Peacebuilding in Developing Countries

Panel 1

Hybrid Political Orders, Peacebuilding and State Formation: Experiences from Africa, the Pacific and Asia

Chair: Anne Brown, University of Queensland, ISSR, ACPACS

Discussant: Martina Fischer, Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management

Volker Boege: Peacebuilding and state formation in post-conflict Bougainville

For almost ten years (1989 to 1998) the South Pacific island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea was the theatre of a large-scale violent conflict. Over the last decade Bougainville has undergone a comprehensive process of post-conflict peacebuilding, and currently Bougainville is in the phase of state formation (be it as an autonomous region within Papua New Guinea or as an independent state).

Peacebuilding and state formation take into account the hybridity of political order on Bougainville and are driven by actors and institutions not only from the realm of the state, but also from the customary sphere and civil society. This paper explores the capacities, effectiveness and legitimacy of institutions and actors from these spheres in areas of governance which are crucial for sustainable internal peace and order. The analysis reveals their strengths and weaknesses and the complex web of their relations and interactions, highlighting both incompatibilities and frictions and considerable (potential for) complementarity of governance efforts.

Findings on peacebuilding and state formation in Bougainville augur well for the emergence of a new type of political community that does not copy the Weberian model of the state, but pursues positive mutual accommodation of introduced Western and indigenous local institutions. Governance structures are emerging that might differ considerably from Western models but that at the same time can become more efficient and legitimate in controlling violence and providing a framework for the non-violent conduct of conflict, as they are grounded in the local societies.

Morgan Brigg/Jodie Curth: Policy Disorder or Evolving Hybridity? Post-conflict Capacity Development in Solomon Islands

This paper considers the evolution of hybrid political order in post-conflict Solomon Islands. It explores the application of a strengths-based approach to capacity development in two institutional sites in an effort to understand how the awkward marriage between local traditional practice and institutional strengthening is evolving on the ground. It would appear that donors are currently attempting to quickly understand and strategically incorporate local practice into state institutions in a manner which is coherent and logical in policy terms. Meanwhile local actors appear to be working to sustain those practices that make most sense to them. Through interviewing and ‘talking story' with program management personnel, practitioners, local counterparts and community members we will explore the experienced reality of this interaction in two cases: Capacity Development in Correctional Services Solomon Islands; and in a Community Policing pilot. Rather than attempt to describe an ideal situation of balance and complementarity between the ‘local' or traditional practice and state-based institutions, we instead explore how hybrid relations have emerged and continue to evolve in the context of a wider hybrid political order. We argue that the ideal ‘end state' is not clear and perhaps it does not need to be. Rather more important are the relations and processes which generate hybrid order, and allowing the space for ‘hybridity' to emerge and correct itself.

Herbert Wulf: Misguided State Building: The Case of Afghanistan

Recent attempts of the international community to overcome conflict and to support post-conflict societies have often been concentrated on the concept of state building. The paper discusses the different types of state building concepts and raises the question why so many of these attempts have failed. It is hypothesized that this is the result of a gross neglect of local capacities for conflict management and a disregard for practicing local ownership. External efforts at state building largely failed. The case of Afghanistan is a telling example. Despite eight years of (military and civil) involvement the state building efforts in Afghanistan seem to be misguided. In addition, while the official concept is to strengthen public institutions, the security arena is partly dominated by private military and security companies; these companies operate in Afghanistan without proper public (local or national) oversight and accountability.

Tobias Debiel/Daniel Lambach: Global Governance meets Local Politics
On Western State-building and the Resilience of Hybrid Political Orders

"Something has changed in the relationship between the industrialized states of the North/West and the ‘subalterns' of the international system (Mohammed Ayoob). In this paper we argue, that the provision of governance in these countries has slowly been globalized. We proceed from the assumption that global governance, despite its supranational ambitions, is still very much dependent on the implementation and enforcement capacities of the modern state. How, then, can global governance be realized when states lack these capacities? Recent trends in the international treatment of poor countries, and post-conflict societies in particular, provide a window on attempts to import globalized governance structures into spaces whose inhabitants are deemed unable to provide for such governance on their own. Our argument, however, is that most of these attempts have failed because they neglect the dynamics and resilience of local politics. Against this background, speaking of global governance is nothing more than self-deception. Instead, external actors enter or even create local arenas in which their state-building attempts are partly contested and partly absorbed and transformed by local actors. The limits that these top-down projects exhibit exhort us to have a closer look at bottom-up domestic state-building. A reconceptualization of global governance will have to take these local dynamics and the resilience of hybrid political orders into account. Otherwise, the approach is doomed to lose its analytical as well as its practical relevance."