International interventions seen from the ‘Middle’: Perceptions of intermediary actors in Côte d’Ivoire and Lebanon
| Author | Tilmann Scherf,Ursula C Schroeder,Sina Birkholz |
| Published date | 01 June 2018 |
| Date | 01 June 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0010836718768633 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836718768633
Cooperation and Conflict
2018, Vol. 53(2) 173 –192
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836718768633
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International interventions
seen from the ‘Middle’:
Perceptions of intermediary
actors in Côte d’Ivoire and
Lebanon
Sina Birkholz, Tilmann Scherf and
Ursula C Schroeder
Abstract
This article examines the perceptions of domestic actors in international governance and state-
building interventions. To further decentre a research field that has so far focused primarily
on the perceptions and representations of actors in the Global North, the article reconstructs
how a specific set of domestic actors sees the presence of donors in international interventions
and their own interactions with them. Drawing on recent advances in relational sociology,
our analysis focuses on how domestic intermediary actors in two post-war political settings
exposed to external state-building interventions conceive of and navigate their social relations
with the interveners. We find that they frequently view interveners as mainly interest-oriented,
bureaucratic and erratic actors. In contrast to studies that posit a clear-cut and static hierarchy
between Northern interveners and Southern targets of interventions, the article moreover paints
a more nuanced picture of the interactions and relations between interveners and ‘the intervened
upon’. The article illustrates its argument by drawing on a series of problem-centred and expert
interviews in Côte d’Ivoire and Lebanon.
Keywords
Côte d’Ivoire, intermediary actors, international interventions, Lebanon, perceptions
Introduction
Recent years have seen a fundamental shift in research on peace- and state-building
interventions. Notions of ‘local ownership’, ‘local agency’ and the ubiquitous ‘local turn
in peacebuilding’ (Mac Ginty and Richmond, 2013) are only some of the concepts that
indicate a new interest – both in the academic and the policy worlds – in the perceptions
Corresponding author:
Ursula C Schroeder, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy, University of Hamburg, Beim Schlump
83, 20144 Hamburg, Germany.
Email: schroeder@ifsh.de
768633CAC0010.1177/0010836718768633Cooperation and ConflictBirkholz et al.
research-article2018
Article
174 Cooperation and Conflict 53(2)
and interests of those affected by post-war interventions. This ‘discovery of the local’
(Chandler, 2013: 22) in critical peace research has produced lively debates about the role
of local agency in and the need for ‘local ownership’ of peace-building interventions (for
overviews, see Leonardsson and Rudd, 2015; Paffenholz, 2015). Research in this vein
has focused on investigating the strategies of local actors responding to external inter-
ventions. Examining strategies of resistance to and appropriation of international assis-
tance, researchers have constructed typologies of local agency responses to interventions
(see, e.g., Björkdahl and Höglund, 2013). In parallel, a lively research debate has started
to problematize the existence of the simple dichotomy between external and local actors.
The concepts of ‘friction’ (see further Björkdahl et al., 2016) and ‘hybridity’ (Mac Ginty,
2010; Richmond, 2014; for a recent critical perspective, see Mac Ginty and Richmond,
2016) were designed to address the closely intertwined and sometimes confrontational
relationships between the local and the global in interventions. Starting from this vantage
point, our article combines attention to local perspectives on international interventions
with a decentred research approach. Empirically, we do this by asking local actors in
intervention societies how they perceive the presence of external ‘interveners’ and their
own interactions with them. Methodologically, we decentre our research by adopting a
relational approach to the study of interventions (Emirbayer, 1997; Go, 2013).
The importance of capturing local perceptions of the results of international peace
interventions has recently gained greater attention. In the policy world, an increased
awareness of the need to better understand local views vis-à-vis peacekeeping missions
has led to the publication of ‘guidelines on understanding and integrating local percep-
tions in UN peacekeeping’ (United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UN
DPKO), Department for Field Support, DPKO-DFS/DPET/Policy and Best Practice
Service, 2014). In the debate preceding the publication of the guidelines, the understand-
ing that ‘what people think does matter’ (Schia et al., 2013) gained ground. Some observ-
ers even argued that ‘community perceptions may be the most important variable in
determining the outcome of a peacekeeping intervention’ (Giffen, 2013). If, as proposed,
we should increasingly use local perceptions as a ‘basis for operational guidance’ (Donati
et al., 2013) to enable better decision-making, we clearly require further knowledge about
these perceptions.
In the corresponding research field, recent years have seen a steady rise in single-case
studies on local perceptions – for example, on the legitimacy of peace operations in Mali
(Sabrow, 2017), on international forces in Afghanistan (Donini, 2007; Karlborg, 2014), on
conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Hellmüller, 2013) and on the United
Nations–African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) (Müller and Bashar, 2017). Despite
this growing interest, more conceptual deliberations about the ways in which local per-
spectives and perceptions matter and about both researchers’ and practitioners’ construc-
tion of the ‘local’ continue to be rare. Talentino’s (2007: 153) observation that the role
played by local perceptions in the success and failure of peace reforms is relatively under-
studied remains true today. This omission is puzzling, as ‘perceptions shape both the
menu of choices available and the likely selection from that menu’ (ibid.). Starting from
the observation that local perceptions are crucial for tracking the functioning and effects
of peace-building interventions, our article critically engages with the use of perceptions
data in current research on international interventions.
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