Deliberating Ideas in the Making of a New Order:

The sketch of recent developments in peacebuilding research shows that the achievements of the liberal peace critique are quite substantial: It has been argued rather successfully that both practitioners and academics could profit from changing their expert status to self-declared amateurs of peacebuilding. And despite the shortage of coherent dynamic models to capture the local-international negotiation and communication procedures the available studies have already shed new light on the

5 The authors give no definition of the term donor, but imply in several paragraphs that this refers to international actors engaged in state building activities, including foreign governments, supranational organizations, or non-governmental agencies.

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character of evolving practices and institutions. The following chapter will briefly describe the contribution this dissertation seeks to make to the current debate in its search for new empirical data and theoretical models. In order to do so it will first discuss the two main shortcomings of the current criticism. The argument is that the debate has not yet managed to escape the niche it developed in: It is through its self-styled ‘opposition-character’ that the debate sets its own conceptual limits.

This problem is first of all evident in the conceptualization of international and local actors as imposers and imposed upon. Attempts to prove earlier generations of scholars and state builders wrong, who had developed their policies and analytical models based on the understanding that foreign countries could, in fact, be pressured in the ‘right’ direction have not weakened but rather reinforced this notion. The introduction to the anthology A Liberal Peace? is exemplary in this regard (Campbell, Chandler, and Sabaratnam 2011).

As indicated by the question mark in the title it sets out to advance our

“understanding of peacebuilding intervention”. The editors then proceed by presenting

“empirical research that investigates the degree to which the liberal peace is, in fact, imposed on post-conflict and transitional states and societies.” With a focus on local actors and conditions in foreign countries some authors argue for instance that this project is doomed to fail because of reluctant elites and established bureaucratic routines.

Others take on a more normative position and hold that economic superiority shouldn’t be abused as a free pass to proceed with ruthless interventions: “Respect for the ‘Other’ […] includes the reluctance to impose universal models” (Campbell, Chandler, and Sabaratnam 2011, 1–3). With their studies the authors can indeed show that ‘imposition’ is neither feasible nor morally acceptable; but this does little to challenge the simplifying understanding of the power bias between them. The same dichotomy is applied when attempting to explain the deteriorating relationships between local and international actors on all institutional levels, from the elite to the sphere of the ‘everyday’.

Autessere’s groundbreaking study on the subculture of international peacebuilders for instance showed how knowledge production, socialization and the

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everyday routines in the circles of these interveners alienate them from the very society they intend to appease and reform. Instead of furthering the goal of building a true partnership for peace their presence in the country often led to additional conflicts. In this regard the study asks “why many of these people, who would in fact benefit from effective international efforts, reject or distort them”. The answer, she finds, lies in the

“very act of imposition” (Autessere 2014, 108). “Intellectuals and authorities regularly complained that interveners tried to impose their ideas, values, and standard operation procedures with no respect for local knowledge and customs.” These results do confirm earlier works by Talentino, who likewise showed that “resentment [against imposition]

results in obstructionism” (Autessere 2014, 109).

While there is nothing to say against the demand to be more sensitive and respectful in dealing with one another it is clearly important not to equate the perception of imposition with the nature of power in the context of an intervention on an analytical level. Which leads to the second problem: Earlier generations of scholars have, as Autessere details, explained resistance with local actors’ “lack of understanding of international strategies, the presence of vested interests, the financial and logistical constraints of the projects, or the Western or liberal characters of the programs”

(Autessere 2014, 108).

In their attempts to demonstrate actors’ agency and frame their opposition as valid and rational behavior the reviewed analysis tend to attribute reforms with an almost material character. Mac Ginty’s hybrid peace model for instance had encouraged analysts to observe the realm of “peace processes and peace accord implementation” with an eye on the agency of local actors to negotiate the substance of externally imposed reforms (Mac Ginty 2011, 211). His article includes several example of hybrid structures that have formed as a result of local resistance, subversion, and their ability to uphold local alternatives to internationally crafted institutions: The informal economy in Iraq, or the new Bosnian state, which he describes as a “distortion of liberal ideas melded with nationalism, realism and a socialist legacy” (Mac Ginty 2011, 219). Despite the study’s acknowledgement of the non-linear character that preceded the creation of these structures, the ideas and assumptions that have driven acts of resistance or subversion remain in the dark. To

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put it more bluntly: Instead of observing processes Mac Ginty actually observes results and explains them with processes. Other studies or analysis are equally silent on the matter: What are actors’ perceptions of the reforms? How do international actors convey their ideas of the changes to come? How do converging or contradicting ideas of the new political order affect the relationship between interveners and local actors?

In order to find an answer to these questions it is neither helpful to further the distinction between liberal and non-liberal preferences, nor to trace all of the international actors’ claims back to their assumptions of superiority. Instead it would be important to advance our understanding of the concrete practice with which interveners seek to enforce, uphold, and confirm their vision of the new political order in the course of a mission and under what circumstances local actors are likely to react to these interpretations of their future.

In other words: It would important to account for the symbolic character of local-international exchanges and negotiations regarding the future political order. It is in regard of these prevailing issues that this work intends to make the following contribution: It will 1.) Provide an analytical model to observe the symbolic dimension of international-local negotiations over the new political order and 2.) Provide empirical data that can demonstrate the importance to account for this dimension while advancing the debate over alternative models of peacebuilding.

With its focus on Cambodia’s public political discourse and the ideas presented by the 20 newly founded Cambodian parties prior to the UNTAC organized elections in 1993 the intended analysis seems to go against the here described trend in state building literature: It observes politics in traditional institutional structures and is interested in interaction on the level of political elites. The following chapter will discuss the theoretical framework used to capture the dynamic of their interaction. It will become evident that it is possible to learn a lot about the nature of power in the context of an intervention if we focus our attention on the ongoing deliberations of the different visions for a peaceful new order that become an option in transitional times. Instead of turning towards the ‘everyday’ in an attempt to discover hidden forms of agency and knowledge, the analysis of the public political discourse in the context of an

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intervention society intends to determine more precisely what kind of knowledge is mobilized under what circumstances to defend contesting claims over legitimate political reforms. Such ongoing deliberations are not taking place in a sphere completely removed from the population, but are very much embedded in the reconstruction efforts that encompass both the state and the nation.

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