Peace in Political Unsettlement

Beyond Solving Conflict

Jan Pospisil

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783030043179
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030043186
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

International peacebuilding has reached an impasse. Its lofty ambitions have resulted in at best middling success, punctuated by moments of outright failure. The discrediting of the term 'liberal peacebuilding' has seen it evolve to respond to the numerous critiques. Notions such as 'inclusive peace' merge the liberal paradigm with critical notions of context, and the need to refine practices to take account of 'the local' or 'complexity'. However, how this would translate into clear guidance for the practice of peacebuilding is unclear. Paradoxically, contemporary peacebuilding policy has reached an unprecedented level of vagueness. Peace in political unsettlement provides an alternative response rooted in a new discourse, which aims to speak both to the experience of working in peace process settings. It maps a new understanding of peace processes as institutionalising formalised political unsettlement and points out new ways of engaging with it. The book points to theways in which peace processes institutionalise forms of disagreement, creating ongoing processes to manage it, rather than resolve it. It suggests a modest approach of providing 'hooks' to future processes, maximising the use of creative non-solutions, and practices of disrelation, are discussed as pathways for pragmatic post-war transitions. It is only by understanding the nature and techniques of formalised political unsettlement that new constructive ways of engaging with it can be found.

© The Author(s) 2019

Jan PospisilPeace in Political UnsettlementRethinking Peace and Conflict Studieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04318-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Jan Pospisil¹

(1)

ASPR—Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Vienna, Austria

Jan Pospisil

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

PeacebuildingAffirmationInclusionPeace processesFormalised political unsettlementPragmatic transitionsPragmatism

End Abstract

The title of this book is misleading. The book examines the loss of agency in the state of affirmation in peacebuilding . Affirmation is a state in which the world has taken over. The modern belief in doability, in this case the doability of peace, has been surpassed by a technocratic accommodation of failure and excessive demand. In peacebuilding, thus, the affirmation of the conditions of conflict and subsequent transitional processes results in accepting the disappearance of one’s agency therein.

I borrow the term affirmation from the wider scholarly debate on the Anthropocene . The notion of affirmation takes in and twists the numerous critiques of modernity—in peacebuilding its top-down liberalism , its neglect of contextuality and locality, and its character as ‘empire in denial’ (Chandler 2006). Affirmation breaks with the assumption that there might ‘be a collective happy ending’ (Tsing 2015: 21). Affirmation in peacebuilding has developed its own theories, concepts and practices—in short, ontopolitics (Chandler 2018)—to accommodate inevitable and enduring failure . However, the price to pay for this accommodation is the loss of agency (cf. Bargués-Pedreny 2018: 143).

The state of affirmation in peacebuilding is something real. Peacebuilding practitioners and scholars experience and feel it. Affirmation is the outcome of efforts undertaken with the best intentions to overcome the shortcomings of liberal peace. Peacebuilding policy has embraced the opportunities to engage with peace and conflict research in recent years. Substantial amounts of personal and financial effort have produced an incredible richness of conceptual and empirical knowledge , which is now taken seriously by policymakers, who themselves are often educated along the attitudes of critical peace scholarship. Nonetheless, the merger of conceptual education, practical experience, and contextualised, detailed knowledge based on empirical research results in a chastening outcome : confusion.

The state of affirmation is overwhelming. It accepts complexity and complexity’s consequences of non-causality and non-linearity . It has reached the end of knowledge because there is too much knowledge . Affirmation is also a deeply felt loss of agency . Technocratic policymaking has found its ways of living with affirmation. It has developed concepts of peace governance ambiguous enough to conceptually work even when failing in practice: inclusion, resilience , and political settlements . Technocratic policymakers have developed the ability to personally handle failure, while collectively holding onto the claim of being on the right side of things. In many instances, failing in affirmation is a comfortable condition for peacebuilders.

The effort undertaken by this book is not to fight against affirmation. It aims to contribute to the reconstruction of agency under the conditions provided by it. First, the book offers a lens that challenges affirmation’s ease. The lens of formalised political unsettlement reconceptualises contemporary peacebuilding failure as the entry point of pragmatic transitions . The book’s second aim is to position this pragmatic transitional approach as a way to overcome the extensions of liberal peacebuilding in affirmation : the logic of success and failure, and the persisting predominance of outcome over process . Finally, the book aims to support the reconstruction of agency by offering a heuristic typology of practices that already exist in peace processes: the provision of hooks , creative non-solutions and disrelation .

The Logic of Peacebuilding

The mainstream approach in peacebuilding understands peace processes as an effort in which the contestation at the heart of a violent conflict is gradually resolved. The prevailing idea sees dispute settlement, preferably in an institutional form, as the main gateway to transforming a violent conflict into normal politics. A seminal paper by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) puts this approach in a straightforward language: ‘Peace process is defined as a formal process in which the warring parties either have decided to settle the incompatibility in a process in which one issue at a time is regulated by an agreement, or where an agreement that builds on a previous peace agreement is signed’ (Harbom et al. 2006: 623, footnote 8). The cessation of violent conflict , which the UCDP expediently constructs as the number of fatalities and violent incidents in a given territory over a defined time span, thus happens by agreeing on a formalised end to the dispute.

The perceptions of peace processes have diversified in recent years. Peacebuilding , which the United Nations (2008) once defined as involving ‘a range of measures targeted to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management , and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace and sustainable development ’, has taken root along conflict resolution and mediation efforts. Peace processes expanded from a strict focus on negotiations and dispute settlement to encompass a wide array of accompanying activities.

Despite new catchy phrases like ‘sustaining peace ’, contemporary peacebuilding policy still relies on core assumptions of traditional liberal approaches. The 2018 joint World Bank /United Nations study ‘ Pathways to Peace ’ emphasises the value of conflict prevention and defines it in line with the United Nations sustaining peace resolutions (UN General Assembly, Security Council 2015; UN Security Council 2016) as ‘activities aimed at preventing the outbreak, escalation, continuation, and recurrence of conflict, addressing root causes , assisting parties to conflict to end hostilities, ensuring national reconciliation , and moving towards recovery, reconstruction, and development’ (World Bank and United Nations 2018: 77). In accordance with this approach, policymakers regularly comprehend peace processes as following a reasonably clear script evolving across several sequential steps.

Within this logic, the conflicting parties, as a first step after experiencing what William Zartman (2000) has called a ‘mutually hurting stalemate ’, reach a joint understanding about the willingness to engage in peace talks. The start of peace talks is often accompanied by a ceasefire that brings the acute violent conflict to a temporary halt, which in turn facilitates the building of mutual trust. At this stage, international negotiation support usually gets involved via third-party mediators , groups of friends, guarantors or the like. An international peacekeeping mission may also be part of the equation. The customary liberal interpretation sees the fundamental contestation as being driven by (subjective ) misunderstanding or distrust, objective factors such as a failed institutional and political dispute resolution structures, or external root causes such as climate change and other environmental factors (Dyer 2011; for a critical assessment of this trope see Selby and Hoffmann 2014).

Hence, conventional logic expects the establishment of an agenda for peace talks along these issues as a second step. The parties, often supported by external mediators and experts, develop a compatible narrative about the causes of the violent conflict and agree on a list of contested issues. If the preliminary talks progress productively, a schedule is agreed upon on how negotiations shall proceed (often laid out in pre-negotiation agreements ). Further arrangements determine who will be granted access to the negotiation process and in what form. The current trend in peacebuilding policy points towards greater inclusivity, where the overriding logic is to include as many stakeholders as possible. The actual talks may take place in diverse formats, with a variable degree of inclusivity regarding parties (horizontal inclusion) and societal groups (vertical inclusion), and international involvement. Commonly, the talks merge issues that are of immediate concern for a transition, such as disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of armed actors , security sector reform (SSR), matters of transitional justice, as well as elements of power-sharing, with responses to the root causes of the conflict. Contemporary peace process research interprets the drafting and signing of a so-called comprehensive peace agreement (as it was done in Sudan in 2005 or Nepal in 2006) as the peace process ‘queen stage’.

Finally, an ideal-type sequencing focuses on the implementation of the comprehensive agreement. If required, implementation goes along with further negotiations over reshaping the political settlement and the constitutional order of the polity (e.g. as it has happened in Nepal). The implementation stage is seen as being of utmost importance in post-conflict peacebuilding. Various institutional frameworks have been developed over time to guarantee its success, such as international ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The State of Affirmation in Peacebuilding: Locating Pragmatic Transitions
• 3. Conceptualising Formalised Political Unsettlement
• 4. Ontopolitics at Play: Inclusion Between a Panacea and a Hook
• 5. Moving Beyond Solving Conflict: Creative Non-solutions
• 6. Moving Beyond the Conflict Setting: Disrelation
• 7. Conclusions: Embracing Affirmation
• Correction to: Ontopolitics at Play: Inclusion Between a Panacea and a Hook
• Back Matter