Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Contradictions of Peace, International Architecture, the State, and Local Agency
- 1 Lockout: Peace Formation in Northern Ireland
- 2 Bosnia–Herzegovina: Domestic Agency and the Inadequacy of the Liberal Peace
- 3 Peace Multitudes: Liberal Peace, Local Agency and Peace Formation in Kosovo
- 4 Engendering the Post-Liberal Peace in Cyprus: UNSC Resolution 1325 as a Tool
- 5 Peace Formation versus Everyday State Formation in Palestine
- 6 Afghanistan's Post-Liberal Peace: between External Intervention and Local Efforts
- 7 International Interventions and Local Agency in Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone
- 8 Local Spaces for Peace in Cambodia?
- 9 Timor-Leste: Building on Local Governance Structures: Embedding United Nations Peace Efforts from Within
- 10 Incompatibility, Substitution or Complementarity? Interrogating Relationships between International, State and Non-State Peace Agents in Post-Conflict Solomon Islands
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Timor-Leste: Building on Local Governance Structures: Embedding United Nations Peace Efforts from Within
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Contradictions of Peace, International Architecture, the State, and Local Agency
- 1 Lockout: Peace Formation in Northern Ireland
- 2 Bosnia–Herzegovina: Domestic Agency and the Inadequacy of the Liberal Peace
- 3 Peace Multitudes: Liberal Peace, Local Agency and Peace Formation in Kosovo
- 4 Engendering the Post-Liberal Peace in Cyprus: UNSC Resolution 1325 as a Tool
- 5 Peace Formation versus Everyday State Formation in Palestine
- 6 Afghanistan's Post-Liberal Peace: between External Intervention and Local Efforts
- 7 International Interventions and Local Agency in Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone
- 8 Local Spaces for Peace in Cambodia?
- 9 Timor-Leste: Building on Local Governance Structures: Embedding United Nations Peace Efforts from Within
- 10 Incompatibility, Substitution or Complementarity? Interrogating Relationships between International, State and Non-State Peace Agents in Post-Conflict Solomon Islands
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Among the existing criticisms of external interventionism in cases of post-violent conflict contexts, a recurrent one highlights the disregard for local dynamics of governance, both peaceful and violent. Peace interventions have progressively become action plans where the core concept is ‘peace as governance’. This has led to a very technical approach to peacebuilding, focusing on institution, state and capacity building always geared towards governance, presented as a means to peace. This technical approach is usually implemented from the outside in, that is, externally promoted, implemented and monitored, and following a topdown approach. Consequently, after the intervention, the intervened country is left with an institutional architecture focusing on democratic governance and security which has been externally transposed into the national context. And even when the local elites have participated or were heard regarding this model, the main problem remains the potential unsustainability of the process, with the new institutions lacking local embedment and legitimacy and, often, competing or even clashing with existing local dynamics of governance and peacebuilding.
These dynamics have been addressed from different perspectives but all build upon some analysis of local agency. Among these studies, one finds concepts such as hybridity, or frictions. Hybridity characterises situations in which the interaction between international and local norms, actors and practices results in new arrangements. Tsing has proposed to study frictions as processes characterised by ‘unexpected and unstable aspects of global interaction’. Both concepts focus on dynamics that result from the interaction between international and local norms terised by a strong international presence in the country. This presence is usually organised in the form of peace missions. What happens to these processes after peace missions exit, however, opens new avenues for research along these lines. Hybridity and frictions may still constitute valid and viable lenses of analysis but focusing on what locals do, once the imposing presence of the United Nations (or the European Union or other international organisation, for that matter) is lifted, allows the local agency to be studied from a different point of view. The underlying logic of international–local interaction is still valid but a deeper and wider space to tap into local norms and practices exists.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Post-Liberal Peace TransitionsBetween Peace Formation and State Formation, pp. 179 - 196Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016