THE
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PEACE AND CONFLICT
Ismail Adaramola Abdul
Azeez1, Amidu Adinoyi Jimoh2
International Sulaemon University, Turkey1
Kogi State University Anyigba, Nigeria2
Email: [email protected], [email protected]
|
KEYWORDS Political economy; War-peace binary;
Continua of violence; Militarism; Patriarchy; Foreign States; Women |
ABSTRACT This paper suggests that a ‘political economy’ approach to conflict
has far-reaching implications for relief work. In war there are both
‘winners’ and ‘losers. The vulnerability of losers needs to be understood as
a consequence of their powerlessness. A state of war provides and justifies
the use of violent means to create or sustain economic profits and political
power. A war may have clear ‘winners’ in the sense that they profit from the
war without the war itself being ‘won’ in the traditional sense. For the
losers, such a war is the never-ending accumulation of abuses, fear and
frustration. The paper aims to find out how the political economy approach to
conflict between peace and conflict. Descriptive method with qualitative
approach was used in the study. The paper proposes that by understanding the
political economy of war, relief agencies can better assess the, forms of
economic violence which threaten livelihoods during wars. Second, analyzing
the context and implications of relief work is crucial so as to minimize its
negative impact – given that belligerents and foreign states may seek to
manipulate a humanitarian presence and misdirect the resources provided by
relief. Its further analysis methods of understanding the course of a
conflict in terms of political economy can help to identify political and
economic interests which impede a transition to peace, and so help avoid the
reconstruction of a pre-war economy that may have had much to do with the
origin of the conflict. |
INTRODUCTION
How
far are external agencies dictating the pattern of economic transformation in
societies emerging from conflict? From current practice in a variety of
situations, and from proposed reforms to peacebuilding and development, the
answer seems to be: “as far as the eye can see!” The hubris of peacebuilders
keys the political economy of war-torn societies into a map captioned “the
liberal peace project;” that, in its economic dimension, requires convergence
towards “market liberalization.” This became an aggressively promoted
orthodoxy, with variations, derived from the late 1990s Washington Consensus on
the logically correct path of development for undeveloped states. Perhaps not
treated as a high priority in stabilizing peace per se (the vanguard of which
has been allocated to fostering security, rule of law and democratic forms),
neoliberal economic policies were nevertheless barely-contested assumptions
underlying external economic reconstruction assistance and management in
war-torn societies (Grasten &
Tzouvala, 2018; Kishek, 2012).
This
article interrogates the current, and proposed revisions of, political economy
as it affects peacebuilding from a critical theory perspective in international
relations. This perspective concerns the power of post-industrial capitalism
and the agency behind globalization ideology. Certainly, there is considerable
disagreement among critical authors about the ontology of so-called market
democracy, the power of its non-state networks and agencies vis-à-vis states,
and the pre-eminence of a fundamentalist version. The Political
Economy of Peacebuilding of neoliberalism its passing having been identified by
(Ralston, 2005).
Theorists from rather disparate standpoints have grappled with the problemata
of global capitalism (Cox, 2002; Van der Pijl, 1998; Baumann, 2000; Murphy,
2005; Hardt and Negri, 2000). They have in common, however, a concern to
construct an inclusive and emancipatory concept of political economy, an
approach that can also be applied to peacebuilding. In applying a critical
approach, this analysis focuses on the politics of the economic projects within
the liberal peace framework, drawing examples from south-east Europe. First, it
deals with the orthodox rationale of the political economy of peacebuilding.
Next, the article notes the virtual death of the Washington Consensus and
identifies a millennial revisionist agenda that emerged internationally during
the course of 2004–05. This interrogation, then, allows reflection about the
objectification of war-torn societies as well as reflection on the essentialist
rationale of the political economy of peacebuilding and its dysfunctional and
normative/ethical contradictions. The article contends that, although the
depiction of an aggressive, undifferentiated liberal peacebuilding has been
refined, the millennial revisionist project ultimately fails to address these
contradictions. An inclusive/emancipatory participation of local actors and
structural diversity in political economies indicates alternative options to
the revisionist ideology that is embedded in a liberal structuring of global
political economy. This paper
aims to find out how the political economy approach to conflict between peace
and conflict.
RESEARCH
METHOD
This research used qualitative research method. Moreover, descriptive method with
qualitative approach: this method involves the collection of in-depth and
detailed data on the phenomena of political economy of peace and conflict.
Researchers can use in-depth interview techniques, participatory observation,
and document analysis to understand the factors that influence conflict and
peace in the context of political economy.
RESULTS AND
DISCUSSION
The
Economic Peacebuilding Rationale
The
rationale for determining rules and frameworks for the development of societies
that will release them from so-called “conflict traps” (Collier, 2003) attributes
economic dysfunctional to societies, in their pre-conflict, conflict and post
conflict stages, rather than to any dysfunctional economic precepts, structures
and conditionalities generated by expressions of capitalist power and “global
governance.”1 A key aspect of the
“liberal peace” thus promotes a form of economic control and regulation to
establish market correctives in societies that have been resistant to
conventional marketisation imperatives (Paris, 1997; Duffield, 2001; Richmond,
2005). Although its modern version derives from the 1989 Washington Consensus
(to which Kofi Annan subsequently acceded on behalf of the United Nations) the
project has not been revolutionary. Its antecedents can be traced to Camdenite
teachings concerning the peaceful benefits of free trade, though it was not so
much “free” as imposed by the hegemon, the UK and its powerful navy.
Nevertheless, the ideology survived the First World War, and only in the Second
did it give way to a system of international management on Keynesian lines.
Even so, poverty reduction was conceived as serving the security interests of
the most powerful. Robert McNamara’s “war on poverty” at the World Bank in 1972
was driven by the notion that the poor went communist (George, 1994). Subsequent
pressure on the US dollar in the Vietnam War and the collapse of trade
proposals in the New International Economic Order (NIEO) that would have
assisted the poor countries cemented the rise of neoliberalism. In historical
terms, then, one can legitimately argue that the liberal peace has been a fluid
response to the logic of industrial and post-industrial capitalism (Murphy, 2005). In its most
modern manifestation, the liberal project has gained enormous strength, less
perhaps from the economics of profiteering and driving down costs of production
than from the rationale of globalization. The future vision has been
constructed as economics without borders. State and international regulation
should survive mainly to preserve fair competition and guard against
fraudulence or the worst excesses of environmental degradation – less to ensure
that people make a living. The liberal peace has promoted transformation
through macro-economic stability, reduction of the role of the state, the
squeezing of collective and public space, a quest for private affluence, and a
reliance on privatization and on exports and foreign investment to stimulate
economic growth. Concerns about large (often corrupt and wasteful) state-run
infrastructure projects in developing countries may also have had an effect on
donor policy. For instance, the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (EBRD) did not fund state infrastructure reconstruction in Bosnia
(EBRD: 1997); though when normal commercial circumstances apply, these concerns
are generally brushed aside. Nevertheless, the “small state” rationale appears
to have worked for the wealthiest postindustrial societies, and so it must also
work for the poorest and most disrupted. Indeed, the US State Department’s
Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization has a mission to help
post-conflict societies to install market economies (Office of the Coordinator for
Reconstruction and Stabilization, 2004). However, there is plentiful evidence
that choices made for war-torn societies are serve to maintain wealth
imbalances and poorly implemented. The liberal project not only ignores the
socio-economic problems confronting war-torn societies, it makes it more
interesting for the vulnerability of sectors of populations to poverty and does
little either to alleviate people’s engagement in shadow economies or to give
them a say in economic reconstruction. As Balakrishnan Rajagopal (2006) contends,
development interventions have been socially costly and divisive, with: forced
privatization of key national industries and increased unemployment,
speculative bubbles in international finance transactions that have massive
impact on real estate and housing markets, displacements of vast populations,
great waves of migrations including to urban areas, elimination of subsidies
for food and services and the introduction of user fees. War results in
destabilizing changes in employment, production and “[t]he ensuing collapse of
market entitlements for large groups of people makes it highly dangerous to
rely exclusively on the market to allocate resources, set prices and fix factor
incomes” (Nafziger, 1996). Prices alone
cannot correct injustice.
The
Political Economy of Peacebuilding Justification
Together
with the interim Iraq constitution perhaps the most striking example of
external imposition has been in Kosovo, in spite of its status as a province of
Serbia in the state of Serbia–Montenegro. Although varying in their degrees of
enforcement and consensus, both Iraq and Kosovo have experienced top-down,
military-backed impositions. External actors determined Kosovo’s framework
constitution, its international status, and its official economic development.
Indeed, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came armed with an
economic vision that its most powerful members had already inserted into the
Ram booklet ultimatum of 23 February 1999 (before the war). This diktat stated
that “the economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market
principles,” and became integral to the NATO war aim of securing the territory
from Serb authority Interim Agreement. Article II specified the reallocation of
ownership and resources of government-owned assets, pensions and social insurance, revenues and any other matters
relating to economic relations (Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government
in Kosovo, 1999). The economic principles were only sketched out at
Rambouillet, but it was assumed that they were valid and should be imposed.
Security Council resolution 1244 of 10 June 1999 was less presumptuous but
supported economic development through the Balkan Stability Pact, which in turn
specified free market economies throughout the region of south-east Europe.
In
contradiction to numerous declarations that Kosovo was to be governed in
accordance with democratic principles, economic policy has been determined by
the European Union (EU), the international financial institutions, and national
aid agencies. Under the constitutional framework, the peoples of Kosovo are
entitled to protect them ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic
identities, and to be free from economic discrimination; however, they are not
entitled to determine their own economic future if they want reconstruction aid
(Pugh, 2005). Virtual Death of
the Neoliberal Consensus Critical analysis of the links between neoliberalism
and unrest (Chua, 2004) and
the construction of lessons to be learned from the failures of economic
transformation in general and in conflict areas such as Sierra Leone, Bosnia,
Afghanistan and Iraq in particular has led to reassessments of the liberal
peace. Resistance to the power of neoliberalism as a framework for sustainable
development and peacebuilding have also apparently been influential. These
include in the present case: pressures for “fair trade”, fulfilment of the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), debt reduction, demands for social
protection for the poor, and abandonment of aid conditionality. This has a
historical provenance in the agency of system building noted by Craig Murphy (2005) many
of the ideas for moving capitalism onwards have originated with the various
resistances to the impacts of global capital. Such pressures have also affected
the introduction of development policies in war-torn societies under the aegis
of peacebuilding. Preliminary work by Oliver Richmond (2005) provides
a nuanced typology of liberal peace that disaggregates it into several modes.
At one extreme a non-consensual, hyper-conservative model attempt to maintain
peace through military superiority. At the other extreme an emancipatory model
combines top-down and bottom-up peacebuilding, focuses on a range of actors,
and emphasizes social justice. In between, conservative models have been
attempted in Kosovo and East Timor respectively. In practice, in spite of the
economic diktat of Kosovo’s constitution, for example, neoliberalism was
modified in Kosovo, in the light of experience in Bosnia. The United Nations
Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) learned the necessity of tackling shadow economies
from experience in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where anti-crime measures and
institutions had been established slowly. UNMIK Customs was the first public
body to be set up and together with European Union (EU) Customs Assistance
Mission reformed the collection system, tripling revenues between 1999 and 2003 (Caplan, 2004).
The
neoliberal credo of Rambouillet and the constitutional framework have been
tempered in rhetoric and practice by programmers of social protection. Thus,
the EU’s 2002 Action Programmer gave priority to the delivery of public
services, institution building, public administration and socially-oriented
projects (European Agency for Reconstruction, 2003). The United Nations
Development programmer (UNDP) emphasized employment generation through training
programmers and social justice projects for ending ethnic and gender
discrimination (UNDP, 2003a). The World Bank provided significant sums for social
and public welfare and for poverty reduction through a Trust Fund, and its
Bank’s Post-conflict Reconstruction Unit has produced pro-poor diagnostics and
appears to accept that a linear model of transition is generally unviable
(World Bank, 1998 and 2002). Together with the UNDP, the Bank also supported
community initiatives for infrastructure rehabilitation and attempted to
strengthen the income generation capacity of vulnerable rural families. Even
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) proposed reform to facilitate long-term
planning and stressed the need for investment in education, health, and social
policy (IMF, 2003). In Kosovo, therefore, several partners in economic
restructuring have acknowledged the importance of social justice and have undertaken
investment in poverty reduction and public services. Even here, however, in
spite of slackening growth, rising unemployment and falling purchasing power in
2002–03, the IMF welcomed curbs on spending and advised further controls on
wages, social welfare, public sector employment, and compensation for workers
thrown out of work by privatization (IMF, 2003). Deficit financing was not part
of its lexicon, even in conditions of social distress. In the last quarter of
2001, an estimated 50 per cent of the population lived in poverty and 12 per
cent in extreme poverty (USAID, 2001).
In the
first quarter of 2003 the unemployment rate was estimated at between 49 and 57
per cent (70 per cent among 16-24-year old’s); about 25 per cent of the labor
force was registered as job seekers (UNDP, 2001; UNDP, 2003b: 11, tab 2.1) Not
surprisingly, opinion surveys ranked unemployment and poverty among the
greatest problems facing Kosovo (UNDP, 2003b: 31, tabA10). These were not,
however, the top priorities of the external agencies. Debates on peacebuilding
have paralleled debates on development. As Murphy (2005) argues,
the development project has been essential to capitalism for its promise of
global stability. Weak states and weak development have not only been held up
as catalysts of conflict, war has also had devastating impacts on development.
War-torn societies have thus tended to be treated as particular, and sometimes
acute, cases of under- or disrupted development. The debate on development in
general has evolved to the point that the Washington Consensus has been
declared “dead” except as an inaccurate term of abuse (Maxwell, 2005; Ritzen, 2005). Certainly, the
neoliberal agenda is now contested more seriously than in the 1990s;
consequently, it has ceased to be an unquestioned “common sense”, ideology or
doxa. Revisionists in the mainstream of international thought have recognized
the chill of failure evident in neoliberalism – though without challenging the
fundamentals of an ideology that, in the words of Günter Grass (2005), “sees mankind as
nothing more than something which consumes and produces.” A salient example was
the report by an International Commission on the Balkans: chaired by former
Italian Prime Minister, Giuliano Amato, comprised almost entirely of serving
and former politicians of impeccably conservative and (apparently) masculine
credentials (only two of the 18 were women), smart suited in the group
photograph, and presenting an appearance of conventional authority
(International Commission on the Balkans, 2005).
In spite
of the huge scale and intrusive scope of international intervention in
Southeast Europe, the Commission announced that the returns had been meagre and
that the region was becoming a marginalized black hole. This remarkable
document reiterated points made by individuals such as General Fabio Mini
commander of UNMIK (who categorically announced after the ethnic cleansing of
Serbs in March 1994, that the mission had failed) and of critical think tanks
such as Human Rights Watch (Human Rights Watch, 2004: 3; Mini, 2005). According
to Human Rights Watch (2004), “The international community appears to be in
absolute denial about its own failings in Kosovo. While international actors
have been universally – and accurately – critical of the failures of the Kosovo
Albanian leadership during and after the crisis, the dismal performance of the
international community has escaped similar critical scrutiny.” But the Amato
report’s provenance among interested political leaders served to undermine the
many scripts by international interventionist that claimed they were achieve ng
success. The Commission on the Balkans (2005) concluded that the alternatives
for the region was either integration with Europe or an even more exacting
neo-colonialism, the two being regarded in this exercise as antithetical. The
Commission argued that EU expansion to the region would solve its problems – a
widely-supported solution even by critics of external intervention (Steil & Woodward, 1999). But recognition
that protectorate power and weak economies in southeast Europe were marks of
failure did not mean that the ideological goals, or the fundamental principles
for generating homo economicus, were flawed. Rather, the process for getting
there was all wrong. Integration with the EU and new political perspectives
(Kosovo’s independence, for example), were required. In effect, the Balkan
Commission’s report not only treated the region as a referent, and threatening,
object, for which “Balkan” was the operative signifier of fragmented chaos, it
relied heavily on a “common-sense” renewal of economic neoliberalism through
European integration. Indeed, the evolving debate marks out dynamics in the
liberal peace project that protect and reproduce its core assumptions. The
old-style unthinking Washington Consensus about development may be merely a
virtual death, with a liberal peace redivivus emerging from the ashes.
Moreover, the linkage between post-conflict reconstruction, development, and
human security has been made explicit in a series of reports that appear to be
setting the framework for proport debates in mid-decade.
Utopian
Reassessment: A New York Consensus?
One of the
most prominent, and influential, revisionist programs has come from the Millennium
Project Report to the UN Secretary-General, Investing in Development, released
in February 2005. Indeed, the Millennium Project analysis provided the nucleus
of the first half of the UN Secretary-General’s subsequent UN reform programs.
(United Nations, 2005). The Millennium Project was conducted by economists
headed by Jeffrey D. Sachs of Columbia University. A special adviser to Kofi
Annan, he had been a chief architect of structural adjustment and a proponent
of “short sharp shock treatment”, which had devastating consequences for
vulnerable sectors of society in the Russian Federation. Sachs, however, is one
in a line of economists who have experienced a Damascene conversion. George
Soros and Joseph Stiglitz have been there before (Soros, 1998; Stiglitz & Pike, 2004). Punctuated by
such stirring phrases as “scaling-up success”, Investing in Development was
remarkable for its commitment to pro-poor and social protection economics. Its
springboard was the measurement of uneven and halting progress towards the
achievement of the MDGs by the target date of 2015. These include ten items:
1)
reduction of extreme poverty and hunger by
50%;
2)
universal primary education;
3)
equal primary and secondary enrolment for
girls, literacy parity for men and women, equal representation of women in
parliaments;
4)
a two-thirds reduction in mortality among
the under-fives;
5)
measles immunization;
6)
A 75% reduction in maternal mortality; The
Political Economy of Peacebuilding
7)
A halt to and reversal of the spread of
HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis;
8)
A 50% reduction in those without improved
drinking water and sanitation;
9)
improvement in the lives of slum dwellers;
10)
reversal of deforestation.
The Sachs team’s
review showed that by 2004 many of the goals were nowhere near being achieved
and were even further away from the benchmarks in some cases, for example
tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa had increased. Investing in Development (Lesotho, 2005) acknowledged
that the shock of market therapy would not work for Africa, and recommended a
bold revision of international strategy Its key components were as follows:
1)
developing countries should adopt
MDG-based, poverty-reduction strategies, to be in place by 2006;
2)
MDG strategies should anchor the scaling
up of public investment, capacity building, resource mobilization, and
development assistance to strengthen governance, human rights, civil society,
and promote the private sector;
3)
strategies should be transparent and
inclusive;
4)
donors should fast-track a dozen or more
countries to scale-up good governance;
5)
partners should launch Quick Win actions
for economic growth (such as the distribution of anti-mosquito nets);
6)
developing countries should align national
strategies with regional initiatives such as New Partnership for Africa’s
Development and the Caribbean Community;
7)
Overseas Development Aid should increase
(from 0.25% of GNP in 2003 to 0.44% in 2006 and 0.7% in 2015) with improved
quality of aid and more generous debt relief;
8)
high-income countries should open their
markets to developing country exports and raise their export competitiveness
through investment;
9)
scientific research should be mobilized to
address the needs of the poor;
10)
the UN should be strengthened at various
levels to support the MDGs.
There seems little
doubt that such a program has considerable appeal because it is a significant
step towards managing the crisis of capitalism in a way that benefits the poor
and vulnerable populations of the world. Massive reduction in the number of
deaths from structural violence (though the report never uses that term) can
only please supporters of pro-poor causes, from debt relief to the provision of
cheap, life-saving drugs to human security ideals. Nevertheless, embedded in
the text of Investing in Development (Lesotho, 2005) are assumptions
that, taken as a whole, indicate that the liberal peace project is alive and
well, even if the Washington Consensus itself is moribund. The main features of
what might be called Sachs 2 can be summarized as follows:
1)
its consumerist teleology frames the
problem of development in terms of convergence and integration into the world
trading system;
2)
entrepreneurial zeal is what drives human
beings: homo economicus is reified without taking into account the human values
outlined in the “Millennium Declaration” of the General Assembly (UN General
Assembly, 2000);
3)
there is a common solution: “Whatever
one’s motivation for attacking the crisis of extreme poverty… the solutions are
the same. All that is needed is action” (Millennium Project, 2005: 1);
4)
responsibility for failures (e.g.
corruption and bad governance) lie with “them” and the poor need to be changed
because they deplete the environment, for example;
5)
“sound economic policy” is a matter of
rationality; rational economic management works;
6)
public investment should be used to
establish market reforms: in other words, public funds for private enterprise;
7)
The MDGs can be met without dirigisme in
politics and state command over the economy;
8)
progress can be achieved through Quick Win
fixes.
The merger
of development and peacebuilding had already been made explicit in the
High-level Panel Report (HLP), A More Secure World: Our Responsibility which
also carried the burden, and sway, of UN’s sponsorship (HLP, 2004). The UN
Secretary-general’s reform program of 2005, In Larger Freedom, was largely a
composite of the Sachs team’s review, Investing in Development, and the HLP
Report. Development and peacebuilding revisionism can be said to have staked a
claim in the UN Secretariat as the foundation for the developmental dynamic in
human security, and Sachs 2 seems to be supported by various other countries.
Among member states, the UK’s pro-poor document, Fighting Poverty to Build a
Safer World, produced by Department for International Development (DFID), also
merges security, development, crime, terrorism and economic growth. The UK
Government supports in general terms the UN Secretary-General’s reform program
and specifically encourages the international financial institutions to engage
in security issues, so that the IMF for example incorporates conflict analysis
into Emergency Post Conflict Assistance agreements (DFID, 2005). The DFID document conforms to the
Sachsen line in several respects: that crime hinders growth, foreign direct
investment is the engine of growth, and problems are significantly rooted in
issues of governance as well as poverty. The High-level Panel and the
Secretary-General placed great store by the establishment of a voluntary
standing fund of US$250 million for peacebuilding and the creation of a
Peacebuilding Commission and a UN Peacebuilding Support Office. They also
recommended the involvement of economic agencies such as the World Bank at early
stage in peace processes. In principle, this could present an opportunity to
institutionalize lessons learned from past experiences in the transformation of
political economies from war to peace. However, the new structure will be
answerable to the Security Council, where the power lies, rather than to the
Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly. Moreover, without
wholesale change to the policies and program of the International Financial
Institutions (IFIs), the participation of international economic institutions
in peace processes will likely reinforce aspects of the liberal peace.
Furthermore, in the light of disagreements at the September 2005 UN summit, it
is unlikely that the revisionist program or a variant will forge a broad “New
York Consensus”. In particular, the project was jeopardized by the Bush
Administration’s determination to contest the summit agenda, as antithetical to
US foreign policy, to the point that mention of the MDGs was eliminated from
the summit declaration, thereby downgrading the revisionist program to a
contested aspiration (Borger, 2005; Pugh, 2005).
Protecting
the Liberal Peace
This
analysis now draws out some of the underlying assumptions of revisionism from a
critical perspective under five headings: the silence surrounding of structural
violence; economics as natural law; the objectification of war-torn societies;
squeezing public goods; and global integration.
The
Silence Surrounding Structural Violence
First, the
hubris that pervades the revisionist view is part of a familiar critique of
weak regulation, such as that in Breaking the Conflict Trap (Collier, 2003). The Collier
critique calls for tough controls, regulation and monitoring of parties in
zones of conflict, and an end to “bad governance” by corrupt, undemocratic
elites in developing countries. Malfeasance, abuse, torture, and even genocidal
operations are certainly conducted by elites, rebels, and followers against
fellow inhabitants in the South. Most casualties are perpetrated by governments
against citizens; and there is an ethical imperative to prevent this. Setting
ethical standards for state behavior and intervention are, to be sure,
exceptionally difficult to establish without reinforcing the hubris of powerful
states. Although this is not the focus of this essay, from a critical theory,
and particularly a Habermasian, perspective, a key to the problem of such
universal discourses lies in dialogue with local civil societies. But the
millennial critique has also consistently maintained a silence around
structural victimization and policies that have emanated from the zones of
peace and probity (and the financial agencies that they dominate). The
asymmetry of external pressure on state-welfare economies, protected economies,
co-operative organization, and collective production denies communities
economic options and can produce a politics of victimhood that stratifies and
omnifies others, as occurred in Rwanda (Azar and Farah,1981; Nafziger and
Auvinen, 2003; Uvin, 1998). The divide between rich and poor is, by definition,
the precondition for having MDGs in the first place, but the Collier team’s agenda
for international action contains one paragraph of barely ten lines
recommending a re-examination of the development and trade policies by the
Organization for Economic Development and the removal of subsidies to its
producers and traders (Collier, 2003). In similar vein
Investing in Development (The Millennium Project, 2005) contains a single
bullet point that fires the equivalent of a blank at the way capitalist cores
are themselves protected from competition and the need for reform of the World
Trade Organization (WTO) and IFIs (Millennium Project). In a less brutal way,
perhaps, the revisionists of this decade may be replicating suppression by the
Reagan administration in the 1980s of the South’s demands for a New
International Economic Order (NIEO) that might foster alternatives to economic
fundamentalism. Silence surrounds the role of intervention ARY core capitalism
in perpetuating poverty through discriminatory policies that structure the
global economy.
Economics
as Natural Law
Second,
the revisionism still takes economics as largely independent of politics and
social values. It results, as Robert Cox (2002) has suggested, in
the de-politicization of economic issues, as if a natural law or a primordial
economic equivalent of the sex drive, rather than powerful interests, were
guiding economic activity. Consequently, there is only one solution to all
inadequately developed societies, whether East Timor or Haiti, and it is a
solution based in the economic rationalism of (capitalistic) entrepreneurship.
The article is completely transparent in its notion that public monies, whether
from revenues raised in developing countries or from aid derived from the
public purse in the donor countries, should be used to provide profit-seeking
business with a leg up. Unsurprisingly, the contradiction inherent in this
so-called ‘rationalism’ is not addressed by the revisionists, though it is of
acute concern to societies in the process of transformation from war to peace.
Notoriously, aid often privileges the purchase of donor goods and expertise
rather than local products and employment. Privatization has been pursued at
the expense of public goods and public space – where public goods are defined
as accessible to all, non-exclusive, and whose value for one consumer does not
diminish their value for others (Kaul, 2005). Values other
than those of economic rationalism are neglected, including the freedom to
decide how markets are conducted, even though they figure in the UN “Millennium
Declaration” (2000) and have been espoused by, among others, Amartya Sen (Sen,
1999). Inequalities and nonphysiologically needs are considered more
significant than either absolute poverty or, beyond a survival point,
physiological needs. This means that provided people are not destitute (which
might be equated to the deep poverty scale of the UNDP); they may choose to
live humbly in order to feel fulfilled. Such an approach recognizes that the
paths to modernization may not be convergent at all, and the marginalized
peoples of the world is entitled to choose the extent to which, and how, they
integrate in the global economy.
Objectifying
War-Torn Societies
Third, the
discursive trope of imperial peacebuilding pathologises populations in war-torn
societies as if suffering from congenital incapacities that needs treatment
through forms of therapeutic governance. In their critique of the psychosocial
treatment of states as “failed service providers run amok,” Caroline Hughes and
Vanessa Pupavac (2005) note that
political processes divorced from the depiction of problems of conflict,
oppression and poverty has opened the way for therapeutic approaches to
intervention. Archived as congenitally incapable of governance and statehood,
these societies require forms of trusteeship that inevitably reflect the
priorities of the trustees.
The
Mantra of Global Economic Integration
Fourth,
the revisionists continue to regard development, at least rhetorically, as a
matter of convergence and integration. Although the Sachs report (Millennium
Project, 2005) does subscribe to fairer, if not fair, trade, it regards replication
of an economic system, advanced in New York as the goal of development. Whether
this is an ideal that pervades economic representations to give hope to the
undeveloped, when in practice policy makers sometimes act as though there are
parallel and even divergent economic development(s), or whether the
convergence/replication program is a matter of self-delusion is less important
than its role in reinforcing a particular model of sustainable development.
Similarly, the integration and participation in the global trade fetish,
manifest in the Balkan Commission’s Report, learns nothing from research on development
by Kamal Malhotra’s team (Malhotra, 2012) for the UNDP and
from critical work on the political economy of peacebuilding. Inverting the
neoliberal/Sachsen mantra that integration produces trade and growth, the
critical perspectives that map both historical and current transformations
demonstrate that integration follows growth, which follows protectionist policies,
much as the UK, United States and EU protected, and continue to protect vital
economic interests while promoting freer trade. The vulnerable, it might be
legitimately argued, need to be protected from the risks of integration.
Squeezing
Public Goods
Fifth, a
significant deficit in all strands of revisionism, however, concerns public
goods. Recovery generation and poverty reduction is constructed as a matter
requiring physical security, state building, therapeutic governance, private
(therefore largely foreign) direct investment, and welfare pluralism. In the
economics of social policy, for example, “welfare pluralism” remains the order
of the day. In addition to residual state supply and community/civil society
provision for such basic services as health, education, and water, market
mechanisms and the private sector have been integral to development (World
Bank, 2004). Indeed, economies have been opened up to liberalization; public
goods have been poor quality; and budget deficits have deprived governments of
resources (Carbonnier, 2004; Hilary, 2005). Detailed
analysis indicates, however, the absence of intrinsic benefits from the
process: This welfare pluralism takes the clock back to an earlier historical
era when social advances and capabilities enhancement proceeded at a much
slower pace than during the decades of state-led welfare provision…. [yet]
there is no reason to believe that developing countries should already embark
on a path of extensive privatization in social services, especially as large
part of their populations are still not covered by the most basic education and
health services (Mehrotra & Delamonica, 2005).
Alternative
Options
Other
straws in the wind, however, indicate a more substantial departure from the old
liberal orthodoxy. The Department for International Development (DFID), for
example, denies that aid should be placed at the service of global security,
and the institution is itself committed to refocusing its work on governance to
include more direct support for the security of the poor (DFID, 2005: 13, 24).
This not only entails therapeutic governance to establish accountable political
systems, combating crime and promoting transparency in the management of
resources and public finance. It also proposes more emphasis on the provision
of basic services such as health and education, security and justice. DFID even
bawls into the silence surrounding the adverse impacts of structural
adjustment, citing the role of the IMF in precipitating the crisis in former
Yugoslavia (DFID, 2005: 9). Furthermore, the UK claimed to relax its aid
conditionality in March 2005. Aid would continue to be linked to poverty
reduction, human rights military spending levels, and misuse of aid but would
no longer be tied to global security goals. The UK would also cease demanding
specific commitments from aid recipients to privatize state industries and
liberalize trade, and would urge the World Bank and others to follow (Foreign
and Commonwealth Office and DFID, 2005; Beattie and Daneshku, 2005). Whether
the proposals are simply part of an internal debate and whether, if activated,
they will carry weight in either UK or international politics might be doubted.
The 2005 G8 summit in Scotland promised much, but – as indicated by the
inclusion of debt relief in the aid figures and relief limited to repayment
write-offs for 18 countries for only three years – claims for an historic deal
for Africa reflected the interests of donors 36 The Political Economy of
Peacebuilding under pressure rather than the Africans seeking justice (Monbiot,
2005). DFID itself has spent huge sums on consultancy firms to advise on
privatization in developing countries; firms whose own analytical frameworks
reflect the privileging of investor interests. For example, the,
pro-privatization Adam Smith Institute (International) received over £34million from the UK aid budget in
1998–2003, and £700,000 of £3m British aid to Malawi was spent on US
consultants (War on Want, 2004; Hilary, 2005; Hencke, 2005). Others have
challenged some of the tenets of the liberal peace in a more fundamental way.
James Boyce, for example, not only calls for substantial abandonment of
conditionality but also for reform of the aid donation system and for support
to state economic direction. While rampant inflation can lead to social unrest,
so can vicious austerity, and thus the current priorities may be ill-suited to
societies emerging from conflict (Boyce, 2013).
Similarly,
Simon Maxwell suggests that social protection should be a high priority and
pro-poor growth needs to be complemented by distributive measures. Although
Maxwell assumes a common destination for developing countries, pursued at
different speeds, he contends that they should not be suddenly exposed to
liberalization without safety netting for vulnerable sectors. Furthermore,
international “governance reform” should be a precondition of more money going
through the World Bank (Maxwell, 2005). Investment in
public goods, infrastructure, social welfare systems, and public employment may
be necessary to help redress a situation in which a few individuals flaunt
obscene affluence, but public facilities are often squalid. Such dirigisme may
entail controls and a degree of political authoritarianism every bit as irksome
as that employed by international civil administrations in post-conflict
societies. But a strong and active state role in planning and implementation (Ballentine & Sherman, 2003) with
expansionist policies to increase employment, income generation, and
consumption power to wean vulnerable people off illegal activities through
investment in public services and social protection, may be less dysfunctional
than the orthodox neoliberal model. Specifically, the statist measures might
include these aspects:
1)
production generated by import controls
and protection of critical sectors, especially agriculture;
2)
high taxes on luxury items and rationing
or subsidies for basic foodstuffs;
3)
government intervention to boost
re-training, employment and public services;
4)
maintenance of public sector salaries;
5)
increased purchasing power through public
works;
6)
deficit financing;
7)
controls on donor corruption;
8)
reduction in tied aid.
On the
other hand, the emphasis on state building in the liberal peace project has
only lately paid attention to the political economy of grass-roots levels. In
particular collective and cooperative production and marketing, whether part of
the formal or informal economy, are often viable mechanisms for economic
organization. This is not invariably the case. Many African co-ops are not so
much member-owned, as financed by, and accountable to, governments which have
used them as channels for implementing economic policy (International
Co-operative Information Centre, 1994). However, independent, self-help
co-operatives have been important in war-torn societies where central economic
authority has been weak. They have been especially important to women (from
Rwanda to Bosnia), for whom they have been vehicles of empowerment as well as
economic survival. Similarly, credit unions have emancipated people from
centralized banking and insurance companies. For people who have limited access
to towns, who are penalized by traditional bank profiling and charges – or who
need to receive remittances from diasporas abroad – credit unions serve various
needs. Over £2 billion is estimated to be sent from Britain to other countries
in this way, and other estimates indicate that over US$200 billion is
transmitted globally through such informal channels. Credit unions number
40,000 worldwide (the largest number in the United States) with an aggregate
membership of over 136 million. The world coordinating body, with support from
USAID, opened two unions in Afghanistan, which in the first two years attracted
2,000 members (World Council of Credit Unions, 2004a; 2004b.) Both co-ops and
credit unions appear to have alliances and linkages with aid organizations and
are given credence in the UN system, especially in the International Labor
Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization.
CONCLUSION
In
conclusion, there have certainly been notable shifts in the development and
peacebuilding debates. There is now a potential institutional merger of the two
through UN reform. The liberal peace has come under sustained pressure as a
consequence of critiques and failures in practice. Pragmatic shifts, to some
extent towards pro-poor and emancipatory engagement with local populations,
have occurred. But we are still entitled to ask the critical question: who is
peacebuilding for, and what purposes does it serve? The means for achieving the
good life are constructions that emerge from the discourse and policy
frameworks dominated by specific capitalist interests – represented as shared,
inevitable, commonsensical or the only available option when they correspond to
the prevailing mode of ownership. Economic wisdom resides with the powerful. As
Murphy (2005: 18) notes, political inequality leaves many with no control over
the major decisions that affect their lives. For Cox, too, “whereas the right
of self-assertion is celebrated, in a social and economic context the individual’s
capacity to exert control over the systemic factors that determine its
implementation is removed. Consequently, just as in one-party, authoritarian
regimes, politics is about depoliticizing people, by removing the economic
determinants of everyday conditions from political control” (Cox, 1992). The
millennial revisionism represents a significant shift. But ultimately it may
perpetuate asymmetries that maintain the liberal peace, albeit in less orthodox
forms. Indeed, the revisionism may intensify the grip of capitalist-dominated
financial and trade institutions. The recommendations of the 2004 UN High Level
Panel’s report on boosting the UN’s attention to peacebuilding activities
includes provision for international financial institutions to be more actively
involved in peace processes. However, without transformation of the IFIs, and
the liberal agenda itself.
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Copyright holders:
Ismail Adaramola Abdul Azeez,
Amidu Adinoyi Jimoh (2023)
First publication right:
Devotion - Journal of Research and Community
Service
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