Comment les intervenants internationaux peuvent-ils (re)construire des institutions légitimes après un conflit intra-étatique ? En d’autres termes, quels facteurs déterminent le résultat du statebuilding post-conflit ? D’un côté, l’approche dominante, dite « technique », soutient que des ressources significatives (financières, humaines, politiques) permettent aux intervenants internationaux de construire les institutions voulues. Au Kosovo, les acteurs internationaux ont établi une administration internationale dotée de pouvoirs exécutifs et des ressources étendues et maintenues tout au long du processus. Or, le bilan du statebuilding est mitigé. D’un autre côté, le paradigme de la « paix libérale » affirme que la libéralisation (politique et économique) contribue au résultat limité des opérations post-conflit car elle est mal appliquée, illégitime voir dangereuse pour les sociétés sortant de conflits violents. Cette approche néglige aussi bien les facteurs internes que les variations dans les intentions internationales et se base, comme l’approche technique, sur un postulat implicite (erroné) de l’asymétrie porteuse de rapports de pouvoir qui favoriseraient les intervenants internationaux. En conséquence, ces approches ignorent la manière dont les acteurs locaux peuvent résister aux normes et objectifs internationaux.Pour expliquer les variations du résultat du statebuilding international, nous proposons un modèle théorique alternatif en modélisant une approche multicausale et séquentielle d’un jeu à deux niveaux. Notre thèse est la suivante. Les variations dans l’issue du statebuilding sont fonction des interactions stratégiques, elles-mêmes déterminées par les changements dans les préférences et les relations de puissance entre les intervenants internationaux et les élites politiques locales. Le statebuilding est étudié comme un processus interactif, mettant en relation potentiellement trois acteurs clés qui dominent le paysage politique post-conflit. Dans ces conditions, le statebuilding est un succès uniquement si les réformes internationales ne menacent pas le pouvoir politique des élites locales – pouvoir qui s’appuie sur deux piliers, le nationalisme et les pratiques informelles – et que les acteurs internationaux ont mobilisé suffisamment de ressources pour amener les élites locales à adopter et appliquer les réformes désirées.Or, le cas du Kosovo montre que les préférences des acteurs ne s’alignent que très rarement. Le statebuilding international a été instrumentalisé et miné par les préférences divergentes et contradictoires entre les principaux acteurs clés. Les acteurs internationaux ont voulu créer un Etat démocratique et multinational, mais ont privilégié la stabilité car ils ont été confrontés à des élites politiques locales – kosovar-albanaises et kosovar-serbes – préoccupées par le pouvoir et la domination de leur groupe sur autrui et par le maintien du leadership à l’intérieur de leur propre groupe. Entraînant ainsi une multiplication des autorités et à une fragmentation de la légitimité : deux systèmes politiques et sociaux persistent et empêchent la cohésion et le caractère multinational de l’Etat. L’intervention de l’UE a permis de changer le jeu en contribuant à apaiser la situation sur le terrain. Mais des tensions persistent, confortant le compromis. / How can international actors build legitimate institutions following intra-state conflict? In other words, what factors determine the outcome of post-conflict statebuilding? On the one hand, the dominant approach, termed "technical", argues that significant resources (financial, human and political) allow international actors to build the required institutions. In Kosovo, international actors have established an international administration with executive powers, extending and sustaining resources throughout process. However, the success of statebuilding generally is mixed. On the other hand, the so-called "liberal peace" paradigm affirms that liberalization (political and economic) is a contributing factor to the limited success of post-conflict operations because it is either misapplied, illegitimate or even dangerous for societies emerging from violent conflicts. The liberal peace approach neglects these facts and ignores variations in international intentions. It is based, as is the technical approach, on an implicit (erroneous) assumption of an asymmetry in power relationships in favor of international actors. The result is that, these approaches fail to acknowledge the possibility of local actors resisting international standards and objectives.To explain variations in the success of statebuilding, we present an alternative theoretical model where a multi-level, sequential approach is modeled to a two-level game. Our thesis is as follows: variations in the statebuilding success are the function of strategic interactions, themselves determined by changes both in preferences and the power relationships between international actors and domestic political elites. Statebuilding is seen here as an interactive process, potentially linking three key actors who dominate any post-conflict political landscape. In unique conditions, no statebuilding process or international reforms need pose a threat to the political power of local elites - power derived from two pillars, i.e. nationalism and informal practices. Rather, international actors mobilise sufficient resources to induce local elites to adopt and implement the desired reforms.However, the preferences of the actors are very rarely aligned. In the case of Kosovo, it has been shown that international statebuilding has been instrumentalized and undermined by divergent and contradictory preferences among key actors. The international actors’ desire was to create a democratic and multinational state, but they opted for stability instead because they had to deal with local political elites - Kosovar-Albanian and Kosovar-Serb. The latter were concerned about maintaining their power over, and domination of, their group over others as well as maintaining leadership within their own group. This has led to a multiplication of authorities and a fragmentation of legitimacy: two distinct political and social systems persist, preventing the development of a cohesive and multinational state. While EU intervention has brought about a game change and helped to calm the situation on the ground, tensions persist, reaffirming the compromise that has taken place.

Cette recherche part de la volonté de comprendre et d‘expliquer l‘interaction entre la politique intérieure et la politique internationale dans les processus de construction étatique des pays les moins développés et avec une histoire de forte dépendance extérieure. Son objectif central consiste donc à étudier les transformations du phénomène de l‘intervention internationale dans le contexte de la mondialisation à partir de l‘analyse du cas colombien. C‘est pourquoi, en premier lieu, y sont examinés les théories qui, selon les relations internationales, ont rendu compte de l‘intervention comme partie de la dynamique de la politique internationale contemporaine. Un type spécifique d‘intervention, la construction étatique, est analysé dans le cadre de la politique extérieure nord-américaine au XXe siècle. En second lieu, l‘étude de cas présentée analyse l‘intervention des États-Unis en Colombie lors de trois moments distincts : l‘Alliance pour le progrès (1961-1972), la lutte contre les drogues (1975-1994) et le Plan Colombie (2000-2010). A travers ceux-ci est exposé de quelle manière l‘intervention de la superpuissance dans le pays sud-américain a changé tant dans sa conception que dans sa mise en place au long d‘un demi-siècle. L‘examen détaillé de ces trois périodes permet d‘identifier les point de comparaison afin d‘établir s‘il s‘agit ou non d‘une intervention orientée vers la construction étatique. / This research project emerges from an interest in understanding and explaining the interaction between domestic and international politics in the processes of state-building in less developed countries that also have histories of strong3foreign dependence. The main objective of this work is to study the transformation of the phenomena of foreign intervention in the context of globalization through the analysis of the Colombian case. Thus, theories from the discipline of international relations that study intervention as part of the dynamics of contemporary international politics are examined first. Specifically, the intervention related to statebuilding, which is presented in the context of American foreign policy in the 20th century, is analyzed. Second, the intervention of the United States in Colombia in three different periods is explored: the Alliance for Progress (1961-1972), the War on Drugs (1975-1994) and Plan Colombia (2000-2010). Throughout these periods, this study establishes how the intervention of this superpower in this South American country was changing in both its conception and implementation for half of a century. Also, by a detailed examination, the study identifies points of comparison in order to assess whether or not the intervention was oriented towards statebuilding.

Despite its presentation as a pragmatic and universally applicable path to peace, the author argues that liberal peacebuilding offers no clear break from past colonial and imperial relations. Liberal peacebuilding is, in fact, colonial in its attempt to penetrate the markets and political systems of post-conflict countries and restructure economies and political life through the hegemonic imposition of liberal norms, facilitating their integration into global capitalism and a liberal community of states. The “liberal peace” created by this political and economic order often involves violent conditions of assimilation and exclusion. Moreover, the confluence of security and development concerns in the 1990s has set the strategic foundation for the incorporation of locally-driven “civil society” approaches to peacebuilding within statebuilding operations. In this thesis, the author identifies existing criticisms of peacebuilding, and, drawing on theorists such as Michel Foucault, Partha Chatterjee, David Scott, and Jenny Edkins, initiates a deeper critique that considers the historical context of colonialism, legitimations of violence, the construction of the non-west in categories of development, and the relations of power and knowledge associated with liberal approaches to making peace. The author provides a historical and political overview of wars in Angola, proposing that discourses and practices of international peacebuilding have concealed the continuation of war by other means.

This thesis critiques liberal peacebuilding in Africa, with a particular focus on Sierra Leone. In particular, it examines the interface between the liberal peace and the “local”, the forms of agency that various local actors are expressing in response to the liberal peace and the hybrid forms of peace that are emerging in Sierra Leone. The thesis is built from an emerging critical literature that has argued for the need to shift from merely criticising liberal peacebuilding to examining local and contextual responses to it. Such contextualisation is crucial mainly because it helps us to develop a better understanding of the complex dynamics on the ground. The aim of this thesis is not to provide a new theory but to attempt to use the emerging insights from the critical scholarship through adopting the concept of hybridity in order to gain an understanding of the forms of peace that are emerging in post-conflict zones in Africa. This has not been comprehensively addressed in the context of post-conflict societies in Africa. Yet, much contemporary peace support operations are taking place in these societies that are characterised by multiple sources of legitimacy, authority and sovereignty. The thesis shows that in Sierra Leone local actors – from state elites to chiefs to civil society to ordinary people on the “margins of the state” – are not passive recipients of the liberal peace. It sheds new light on how hybridity can be created “from below” as citizens do not engage in outright resistance, but express various forms of agency including partial acceptance and internalisation of some elements of the liberal peace that they find useful to them; and use them to make demands for reforms against state elites who they do not trust and often criticise for their pre-occupation with political survival and consolidation of power. Further, it notes that in Sierra Leone a “post-liberal peace” that is locally-oriented might emerge on the “margins of the state” where culture, custom and tradition are predominant, and where neo-traditional civil society organisations act as vehicles for both the liberal peace and customary peacebuilding while allowing locals to lead the peacebuilding process. In Sierra Leone, there are also peace processes that are based on custom that are operating in parallel to the liberal peace, particularly in remote parts of the country.

Afrikanische Staaten werden oft mit einem ideal-typischen westeuropäischen Nationalstaat verglichen und unweigerlich für unzureichend befunden. Diese Arbeit begegnet diesem theoretischen Missstand, indem sie eine neue Typologie des territorialen afrikanischen Nationalstaats in Abgrenzung vom europäischen Model entwickelt. Die Typologie fungiert als theoretisches Prisma für eine ausführliche Analyse des Südsudan für die Jahre 2005-2014. Gleichzeitig liefert der Vergleich mit dem Sonderfall Südsudan neue Erkenntnisse zum Wandel von Staat und Nation in Afrika. Ausgehend von einer historisch-philosophischen Querschau auf Staat und Nation in Europa, werden die grundverschiedenen Umstände von Nationalstaatsbildung im postkolonialen Afrika dargestellt. Der Autor schöpft aus einer umfangreichen Literatur, die fast sämtliche Staaten in Sub-Sahara Afrika abdeckt, um typisierte Aspekte von Staat und Nation herauszuarbeiten. Für den afrikanischen Staat sind dies der hybride Quasi-Staat, der illegitime Staat, der privatisierte neopatrimoniale Staat und der aufgedunsene Zentralstaat. Die Typologie der afrikanischen Nation besteht aus inklusivem Staatsnationalismus, dem Wiedererstarken politischer Ethnizität sowie dem ausgrenzenden neuen Nationalismus. Auf der Basis von Primär- und Sekundärquellen sowie Feldforschung, haben sich südsudanesischer Staat und Nation als überwiegend kongruent mit der Typologie erwiesen. Abweichungen bestehen jedoch im Ausmaß der Übernahme von Dienstleistungen durch ausländische NGOs, in der Struktur der neopatrimonialen Netzwerke sowie in der Rolle, die Sprache für die nationale Identität spielt. Zudem weist der Südsudan sämtliche Entwicklungstrends des postkolonialen Nationalismus parallel zueinander und nicht aufeinander folgend auf. Dies deutet darauf hin, dass sich die Bedingungen für Nationenbildung im heutigen Afrika dank Urbanisierung, moderner Kommunikationswege und dem Vorherrschen von Bürgerkriegen sehr von der Vergangenheit unterscheiden. / African states are often judged by comparison to an ideal-typical Western European nation-state, which inevitably finds the African state wanting. This thesis challenges this theoretical drawback by developing a novel typology of the African territorial nation-state in juxtaposition to the European model. The typology is then applied as a theoretical prism for an in-depth analysis of the case of South Sudan, the world’s newest state, for the period 2005-2014. At the same time, comparison to the anomalous case of South Sudan provides new insights into the changing nature of statehood and nationalism in Africa. Starting out from a historical-philosophical overview of state and nation in the European context, the very different circumstances of nation-state formation in postcolonial Africa are depicted. The author then draws on a large body of literature covering almost all of Sub-Saharan Africa to distil typified facets of state and nation. For the African state, these components are the hybrid quasi state, the illegitimate state, the privatized neopatrimonial state and the swollen centralized state. The typology of the African nation consists of inclusive state-nationalism, the resurgence of political ethnicity and exclusionary new nationalism and the politics of autochthony. Based on primary and secondary sources including fieldwork in South Sudan, the empirical reality of South Sudan’s nascent nation-state is shown to largely match the typology. Important divergences exist however in the degree of service delivery by foreign NGOs, in the dispersed nature of the neopatrimonial networks, and the role of language in nationbuilding. Crucially, South Sudan exhibits all three trends of postcolonial African nationalism at the same time rather than in successive periods. This indicates that in contemporary Africa rapid urbanization, modern communications and the prevalence of civil wars create very different conditions for nationbuilding than in decades past.

This thesis provides a framework for viewing socio-political contexts and how these relate to interventionist projects. The framework draws on and combines strands from international relations and sociological perspectives of social interaction. The central question becomes how intervention and existing social contexts interact to produce unintended outcomes. It applies the analysis to two separate wider contexts: Afghanistan and Somalia, with a particular focus on the self-declared independent Somaliland as an internally generated and controlled transformational process. Unlike abstract directions of theoretical development the framework seeks to provide a platform that sets aside ideological assumptions and from which interventionist projects can be observed and evaluated based on literature, field observations and interviews. Drawing on such diverse influences as fourth generation peace and conflict studies, Morphogenetics, and social forces theory, the framework explores conditions and interest formations to capture instances of local agency that are part of a continuity of local realities. It views social interaction without imposing Universalist value assumptions, but also without resorting to relativism or raising so many caveats that it becomes impractical. It exposes the agency of local interest formations hidden beneath the discourses of ideologically framed conflicts. These social agents are often dismissed as passive victims to be brought under the influence of for example the state, but are in reality able to subvert, co-opt, constrain or facilitate the forces that are dependent on them for social influence. In the end, it is the modes of mobilisation that emerge as the most crucial factor for understanding the relevant social dynamics.

For the past two decades, statebuilding has been the object of a growing attention from practitioners and scholars alike. ‘International statebuilding’, as its dominant approach or model guiding the practices of national and international actors, has sparked numerous discussions and debates, mostly around its effectiveness (i.e. if it works) and deficiencies (i.e. why it often fails). Surprisingly, little efforts have been made to investigate what international statebuilding, in the multiple ways it is mobilized by various actors, actually produces on the political dynamics of the ‘fragile’ contexts it is supposed to support and reinforce. Using an instrumentation perspective, this dissertation addresses this gap by exploring the relationship between the micro-dynamics of the uses of international statebuilding instruments and the fragility of contexts. This exploration is articulated around five essays and as many angles to this relationship. Using the case of Hamas, Essay I explores the European Union’s (EU) terrorist labelling policy by questioning the nature and modalities of the enlisting process, its use as foreign policy tool and its consequences on its other agendas, especially its international statebuilding efforts in Palestine. Essay II examines a Belgian good governance incentive mechanism and sheds the light on the tension between the claimed apolitical and objective nature of the instrument and the politicization potential embedded in its design and modalities, naturally leading to a convoluted implementation. Essay III analyses the localization dynamics of transitional justice in Burundi and unveils the nature, diversity and rationale behind transitional justice subversion techniques mobilized by national and international actors, which have produced a triple form of injustice. Essay IV widens this scope in Burundi, developing the argument that the authoritarian trend observed in the 2010-2015 period did not only occur against international statebuilding but also through self-reinforcing subversion tactics of its appropriation. Finally, essay V deepens the reflection on appropriation by attempting to build a theory of regime consolidation through international statebuilding subversion tactics. Overall, the incremental theory building reflection of the essays converges towards the assembling of a comprehensive framework of the in-betweens of the normative diffusion of liberal democracy, the inner-workings of its operationalization through the resort to the international statebuilding instrument and the intermediary constraints or objectives of actors not only interfering with its genuine realization but also contributing to its antipode of regime consolidation, conflict dynamics and authoritarianism. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished