The fallacy of hybrid political orders

This article reviews the recent academic and policy interest in hybridity and hybrid political orders in relation to peacebuilding. It is sceptical of the ability of international actors to manufacture with precision hybrid political orders, and argues that the shallow instrumentalization of hybridity is based on a misunderstanding of the concept. The article engages in conceptual-scoping in thinking through the emancipatory potential of hybridity. It differentiates between artificial and locally legitimate hybrid outcomes, and places the ‘hybrid turn' in the literature in the context of the continued evolution of the liberal peace as it struggles to come to terms with crises of access and legitimacy.

Third World Quarterly, 2018

Critical peacebuilding scholars have focused on the impact of the encounter between the 'local' and the 'international' , framing the notion of 'hybridity' as a conceptual mirror to the reality of such encounter. This paper explores a dual aspect of hybridity to highlight a tension. Understood as a descriptor of contingent realities that emerge after the international-local encounter, hybridity requires acknowledging that peacebuilders can do little to shape the course of events. Yet, framed as a process that can enable the pursuit of empowering solutions embedded in plurality and relationality, hybridity encourages forms of interventionism that may perpetuate the binaries and exclusions usually associated to the liberal peace paradigm. The paper suggests that when hybridity is used to improve peacebuilding practice, an opportunity may be missed to open up this tension and analytically discuss options, including withdrawal which, whilst largely left out of the conceptual picture, may be relevant to calls for reclaiming the self-governance of the subjects of peacebuilding themselves.

Critical peacebuilding scholars have focused on the impact of the encounter between the ‘local’ and the ‘international’, framing the notion of ‘hybridity’ as a conceptual mirror to the reality of such encounter. This paper explores a dual aspect of hybridity to highlight a tension. Understood as a descriptor of contingent realities that emerge after the international–local encounter, hybridity requires acknowledging that peacebuilders can do little to shape the course of events. Yet, framed as a process that can enable the pursuit of empowering solutions embedded in plurality and relationality, hybridity encourages forms of interventionism that may perpetuate the binaries and exclusions usually associated to the liberal peace paradigm. The paper suggests that when hybridity is used to improve peacebuilding practice, an opportunity may be missed to open up this tension and analytically discuss options, including withdrawal which, whilst largely left out of the conceptual picture, may be relevant to calls for reclaiming the self-governance of the subjects of peacebuilding themselves.

Hybridity has emerged recently as a key response in IR and peace studies to the crisis of liberal peace. Attributing the failures of liberal peacebuilding to a lack of legitimacy deriving from uncompromising efforts to impose a rigid market democratic state model on diverse populations emerging from conflict, the hybrid peace approach locates the possibility of a 'radical', post-liberal and emancipatory peace in the agency of the local and the everyday and 'hybrid' formations of international/liberal and local/non-liberal institutions, practices and values. However, this article argues, hybrid peace, emerging as an attempt to resolve a problem of difference and alterity specific to the context in which the crisis of liberal peacebuilding manifests, is a problem-solving tool for the encompassment and folding into globalising liberal order of cultural, political and social orders perceived as radically different and obstructionist to its expansion. Deployed at the very point this expansion is beset by resistance and crisis, hybrid peace reproduces the liberal peace's logics of inclusion and exclusion, and through a reconfiguration of the international interface with resistant 'local' orders, intensifies the governmental and biopolitical reach of liberal peace for their containment, transformation and assimilation.

Review of International Studies, 2014

Hybridity has emerged recently as a key response in International Relations and peace studies to the crisis of liberal peace. Attributing the failures of liberal peacebuilding to a lack of legitimacy deriving from uncompromising efforts to impose a rigid market democratic state model on diverse populations emerging from conflict, the hybrid peace approach locates the possibility of a ‘radical’, post-liberal, and emancipatory peace in the agency of the local and the everyday and ‘hybrid’ formations of international/liberal and local/non-liberal institutions, practices, and values. However, this article argues, hybrid peace, emerging as an attempt to resolve a problem of difference and alterity specific to the context in which the crisis of liberal peacebuilding manifests, is a problem-solving tool for the encompassment and folding into globalising liberal order of cultural, political, and social orders perceived as radically different and obstructionist to its expansion. Deployed at ...

2018

Recently, the concept of liberal peace-building has been heavily contested with regards to its rather imperfect record in terms of achieving sustained peace in post-conflict environments, with even its advocates conceding that its repercussions have been disappointing (Paris, 2010). Whereas the 1990’s first saw a rapid increase for the approval of the liberal state concept culminating in a ‘unipolar‘ world — with limited fear of international conflict (Fukuyama, 1992), this exuberance has recently been followed by a wave of stark criticism over the liberal mechanisms and instruments that are being deployed in practice. The US-led interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan are often mentioned as a turning point in the debate where an effort by the ‘coalition of the willing and able‘, was perceived as a means to introduce neoliberal norms and values. This ’coalition‘ still resembles the leading donors behind peace-building missions around the world (De Coning, 2018). In the Agenda for Peace (UN: 1992) Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali termed the concept of peace-building as an ‘action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict‘, with the aim of transforming the causes of conflict into foundations of sustainable peace (Campell and Peterson in McGinty, 2013). The reasons for conflict and fragility was not seldom brought in conjunction with poor governance, weak institutions, lack of accountability, and ineffective political processes (Menocal, 2009). Thus, peace-building missions consequently focused more on the aim of liberating and emancipating citizens from oppressive states and societies (Campell and Peterson in McGinty, 2013). As the debate unfolded, a liberal-lead consensus emerged that a minimally functioning state is indispensable to maintain peace, while acknowledging that there are no viable alternatives than institutionalise peace through functioning institutions, if it was to be sustained in the way the UN had envisioned (Paris, 2010; Menocal, 2009). Hence, the prevailing Zeitgeist of the 1990’s and early 2000’s reflected a strategy of pursuing peace through economic and political liberalisation of the host state and consolidating such reforms institutionally (Paris, 2010). The 2001 UN report ‘No Exit without Strategy‘, subsequently came up with three main objectives to address former deficiencies of peace missions in Rwanda, Liberia and Cambodia. One of them, namely the ‚strengthening of political institutions‘ became known under the term of ’state-building‘ (UN Document S/2001/394) and lead the UNDP to develop an approach called ’state-building for peace‘ which came about with plenty of criticism in the field (Menocal, 2010). Even though both concepts have a similar aim as to strengthen the relationship between state and society, as well as to make state institutions more inclusive and responsive to societies’ needs for building peace, there are potential tensions and contradictions between the two, which will not necessarily reinforce each other (Haider and Strachan, 2014). These contradictions and tensions can consequently lead to unanticipated dilemmas and paradoxes, that impede the efforts of the international donor community and shall be the subject of this analysis. These paradoxes will be examined and, if at all, they can be overcome for a more legitimate outcome as to make peace-building endeavours more sustainable over the long-run. Thereupon, it is investigated whether alternative approaches such as informal or parallel structures of governance can inform the debate. In particular, it will examined whether such informal 2 structures can make more convincing claims to the different perceptions of legitimacy bestowed by citizens and international donors, as informal institutions and practices can often prove to be remarkably resilient in post-conflict settings (Menocal, 2010). Here, the term of hybrid systems of governance is introduced and how such rather informal modes of governance may allow for more a organic process of building up state-society relations. To this end, Somaliland shall serve as an exemplary case that has successfully maintained relative order and stability with hybrid governance systems. This analysis shall be guided by the following research question: How can a hybrid form of governance inform the daunting concept of liberal state-building and more specifically the question of legitimacy? The data used for the analytical part of the paper relies mainly on primary and secondary sources for qualitative research. Primary sources such as UN or OECD documents are used to curtail the objectives of liberal peace building. Secondary sources are taken for the assessment of contradictions and tensions within the concept of liberal peace.

Hybridity on the Ground in Peacebuilding and Development: Critical Conversations

HYBRIDITY ON THE GROUND IN PEACEBUILDING AND DEVELOPMENT CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS, 2018

Hybrid forms of peace represent a juxtaposition between international norms and interests and local forms of agency and identity. A first stage may be tense forms of hybrid politics that maintain structural violence, fail to resolve the contradictions between local and international norms, and reflect the outsourcing of colonial style rule. This could be characterised as, or lead to, a negative form of hybrid peace. A positive form of hybrid peace would have the advantage of having resolved such contradictions through active rather than passive everyday agency. This article examines this range of dilemmas surrounding debates about hybrid peace.