For whom do local peace processes function? Maintaining control through conflict management
| Author | Gearoid Millar |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836716671757 |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
671757CAC0010.1177/0010836716671757Cooperation and ConflictMillar
research-article2016
Article
Cooperation and Conflict
2017, Vol. 52(3) 293 –308
For whom do local peace
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836716671757
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Maintaining control through
conflict management
Gearoid Millar
Abstract
Recent peacebuilding literature provides a sustained critique of externally designed conflict
management processes and promotes instead local mechanisms. Such mechanisms, it is argued,
will provide more ownership and agency to local actors and, thus, a more sustainable peace. But
while there are many examples of local conflict management institutions, and many discussions
of the hybrid outcomes of interaction between the global and local, the literature rarely explores
exactly what transpires on the ground when international actors influence the operation of local
peace processes; this article provides exactly this insight. The data presented illustrate how local
conflict management institutions in rural Sierra Leone are subtly manipulated by actors – both
international and local – to maintain and enhance existing relations of power. The article illustrates,
therefore, the problems that arise when local conflict management institutions become interlaced
with new forms of power and start themselves to serve as sites of contestation and resistance.
Keywords
Bottom-up, customary authority, land-grab, local-turn, peacebuilding, Sierra Leone
Introduction
While the initial decade of post-Cold War peace intervention was overly ambitious in its
liberal exuberance, the decade since has been characterized by criticism of Western inter-
ventionism. Initial critical literature often recognized problems on the ground while
endorsing intervention more generally (Paris, 2004), but later contributions questioned
the very nature of intervention, the motivations of global powers (Chandler, 2006), and
the illiberal effects of peacebuilding processes (Pugh, 2011). More recent contributions
Corresponding author:
Gearoid Millar, The Institute for Conflict, Transition, and Peace Research (ICTPR), Department of
Sociology, Edward Wright Building, University of Aberdeen, AB24 3QY, UK.
Email: g.millar@abdn.ac.uk
294
Cooperation and Conflict 52(3)
emphasize the unpredictable nature of intervention outcomes, and deploy concepts such
as hybridity (Millar, 2014a; Mac Ginty, 2011; Peterson, 2012; Richmond, 2009) and
friction (Björkdahl and Höglund, 2013; Björkdahl et al., 2016; Millar et al., 2013) to
understand the effects of peacebuilding where the global and the local interact. As such,
they have pushed the field to focus increasingly on local individuals and communities
in the context of post-conflict peacebuilding and they are part of what Mac Ginty and
Richmond have called the ‘local turn’ (Mac Ginty and Richmond, 2013).
Not surprisingly, there have also been heavy critiques of this local turn. It is argued
that the local is often unequal and contested and that those promoting local mechanisms
are promoting illiberal systems (Paris, 2010). Others argue that the local turn accepts an
inappropriate dichotomy between global and local and is, therefore, recreating the bina-
ries it claims to deconstruct (Paffenholz, 2015). It has even been argued that the local
turn may serve to disempower local actors by encouraging international actors to inter-
vene directly in local social contexts (Chandler, 2013). Although this article will address
all three of these critiques, the last one is the starting point for my analysis as it should
indeed concern local turn advocates if a focus on local actors and institutions serves to
encourage intervention at the local level. However, while this critique seems plausible,
there is little analysis of such local appropriation on the ground. This article starts to fill
that gap by closely examining the interaction between interventionary actors and local
conflict management institutions (LCMIs) on the ground in Sierra Leone.
The remainder of this article is divided into four parts. Part one provides a short
review of the ‘local turn’ literature; focusing on the critique of interventionism, my defi-
nition of LCMIs, and the counter-critiques of the local turn. Part two includes very brief
descriptions of the conflict and post-conflict situation in Sierra Leone, the LCMIs in
that context, and the international intervention that is interacting with those institutions
on the ground. Through a number of empirical examples, part three illustrates the man-
ner in which LCMIs are manipulated in subtle ways to serve the purposes of established
power. What is perhaps most interesting, however, is that this established power may be
either global or local. The final part discusses three core implications of my findings for
the ‘local turn’ in both theory and practice, and directly addresses the three critiques
noted above.
Peacebuilding: global and local
While contemporary conflicts are diverse and complex, peace interventions have unfor-
tunately become packages of technocratic, problem-solving, or tool-kit solutions applied
by professionals across very diverse cases with little consideration for local political,
economic, cultural, or social distinctions (Autesserre, 2014; De Waal, 2009; Kritz, 2009;
Mac Ginty, 2012; Pugh, 2011; Sending, 2009). Abundant research has now shown the
limitations of such an approach, illustrating both the lack of local ownership (Donais,
2009, 2012 ; Franks and Richmond, 2008; Richmond, 2012; Richmond and Mac Ginty,
2013; Sending, 2009; Shaw, 2005; Shaw et al., 2010; Theidon, 2013; Author, 2010,
2013) and the significant gaps between what the international community believes it
is doing in such cases and what local people experience as a result of intervention
(Autesserre, 2010; Isaacs, 2009; Robins, 2011; Millar, 2011a, 2011b, 2012a, 2012b,
Millar
295
2015a). As a result, many now argue against the application of ‘cookie-cutter’ solutions
(Call and Cousens, 2008: 14) and for more sensitivity and adjustment to local context.
A central aspect of this proposed approach is the reliance on or utilization of LCMIs
(Pogodda and Richmond, 2015: 899).
This article defines LCMIs as indigenous or pre-existing institutions of conflict man-
agement or resolution based on concepts and practices salient within a bounded geo-
graphical or cultural space. Such mechanisms are not everywhere the same, nor are they
all salient within what might initially match our idea of ‘the local’. Some LCMIs are
rooted in concepts shared across regions over which a specific culture dominates, such
as the mediating role played by community elders throughout West Africa or the role of
contracts and judicial processes throughout Europe and its colonial offspring. Such
LCMIs are not bounded by a local geography, but are culturally specific. Other LCMIs
may not be shared throughout an entire culture, but are rooted instead in the force of
single institutions or personalities. We might think of the influence of respected civil
society organizations (CSOs) such as Conciliation Resources or Search for Common
Ground within specific post-conflict contexts (see examples in Van Tongeren et al.,
2005), or individual actors such as Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela in multi-cultural
post-Apartheid South Africa.
Various scholars have previously turned towards the local for the purpose of building
peace (Cochrane, 2000; Lederach, 1997; Shonholtz, 1984) and many have described
LCMIs across different cultures (Al-Krenawi and Graham, 1999; Dillon, 1976; Eckett
and Newmark, 1980; Hamer, 1980; Mac Ginty, 2011; Podolefsky, 1990; Quinn, 2009;
Shaw, 2010; Van Tongeren et al., 2005). While the recent local turn is not entirely new,
however, it is somewhat unique in its potential to extend outside academic theory and
influence the policy and practice of international peacebuilding. Quite distinct from
anthropologists, sociologists and social-psychologists who have studied LCMIs,
International Relations scholars working in this area have both a keen interest in influ-
encing policy and the connections within policy and practitioner communities that are
necessary to promote change. However, and partially as a response to the growing influ-
ence of this literature, many have also critiqued the ‘local turn’.
Some describe the local turn as romanticizing the local and as failing to hold to ‘uni-
versal’ liberal principles. If we do not incorporate proven universal principles of democ-
racy, market economics, and human rights into local contexts, relying instead on
non-liberal norms dominant within those contexts, we will reproduce the structures of
marginalization and inequality that led to conflict in the first place. Only the universal
values inherent in the liberal model, it is claimed, can provide the foundation for sustain-
able peace (Doyle, 2005; Paris, 2004). Others argue that the local turn inappropriately
constructs the global and local as ‘binary opposites,’ and is therefore blind to diversity
within the local and the international, ignores the prevalence of local elites within peace-
building processes, and generally oversimplifies the operation of power and resistance
within post-conflict contexts (Paffenholz, 2015: 858). Further, while those who advocate
for a local turn argue that it will decrease...
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