Decoupling local ownership? The lost opportunities for grassroots women’s involvement in Liberian peacebuilding
| Author | Theodora-Ismene Gizelis,Jonathan Joseph |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836716672897 |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
672897CAC0010.1177/0010836716672897Cooperation and ConflictGizelis and Joseph
research-article2016
Article
Cooperation and Conflict
2016, Vol. 51(4) 539 –556
Decoupling local ownership?
© The Author(s) 2016
The lost opportunities
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for grassroots women’s
DOI: 10.1177/0010836716672897
cac.sagepub.com
involvement in Liberian
peacebuilding
Theodora-Ismene Gizelis
and Jonathan Joseph
Abstract
Civil society organizations and grassroots groups are often unable to play an active role in post-
conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding. A possible explanation for the observed challenges in
peacebuilding is the gap or decoupling between international expectations and norms from practical
action, local norms and capacities. External actors are often overly instrumental and operate
according to a general template that fails to start from what the local capacities might actually be.
This often leads to the decoupling of general values from practical action, which helps account
for the observed barriers of engaging local civil and community organizations in reconstruction.
We examine the different types of decoupling and the challenges these present. We evaluate
our general theoretical argument using evidence based on the experiences of Liberian women’s
civil society organizations. Given the compliance of the Liberian government with international
norms, we should expect external actors to have an easier task in incorporating civil society and
women’s organizations in the post-conflict reconstruction process; yet, the record appears to
be the opposite. While we present the ‘tragic’ aspect of this relationship between international
norms and local practice, we also suggest opportunities for ‘hybrid’ alternatives.
Keywords
Gender, Liberia, peacebuilding, post-conflict society
Civil society organizations (CSOs) and grassroots groups are often unable to play an
active role in reconstruction and development in post-conflict countries. Decoupling –
defined as the gap between international norms and local norms and the capacity to
Corresponding author:
Jonathan Joseph, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK.
Email: j.joseph@sheffield.ac.uk
540
Cooperation and Conflict 51(4)
implement policies – provides a possible explanation for the observed challenges in
peacebuilding and reconstruction. Decoupling occurs through different pathways, either
because locals are unwilling to accept the new rules and norms or because they lack
capacity to implement policies.
The literature on peacebuilding normally attributes failures in post-conflict recon-
struction to the top-down imposition of policies and values on local populations (see
Paris and Sisk, 2009; Richmond and Mac Ginty, 2014). Another impediment to post-
conflict reconstruction is the difficulty of formulating bottom-up policies when local
actors have low capacity (Donais, 2012; Pouligny, 2006). This overlooks how local
community organizations and civil society – despite the many challenges – are often
eager participants in the reconstruction process and willing to adopt institutional
reforms conforming to international norms and practices (Donais, 2012; Interviews in
Liberia, 2011).
Our claim here is not that arguments about weak civil society and top-down inter-
vention are inherently wrong, but rather that they fail to distinguish situations where
locals are unwilling to accept international norms and values with cases where locals
are willing but unable to implement policies due to low capacity. Both lack of willing-
ness and capacity appear to lead to similar outcomes (e.g. failure to implement poli-
cies) and decoupling, but these are different obstacles to peacebuilding with distinct
causes and challenges. Decoupling provides a more nuanced approach to understand-
ing interactions between external and domestic actors and encompasses both scenarios
as obstacles that hinder the process of peacebuilding.
External influences on post-conflict states are not limited to direct external coercion
or imposition through international intervention, but also take mimetic (i.e. imitating)
and normative forms. In fact, newly emerged states and societies may come to display
similar institutions or outcomes through a process of isomorphism, or adaptation to
softer international norms and expectations (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Convergence
of institutions often leads to the decoupling of general values from practical action,
which creates barriers to properly engage local civil and community organizations in
reconstruction. As we will explore in detail, decoupling comes in different types, and
each category of decoupling leads to different challenges for external and local actors.
Recognizing decoupling can help in contextualizing the implementation of peacebuild-
ing policies and also in identifying the mechanisms behind this.
We evaluate our general theoretical argument by exploring the experiences of Liberian
women’s CSOs since the end of the civil war in 2003. Liberia is an appropriate case study,
because of the important role of local female leaders in the peacemaking process leading
up to the women’s organizations’ mediating presence in the Peace Agreement signed in
2003, and the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as President in 2005 and 2011. Moreover,
following United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1325, Liberia became the
first country in Africa, together with the Ivory Coast, to adopt a National Action Plan
(NAP) for implementing UNSCR 1325 in 2009. Liberia appears to perform quite well on
certain indicators of gender empowerment considering the level of development in the
country and the recent conflict history (Gizelis, 2009; Kevane, 2004; Svensson, 2008). In
the Liberian context policies illuminate the tension between the pursuit of global values
resulting from international interactions and the reality present at the local level.
Gizelis and Joseph
541
We set out our argument first by looking at debates about local and external actors in
the peacebuilding process, then by discussing the idea of decoupling and differentiating
three aspects of this, then by applying this to Liberia. Our conclusions highlight the gaps
that have been revealed, and also point to some possible opportunities to overcome these.
Interactions between external and local actors
In a post-conflict environment external actors can interact with locals in two ways. One
the one hand, bottom-up approaches emphasize the importance of local non-governmen-
tal and grassroots organizations in reconstruction (Lederach, 2008). Top-down peace-
building approaches, on the other hand, tend to focus on elites and establishing functioning
institutions in a country after violent conflict (Donais, 2012; Paris, 1997).
Influential sources, such as the Annan (2005) report, develop the idea that the UN
system requires a greater focus on governance through promoting partnerships and local
ownership. This approach to peacebuilding seeks to strengthen individual, local and
national capacities, building institutions, instigating good governance and enhancing
economic opportunities. The report follows a ‘people-centred’ approach, placing local
populations at the centre of the strategy and empowering them to take the initiative
(Annan, 2005: 2). ‘People-centred’ or bottom-up approaches emphasize the importance
of local dialogue and capacity building, and appeal to local actors. However, they do so
through an international template that is overly technical, depoliticizing and often exclu-
sionary (Paris, 2002). The focus is often on a handful of professional non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) that are often artificial creations, with weak roots in the commu-
nity, and dependent on external support (Ottaway, 2000: 85). More deep-rooted and
active local groups tend to stay out of such activities and their neglect is a consequence
of internationally set priorities. International bodies, such as the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), World Bank and development agencies, believe the main focus for peace-
building should be to get institutions to comply with a set of political and economic
standards and expectations (Boutros-Ghali, 1992; World Bank, 1997, 2002). Duffield
(2002) has labelled this a process of ‘metropolitan monitoring’.
Critics argue that liberal peace is externally driven and imposes a particular under-
standing of peacebuilding favoured by dominant states and international organizations.
Most international organizations internalize the political and economic values of the
wealthy liberal democracies, while countries hosting peacebuilding missions tend to be
poor and politically weak (Paris, 2002). Although Paris (2002: 638) is supportive of lib-
eralization, he recognizes that this cannot be imposed, and goes so far as to suggest that
the attempts to apply standards for domestic governance makes contemporary peace-
keeping resemble the colonial era’s ‘mission civilisatrice’.
Recently, a number of approaches have emerged that highlight the limits of the liberal
peace approach (Mac Ginty and Richmond, 2013). Chief among these is the hybridity
approach, which suggests a tense, conflictual and ultimately accommodating process of
peace configurations worked out across a range of different actors, contexts and norma-
tive frameworks (Richmond, 2015: 62). There is an emphasis on intersubjective media-
tion between local and international...
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