No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Coupled Arenas: Why State-building is so Difficult
Abstract
Interventions seem,to regularly result in unintended,outcomes,that no one has planned,or anticipated. Many,of these,outcomes,can be associated with organizational,problems,and connected,ways ,of perceiving ,reality within ,the interventionists’ camps. These processes of knowledge,production,and implementation,will be explained by the model,of “coupled arenas”. Interactions between,different arenas,lead to,a contradictory,indirect administra- tion of the Global South. Most of the problems,of interventionsaiming,at “state-building” can be better understood when conceived as results of the interactions between actors in three different arenas, namely Western headquarters, national base camps, and local offices “in the bush”. Nor- mally, NGOs and international agencies, likewise, are facing problemsstemming from the fact that their activities take place in different places simultaneously.,While in the Western headquarter bureaucratic logics and moral politics prevail, the national base camp obeys to the logic of intermediary rule. Finally, in the bush office, decisions and plans taken else-
... 22 The staff could record an increase in participation and report that the community is indeed in the driving seat of state-building. Local authorities, prominent among them elders and religious authorities, could continue to operate the VC and distribute the benefits of 21 While such tricks could be interpreted as a strategic response of subaltern actors, they are not restricted to the subaltern, but are a rather common feature of development (see Schlichte and Veit 2007). 22 Strunz (2012) argued that conceptual vagueness can enhance creativity, facilitate inter-and trans-disciplinary communication, and promote problem-solving. ...
Development promotes bureaucratization, and bureaucracies are based on knowledge and produce knowledge. Failures of development are therefore regularly attributed to a lack of knowledge. The article argues that the quest for knowledge is embedded in the managerial rationality of interventions. This rationality also structures the developmental knowledge field and thereby generates ignorance. The example of a state-building program in Somalia is used to empirically explore how the generation, administration, and transfer of knowledge was intertwined with ignorance. It shows what knowledge missed, obfuscated, ignored, or even hid and how knowledge and ignorance were arranged in the daily state-building practice. This approach sheds light on relations and mechanism of power exerted in development and helps to explain its effects. In Somalia, omission, silence, secrecy, and strategic and bureaucratic ignorance enabled the program to delineate the interventionist terrain as technical and to depoliticize state-building. They also helped to expand liberal modalities of government to “remote” and “unruly” Somali villages.
... Dementsprechend unterscheiden sich innerhalb der Organisation die Wahrnehmungen von "Welt" als Teil der Organisationsumwelt. Die Entscheidung für eine Peacekeeping-Mission (re-)produziert Weltordnung, doch die Umsetzungen sind verhaftet mit den lokalen Realitäten bürokratischer Verfahrensweisen und den organisatorischen und politischen Adaptionen an lokale Bedingungen.Dass die "Welt" in einem Field Office im Hinterland von Liberia verglichen zur Perspektive aus dem Wolkenkratzer des VN-Hauptquartieres in New York anders wahrgenommen wird, ist natürlich keine neue Erkenntnis (vgl. auchSchlichte und Veit 2007). Die zentrale Frage stellt sich jedoch hinsichtlich des Umgangs mit diesen Unterschieden innerhalb einer bürokratischen Organisation: Wie leisten bürokratische Organisationen und ihre MitarbeiterInnen diese Differenzierung weltorganisatorischen Anspruchs als integralen Bestandteil ihrer alltäglichen Arbeit? ...
Dieses Buch stellt mit Weltorganisationen ein begriffliches Konzept für internationale Organisationen vor und diskutiert dessen Mehrwert in theoretisch-konzeptioneller und empirischer Hinsicht. Im Vordergrund steht die Frage, was das Konzept der Weltorganisation im Gegensatz zu etablierten Konzepten zu leisten vermag und wie sich damit ausgewählte internationale Organisationen analysieren lassen.
... The most prominent of these can be found in a 2013 special issue of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, wherein several authors discuss the everyday legitimacy of statebuilding and advocate for a shift in focus from the agenda of liberal peacebuilding to 'a literature proposing a more nuanced examination of the extent to which peacebuilding needs to be legitimate in the eyes of those who proffer the process as well as those who experience its edict' ( Roberts 2013, 6). At the same time, a number of studies have shown that interventions establish social relations and special kinds of interactions between those intervening, the state political elite and the local population on the ground ( Pouligny 2006;Schlichte and Veit 2007). This can also include any local resistance to international interventions ( Kappler and Richmond 2011). ...
This introduction to the special section on “Authority Building in International Administered Territories” begins by summarizing the relevant literature on international administrations. To conceptualize authority building as an ongoing process in which international and local actors confirm – or refuse – authority claims, secondly, two types of authority are differentiated: ‘interpretative authority’ and ‘performing authority’. This sociological conceptualization of authority building allows, thirdly, a discussion on the restrictions and challenges that international administrations face in their attempts to establish authority on the ground. Finally, an overview of the section’s articles is provided.
... (Lavanex 2008) Thus, the most systematic developments of the multi-level governance approach have been focused on the EU context and this article will mostly refer to this literature. However, it is important here to mention the fact that some conflict literature too has advocated a global-to-local approach, whilst some authors have considered how violence and armed groups are networked across national borders (Schlichte and Veit 2007). Likewise, there is an important and fast growing literature on the hybridity of African states and of their governance arrangements which has put the stress on Ellis and Hibou 1999), has studied state-supported criminal activities in Africa, showing how individuals' roles are embedded into group responsibility: contrary to many studies on corruption in Africa which put the stress on individual responsibilities, these scholars have stressed the linkages between African governments and institutionalised fraud, the growth of private armies, the plundering of natural resources, the privatisation of state institutions, and the development of 'economies of plunder'. ...
This paper analyses how the security sector reform (SSR) process in the Central African Republic has been defined and then implemented, putting emphasis on the interactions between national and international actors. Therefore, it advocates an approach which consists of expanding the agenda of the traditional multi-level governance approach and which seeks to seize both the top-down and the bottom-up dynamics of decision-making processes. The first objective is to capture the sets of actors and procedures which drive the reform process, and to map out the various levels of government at which decisions are made. Secondly – and more fundamentally – is to capture the intermingling of domestic and international decision-making processes which increasingly overlap and interfere with each other in Southern countries.
The insistence of the return of violence in countries where the UN has intervened to promote peace has fuelled a debate about the effectiveness of international instruments for conflict resolution. This article reflects on the progress that these instruments were having in response to the recurrence of violence in light of what has been an approach to the concept of positive peace of Johan Galtung. From two case studies (Guatemala and Haiti) marked by changes in the discourse and practice of the United Nations that this approach inspired, it is argued that the UN instruments for peace would be so much more effective when they respect the author’s proposal, not only with regard to results they intend to achieve, but also in the way positive peace is operationalised on the ground. Analyses – as difficulties in implementing more comprehensive, local and inclusive processes that would affect the promotion of more sustainable peace – also contaminate the mechanisms used to assess their effectiveness.
The fight for women’s rights in different regions of the world has given rise to a process of ‘global norm creation’ (UN Women 2009). CEDAW is a milestone in this process, which aims to improve the reality of so-called ‘local’ women in various countries. This very distinction between the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ has become commonplace in the practice and discourses around women’s rights. From a critical feminist perspective, global instruments are regarded as hegemonic and distant from local realities. The same argument is prominent in critical approaches to peace and conflict studies where critics of the so-called ‘liberal peace’ argue that the promoted forms of peace follow definitions and preferences of the global North, and that local perspectives and practices are neglected and agency withdrawn from local actors.
Weltorganisationen haben den Anspruch, global zu denken und zu handeln. So integrieren sie die „Welt“ als Teil ihrer Semantik, interagieren mit der „Welt“ als Teil ihrer Organisationsumwelt und generieren Ordnungen für die „Welt“. Des Weiteren setzen viele dieser Weltorganisationen ihren Anspruch auch durch eigene „Aktion“ ihrer Bürokratie um (vgl. Barnett und Finnemore 2004). Peacekeeping der Vereinten Nationen (VN) ist in diesem Zusammenhang ein besonders interessanter Fall. Zum einen beruht Peacekeeping auf den Beschlüssen des (zwischenstaatlichen) Sicherheitsrats der Vereinten Nationen, dem aufgrund der Charta der Vereinten Nationen die Aufgabe zufällt, Sicherheit und Frieden in der Welt zu bewahren – notfalls auch durch die Mandatierung militärischer Interventionen (vgl. ICISS 2001). Eine Peacekeeping-Mission repräsentiert somit einen Beschluss des Sicherheitsrates. VN-Peacekeeping ist allerdings auch die programmatische und die technisch angewandte Lösung der VN-Bürokratie für diese spezifischen Problemlagen.
Volltext: https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-zmsbw/files/577/08179929.pdf
Sowohl für die NATO als auch für die Bundeswehr stellte die International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan den intensivsten und verlustreichsten Einsatz ihrer Geschichte dar. Über die genaue Praxis dieser vielfach als problematisch gesehenen militärischen Mission ist jedoch wenig bekannt. Philipp Münch untersucht erstmals auf breiter Quellenbasis und in historischer Perspektive die Handlungslogik der Bundeswehr in Afghanistan, ebenso die relevanten politischen Entscheidungen. Er analysiert eingehend, wie die Verantwortlichen den Auslandseinsatz strategisch und operativ planten, wie sie mit afghanischen Machthabern umgingen, wie das Nachrichtenwesen funktionierte und wie die Bundeswehr Gewalt anwendete. Die Ergebnisse werden eingebettet in eine Untersuchung der lokalen afghanischen Verhältnisse, unter denen die Bundeswehr agierte.
Rezension der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung (FAZ): http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/politische-buecher/bundeswehr-am-hindukusch-laehmende-selbstabsicherung-14311736-p2.html?printPagedArticle=true#pageIndex_2
Karamoja is a semi-arid region in north-eastern Uganda and inhabited by different
pastoral groups that together number about a million people. A harsh environment
characterised by high temperatures and erratic rainfall, semi-nomadic livestock herding
has emerged as the prevalent economic activity and marks all aspects of social and
cultural life. Written and oral history recognises that pastoral conflicts have been prevalent
in Karamoja for a long time; recurring inter-group vendettas arose mainly when livestock
was raided but also over natural resources like water and pasture. The practice of cattle
rustling illustrates that the people of Karamoja are in a steady process of transition that is
far from threatening to their cultural survival. Such contact is, in fact, essential for local
identity (Barth 1969). With British colonial rule beginning in the late 19th century the
people of Karamoja have, however, been forced to deal with a new form of violence that
has continued in post-colonial Uganda. The main elements of this forced transformation
are the application of anti-pastoral policies and the militarisation of the region.
Anti-pastoral policies that encompass establishment of game reserves and wildlife
forests, policies of sedentarisation, limitations to mobility as well as the promotion of cattle
ranches and crop cultivation do not only express an ignorance and marginalisation of the
pastoral people but had far reaching consequences: Less accessible land, concentration
of animals, overgrazing (as a pre-stage of desertification) and forced destocking of herds
as well as animal losses due to epidemic diseases became the predominant pattern in the region (Mamdani et al. 1992). At the same time, farming – always rather complementary
to livestock herding – could not be instituted as an alternative mode of production, the
erratic rainfall make crop cultivation a high risk activity. Impoverishment and lack of
alternative livelihoods is further complicated by a rising population. Together these
factors have led to chronic shortages in food supply and consequently, human suffering.
Cutting firewood and charcoal production have become a wide-spread strategy among the
people of Karamoja to diversify their household income, but its deteriorating
environmental impact is visible in ongoing desertification, which is further impacted by
climate change.
The militarisation of the region began with the British military occupation in 1911, a
reaction to the considerable numbers of small arms and weapons that were said to be in
circulation (Barber 1968). The people of Karamoja traded these weapons for cattle and
used them in cattle raiding or, respectively, to protect their animals. The official mission of
the British administrators - to establish law and order in the region – were continued by
post-colonial governments and resulted in the recurring impounding of livestock and
repeated disarmament interventions (Mkutu 2008). As pastoral groups quite often
perceive state actors as enemies (Mkutu 2007), disarmament programmes contributed to
increased hostility towards the government of Uganda (Gray 2000). Hence, a steady
increase in armed violence and casualties in Karamoja throughout the 20th century has
added a serious security threat to the livelihood crisis in Karamoja. Given the fact that
most of Karamoja’s borders are unchecked, small arms and light weapons (SALW) can
flow into the country easily. This conflict thus has an international dimension that hampers
sustained disarmament: groups outside of Uganda are also involved, specifically from
south-eastern Sudan, north-western Kenya and south-western Ethiopia (ITDG-EA & AU
IBAR 2003).
Given the continuity of anti-pastoral policies and the intensifying militarisation of the
region one might grasp why Karamoja has become a crisis region in Africa. Increased
human suffering has led to lasting international attention. Aid interventions first started as
emergency relief operations in 1964 but especially in the aftermath of the drought of 1979
and the subsequent famine marked by significant human loss. The number of
international aid agencies has grown steadily, though the total number is unknown, even
to the government of Uganda itself. At present, all types of interventions – from relief to rehabilitation to ‘development’ – can be found. Recent comparative humanitarian and
‘development’ indicators still show that Karamoja is far from what is said to be the national
average. Beside the agencies’ direct assistance in Karamoja, many international
agencies operate in Uganda’s capital Kampala, where they are involved in policy advice to
the government of Uganda (GoU). Among other so called working groups, the Karamoja
Working Group (KWG) is made up of representatives from both international donors and
aid agencies that debate on adequate policy and intervention strategies to be applied to
Karamoja.
Meanwhile, anti-pastoral politics and disarmament operations continue under the
current government of President Yoweri Museveni and First Lady Janet Museveni who
was appointed Minister of State for Karamoja Affairs in 2009. The government has
elaborated two programmes that provide a framework for all interventions in the region,
namely, the Karamoja Integrated Disarmament and Development Programme (KIDDP)
and Karamoja Action Plan for Food Security (KAPFS) (cf. OPM 2007; OPM 2010a). The
GoU also considers the resettlement of people to more fertile areas of Karamoja as a
legitimate goal and promotes sedentary crop cultivation as an alternative livelihood option
(OPM 2007).
Am Anfang einer Intervention stehen unbegründet große Hoffnungen und eine ausgeprägte Überheblichkeit. Jedenfalls zeigt sich
ein solches Bild im Lichte der Theorien von Pierre Bourdieu und Niklas Luhmann. Beide Werke lassen zweifeln, ob Eingriffe
von außen den Verlauf und Austrag von zuvor kriegerisch ausgetragenen Konflikten wie gewünscht beeinflussen können.
Mittagspause in Kampala: Zwischen deutschen und ugandischen Kollegen kommt das Gespräch auf das Thema Korruption. Wie so oft
zwischen Gesprächspartnern aus verschiedenen Ländern wird vergleichend diskutiert. Eine deutsche Kollegin kritisiert an den
ugandischen Verhältnissen, dass der Halbbruder des Präsidenten offenbar in eine Korruptionsaffäre bei der Beschaffung gebrauchter
Armeegüter aus Bulgarien und der Ukraine verwickelt sei. Die ugandischen Kollegen fragen nach, wovon denn der Bruder des deutschen
Präsidenten lebe.
This article juxtaposes donors' analyses of state failure and strategies of post-conflict statebuilding in Sierra Leone with actual processes of state-formation. It argues that international state-builders' analytical and policy frameworks are built on stylized assumptions about how states form and operate influenced by ideas derived from neoclassical economics. They focus on individual decision-making and functionalist formal institutions and provide a-historical analyses that fail to comprehend long-term state-formation. Interveners need to broaden their conceptual toolbox by paying more attention to local power structures, informal institutions and historical path dependency. Such a deeper analysis would encourage reflection on whether and how social change can be influenced by external intervention and allow donors to evaluate their statebuilding activities more honestly. This would raise important questions about the mismatch between interveners' ambitious goals and modest tools.
When political actors and international relations scholars invoke ‘the international community’, the term is commonly framed very loosely. It is used either as a reference to the norms of international politics or, according to its composition, as a coalition of concerned actors. This article, by contrast, argues that it is the interplay of image and practice of the term's invocation that shapes its multi-faceted character. ‘The international community’ can be used by many different groups, state and non-state alike, to locate their political goals in the context of a wider array of values. Usually, these norms are state related and can be used to simulate political relevance. Conversely, actors defying widely accepted values can be excluded and policy against them legitimized. Addressing domestic as well as international audiences, the claim to be acting as, or on behalf of, ‘the international community’ is mostly virtual but has definite political consequences.
Effective argumentation in international politics is widely conceived as a matter of persuasion. In particular, the ‘logic of arguing’ ascribes explanatory power to the ‘better argument’ and promises to illuminate the conditions of legitimate normative change. This article exposes the self-defeating implications of the Habermasian symbiosis between the normative and the empirical force of arguments. Since genuine persuasion is neither observable nor knowable, its analysis critically depends on what scholars consider to be the better argument. Seemingly, objective criteria such as universality only camouflage such moral reification. The paradoxical consequence of an explanatory concept of arguing is that moral discourse is no longer conceptualized as an open-ended process of contestation and normative change, but has recently been recast as a governance mechanism ensuring the compliance of international actors with pre-defined norms. This dilemma can be avoided through a positivist reification of valid norms, as in socialization research, or by adopting a critical and emancipatory focus on the obstacles to true persuasion. Still, both solutions remain dependent on the ‘persuasion vs. coercion’ problem that forestalls an insight into successful justificatory practices other than rational communication. The conclusion therefore pleas for a pragmatic abstention from better arguments and points to the insights to be gained from pragmatist norms research in sociology.
This study examines the implicit conceptualisation and apparent transformation
of the discourse of peace both as an ideal, unachievable or
achievable form, or as a subjective concept. It does so from its early
beginnings in the context of the literature on political theory and philosophy,
to the literatures on conflict, war and power, and its association
with democratisation, development, free-market reform, human
rights, and civil society. This is compared and contrasted with the
development of the methods of making peace, public discourses on
peace, and international and civil society organisations focusing on
disarmament and later on humanitarian issues. This culminates in the
policy discourses associated with the institutionalisation of such practices
and discourses in the context of the role of the UN and peacebuilding.
In particular this study focuses on the intellectual and policy
evolution that has led to the development of a contemporary discourse
of a ‘liberal peace’, implicit in most contemporary peacemaking activities
and humanitarian intervention, and which is increasingly the
precursor of intervention for governance purposes based upon a peacebuilding
consensus. This study concludes by examining the different
graduations of the liberal peace. It points to the danger of assuming
that the concept of peace always signifies an ideal form, and therefore
of condoning what may well be a slide of the debates about peace into
debates about war in which the liberal peace is seen to be virtuous, but
in reality is highly interventionary and perhaps also virtual. Indeed,
this book argues that it may well be that the liberal peace is becoming
a form of war, and furthermore, that this is far from being a new
phenomena.
France in Search of an African Policy?, by Roland Marchal
The French presidential élections do not seem to have essentially changea France's African policy: vital décisions are not being taken and the government is simply content to deal with the situation on a day-to-day basis. Despite the désire to reform cooperation policy, the centres of decision-making remain scattered and networks of influence powerful. Whilst recommending the policies of structural adjustment called for by the Bretton Woods institutions, France continues to support African leaders who stand in the way of democratization. France should rather favor the State of Law and settle the important economie issues such as debt, regional integration and the future of the franc zone. France must work especially hard to ensure that there is greater European commitment to Africa, not only financially speaking but also politically. This would help to remedy the deficiencies of the United Nations.
International state-building has become central to international policy concerns and has marked a clear neo-Wilsonian shift in international thinking, spurred by the leadership of the United States and the European Union. Today's approaches insist on the regulatory role of international institutions and downplay the importance of locally-derived political solutions. This privileging of 'governance' over 'government' is based on the assumption that the political process can be externally influenced through the promotion of institutional changes introduced at the state level and pays less attention to how societal pressures and demands are constitutive of stable and legitimate institutional mechanisms. This article questions this approach and analyses the transformation in the assessment of the importance of the societal sphere. It considers how this shift has been shaped by current understandings of war and conflict, and how the prioritisation of governance has fitted with critical and post-positivist trends in academic thinking in international relations and security studies. The discussion is illustrated with examples drawn largely from the Balkans and the international regime in Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular.
Prendre l'avion, envoyer un e-mail : la mondialisation s'inscrit dans nos gestes les plus quotidiens. Pourtant, nous l'envisageons souvent comme une menace qui pèserait sur notre identité, voire notre survie. Dans cet essai incisif, Jean-François Bayart propose une vision radicalement nouvelle de ce phénomène, à rebours des discours néo-libéraux ou altermondialistes : la mondialisation est notre œuvre et l'Etat-nation en est, en réalité, le produit et non la victime.La globalisation est nôtre car c'est par elle que nous façonnons notre éthique et notre corps, que nous soumettons et que nous sommes subordonnés. Loin d'être synonyme, en tout temps et en tous lieux, d'aliénation culturelle et de délitement social, la mondialisation engendre des solidarités et des réseaux transnationaux qui s'articulent aux Etats-nations sans nécessairement les ébranler. Elle voit l'émergence de nouveaux sujets moraux, de préoccupations éthiques inédites, de styles de vie neufs.La globalisation est aussi affaire de pouvoir, d'accumulation, donc d'inégalités et de violences. Contradictoire, elle intègre le marché international des capitaux et des biens, mais cloisonne, par la coercition, celui de la main-d'œuvre ; elle célèbre la vitesse, exacerbe le sentiment d'urgence, mais se caractérise par la contrainte de l'attente, le report permanent des solutions et le stockage des populations.Embrassant deux siècles d'histoire, comparant les sociétés les plus diverses, analysant des pratiques sociales concrètes, Jean-François Bayart montre que, si la mondialisation est nôtre, son devenir, notre histoire, donc, se décideront sur ces seuils tragiques où s'inventent de nouvelles manières de vivre, de consommer et de lutter. Ce faisant, il renouvelle la sociologie politique et la théorie tant du pouvoir que des relations internationales.
Exploring the challenge of rehabilitating countries after civil wars, this study finds that attempting to transform war-shattered states into liberal democracies with market economies can backfire badly. Roland Paris contends that the rapid introduction of democracy and capitalism in the absence of effective institutions can increase rather than decrease the danger of renewed fighting. A more effective approach to post-conflict peacebuilding would be to introduce political and economic reform in a gradual and controlled manner.
Die französische Afrikapolitik ist spätestens seit den Zeiten der Dekolonisation von
einem deutlichen Widerspruch zwischen ihren hohen politischen und ökonomischen
Kosten und ihrem geringen Ertrag gekennzeichnet. Gängige Theorien der Internationalen
Beziehungen können die Gestalt und Kontinuität dieser Politik nicht erklären,
weil sie eine Rationalität staatlichen HandeIns unterstellen, die im politischen
Feld Francafrique empirisch nicht nachweisbar ist. Für eine Erklärung der
französischen Afrikapolitik wird statt dessen Rückgriff auf Pierre Bourdieus Begriff
des sozialen Habitus genommen, um die historisch bedingten Wahrnehmungs- und
Bewertungsmuster der politischen Klasse Frankreichs nachzuzeichnen, die es klientelistischen
Netzwerken erlaubten, die französische Afrikapolitik weitestgehend
ihren partikularen Interessen unterzuordnen. Der Beitrag führt umfangreiches Material
zu den Kosten französischer Afrikapolitik an und diskutiert zugleich die theoretischen
Implikationen seiner Begrifflichkeit.
In diesem Kapitel befassen wir uns mit dem empirischen und normativen Hintergrund der Diskussionen über das Demokratiedefizit
der internationalen Politik.
Following the example of the colonizers, who were quick to adopt a simplified image of Africa and a normative approach to its complex and apparently incoherent realities, international lenders have developed a perception of Africa and a philosophy of intervention that are bothsimplistic and norm-driven. This image has not evolved in its form ; its philosophical foundations have remained unquestioned since the 1980s. Until the middle of the last decade, only technical aspects of the economy were taken into account : economic difficulties in Africa stemmed from the pursuit of wrongheaded economic programs, on the one hand, and insufficient market mechanisms on the other. Since the middle and especially the end of the 1980s, and in response to footdragging, resistance, and reversals, as well as the supposed inefficiency of reforms, certain institutional and political factors were integrated into this paradigm. Nonetheless, the philosophy and the method have remained the same: the political is treated as a technical and supplementary variable, only mobilized to affirm the prevailing discourse.
That democratic societies do not fall into conflict has become an axiom of contemporary international relations. Liberal societies, however, do not properly exist along the troubled margins of the global order. This absence has lent urgency to present efforts at social reconstruction. Whereas a couple of decades ago the principle of non–interference prevailed, this unfinished business has shaped a new will to intervene and transform societies as a whole. This article critically analyses the international will to govern through three interconnected themes. First, it examines accepted views on the nature of the new wars. These representations usually portray conflict as a form of social regression stemming from the failure of modernity. As such, they provide a moral justification for intervention. Second, an alternative view of the new wars — as a form of resistant and reflexive modernity — is developed. Made possible by the opportunities created by globalization, this resistance assumes the organizational form of network war. The essay concludes with an examination of the encounter between the international will to govern and the resistance of reflexive modernity. This encounter is the site of the post–Cold War reuniting of aid and politics. One important consequence has been the radicalization of development and its reinvention as a strategic tool of conflict resolution and social reconstruction. The use of aid as a tool of global liberal governance is fraught with difficulty; not least, the equivocal and contested nature of its influence. Rather than reconsideration, however, policy failure tends to result in a fresh round of reinvention and reform. The increasing normalization of violence is but one effect.
The international community claims transformative power over post-conflict spaces via the concept of peacebuilding. International actors discursively make space for themselves in settings such as the Central Asian state of Tajikistan which endured a civil war during the 1990s and has only seen an end to widespread political violence in recent years. With the work of James C. Scott45.
Scott , J. C. 1998. Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. View all references, this paper challenges the notion that post-conflict spaces are merely the objects of international intervention. It reveals how, even in cases of apparent stability such as that of Tajikistan, international actors fail to achieve their ostensible goals for that place yet make space for themselves in that place. International peacebuilders may provide essential resources for the re-emergence of local forms of order yet these symbolic and material resources are inevitably re-interpreted and re-appropriated by local actors to serve purposes which may be the opposite of their aims. However, despite this ‘failure’ of peacebuilding it nevertheless survives as a discursive construction through highly subjective processes of monitoring and evaluation. So maintained, peacebuilding is a constitutive element of world order where the necessity of intervention for humanitarian, democratic and statebuilding ends goes unchallenged. This raises the question of what or where – in spatial terms – is the locus of international intervention: the local recipients of peacebuilding programmes (who are the ostensible targets) or the ‘International Community’ itself (whose space is re-inscribed as that of an imperfect but necessary regulator of world order).
The purpose of the present study was to critically assess the role and place of United Nations peacekeeping in the practice and theory of post-Cold War international relations. Specific cases of United Nations peacekeeping and interventionism--in North Korea, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda--were closely detailed. For the purpose of the critical analysis, three possible, yet complementary, levels of reading of the case-studies were introduced: a strictly denotative and normative interpretation which, simply put, told the story of UN peacekeeping from the perspective of its successes and failures; a more complex criticism of the United Nations as an ideological instrument of global governance and neoliberalism; and a supplementary postmodern reading which, building upon the previous two levels of analysis, sought to highlight the inconsistencies and inherent discontinuities of UN peacekeeping as a normative practice and as an ideological enterprise. Throughout this multi-layered critical analysis, the emphasis was placed on vision and the visual models and media through which UN peacekeeping was both practically and ideologically mobilized. Techniques such as panoptic modes of surveillance, visual simulations by means of cinema or television, photographic allegories were used to give the appearance that United Nations interventions were effective (in keeping the peace) and contributed to the realization of liberal ideologies of governance (more trivially known as "New World Order" ideals). This study showed, however, that such an intervention only took place at a level of appearances and make-believe, and that the UN in the mid-1990s may best be interpreted as a failing simulation. Indeed, instead of keeping or making the peace in the countries where it intervened, and despite its arsenal of visual devices, the UN could not prevent instances of disruption, disorder, and instability from haunting the post-Cold War international landscape, to the dismay of neoliberal world order ideologues.
Sur la télévision, suivi de L'emprise du journalisme
- Pierre Bourdieu
Bourdieu, Pierre 1996. Sur la télévision, suivi de L'emprise du journalisme. Paris:
Liber editions.
Exkurs über den Fremden, in: Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung
- Georg Simmel
Simmel, Georg 1908: Exkurs über den Fremden, in: Soziologie. Untersuchungen
über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot: 509-512.
The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality
- Michel Foucault
Foucault, Michel 1991. Governmentality, in: Graham Burchell et al. (eds.). The
Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press: 87-104.
Koloniale Herrschaft: Zur Soziologischen Theorie der Staatsentstehung am Beispiel des "Schutzgebietes Togo
- Trutz Trotha
- Von
Trotha, Trutz von 1994. Koloniale Herrschaft: Zur Soziologischen Theorie der Staatsentstehung am Beispiel des "Schutzgebietes Togo". Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr.
Weltmission und religiöse Organisationen: Protestantische Missionsgesellschaften im 19
- Artur Bogner
Bogner, Artur et al. (eds.) 2004. Weltmission und religiöse Organisationen: Protestantische Missionsgesellschaften im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Würzburg: Ergon.
The Limits of Statebuilding. The Role of International Assistance in Afghanistan
- Astri Suhrke
Suhrke, Astri 2006. The Limits of Statebuilding. The Role of International Assistance in
Afghanistan. Chr. Michelsen Institute/ Paper presented at the International
Studies Association Annual Meeting, San Diego, 21-24 March.
Democratization and Development. New political strategies for the Middle East
- Dietrich Jung
Jung, Dietrich 2006. War Making and State Making in the Middle East, in:
Dietrich Jung (ed.). Democratization and Development. New political strategies
for the Middle East. New York: Palgrave: 3-32.
Conflict processing and the Opium Poppy Economy in Jalalabad Project for Alternative Livelihoods in Eastern Afghanistan
- Koehler
Koehler, Jan 2005. Conflict processing and the Opium Poppy Economy in Jalalabad.
Project for Alternative Livelihoods in Eastern Afghanistan, http://www.arcberlin.com/pdf-sept/Drugs_and_Conflict_full.pdf (15 May 2007).
Le sens pratique. Paris: Editions de minuit
- Pierre Bourdieu
Bourdieu, Pierre 1980. Le sens pratique. Paris: Editions de minuit.
Seeing Like the International Community: How Peacebuilding Failed (and Survived) in Tajikistan. Paper presented to the Special Section "Post Conflict Spaces in IR
- John Heathershaw
Heathershaw, John 2007: Seeing Like the International Community: How Peacebuilding Failed (and Survived) in Tajikistan. Paper presented to the Special Section
"Post Conflict Spaces in IR", Annual Meeting of the International Studies
Association, 28 Feb -3 Mar, Chicago.
The Dynamics of States: The Formation and Crises of State Domination
- Béatrice Hibou
Hibou, Béatrice 2005. The Privatization of the State in North Africa, in: Schlichte,
Klaus (ed.). The Dynamics of States: The Formation and Crises of State Domination. Aldershot: Ashgate: 71-96.
Conflict processing and the Opium Poppy Economy in Jalalabad
- Koehler
Koehler, Jan 2005. Conflict processing and the Opium Poppy Economy in Jalalabad.
Project for Alternative Livelihoods in Eastern Afghanistan, http://www.arcberlin.com/pdf-sept/Drugs_and_Conflict_full.pdf (15 May 2007).