Sri Lanka’s Schmittian peace: sovereignty, enmity and illiberal order

Abstract

The dominant discourses and practices of post-Cold War liberal peacebuilding are increasingly challenged by illiberal and authoritarian alternatives. This article adds to the emerging literature on 'authoritarian conflict management' and 'illiberal peace' using the work of the controversial German jurist Carl Schmitt, the foremost theoretician of anti-liberal thought in the twentieth-century. I use the case of Sri Lanka to illustrate how Schmitt can be useful in understanding illiberal peace, not merely as an aberration from liberal norms of conflict resolution, but as an alternative paradigm that has an increasing global resonance beyond particular case studies. The Schmittian framework suggests that the most likely trend for postliberal peace is not towards an emancipatory model of hybridity and compromise, but a retrograde 'illiberal turn' towards authoritarian political order and highly illiberal practices.

Routledge Handbook of Autocratization in South Asia

“…In recent years his work has spread to other parts of the world, particularly Russia (Lewis 2020a) and China (Zheng 2015;Libin and Patapan 2020), where his anti-liberal thought has been hugely influential. In South Asia Schmitt's reach remains more limited, but his political theory has been deployed recently in discussions of the politics of Hindutva in India (Basu 2020) and the conflict in Sri Lanka (Lewis 2020b). Here I explore four of Schmitt's ideas that help us to interpret autocratization's third wave and to develop a comparative theoretical framework to identify and interpret many common and overlapping trends across very distinct political contexts.…”

“…South Asia is no exception to this trend. In Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has continued the drive of the wartime regime run by his brother and former president, Mahinda, to subordinate parliament and the judiciary to the regime's will and perpetuate strongman politics (Lewis 2020b;Mihlar, Chapter 25 of this volume). In Bangladesh, what was once a contested political system, in which political power was fought over by two major parties, has deteriorated into a de facto one party system, dominated since 2009 by the personalised political leadership of Awami League leader Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Ruud, Chapter 22 of this volume).…”

“…In Sri Lanka there is a long history of extrajudicial killings and disappearances, which was revived during the presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa (DeVotta 2011). A series of notorious 'White Van' disappearances punctuated the war against the LTTE in 2006-2009 (Lewis 2020b). In Bangladesh, according to human rights defenders, between 2009 and 2018 at least 1,921 people became victims of extrajudicial killings and 109 were victims of enforced disappearances (Riaz,Chapter 18 of this volume).…”

Liberal and Illiberal Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka

“…In the post-war period, Rajapaksa privileged national security, economic development, and regime consolidation over addressing the political grievances of minority communities. Lewis (2020) has examined the ideational roots of this illiberal turn in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, highlighting a number of key featuresa rhetorical commitment to distinguishing friend and enemy (rather than seeking to resolve differences), an emphasis on centralized sovereign power (rather than devolved power), and an antiliberal understanding of space. Responding to international pressure, Rajapaksa made some steps to address issues of accountability and reconciliation by appointing a Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission in 2010.…”

Accommodating Minorities into Sri Lanka’s Post-Civil War State System: Government Initiatives and Their Failure

“…He believed that economic development would serve as a better solution to the conflict rather than constitutional reform (Rajasingham, 2019). Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the presidential election in November 2019 (Lewis, 2020), following which Mahinda Rajapaksa was again appointed as the Prime Minister of the country.…”