’, Security Dialogue, Vol.45, No.6, 2014, pp.548–64.

12. M. Laffey and S. Nadarajah, ‘The Hybridity of Liberal Peace: States, Diasporas and Insecurity', Security Dialogue, Vol.43, No.5, 2012, pp.403–20.

13. V. Boege, A. Brown, K. Clements and A. Nolan, On Hybrid Political Orders and Emerging States: State Formation in the Context of ‘Fragility', Berlin: Berghof, 2008; P. Albrecht and L. Wiuff Moe, ‘The Simultaneity of Authority in Hybrid Political Orders’, Peacebuilding, Vol.3, No.1, 2015, pp.1–16.

14. Mac Ginty (see n.7 above), p.397.

15. G.C. Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?', in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, London: Macmillan, 1998, pp.66–111; Asad (see n.9 above).

16. R. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, London: Routledge, 1995, p.10; P. Chabal, The End of Conceit: Western Rationality after Postcolonialism, London: Zed Books, 2012, p.137.

17. O. Richmond, Peace in International Relations, London: Routledge, 2008.

18. Comaroff and Comaroff (see n.11 above).

19. N.G. Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005, p.xxiii.

20. M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, New York: Pantheon, 1980, p.98.

21. D. Held, Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus, London: Polity Press, 2004.

22. O.P. Richmond, ‘The Paradox of Peace and Power: Contamination or Enablement?’, forthcoming in International Politics, 2016.

23. K. Menkhaus, ‘Governance without Government in Somalia: Spoilers, Statebuilding, and the Politics of Coping', International Security, Vol.31, No.3, 2007, pp.74–106; Boege et al. (see n.13 above).

24. Richmond and Franks (see n.7 above).

25. A.M. Brown and A.F. Gusmao, ‘Peacebuilding and Political Hybridity in East Timor', Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, Vol.21, No.1, 2009, pp.61–9.

26. F. Cleaver, T. Franks, F. Maganga and K. Hall, Beyond Negotiation? Real Governance, Hybrid Institutions and Pastoralism in the Usangu Plains, Tanzania, London: King's College, 2013, p.5.

27. P. Chandra, ‘Marxism, Homi Bhabha and the Omissions of Postcolonial Theory', Critique: Journal of Social Theory, Vol.40, No.2, 2012, pp.199–214.

28. H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994; K.H. O'Malley and C.Ó. Comhraí, ‘Introduction', in K.H. O'Malley and C.Ó. Comhraí (eds), The Man Will Talk to Me: Galway Interviews by Ernie O'Malley, Cork: Mercier Press, 2013, pp.22–64, at p.26.

29. M. Sabaratnam, ‘Avatars of Eurocentrism in the Critique of the Liberal Peace', Security Dialogue, Vol.44, No.3, 2013, pp.259–78, at p.269.

30. M.-J. Zahar, ‘Norm Transmission in Peace- and Statebuilding: Lessons from Democracy Promotion in Sudan and Lebanon', Global Governance, Vol.18, 2012, pp.73–88.

31. D. Zaum, ‘Beyond the Liberal Peace', Global Governance, Vol.18, No.1, 2012, pp.121–32, at p.124.

32. Laffey and Nadarajah (see n.12 above), pp.404, 406.

33. Author interviews in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mar. 2014.

34. Author interviews in United Nations headquarters, New York, Apr. 2014.

35. D. Chandler, ‘Democracy Unbound? Non-Linear Politics and the Politicization of Everyday Life', European Journal of Social Theory; doi:10.1177/1368431013491817, Chandler (see n.3 above); A. Björkdahl and K. Höglund, ‘Precarious Peacebuilding: Friction in Global–Local Encounters’, Peacebuilding, Vol.1, No.3, 2013, pp.289–99.

36. Bhabha (see n.28 above).

37. J.P. Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies, Washington, DC: USIP Press, 1998.

38. R. Brett, ‘Peace Stillborn? Guatemala's Liberal Peace and the Indigenous Movement', Peacebuilding, Vol.1, No.2, 2012, pp.222–38.

39. R. Bleiker, ‘Conclusion: Everyday Struggles for a Hybrid Peace', in O.P. Richmond and A. Mitchell (eds), Hybrid Forms of Peace: From Everyday Agency to Post-Liberalism, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012, pp.293–306.

40. Richmond and Franks (see n.7 above); R. Mac Ginty, International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance: Hybrid Forms of Peace, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011; G. Visoka, ‘Three Levels of Hybridization Practices in Post-Conflict Kosovo', Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, Vol.7, No.2, 2012, pp.23–36; G. Millar, ‘Disaggregating Hybridity: Why Hybrid Institutions Do Not Produce Predictable Experiences of Peace', Journal of Peace Research, Vol.51, No.4, 2014, pp.501–14.

41. J.H. Peterson, ‘A Conceptual Unpacking of Hybridity: Accounting for Notions of Power, Politics and Progress in Analyses of Aid-Driven Interfaces’, Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, Vol.7, No.2, 2012, pp.9–22, at p.10.

42. C. Constantinou, ‘Aporias of Identity: Bicommunalism, Hybridity and the “Cyprus Problem”’, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol.42, No.3, 2007, pp.247–70, at p.250.

43. OECD, The State's Legitimacy in Fragile Situations: Unpacking Complexity, Paris: OECD, 2010, p.17.

44. Council of Europe, ‘European Commission for Democracy through Law', Opinion no.710/2012, Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2013 (at: www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD%282013%29009-e).

45. M. Miklaucic, ‘NATO Countering the Hybrid Threat’, NATO, 2011 (at: www.act.nato.int/nato-countering-the-hybrid-threat).

46. UN-OCHA, ‘Guidelines for UN and Other Humanitarian Organizations on Interacting with Military, Non-State Armed Actors and Other Security Actors in Iraq’, UN-OCHA, 2008 (at: https://docs.unocha.org/sites/dms/Documents/Civil%20Military%20Guidelines%20for%20Iraq%20%2831%20July%202008%29.pdf).

47. A. Cassani, ‘Hybrid What? Partial Consensus and Persistent Divergences in the Analysis of Hybrid Regimes’, International Political Science Review, Vol.35, No.5, 2014, doi:10.1177/019251211349756; International Crisis Group, ‘Serbia's New Constitution: Democracy Going Backwards', ICG, 2006 (at: www.crisisgroup.org/en/publication-type/media-releases/2006/europe/serbias%20new%20constitution%20democracy%20going%20backwards.aspx).

48. S. Dar, ‘Hybrid Accountabilities: When Western and Non-Western Accountabilities Collide', Human Relations, Vol.67, No.2, 2014, pp.131–51; M. Frenkel and Y. Shenhav, ‘From Binarism Back to Hybridity: A Postcolonial Reading of Management and Organization Studies’, Organization Studies, Vol.27, No.6, 2006, pp.855–76.

49. Millar (see n.40 above).

50. Ibid., p.511.

51. R. Paris, ‘Saving Liberal Peacebuilding’, Review of International Studies, Vol.36, No.2, pp.337–65. See also World Bank, ‘World Development Report: Conflict Security and Development’, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011.

52. Richmond (see n.22 above).

53. R. Luckham and T. Kirk, ‘Security in Hybrid Political Contexts: An End-User Approach', JSRP Paper 2, London: LSE, 2012; DFID, ‘Governance, Security and Justice in Fragile Conflict Affected Situations’, Research for Development – Project Record, 2014 (at: http://r4d.dfid.gov.uk/Project/60873/).

54. D.M. Luna, ‘Remarks by Director for Anticrime Programs’, Washington, DC: Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the National Defense University, Fort McNair, 2012 (at: www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/rm/194199.htm); D.M. Luna, ‘Remarks by Senior Director for Anticrime Programs’, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs: UNICRI Impact of Organized Crime Workshop, Rome, 16 Jun. 2014 (at: www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/rm/2014/227612.htm).

55. British Army, ‘Countering Insurgency', Army Field Manual, Volume 1, 2010 (at: www.stabilisationunit.gov.uk/component/docman/cat_view/163-thematic/164-counterinsurgency.html?limit=10&limitstart=0&order=name&dir=ASC&Itemid=230).

56. W. Maley, ‘Statebuilding in Afghanistan: Challenges and Pathologies’, Central Asian Survey, Vol.32, No.3, 2013, pp.255–70; R. Mac Ginty, ‘Warlords and the Liberal Peace: State-Building in Afghanistan', Conflict, Security & Development, Vol.10, 2010, pp.577–98.

57. J.G. Ikenberry, ‘Liberal Internationalism 3.0: America and the Dilemmas of Liberal World Order', Perspectives on Politics, Vol.7, No.1, 2009, pp.71–87; D. Youngs, The EU's Role in World Politics: The Retreat from Liberal Internationalism, London: Routledge, 2011.

58. Richmond (see n.22 above).

59. M.S. Grindle, ‘Good Enough Governance: Poverty Reduction and Reform in Developing Countries’, Governance, Vol.17, 2004, pp.525–48.

60. E. Hall and S. McGarrol, ‘Progressive Localism for an Ethics of Care: Local Area Co-ordination with People with Learning Disabilities’, Social and Cultural Geography, Vol.14, No.6, 2013, pp.689–709.

61. W. Naudé and N. Stel, ‘Hybrid Political Orders and Fragile States: Lessons from Lebanon', in UNU-Merit Blog, 2013 (at: http://blog.merit.unu.edu/hybrid-political-orders-and-fragile-states-lessons-from-lebanon/).

62. World Bank, ‘Public Goods through Social Entrepreneurship: Creating Hybrid Value Chains', Washinton, DC: World Bank, 2011, World Bank event, 18 May; Z. Kassim, H.S. Odierno and S. Patel, ‘Hybrid Insurance Structures: Hybrid Mutual Insurers. And Takaful', in S.O. Gonulal (ed.), Takaful and Mutual Insurance: Alternative Approaches to Managing Risks, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012, pp. 67–82.

63. D. Chandler and O. P. Richmond, ‘Contesting Postliberalism: Governmentality or Emancipation?', Journal of International Relations and Development, Vol.18, 2015, doi:10.1057/jird.2014.5.

64. D.F. Da Costa and J. Karlsrud, ‘Navigating Hybrid Political Orders: Balancing Peacebuilding in Chad', Conflict Trends, 2011, pp.13–21.

65. C. Kumar and J. De la Haye, ‘Hybrid Peacemaking: Building National “Infrastructures for Peace”', Global Governance, Vol.18, 2012, pp.13–20.

66. Ibid., p.17.

67. UNHCR, Rule of Law Tools for Post-Conflict States: Maximizing the Legacy of Hybrid Courts, Geneva and New York: UNHCR, 2008; European Commission, ‘Toolkit for Bridging the Gap between National and International Justice', Joint Staff Working Document on Advancing the Principle of Complementarity, SWD, 2013, 26 Final, 31 Jan., Brussels: European Commission, 2013, p.2.

68. A. Wardak and H. Hamidzada, ‘The Search for Legitimate Rule, Justice and a Durable Peace: Hybrid Models of Governance in Afghanistan', Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, Vol.7, No.2, 2012, pp.79–88, at p.79.

69. M.V. Hoehne, ‘Limits of Hybrid Political Orders: The Case of Somaliland', Journal of Eastern African Studies, Vol.7, No.2, 2013, pp.199–217.

70. K. Meagher, ‘The Strength of Weak States? Non-State Security Forces and Hybrid Governance in Africa', Development and Change, Vol.43, No.5, 2012, pp.1073–101, at p.1097.

71. T. Goodfellow and S. Lindemann, ‘The Clash of Institutions: Traditional Authority, Conflict and the Failure of “Hybridity” in Buganda', Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, Vol.51, No.3, 2013, pp.3–26.

72. World Bank (see n.51 above).

73. DFID (see n.53 above).

74. Ibid., p.13.

75. M. Bøås and M.H. Gaas, ‘What to Do with Somalia', Wardheer News, 2012 (at: http://wardheernews.com/Articles%202012/Feb/25_Somalia_by%20Morten_mohamed.html).

76. DDG, ‘External Involvement in Local (Sub-National) Peace Building in Somalia’, DDG, 2014 (at: www.somaliangoconsortium.org/docs/key/15/2014/1396353740.pdf).

77. Richmond (see n.22 above).

78. A. Escobar, Territories of Difference, London: Duke University Press, 2008, pp.10–12.

79. E. Balibar, Politics and the Other Scene, London: Verso, 2002, p.35.

80. O.P. Richmond, ‘The Dilemmas of a Hybrid Peace: Negative or Positive?', Cooperation and Conflict, Vol.50, No.1, 2015, pp.50–68, doi:10.1177/0010836714537053

81. J. Borger and J. Boone, ‘Taliban Peace Talks with Hamid Karzai are “Mostly Hype”’, Guardian, 24 Oct. 2010 (at: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/taliban-peace-talks-hamid-karzai-afghanistan).

82. M. Turner, ‘Peacebuilding as Counter-Insurgency in the Occupied Palestinian Territory', Review of International Studies, Vol.41, No.1, 2015, pp.73–98.

83. Richmond (see n.80 above).

84. Richmond (see n.22 above).

85. Asad (see n.9 above), p.114.

86. Richmond (see n.80 above).

87. J. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

88. E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York: Peter Smith, 1999.

89. R. Harris, Prejudice and Tolerance in Ulster: A Study of Neighbours and ‘Strangers’ in a Border Community, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972.

90. R. Bleiker, ‘Conclusion: Everyday Struggles for a Hybrid Peace', in O.P. Richmond and A. Mitchell (eds), Hybrid Forms of Peace: From Everyday Agency to Post-Liberalism, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012, pp.293–306.