“…Based on these deliberations, we analyse the intervention in Burundi as a political process in which regional forces struggled to define peace for the small Great Lakes country -a place where domestic elites and armed movements were themselves in conflict over the future of the state. By unravelling the frictional encounters between domestic and regional forces, we expand on previous applications of friction in the critical peacebuilding literature, which primarily look at the interplay of international and local forces, ideas and practices (inter alia Freire and Lopes, 2013;Van der Lijn, 2013).…”
Section: Intervention As a Frictional Processmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In our take on gaps, the latter do not only emerge when universalised knowledge schemes fail to seize local complexities (cf. Tsing, 2005;Van der Lijn, 2013). Focusing on the frictional encounters between interveners and the intervened upon renders visible how both sides necessarily reduce complexity and thereby create gaps of comprehension.…”
Section: The Encounter Of Regional and Domestic Elites: Delineating Gapsmentioning
Peacebuilding attempts invoke a considerable amount of friction. In this article we argue that these frictional encounters can be made visible by focusing on articulations of resistance voiced by different actors in the intervention scene, including national elites and interveners. Departing from the discussion of the regionally led facilitation in Burundi, we show that the respective national elites and African interveners referred to different scales in order to legitimise their resistance: the Great Lakes Peace Initiative for Burundi resisted sedimented continental practices as well as international attempts to impose their conceptions of peace, whereas the Burundian elites repeatedly rejected regionally sponsored ‘solutions’ with reference to the domestic situation. Drawing on interviews with and statements by diverse national and regional forces, we show how claims to resist were articulated with respect to different spatial reference points and thereby explore how regional and domestic actors talked past each other.
“…Based on these deliberations, we analyse the intervention in Burundi as a political process in which regional forces struggled to define peace for the small Great Lakes country -a place where domestic elites and armed movements were themselves in conflict over the future of the state. By unravelling the frictional encounters between domestic and regional forces, we expand on previous applications of friction in the critical peacebuilding literature, which primarily look at the interplay of international and local forces, ideas and practices (inter alia Freire and Lopes, 2013;Van der Lijn, 2013).…”
Section: Intervention As a Frictional Processmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In our take on gaps, the latter do not only emerge when universalised knowledge schemes fail to seize local complexities (cf. Tsing, 2005;Van der Lijn, 2013). Focusing on the frictional encounters between interveners and the intervened upon renders visible how both sides necessarily reduce complexity and thereby create gaps of comprehension.…”
Section: The Encounter Of Regional and Domestic Elites: Delineating Gapsmentioning
Peacebuilding attempts invoke a considerable amount of friction. In this article we argue that these frictional encounters can be made visible by focusing on articulations of resistance voiced by different actors in the intervention scene, including national elites and interveners. Departing from the discussion of the regionally led facilitation in Burundi, we show that the respective national elites and African interveners referred to different scales in order to legitimise their resistance: the Great Lakes Peace Initiative for Burundi resisted sedimented continental practices as well as international attempts to impose their conceptions of peace, whereas the Burundian elites repeatedly rejected regionally sponsored ‘solutions’ with reference to the domestic situation. Drawing on interviews with and statements by diverse national and regional forces, we show how claims to resist were articulated with respect to different spatial reference points and thereby explore how regional and domestic actors talked past each other.
“…It has been noted that the neoliberal peacebuilding enterprise deeply resembles the imperial practices of socialising and co-opting elites (Chandler 2006;Darby 2009), and that the use of local ownership models and capacity building techniques are essentially aimed at teaching a selected segment of the population the correct 'formula' of liberal democratic systems (Gheciu 2005b). Lately, mixed systems of liberal and illiberal norms are observed to exist (MacGinty 2010;Jarstad and Belloni 2012), and some see 'friction' as a distinct condition between the 'global' and the 'local' in post-war reconstruction processes (Björkdahl and Höglund 2014;Millar et al 2013).…”
Section: Security Governance Salw Control and Norm Diffusionmentioning
This article asks how domestic elites contest and localise global norms in contentious post-war contexts. Engaging with critical norm research, it develops a 'two-step localisation' framework in order to explain how seemingly technical security governance programmes depend on active congruence making with constitutive state-society narratives -both by international practitioners and domestic elites. The first step consists of the adaptation that practitioners working in the field make in order to tune their message to local contexts, and the second step constitutes the locally driven processes of contestation through narrative construction. The article thus brings in deeply political negotiations over state-society narratives in order to unpack how local agents contest and reframe global norms. Applying the two-step localisation framework to a comparative case study of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) Control programmes in Kosovo and Cambodia, the article illustrates how the relationship between arms and state-society narratives is key to understanding the outcome of security governance processes.
“…Critical and qualitative researchers who examine the synergies between local actors both elites, but also at the grassroots level, have highlighted the emergence of 'hybrid peace governance' in post conflict countries that experience peacebuilding missions (Belloni 2012;Bjorkdahl and Hoglund 2013;MacGinty 2008MacGinty , 2010Millar, van der Lijn and Verkoren 2013;Richmond and Mitchell 2013). The authors on 'hybrid peace' are primarily concerned with the characteristics of 'peace' that emerges in the wake of peacekeeping operations.…”
Article Summary:Peacekeeping has evolved both in its focus and in setting increasingly ambitious goals. In effect, the referent object of peacekeeping-what and whose peace is to be kept-has changed. The peace that is to be kept has evolved from a negative conception of peace to encompassing an increasingly positive understanding of peace.Similarly, the object of the peace has shifted from the global to the national and ultimately the local. In effect, this has raised the bar for peacekeeping.Peacekeeping research has mirrored these changes in the expectations and practice of peacekeeping where the (in)effectiveness of peacekeeping has remained a constant concern. The evaluation has shifted from the authorization and organization of peacekeeping missions to the impact of peacekeepers to avoid the recurrence of conflict, to ultimately the ability of peacekeepers to change the situation on the ground and the interaction between peacekeepers and the local population.Research on peacekeeping has become increasingly methodologically sophisticated.
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