‘Post-Liberal’ Peacebuilding and the Crisis of International Authority

TY - JOUR

T1 - ‘Post-Liberal’ Peacebuilding and the Crisis of International Authority

AU - Finkenbusch, Peter

N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Peacebuilding on 14/06/16, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/21647259.2016.1193937 Copyright © and Moral Rights are retained by the author(s) and/ or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This item cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

PY - 2016/6/14

Y1 - 2016/6/14

N2 - This paper investigates how pragmatic approaches to peacebuilding might undermine the capacity of international policymakers to formulate a purposive, socially transformative project for their engagement with the Global South. Focusing on Oliver Richmond and Roger Mac Ginty’s recent work on ‘post-liberal’ peacebuilding, the analysis draws out how notions of ‘the everyday’, hybridity and ‘the local’ are geared towards disassembling the existing stock of reductionist liberal-universal knowledge claims. These were the ideological basis on which international interveners used to cohere their policy frameworks towards the Global South. Pragmatic approaches posit that the key to successful post-conflict transition lies in local – non-western, non-universalist – epistemologies and that empowering this pool of idiosyncratic insider understandings requires the deconstruction of modern liberal-universalist forms of knowing. While this dynamic of analytical and normative self-deconstruction is heralded as an opportunity for radical change ‘from below’, it simultaneously corrodes international authority as the ability to initiate and transform.

AB - This paper investigates how pragmatic approaches to peacebuilding might undermine the capacity of international policymakers to formulate a purposive, socially transformative project for their engagement with the Global South. Focusing on Oliver Richmond and Roger Mac Ginty’s recent work on ‘post-liberal’ peacebuilding, the analysis draws out how notions of ‘the everyday’, hybridity and ‘the local’ are geared towards disassembling the existing stock of reductionist liberal-universal knowledge claims. These were the ideological basis on which international interveners used to cohere their policy frameworks towards the Global South. Pragmatic approaches posit that the key to successful post-conflict transition lies in local – non-western, non-universalist – epistemologies and that empowering this pool of idiosyncratic insider understandings requires the deconstruction of modern liberal-universalist forms of knowing. While this dynamic of analytical and normative self-deconstruction is heralded as an opportunity for radical change ‘from below’, it simultaneously corrodes international authority as the ability to initiate and transform.

KW - Agency

KW - Neo-liberalism

KW - Post-liberalism

KW - The local turn

KW - Civil society

U2 - 10.1080/21647259.2016.1193937

DO - 10.1080/21647259.2016.1193937

M3 - Article

VL - 4

SP - 247

EP - 261

JO - Peacebuilding

JF - Peacebuilding

SN - 2164-7259

IS - 3

ER -