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This book critically examines the range of policies and programmes that attempt to manage economic activity that contributes to political violence. Beginning with an overview of over a dozen policies aimed at transforming these activities into economic relationships which support peace, not war, the book then offers a sustained critique of the reasons for limited success in this policy field. The inability of the range of international actors involved in this policy area, the Development-Security Industry (DSI), to bring about more peaceful political-economic relationships is shown to be a result of liberal biases, resulting conceptual lenses and operational tendencies within this industry. A detailed case study of responses to organised crime in Kosovo offers an in-depth exploration of these problems, but also highlights opportunities for policy innovation. This book offers a new framework for understanding both the problem of economic activity that accompanies and sometimes facilitates violence and programmes aimed at managing these forms of economic activity. Summaries of key arguments and frameworks, found within each chapter, provide accessible templates for both students and aid practitioners seeking to understand war economies and policy reactions in a range of other contexts. It also offers insight into how to alter and improve policy responses in other cases. As such, the book is accessible to a range of readers, including students interested in peace, conflict and international development as well as policy makers and practitioners seeking new ways of understanding war economies and improving responses to them.
problems typically associated with liberal peacebuilding operations – lack of local ownership, technocratic approaches, and lack of accountability – the mission mandate embodied ambitions for conflict transformation. However, as the EU increased its presence and commitment to Kosovo and the region in the late 2000s, it became increasingly difficult to reconcile its own conflicting priorities for the region
understand the barriers and opportunities for building peace economies, one must address three interdependent processes. The limitations of war economy policy can be explained by examining the ideological foundations of the liberal peacebuilding project, conceptual lenses through which the problem is understood and the degree to which this is implemented in programming, as well as the operational characteristics of the DSI. By exploring these related characteristics of the aid industry, one finds that whilst the critiques of liberal peacebuilding do hold in many instances
locked in negotiations aimed at not only reviving activities across the complex, but also ensuring this is done in a fair and transparent manner (Smith, 2009). The centrality of the market: liberal peacebuilding and the push for privatisation Since the end of the Cold War, developed and developing nations alike have undergone a deepening of privatisation, with this reform also being a central policy prescription in post-communist and post-socialist states. Indeed, privatisation has been a favoured tool of intervention in transitioning states as international
The role of customs reform in managing the legacy of Kosovo’s war economy is explored. This reform area is shown to be a central to the liberal peacebuilding agenda with the protection of borders and the facilitation of trade seen as essential features of an effective liberal state. However, these reforms often lead to a favouring of already powerful actors which in turn pushes others further into the informal and illegal realms. Evidence of depoliticized approaches to reform are evidenced, illustrating the bias for programming to be based on problematic rational-choice understandings of war economies. The role of the DSI in creating problems that customs agencies are tasked with resolving is highlighted, and as with other areas of reform, success is hindered by a range of operational problems. However, evidence also reveals important ‘policy moments’ where a structural political-economy understanding of war economies influenced policy to a greater degree.
6 The local is everywhere: a post-colonial reassessment of cultural sensitivity in conflict governance Kristoffer Lidén and Elida K. U. Jacobsen Introduction The problem of sensitivity to ‘the local context’ is a recurrent theme in scholarly and political debate on global governance, including international development aid, humanitarian assistance and, more recently, international peace operations associated with ‘liberal peacebuilding’.1 Global, or ‘transnational’, peacebuilding governance is repeatedly seen as having inadequate concern for social and cultural
economies in conflict-affected states. As the methods and politics of war economy transformation are assessed, what becomes apparent is that current transformation attempts have become both illustrative of and central to the liberal peacebuilding agenda. This agenda, led by international development and security actors, has the ultimate goal of constructing liberal peaces from the vestiges of what they define as weak, failed and collapsed states. It is in the dominance of the liberal peacebuilding agenda that the broader explanation for the failure of transformation
Identity is often regarded as something that is possessed by individuals, states, and other agents. In this edited collection, identity is explored across a range of approaches and under-explored case studies with a view to making visible its fractured, contingent, and dynamic features. The book brings together themes of belonging and exclusion, identity formation and fragmentation. It also examines how identity functions in discourse, and the effects it produces, both materially and in ideational terms. Taking in case studies from Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, the various chapters interrogate identity through formal governing mechanisms, popular culture and place. These studies demonstrate the complex and fluid nature of identity and identity practices, as well as implications for theorising identity.
-conflict reconstruction and state-building in the last twenty years, both scholars and practitioners have realised the need for a moment of pause and a reconfiguration of existing strategies. Two schools of thought have emerged, which, while continuing to value democracy, approach potential solutions very differently. One school of thought is primarily concerned with the effectiveness of peace-building and seeks problem-solving solutions to the intermediate crisis of liberal peace-building (Newman 2009), an approach which Kumar and De Zeeuw (2006) consider a mismatch between strategies
. 5 Examples of the former include Roland Paris's work on UN peace operations and the rise of liberal peacebuilding. Paris argues that ‘global culture’ shapes peacekeeping in fundamental ways. Peacekeeping actors and member states are ‘predisposed to develop and implement strategies that conform with the norms of global culture, and they are disinclined to pursue strategies that deviate from those norms’ (Paris 2003 : 442–3). In substantive terms, this means that peacekeeping agencies demonstrate a marked preference for political and