Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 

About: Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding is an academic journal published by Routledge. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Peacebuilding & Politics. It has an ISSN identifier of 1750-2977. Over the lifetime, 489 publications have been published receiving 7836 citations.

Becoming Liberal, Unbecoming Liberalism: Liberal-Local Hybridity via the Everyday as a Response to the Paradoxes of Liberal Peacebuilding

Abstract: It has become clear that the liberal international institutions and ‘corridors of power’ have so far failed to deliver on their promise of a liberal peace for all. Liberal peacebuilding has often offered resources to an elaborate structuration of sometimes predatory elites – international and local – but not to the general populations of these multiple states. Institutions have been created, but the reach of liberal politics has had little impact – other than in basic security and in rhetorical, rights oriented terms – on the everyday life of populations. The local is commonly deployed to depict a homogenous and disorderly Other, whose needs and aspirations do not conform to liberal standards. Claims that moves toward the everyday have already been made disguise the limited ambitions of liberal statebuilders to enable a real improvement in local agency. In the midst of all of this the real everyday needs and lives of individuals have become obscured. This essay briefly suggests some theoretical r...

Statebuilding without Nation-building? Legitimacy, State Failure and the Limits of the Institutionalist Approach

Abstract: The paradox of attempting to (re)construct state institutions without considering the socio-political cohesion of societies recurs throughout the world, most notably today in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. This essay tries to shed some light on the debate around the concepts of state and nation-building. Drawing on a sociological understanding of the modern nation-state, it contends that it is impossible to conceive of statebuilding as a process separate from nation-building. This essay identifies two different schools of thought in the discussion concerning the statebuilding process, each of which reflects different sociological understandings of the state. The first one, an ‘institutional approach’ closely related to the Weberian conception of the state, focuses on the importance of institutional reconstruction and postulates that statebuilding activities do not necessarily require a concomitant nation-building effort. The second, a ‘legitimacy approach’ influenced by Durkheimian soci...

Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound: Everyday Life in Post-Interventionary Society

Abstract: The politicisation of aid has made helping others increasingly dangerous. The fortified aid compound is now ubiquitous throughout the global borderland. It has become the signature architecture, for example, of the UN integrated mission. In examining these developments, the article first looks at the potential for UN field-security training to normalise risk-aversion and the necessity, even desirability, of defensive living. Using the example of Sudan, the wider implications of aid bunkering, including its overlaps with such global trends as urban splintering and the proliferation of gated-communities are also examined. The fortified aid compound is symptomatic of the deepening crisis within the development-security nexus.

Ownership in Theory and in Practice: Transfer of Authority in UN Statebuilding Operations

Abstract: The language of ‘ownership’ is commonly used in statebuilding operations, but it is not clear that the term has either consistency or substance. It certainly does not have its literal meaning, in the sense of rights of possession either of property or a formal stake in an organization, such as shares in a corporation. Instead ownership tends to be used figuratively – much as ‘buy-in’ in this context usually does not suggest an actual financial transaction – to refer in a more vague way to the relationship between stakeholders, with meanings ranging from a sense of attachment to a programme or operation, to (rarely) actual controlling authority. This essay explores how ownership emerged as a shibboleth of the development community and how it has influenced UN statebuilding operations. The emphasis will be on rule of law institutions, but the critique of ownership applies to post-conflict operations more generally.

Responsibility to Protect or Right to Punish

Abstract: This essay argues that the new global regime of R2P bifurcates the international system between sovereign states whose citizens have political rights, and de facto trusteeship territories whose populations are seen as wards in need of external protection. Under the direction of the UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court has become an integral part of the international R2P regime by allowing for the legal normalization of certain types of violence (such as Western counterinsurgency efforts), while arbitrarily criminalizing the violence of other states as ‘genocide’. In place of this unequal global regime, the essay concludes by arguing for an internally-driven process of political reform and legal reconciliation, as pioneered in South Africa.