OUVRAGE : N.H. Barma, The Peacebuilding Puzzle: Political Order in Post-Conflict States

Naazneen H. BARMA

Transformative peace operations fall short of achieving the modern political order sought in post-conflict countries because the interventions themselves empower post-conflict elites intent on forging a neopatrimonial political order. The Peacebuilding Puzzle explains the disconnect between the formal institutional engineering undertaken by international interventions, and the governance outcomes that emerge in their aftermath. Barma's comparative analysis of interventions in Cambodia, East Timor, and Afghanistan focuses on the incentives motivating domestic elites over a sequence of three peacebuilding phases: the elite peace settlement, the transitional governance period, and the aftermath of intervention. The international community advances certain forms of institutional design at each phase in the pursuit of effective and legitimate governance. Yet, over the course of the peacebuilding pathway, powerful post-conflict elites co-opt the very processes and institutions intended to guarantee modern political order and dominate the practice of governance within those institutions to their own ends. This title is also available as Open Access.


TABLE OF CONTENTS


List of figure and tables page
Acknowledgments
Introduction

The Politics of Peacebuilding
The Argument and its Significance
Structure of the Book

1. Rethinking the Peacebuilding Puzzle

What is Peacebuilding?
The Transitional Governance Approach to Transformative Peacebuilding
What Do We Know About Peacebuilding?
Rethinking the Peacebuilding Puzzle
A Unique Approach to Understanding Peacebuilding

2. Political Order in Post-Conflict States: A Theoretical Framework

The Pursuit of Political Order
The Neopatrimonial Equilibrium
Elites and Transformative Events
Elite Settlements: The Continuation of War by Other Means
Transitional Governance: A Process of Inherent Contradictions
Neopatrimonial Political Order: A Hybrid Form of Governance
The Peacebuilding Pathway

3. From Violent Conflict to Elite Settlement

The Cambodian Civil War
The Paris Peace Agreement on Cambodia
The East Timorese Resistance to Occupation
The East Timor Independence Referendum
The Afghan Civil War
The Afghanistan Bonn Agreement
Elite Settlements in Comparative Perspective

4. International Intervention and Elite Incentives

Transitional Governance in Cambodia
The Cambodian Elections of 1993
Transitional Governance in East Timor
The East Timorese Elections of 2001
Transitional Governance in Afghanistan
The Afghan Elections of 2004 and 2005
Transitional Governance in Comparative Perspective

5. Neopatrimonial Post-Conflict Political Order

Post-Intervention Cambodia: Exclusionary Neopatrimonialism and the Threat of Violence
Post-Intervention East Timor: Inclusionary Neopatrimonialism and Latent Conlict
Post-Intervention Afghanistan: Competitive Neopatrimonialism and Persistent Insecurity
Neopatrimonial Political Order in Comparative Perspective

Conclusion: The Paradoxes of Peacebuilding

The Mirage of Modern Political Order in Post-Conlict States
Transformative Peacebuilding Elsewhere
Whither Peacebuilding?
Sequencing the Pursuit of Effective and Legitimate Governance
Six Principles and a Caveat for Modifying Peacebuilding Practice
Future Research and Theoretical Implications
Conclusion

Appendix: Interviews Conducted
Bibliography
Index

Naazneen H. BARMA, The Peacebuilding Puzzle: Political Order in Post-Conflict States, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016 (280 pp.)

Naazneen H. Barma is Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. Her research focuses on international interventions in post-conflict states and the political economy of development, and has appeared in scholarly and policy publications. She has worked with the World Bank as a governance and institutional reform specialist in the East Asia Pacific Region and is a founding member of Bridging the Gap, an initiative devoted to enhancing the policy impact of contemporary international affairs scholarship.