The main purpose of this research was to understand the civil war in Sierra Leone and its antecedents, and to analyse the package of reconstruction reforms which came along in the post-war era and their relevance for and impact on the local challenges for longer term peace. Continued corruption among the political class, the persistent disenfranchisement of important social groups, and emerging tensions along political party lines suggested that, ten years on from the Lomé Peace Accord, there may have been a malaise in the peacebuilding plan. To investigate the complex issues, and to support the hypothesis that the model for reconstruction was not best suited to local conditions and local priorities, the work first made a deep interrogation of the historic political, cultural and economic factors which led to the violent conflict. This scrutiny of the local experience allowed the conceptualisation of a germane 'framework for peace' which represented the most pressing priorities of the local community and the central challenges for peace. The framework reflected the main concerns of the local populace and was used as an analytical tool to better understand the relevance of the model for reconstruction vis-à-vis the local context. Through a critical analysis of the post-war reforms and their impact on the social dimensions of recovery, in particular macro-economic reforms and the promotion of democracy, conclusions were drawn about the appropriateness and efficacy of the model of reconstruction experienced in Sierra Leone and how it supported local priorities for peace. The enquiry found that, in general, the model for reconstruction was not best suited to the local context because of its inflexibility to support the local peacebuilding and its many challenges. In some ways the model for reconstruction heightened residual tensions from the conflict because it failed to address key issues for reform such as governance and social justice.

A major weakness of the literature on the regulation of freedom of expression within the field of political science is the assumption of peaceful, liberal democratic conditions. My project seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the legitimate regulation of speech by analyzing disciplinary approaches to freedom of expression through the lens of countries recovering from intractable conflict. I ask: How appropriate are current understandings of freedom of expression to the regulation of speech in post-conflict environments? Relying on insights from the field of social psychology and the case of post-genocide Rwanda, I argue that greater restrictions on freedom of expression could be legitimate in countries recovering from intractable conflict. However, rights derogations must take place within limits so as not to become a tool of authoritarian rule.

This thesis examines the challenge of coordinating civilian and military efforts within a so-called ‘whole-of-government’ approach to stability operations. The empirical analysis focuses on British and American attempts to implement an integrated civilian-military strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2010. Unlike many existing analyses, the thesis consciously avoids jumping to the search for solutions to fix the problem of coordination and instead offers a nuanced explanation of why it arises in the first instance. Empirical data was gathered through personal interviews with a wide range of civilian and military practitioners between 2007 and 2011. Together with the in-depth study of official documents released by, and on, the defence, diplomatic and development components of the British and American governments, they provide the basis for a fine-grained analysis of obstacles to interagency coordination. The thesis offers a framework for analysis that is grounded in organisation theory and distinguishes between material, bureaucratic and cultural dimensions of obstacles to interagency coordination. It identifies organisational cultures as a crucial force behind government agencies’ reluctance to participate and invest in an integrated approach. The empirical chapters cover interagency dynamics within the government bureaucracy and in operations on the ground, including the role of specialised coordination units and Provincial Reconstruction Teams in the pursuit of coordination. The thesis concludes that stabilisation remains an inherently contested endeavour for all organisations involved and that the roles and expectations implied by contemporary templates for coordination clash with prevailing organisational identities and self-perceptions. These findings caution against the procedural and technocratic approach to interagency coordination that permeates the existing literature on the subject and many proposals for reform. While the thesis examines a specific empirical context, its conclusions have broader implications for civilian-military coordination and the quest for an integrated approach to security in the twenty-first century.

This study, which seeks to contribute to the shared-body of knowledge on media and war crimes jurisprudence, gauges the impact of the media’s coverage of the Civil Defence Forces (CDF) and Charles Taylor trials conducted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) on the functionality of civil society organizations (CSOs) in promoting transitional (post-conflict) justice and democratic legitimacy in Sierra Leone. The media’s impact is gauged by contextualizing the stimulus-response paradigm in the behavioral sciences. Thus, media contents are rationalized as stimuli and the perceptions of CSOs’ representatives on the media’s coverage of the trials are deemed to be their responses. The study adopts contents (framing) and discourse analyses and semi-structured interviews to analyse the publications of the selected media (For Di People, Standard Times and Awoko) in Sierra Leone. The responses to such contents are theoretically explained with the aid of the structured interpretative and post-modernistic response approaches to media contents. And, methodologically, CSOs’ representatives’ responses to the media’s contents are elicited by ethnographic surveys (group discussions) conducted across the country. The findings from the contents and discourse analyses, semi-structured interviews and ethnographic surveys are triangulated to establish how the media’s coverage of the two trials impacted CSOs’ representatives’ perceptions on post-conflict justice and democratic legitimacy in Sierra Leone. To test the validity and reliability of the findings from the ethnographic surveys, four hundred (400) questionnaires, one hundred (100) for each of the four regions (East, South, North and Western Area) of Sierra Leone, were administered to barristers, civil/public servants, civil society activists, media practitioners, students etc. The findings, which reflected the perceptions of people from large swathe of opinions in Sierra Leone, appeared to have dovetailed with those of the CSOs’ representatives across the country. The study established that the media’s coverage of the CDF trial appeared to have been tainted with ethno-regional prejudices, and seemed to be ‘a continuation of war by other means’. However, the focus groups perceived the media reporting as having a positive effect on the pursuit of post-conflict justice, good governance and democratic accountability in Sierra Leone. The coverage of the Charles Taylor trial appeared to have been devoid of ethno-regional prejudices, but, in the view of the CSOs, seemed to have been coloured by lenses of patriotism and nationalism.

Conventional post-conflict state-building models approach disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) programmes as a means for state actors to delegitimise non-state sources of power and centralise control over coercive power with the state. The programmes carry the promise of new lives for conflict actors and a new, modern and technocratic approach to the exercise of force; they are thus central to post-conflict transformation. However, this thesis calls into question the naturalisation of 'state' and 'conflict' actors in DDR models. Instead, it finds that DDR programmes create these categories and, in doing so, serve to mask and facilitate continuities in elite power. This thesis examines the case of Timor-Leste. In Timor-Leste, the country's new leaders - resistance actors cum state actors - have centralised legitimate power, while, at the same time, incorporated non-state, resistance-era networks and identities upon which their authority depends. The key technology through which this order has been established is a suite of reintegration programmes. In registering over a quarter of a million people and dispersing significant funds, this programme has emerged as a tool of governance. Again challenging the idea of a 'state' acting upon 'veterans', this thesis finds that these programmes constitute these identities. The act of defining non-state conflict actors who may no longer legitimately wield force also necessarily defines the category of state actors who may wield force. In asking what these programmes 'do,' this thesis rejects conventional readings of reintegration practices as security-driven or processes like registration as purely administrative challenges. As such, this study introduces a critical, new perspective on the political economy of post-conflict reintegration programmes. It supports its findings through a mixed methods approach, combining a robust, representative survey of over 220 former resistance members with ethnographic observation and 90 semi-structured elite interviews. This thesis is thus of relevance to those interested in DDR, conflict networks, and state-building.

Abstract This thesis is intended to explore the international relations of emerging nation-building in the Somali coast, with particular reference to the un-recognised Republic of Somaliland in the north-western Horn of Africa region. This study focuses on the international relations of Somaliland’s international quest for recognition, linked to its own culturally-rooted internal reconciliatory post-war nation-building efforts. Informed by written as well as first-hand research interviews, particular focus is placed in this study on the interplay of internal and external forces in shaping a strategy by Somaliland’s elites for acquiring international recognition and national selfdetermination. These are placed within the broader regional and international context of attempts to resuscitate the Somali state, an endeavour offering a fitting assessment of different modalities of African nation-building within the greater Somali environment. In relative analytic terms, the competitive international relations of nation-building in Somaliland and state reconstitution in southern Somalia informs the underlying hypothesis of this thesis: Somaliland’s example as a study in the efficacy of the internally-driven, culturally-rooted ‘bottom-up’ approach to post-war nation-building and regional stability, and the implications this holds for prioritising reconciliation between indigenous traditions and modernity in achieving stability in nation-building. By contrast, the internationally-backed ‘top-down’ approach to reconstituting a Mogadishu-based Somali state remains elusive. Yet, the international status quo regarding the affording of diplomatic recognition to what are normally considered secessionist ‘break-away’ regions of internationally recognised states, complicates Somaliland’s culturally rooted ‘bottom-up’ modalities. It also challenges the African Union (AU) during the ‘good governance’ era of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), a context within which Somaliland fits comfortably as a good citizen of the international community. The international relations of the Somaliland nation-building enterprise is approached from a ‘quadrilateral framework’ of interactive elements to the Somaliland experience: Reconciliation, Reconstruction, Religion and Recognition. This framework informs the four core chapters of the thesis.

Le Mali a connu en 2012 un conflit qui est sans précédent, même s’il s’inscrit dans la lignée de plusieurs mouvements de rébellion des populations touareg de la partie nord du pays depuis l’indépendance. La crise qui en découle n’est pas résorbée encore. La reconstruction de l’Etat et le retour des populations malienne déplacées et réfugiées sont au coeur de la problématique du post conflit. Ces deux enjeux sont liés, et de longue date. La défaillance et la faiblesse de l’Etat malien, qui n’était pourtant pas considéré avant 2012 comme un Etat fragile, est une des causes des migrations forcées des populations du Nord. La crise depuis 2012 peut se lire comme la crise de l’Etat m alien, crise de légitimité, d’effectivité et d’efficacité. En étudiant la trajectoire des réfugiés maliens dans les camps de Abala et Tabarey-barey au Niger, en décryptant les conditions posées à leur retour, nous pouvons dessiner « en creux » un « besoin d’Etat » matériel et symbolique, exprimé de manière plus ou moins consciente par les réfugiés. Mais le processus de reconstruction de l’Etat malien, conditionné par la temporalité et les modalités de la sortie du conflit, façonné par les rapports de force internes et externes esquisse une toute autre réalité étatique. / In 2012, Mali experienced a conflict that was unprecedented even in a string of rebellious movements by the Touareg population since the country’s independence. The ensuing crisis has not yet been resolved. The reconstruction of the state and the return of the displaced and refugee populations of Mali are at the heart of the post-conflict problem. These two issues are related and have affected each other for a long time. The failure and weakness of the Malian state, which was not considered fragile before 2012, is one of the causes of forced migration of northern populations. The crisis since 2012 can be interpreted as the crisis of the Malian state: a crisis of legitimacy, effectiveness, and efficiency. By studying the trajectory of Malian refugees in the camps of Abala and Tabarey-barey in Niger; by decrypting the conditions laid down for their return, we can draw "in hollow" a "need of State" material and symbolic, expressed more or less consciously by the refugees. However, the process of reconstruction of the Malian state, conditioned by the temporality and modalities of the exit from the conflict, shaped by the internal and external power relations, sketches a completely different state reality.

Thesis advisor: M. Brinton Lykes / During the last two decades of the 20th century the Peruvian internal armed conflict affected thousands of Quechua-speaking campesinos [peasants], including those in the community of Huancasancos. The pre-existing socioeconomic conditions strongly informed the conflict’s origins and help us to understand how its legacies have unfolded. This feminist participatory action research (PAR) dissertation was conducted with Andean women knitters from Huancasancos. Through this process the participants and I explored how organizing through a women’s knitting association could be one way to identify and face challenges in their community, including the social and emotional legacies of the armed conflict as well as ongoing structural gender and racial violence. Through participatory workshops we collectively analyzed topics related to the research focus, and the knowledge that we co-constructed was the primary dissertation data. These collective reflections were subsequently analyzed using a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2014) and were complemented by 16 individual interviews and field notes. The major findings of this dissertation reflect the urgency that Andean women feel about confronting material poverty. Also prevalent were Andean women’s experiences of gender racialized violence, experiences that limit their capacity to face their material poverty and improve their living conditions. Finally, these findings also confirm that the concept of “organizing-as-women” has been introduced into rural Andean towns by outsiders. As ideas from outside of the community, they typically fail to incorporate ways of organizing that already exist in these communities. Similarly, transitional justice and its mechanisms are experienced as having been introduced from outside the community and as disconnected from Andean people’s lived experiences of the armed conflict and its wake. The findings of this study yield important implications for professionals interested in working in transitional justice settings, particularly those working in cultural contexts different from one’s own. The study has additional implications for those who work with Andean and other indigenous women who have experienced the violence of armed conflict and continue to experience ongoing gender and racial marginalization. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

A wide number of contributions to the peacebuilding literature have decried the limitations and constraints of liberal peacebuilding, to such an extent that the very term has begun to assume vaguely pejorative overtones. Concerns for the health and well-being of liberal peacebuilding have accumulated to the extent that Roland Paris has issued a plaintive call for liberal peacebuilding to be ‘saved’ (2010). In this thesis, I critically engage with the comprehensive approach, one of the central mechanisms that has enabled liberal peacebuilding to redefine and rearticulate its terms of reference. I begin from the assumption that the comprehensive approach does not anticipate the post-liberal peace that has been heralded by some observers (see Richmond, 2011); quite the contrary, it instead provides the basis for reformulation or adaptation within the terms that have been established by liberal peacebuilding. In continuing to hold out this tantalising possibility, the comprehensive approach continues, more than 20 years after its first articulation, to cast a seductive spell over its adherents. In this thesis, I critically assess how the comprehensive approach framework has been engaged and developed by one of its leading proponents (the British Government). I break the approach down into three dimensions of comprehensiveness (deepening, contextuality and complementarity), with a view to illustrating how the textual reproduction of each dimension has been accompanied by a set of contradictions and tensions. In doing so, I propose to explore how discursive ‘broadening’ and ‘deepening’ has been accompanied by a range of contradictions and tensions. In unravelling these contradictions, I then draw upon Foucauldian concepts and themes to argue that each and every advancement of freedom (whether through the form of empowerment, participation or contextual engagement) has been considerably more ambiguous than the standard narrative of the comprehensive approach – which reproduces the impression of an incremental progression – would have us believe. In questioning and probing the proposition that the comprehensive approach overcomes or reconciles the contradictions and tensions of liberal peacebuilding, I instead suggest a disconcerting reversion to prior points of reference.

Cette thèse porte sur les espaces de la vie nocturne à Beyrouth, entendue comme l’espace physique des bars et des boîtes de nuit et comme un ensemble de pratiques et de sociabilités qui lui sont associées (notamment autour de l’alcool, de la danse, de la musique), regroupant diverses catégories d’acteurs chargés de sa production et de sa régulation. Tout en privilégiant une étude décentrée des concepts, je m’inscris dans le champ récent qui intègre la nuit à la réflexion géographique. Je privilégie l’analyse des usages ludiques de Beyrouth la nuit ainsi que leur portée sociale et politique dans le contexte libanais. J’articule donc les problématiques nocturnes au prisme du post-conflit, qui permet de définir une situation dans laquelle les héritages de différentes périodes de guerre sont encore visibles et opérantes tout en se mêlant à d’autres processus plus récents. Le rapport entre vie nocturne et ville post-conflit est à double sens : la situation post-conflictuelle conditionne l’offre, les pratiques et les représentations attachées aux loisirs de nuit qui en retour constituent le lieu d’inscription des héritages, des incertitudes et des possibles de la jeunesse noctambule. Cette recherche s’appuie sur une enquête qualitative mêlant entretiens formels et observation directe. La vie nocturne de Beyrouth y est appréhendée à travers trois lectures de l’espace : l’espace physique et urbain investi par les établissements et les individus, l’espace social des relations entre acteurs, l’espace politique et critique des revendications et des transgressions. Ces trois niveaux de compréhension mobilisent tout en les spatialisant les notions de champ (pour désigner les acteurs chargés de la production de la vie nocturne), de monde (pour désigner les noctambules) et d’ethos (pour désigner l’ensemble des principes et des valeurs qui orientent les comportements. / This PhD thesis deals with Beirut’s nightscape and nightlife. These are narrowly defined as the spaces occupied by bars, pubs, and nightclubs as well as a range of practices and sociabilities ascribed to them. They bring a range of stakeholders concerned by the production and the regulation of nightlife together. In this research, I adopt a decentered point of view and subscribe to the recent field including the night into geographical studies. I focus on an analysis of the recreational uses of Beirut’s nightscape through the lens of Lebanon’s post-conflict situation, including moral, social and political challenges. This framework takes into account problematics linked to the night in the light of the post-conflict situation, which allows me to define a situation in which dynamics inherited from different war times are still present, merging with new practices and processes. The two-way relationship between nightlife and the post-conflict city means that the post-conflict situation shapes the offer, behaviors and representations. In return, Beirut’s nightscape is a scene where legacies, uncertainties and possibilities can be expressed and read. This study is based on qualitative research combining field observations and interviews. Beirut’s nightlife is analyzed through three approaches to the concept of space. First, the urban space made up of nightlife venues; second, the social space of relationships between stakeholders ; and third, the political space of claims and transgressions. These three levels are considered through the key concepts of field, world and ethos in both social and spatial terms.