Peacebuilding beyond the state

In the wake of the state-building intervention in Afghanistan, international peace interventions have increasingly sought ways to build on pre-existing institutions and capacities for peace to strengthen societies’ ability to withstand shocks and violent conflict. Rather than building central state institutions, such approaches engage religious institutions, elder-councils, civil self-defense groups or local government, thus bringing ‘hybrid orders’, ‘resilience’ and non-state actors into focus.

In a new article in International Affairs, Finn Stepputat reflects on this trend towards more pragmatic approaches to peacebuilding. He argues that it brings about analytical and normative challenges that are difficult to deal with within a conventional framework that puts the state at the center of the analysis, even in areas where state institutions have limited presence.

As an alternative to the dominant analytical focus on the state, he develops the notion of ‘governscapes’ to better understand and talk about the uneven ways in which the use of force and forms of governance spread within and beyond state boundaries.

He argues that pragmatic approaches to peace:

1) play into emerging landscapes of governance and not-always-so-liberal forms of non-state authority, such as religious authorities or local self-defense groups; and

2) place too little emphasis on the capacity for using violence that characterizes many non-state actors that exercise some kind of authority against or alongside state authorities.

The article forms part of a special section in International Affairs on pragmatic peacebuilding, edited by Louise Wiuff Moe ((Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Hamburg) and Finn Stepputat.