Introducing hybrid peace governance: impact and prospects of liberal peacebuilding.

Jarstad, Anna K. ; Belloni, Roberto

IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA, IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, AND LEBANON, TO MENTION just a few cases, the international efforts to promote peace and democratic institutions frequently clash with different understandings of the meaning and implications of these terms. International and domestic actors enter into a bargaining relationship whereby each actor attempts to promote its own values, norms, and practices. The end result is a condition of hybrid peace governance, in which contrary elements exist alongside each other in a context where violence, actual or potential, continues to play an important role. More precisely, hybrid refers to a condition where liberal and illiberal norms, institutions, and actors coexist, interact, and even clash. The term peace governance points to the activity of governing this condition. While the articles included in this special issue focus primarily, although not exclusively, on hybridity in political and institutional matters, hybrid conditions are also found in other realms, most notably in culture.

There are many types of hybridity along the continuum between an ideal type liberal state and illiberal institutions, norms, and practices. At one end there is the Westphalian state, which, unfairly, often is used as a yardstick to assess progress in war-to-democracy transitions. At the other end there is the illiberal, often authoritarian, repressive state. In between there is a wide array of hybrid conditions, ranging from the formal inclusion of warlords into state institutions, to the influence of informal and traditional institutions and actors (such as clientelism, neo-patrimonialism, and nonstate authorities like local chiefs), to instances where the state may possess formally democratic elements such as periodic elections, but is actually "captured" by narrow, illegal, and even violent groups (see Figure 1). Whether hybridity represents a deviation from liberalism, which would thus be accorded a foundational and privileged position, is a matter of debate. Much of the recent literature on peacebuilding tends to endorse this position (see Roberto Belloni's article), while the articles in this special issue, as a whole, stress the importance of local agency in shaping peacebuilding outcomes.

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The various kinds of hybrid governance may take place in situations spanning from war to peace. In practice, liberal peacebuilding frequently occurs where the distinction between war and peace is blurred. (1) Violence, particularly criminal violence, may be rife or continue to lurk in the background and to affect, in various degrees, all phases of the transition from war to peace. Conceptually, however, it is still possible to identify a violence continuum moving from civil war to the existence of pockets of violence and occasional clashes, to the state's monopoly of violence (see Figure 2).

By combining the two dimensions illiberal/liberal and war/peace we obtain a simple matrix with four categories (see Figure 3). (2) The first category is liberal peace governance in the form of the Westphalian slate (I), which combines peace, liberal norms, and democratic institutions. Empirical conditions closest to this ideal type are found in some Western states -- such as Germany and Sweden -- but are largely unknown to postwar contexts, particularly with regard to the state's monopoly of violence.

There are three categories that can be properly described as hybrid peace governance. One category, the victor's peace (II), is the empirically most frequent kind of hybrid peace governance. Here a situation of peace, which could be described as a truce, is combined with predominantly illiberal norms, institutions, and practices. Formally liberal and democratic institutions are in place, elections are held, and individual and group rights are recognized to some extent. But illiberal elements play a decisive role in political, economic, and social life. There is no war because the opposition has been defeated decisively, not because it has voluntarily accepted the majority's legitimacy to rule. Thus, theoretically, conflict remains a possibility. Kosovo and Sri Lanka are prominent examples of this kind of hybridity.

In another hybrid peace governance category, the divided state (III), more or less liberal institutions coexist with various degrees of violence. Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland up to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement are the most well-known examples of this kind.

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The last category, anarchy (IV), displays a situation where peacebuilding has resulted in the coexistence of illiberal and liberal norms, institutions, and actors in a warlike context. Many post-Cold War peacebuilding efforts, from the ones in Afghanistan to Darfur, are of this kind.

Liberal and hybrid peace governance differ in a number of important ways. Liberal peace governance is based on market economy and legitimate, accountable democratic institutions and formal practices such as elections that provide for shifting majorities and the change of government. By contrast, hybrid peace governance combines such formal practices with informal institutions like hereditary, ethnic, or traditional rule. Likewise, liberal peace governance actors include civil servants, politicians, open civil society, free media, police, and judges. Hybrid peace governance empowers additional actors such as local chiefs, traditional and religious institutions, rebel groups, warlords, and mafia groups. Moreover, liberal peace governance is based on values such as meritocracy, rule of law, transparency, and human rights whereas hybrid peace governance also encapsulates illiberal values such as patrimonialism, religious orders, authoritarian rule, and the notion that international human rights are secondary vis-a-vis state sovereignty. Paradoxically, while liberal peacebuilding seeks to advance peace as well as liberal norms, stability tends to be prioritized. (3) For this reason, liberal peace promoters often engage with illiberal institutions that provide for predictable transitions and stability, but inadvertently reinforce illiberal values and actors.

The articles in this special issue demonstrate that hybrid peace governance takes many shapes. A first conclusion can be drawn from the articles by Keith Krause and by Francesco Strazzari and Bertine Kamphuis, respectively, who show that hybridity already exists before the deployment of an international peacebuilding mission and is shaped by decades of international-local interaction. While differing in attentiveness to such historical matters, all authors agree that hybridity, contrary to intentions or not, can be reinforced by international involvement. Marie-Joelle Zahar shows that transmission of liberal norms is often constrained by local actors' postures toward the liberal peace project as well as by their lack of representativeness and ability to influence their constituencies.

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A second conclusion is that divisions within the international arena also contribute to sustain hybridity at the local level. For instance, Kristine Hoglund and Camilla Orjuela discuss how local dynamics and hybrid peace governance are influenced by the involvement of illiberal states such as China. Anna K. Jarstad and Louise Olsson also highlight the oftentimes clashing logics of different types of international actors; in particular, development agencies and military organizations.

A third conclusion is that hybridity is manifested in the dual use of formal and informal, legal and illegal means to gain influence. This is true not only among many local actors, but also among international ones engaged in the host state. As a result, the international peaccbuilding strategy has frequently undermined both the liberal state and the peace and has resulted in different forms of hybrid peace governance.

It is a real possibility that such hybrid peace governance situations may ultimately reinforce patriarchal, feudal, sexist, and violent political and social systems. And yet a last conclusion is that this hybrid condition may also contain significant opportunities to make peace processes more stable and to provide domestic institutions with the kind of locally rooted legitimacy that liberal peacebuilding has been unable to impart. Thus, the concept of hybrid peace governance is more than a simple repackaging of the failures and limitations of liberal peacebuilding. Rather, hybridity suggests the potential to more firmly ground peace processes in the domestic reality of conflict areas.

For international actors, this implies the necessity to develop greater context sensitivity and to move away from the idea of a single model of the state rooted in the Wcstphalian tradition. In part, this is already happening, as demonstrated by Chetan Kumar and Jos De la Haye's discussion of the United Nations *s hybrid peacemaking efforts. Moreover, the emergence of the "g7+" group (see Vanessa Wyeth's contribution to this issue) suggests the potential of local agency to systemically shape peacebuilding processes. However, international actors (above all, the United Nations) face considerable dilemmas in confronting hybrid conditions because local norms, especially in relation to the rights of women and minorities, may openly conflict with international human rights.

Various aspects of hybrid peace governance are discussed in the following articles. A range of different cases is presented, some of which attracted significant international intervention while others received only limited external involvement. These examples are all intended to be illustrative, not comprehensive, of the patterns of interaction between international and local actors or of the role played by local actors, norms, and institutions in postwar transition. Belloni provides a typology of hybrid peace governance that places particular attention on institutional hybridity. Furthermore, he critically reviews some recent literature on the topic, showing how the condition of hybridity and its implications may still be underappreciated. Krause discusses hybridized forms of violence. He advances the discussion by distinguishing four different kinds of hybridity (categorical, institutional, motivational, and temporal) and by arguing that hybrid violence has more to do with the dynamics of statebuilding, common to most developing countries, and the related struggles for power and influence than it does with external peacebuilding interventions. Accordingly, he presents a broad universe of cases including both postwar and non-postwar cases.

Similarly, Strazzari and Kamphuis adopt a state formation approach to analyze hybrid economic governance. They show how local and international agendas tend to converge toward a type of hybrid economic governance that contributes to the resilience of extralegal economic practices. Zahar measures the objectives of democracy promotion programs against their reception by the "intended beneficiaries" in Sudan and Lebanon and shows how the agency of local actors plays a decisive role in determining outcomes. Hoglund and Orjuela highlight differences within the international community and show how some actors -- both local and international -- oppose domination by Western nations, resist liberal peace interventions, and cooperate to promote illiberal norms and hybrid forms of governance. Finally, Jarstad and Olsson problematize the inherent tension between international and local actors with regard to the ownership question (i.e., who should own what and when during a peace operation). (4)

Notes

Anna K. Jarstad is associate professor at the Department of Government, Uppsala University, Sweden. With Timothy D. Sisk, she coedited the volume From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Peacebuilding. Her publications also address contemporary power-sharing pacts and management of political violence in Conflict Management and Peace Science, Africa Spectrum, Civil Wars and Democratization. Roberto Belloni is associate professor of international relations at the University of Trento, Italy. His main research interest is postconflict international intervention in deeply divided societies, with particular reference to southeastern Europe. He has published extensively on this topic, including a monograph (State Building and International Intervention in Bosnia), book chapters, and articles in a number of journals such as Review of International Studies, Journal of Peace Research, International Peacekeeping. Civil Wars, Ethnopolitics, and International Studies Perspectives.

(1.) David Keen, "Peace and War: What Is the Difference?" in Adekeye Adebajo and Chandra Lekha Sriram, eds., Managing Armed Conflicts in the list Century (London: Frank Cass, 2001), pp. 1-22.

(2.) Special thanks to Johanna Soderstrom, who has assisted in designing the figures.

(3.) Anna K. Jarstad and Timothy D. Sisk, From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Pemebwldittg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2008).

(4.) Drafts of articles were presented at a workshop held in Montreal on 15 March 2011. In addition to the article authors, the following researchers and practitioners participated: Jos De la Haye, Eugenia Piza Lopez, Tim Sisk, Johanna Soderstrom, Anders Themner, and Vanessa Wyeth. We are grateful to the International Studies Association lor providing a grant to make this meeting possible and for providing panels at its annual meeting in Montreal, 16-19 March 2011. Thanks are also due to Oliver Richmond and Dominik Zaum who kindly agreed to serve as discussants on those panels. Finally, we are grateful to the editors of Global Governance for publishing these articles and in particular to Tim Sisk for his early, enthusiastic, and continuous support for our project.