Review Essay: Critical Debates on Liberal Peacebuilding (original) (raw)

The literature on contemporary peacebuilding is increasingly being framed by the liberal peace debate. Sometimes labelled "liberal interventionism" i or "liberal internationalism", ii the authors under review concur that the liberal peace paradigm is the dominant form of internationally--supported peacebuilding. The liberal peace debate is linked to the wider debate surrounding democratic peace theory, as defined by authors such as Bruce Russett or John Oneal. iii Liberal peace refers here to the idea that certain kinds of society will tend to be more peaceful, both in their domestic affairs and in their international relations, than "illiberal" states. iv Hence, liberal peacebuilding implies not just managing instability between states, the traditional focus of the IR discipline, but also to build peace within states on the basis of liberal democracy and market economics. Mirroring the democratic peace debate, the liberal peace encompasses socio--cultural norms associated with peacemaking, as well as the international and national structures instrumental to promoting the liberal peace. The liberal peace's main components vary, but usually include democracy promotion, the rule of law and good governance, promotion of human rights, economic reform and privatisation. More than an absence of violence and war, a negative peace to use Galtung's terminology, v advocates of the liberal peace focus on social engineering meant to constitute the foundations for a stable society. The blurring and convergence of development and security -dubbed the "security--development nexus" -is at the roots of the liberal peace, in the process bringing together two previously distinct policy areas, and different sets of actors and agencies. The double dynamic of the radicalisation of the politics of development and the reproblematisation of security entails the transformation of societies to fit liberal norms and Western expectations. vi Then the main objective underlying liberal peace promotion is to create a "a self--sustaining peace within domestic, regional and international frameworks of liberal governance in which both overt and structural violence are removed and social, economic and political models conform to a mixture of liberal and neo--liberal international expectations in a globalized and transnational setting." vii The process of taming "overt and structural violence" can in itself create or reinforce modes of cultural and social domination occurring within the everyday social habits, forms of order and social restraint produced by indirect, cultural mechanisms; what has been described as "symbolic violence" by Pierre Bourdieu. viii However, symbolic violence requires acceptance as legitimate by the subject to reach its aim - this is the process of misrecognition (méconnaissance):