Implementing the Liberal Peace in Post‐conflict Scenarios: The Case of Women in Black‐Serbia
| Author | Max Stephenson Jr,Laura Zanotti |
| Date | 01 February 2012 |
| Published date | 01 February 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00102.x |
Implementing the Liberal Peace in
Post-conflict Scenarios: The Case of
Women in Black-Serbia
Max Stephenson Jr
Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance
Laura Zanotti
Department of Political Science, Virginia Tech
Abstract
This article explores the complex, and often unintended, consequences of NGO struggles to implement the normative
claims embedded in discourses of liberal peace in post-conflict situations. We study Women in Black-Serbia (WIB) to
examine the tensions between WIB’s adoption of a liberal, radically feminist, deterritorialized and individualistic
conceptualization of peace, its development of politics and political strategies in accord with the nationalistic
identities it has purported to reject, and the organization of its advocacy for peace around the memorialization of war
victims. We argue, in a very polarized political climate and in the context of a heavy presence of international
stakeholders, that WIB activism may produce the unintended consequence of hardening existing war identities and
conflict positions. This article assesses NGOs, not mainly for the quality of their normative claims or putative roles, but
as political agents whose discourses, tactics and practices are evaluated in the context of their interactions with other
(local and international) actors. More broadly, this analysis illuminates the unexplored conundrums, complexities and
ambiguities associated with implementation of the liberal peace in a highly polarized political space, and in the
context of multi-stakeholder peace-building processes.
Policy Implications
•Bilateral donors and multilateral organizations should assess their support for NGO advocacy activities in post-
conflict situations, not only based upon general normative claims, but in a thoroughly contextualized manner.
•Because NGO peace-oriented advocacy activities may create unexpected and even perverse consequences as a result
of mediating political and social factors, NGOs must be considered as concrete political actors involved in complex
contexts and their actions evaluated by policy makers accordingly.
•Policy-maker assumptions concerning the effects of normative claims, especially regarding justice and guilt and the
memorialization of war-related atrocities, merit careful analysis. Such efforts cannot simply be assumed to conduce
to peace, as often they may not.
•International donors and policy makers should consider crafting broad-based strategies for moving the political
debate away from war-related concerns. Policies aimed at fostering broad economic opportunities and increased
economic integration may help to foster propitious conditions for political reconciliation.
The reframing of international security as human security
and the increasing interest of international organizations
in directly intervening to protect populations from an
array of dangers – from poverty to gross violations of
human rights – have opened new spaces for nongovern-
mental organization (NGO) action, funding and engage-
ment. The United Nations (UN) Department of
Peacekeeping Operations 2008 Manual for Integrated
Peacekeeping Missions recognized this changed reality
by emphasizing the importance of coordinating with
‘the range of humanitarian and development actors
involved in international crisis management …where
the United Nations peacekeeping operations are
deployed’ (UN DPKO, 2008, p. 10). This reconceptualiza-
tion of security reflects an emerging consensus among
states, NGOs and international organizations around
what Oliver Richmond (2005) has called the ‘liberal
peace’. This view imagines peace as ‘a concurrent agree-
ment between state and non-state actors on universal
human needs, the provision of which brings a form
Global Policy Volume 3 . Issue 1 . February 2012
ª2011 London School of Economics and Political Science and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Global Policy (2012) 3:1 doi: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00102.x
Research Article
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