Liberal Statebuilding in post-conflict societies is a very complex, intricate and dynamic task that is often based on liberal assumptions. Critiques argue that local contributions to define democracy and its norms, such as accountability, tend to be limited since local experiences are often perceived by the aid and statebuilding community to predate liberal requirements. Democratic norms are consequently often based on external international legitimacy and intentions rather than on domestic acceptance. In order to explore this further, this thesis critically examines the development of one democratic norm, accountability, in Afghanistan by using field data and applying Sikkink and Finnemore’s Norm Life Cycle to three accountability characteristics. These map out the norm’s legitimacy, its methods and relationship between Afghan citizens and government in order to understand the manifestation of accountability. The objective of the thesis is to assess whether accountability in Afghanistan was developed as intended by liberal statebuilding between 2001 and 2013. Empirical findings show that accountability did not manifest per the liberal democratic definition since the social and political realities that heavily impact norm development were not incorporated in the statebuilding approach. Combining theoretical and conceptual analysis, the research contributes to the Critical Peace Studies and Good Enough Governance literature and concludes that the liberal statebuilding methodology introduced accountability in a de-contextualised way that deprived it from norm contestation and local legitimacy. The thesis argues that this had both positive and negative effects. Accountability was introduced to a context that could benefit from its existence, but its introduction was done in an inconsistent manner that weakened its domestic conceptualisation by ignoring the link between social action and political power. Moreover the international community’s role in promoting accountability in Afghanistan both advanced and hampered the development of the liberal norm. Donors were able to raise accountability’s profile in the democratisation process but did so from an inaccessible and unaccountable political space that further removed Afghan citizens from policymaking and politics. The thesis’ application of a norm development lens to statebuilding provides a more in-depth and nuanced analysis to democratisation and one that, I hope, is original. It uses this alternative methodology to engage both with academic debate, and with policy development and implementation. The suggested approach allows for a better insight into the mergence between liberal concepts and local contexts as it not only confirms the existence of hybridity or mergence, but it also elaborates on its quality and consequences. It further proposes a more emancipatory statebuilding process that moves beyond a top-down vs. bottom-up perspective to a more enfranchised and integrated approach.

Building peace and preventing the emergence of new and existing conflicts is one of the fundamental objectives of the United Nations, seen as deep down as in the charter of the organization. As the United Nations has existed for some time their peacebuilding framework has changed on several occasions, with the most recent change taking place in 2016. This paper is concerned with how this new United Nations approach to peace from 2016 has changed the way in which the United Nations understands peacebuilding. As this paper is focused on peacebuilding, this study applies the theoretical lenses of Liberal peace theory, critical peacebuilding and Scandinavian peace theory to critically examine the current United Nations approach as well as the previous approach to peacebuilding. The use of the ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ approach allows for the identification of how the peace frameworks of the United Nations problematizes peacebuilding, the underlying assumptions as well as the effects. From this, it is determined that the new/current United Nations approach to peacebuilding has not significantly changed. Both frameworks are characterized by state-centricity with a focus on the necessity of liberal-democratic values being in place in order for sustainable peace to be achieved. The findings did show that the new approach emphasizes more interaction with local actors in the peace process however this emphasis was underpinned with a focus on peace through the state and not through the local.

Over time, hundreds of peace agreements have been signed in different parts of the world. Most of those peace agreements have not brought sustainable peace. Studies show that only 50% of the peace agreements survive for 5 years. After undergoing civil war between the ethnic groups, Bosnia and Herzegovina ended the bloodiest conflict in European history since the second world war with a peace agreement with the official name The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also called the Dayton Peace Agreement. The main purpose of the Dayton Agreement was to bring peace and stability between the ethnic groups. Stability and peace would later democratize the country and bring it closer to the Western standards. 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Dayton Agreement. The Dayton peace agreement constitutes a big portion of the Bosnian constitution, outlining the structure of the new government and the division of power between the three ethnic groups in the country. Using the democratic pillar of the Liberal Peace concept as an analytical framework, this research investigates the impact of the Dayton peace agreement on the democratization process in Bosnia and Herzegovina and determines whether Liberal Peace has after all been achieved in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 25 years after the signing of the peace agreement. The study is conducted as a qualitative case study. The findings present that the Dayton agreement has been based on the liberal peace principles. The latest development in BiH show that the country has moved beyond the Dayton peace agreement to the European integration and European Union membership. The liberal peacebuilding has therefore taken another shift and the country’s main focus nowadays relies on resolving the needed reforms that will bring the country closer to the EU. The impact of the Dayton peace agreement is still present within the political sphere in the country, where many of the obstacles to becoming a European Union member state are caused by the Dayton agreement. There is thus high interest by the political elite in the country to move beyond what has happened 25-years ago and focus on the future of the country.

Post-liberal, hybrid peace, a new model of peacebuilding, aims to step away from the top-down imposition of liberal peace. In order to recognise the local, the new model considers the interaction between the international and the local as a dynamic power interaction, through which the means and ends of peace can be mediated. Yet, it has already been criticised for its theoretical underpinnings which would, ultimately, impede it to achieve its objectives. This thesis aims to determine the concrete impacts of the elements pinpointed by the critiques. It adopts an alternative focus on both the programme itself and the affected population’s perspectives. Through an instrumental case study of the EU Peace III Fund’s peacebuilding in Northern Ireland and the Border Region, the thesis highlights that these critiques can take different, practical forms. It enables to unveil the importance of exploring the affected population’s perspectives, of the initial context as well as the external peacebuilder’s belief that it knows, still, what is best over the affected populations.

This study is based on Swedish feminist foreign policy and how ideas about feminist peacebuilding have found their place in international peace and conflict studies. Since World War II, traditional security policy has been dominated by liberal explanatory models and strategies to achieve a more peaceful world order, and the main elements of liberal peace include democracy, international cooperation and free trade. Feminist theory criticizes the liberal view of peace by pointing out the meaning of human security rather than national security. The purpose of the study is to depict the type of peace that the Swedish government has worked for in Colombia and intends to answer the questions, what has the Swedish government's work for peace in Colombia looked like and what type of peace, feminist peace or liberal peace, can the work describe best? By using a qualitative content analysis as a method with an analysis tool that is built based on the theoretical framework, the study aims to more deeply examine the empirical material to depict what the government’s worked looked like during the peace process. The study shows that Sweden has worked for a feminist peace in the negotiations and statements that were directly linked to the peace process, but that the traditional liberal perspective still dominates in certain areas such as trade policy. The study contributes to an increased understanding of the development of Swedish feminist politics.

The liberal peace approach guided the Disarmament Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes under the auspices of the United Nations. While both practitioners and policymakers recognised that context fitted approaches are required, which resulted in the revision of DDR policy and practice, the driving principle approach remained the liberal peace theory, which creates a hierarchical relationship between the intervener and the intervened. I argue that applying the relational sensibility concept that places relations, dialogue, and hybridity in its focus can (potentially) contribute to a more effective locally designed, led, and implemented reintegration programme that is owned by the different stakeholders instead of imposed. Most reintegration programmes focused on the economic reintegration of ex combatants yielding limited results. I argue that social development for not only former combatants but also for youth at-risk of criminalisation is an essential element of reintegration. I probe the applicability of an alternative peace-building approach to the liberal peace that prioritises actions over relations by reviewing past DDR programmes and a specific case study in Somalia. I establish that an inclusive, community-based reintegration programme that focuses on the social rehabilitation and integration of vulnerable and at-risk youth by strengthening their social and spiritual capitals, as well as promotes restorative justice, can contribute to the decreased level of aggression at the individual level and the perceptions of the increased level of community security in Somalia. I conclude that DDR programmes both policy and practice, should look into more community-based approaches, inclusivity, and balancing between social and economic development opportunities.

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. / Economic and Social Research Council

The question of what agenda drives NGO peacebuilding in post-conflict setting has been raised in a number of literatures which make generalized conclusions that NGOs tend to respond to the liberal peace agenda, and in the process co-opt local peacebuilding initiatives. Liberal peace agenda refers to the post-conflict peacebuilding approach based on the promotion of democracy, economic liberalization, human rights and the rule of law. As such, NGOs are seen as privatizing peacebuilding, marginalizing local initiatives and applying unsustainable approaches to peacebuilding in post-conflict contexts. Provoked by these assertions, I conducted field research in northern Uganda, which up to 2006 had experienced 22 years of conflict between the Lord¿s Resistance Army (LRA) and Government of Uganda (GOU). I contend in my findings that while to some extent the generalized observations made by liberal peace critics are true, they fail to fully engage with the micro aspects of post-conflict peacebuilding. The macro-analytic assertions of the liberal peace critics ignore the plurality of the NGO peacebuilding practice, the diverse internal organizational culture, and the complexities and diversities of the contextual dynamics of post-conflict settings. My research was based on a micro level analysis and demonstrated that the peacebuilding process in northern Uganda was interactive, and, as such, engendered diverse encounters of sense-making, relationship building and co-construction of peacebuilding discourse and practice between NGOs, donors and local community. The study shows that peacebuilding was essentially relational and developed through a process of relational constructionism, which denotes social processes of reality construction based on relational encounters.

The dominant liberal peacebuilding critiques tends to focus on ‘states’ and the failure of interventions in rebuilding them. Consequently, a standardised critique has emerged largely because the critics apply a broad brush across a diverse range of contexts, programmes, issues and activities as illustrated by the lack of scrutiny on mine action and emerging contexts such as Somaliland. The liberal peacebuilding critics critique the standardised ‘one size fits all approach’ employed by interveners, yet they take the same approach. I therefore argue for the need to broaden the critique to include other elements and contexts of peacebuilding. I demonstrate that as an intervention mine action has intrinsic peacebuilding potential. However, the way mine action is implemented both globally and in Somaliland reflects the same dominant characteristics of the liberal peacebuilding critique i.e.; it is externally led; uses technical and standardised formulaic approaches; disregards local context thus failing to secure local ownership. Attributes that the critics argue have led to the failure and/or limited success of peacebuilding interventions. I therefore contend with the critics and demonstrate how these attributes have contributed to the challenges of implementing mine action activities thereby limiting mine actions ‘peace-ability’ potential in Somaliland. However, beyond the implementation modalities there are other factors that further contribute to limiting this potential; these include the Sector Actors; the Somaliland context i.e. the historical and political context, and the perception of Somaliland people. Thus in conclusion I argue for a nuanced critique that acknowledges the challenging realities of implementing programmes in challenging post conflict environments.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect that international trade, or trade dependency, had on China’s propensity to achieve peaceful international relations in the period between 1970 and 2005. The hypothesis put forward is that there will be a negative correlation between China’s international trade pattern, or trade dependency, and the state’s aggressive international relations towards other states. For easy assessment three research themes are formed; trade, conflict and peace, each considered separately. Evaluation of the research themes is done by means of simple regression and statistical analysis. In order to support the hypothesis, a negative and significant correlation between the two variables has to be found. The conclusion of the study is that no negative correlation between the variables can be established, proving the hypothesis wrong. Furthermore no significant correlation, negative or positive, is found. However, there are indications in the data that there might be something to the liberal peace theories that form the basis of this study and further study is encouraged and recommendations for alterations are given.