Customer Reviews

At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict

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It is stunning that so little attention has been given to reviewing this book yet. This volume is one that advances preconditions for successful democratic nation building, based upon a series of recent case studies (such as Angola, Rwanda, Cambodia, Liberia, Bosnia, Croatia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Namibia, and Mozambique). This is one of a series of works (such as The RAND volume, America's Role in Nation-Building;Fukuyama's State-Building; etc.) that address what it takes to create new democratic states that will ensure.

Roland Paris addresses an issue that initially seems far afield--peacebuilding. However, his analysis ends up very much on the mark for better understanding democratic nation building. For Paris, peacebuilding represents ". . .postconflict missions". . .with ". . .the goal of preventing a recurrence of violence" (Paris, 2004: 2). What does this have to do with nation building? As he explains (2004: 5):

Peacebuilding missions in the 1990s were guided by a
generally unstated but widely accepted theory of conflict
management: the notion that promoting "liberalization" in
countries that had recently experienced civil war would
help to create the conditions for a stable and lasting
peace. In the political realm, liberalization means
democratization, or the promotion of periodic and genuine
elections, constitutional limitations on the exercise of
government power, and respect for basic civil
liberties. . . .

On the economic side, liberalization refers, according to Paris, to the movement toward a market economy model. His study of a series of postconflict situations finds this liberal economic democracy model a common end goal of peacebuilders. In effect, what he terms peacebuilding looks very much like what others call democratic nation building.

Paris argues that the most promising strategy is IBL---Institutionalization Before Liberalization, that is, that peacebuilders should not immediately move toward economic and political liberalization. Rather, they should first (re)build institutions so that there is a stable base. Among the steps in this process are:

1. Wait until conditions are conducive for elections to
take place.
2. Design electoral systems to reward moderate parties
and candidates.
3. Work to develop a stable civil society.
4. Head off the emergence of "hate" speech.
5. Develop conflict-reducing economic policies.
6. In short, rebuild effective state institutions.

For Paris, there needs to be a two-step process: first, build institutions as a foundation; second, construct liberal structures on that foundation.

This means time and hard work. For successful democratic nation-building, patience is needed--and understanding thast the process must be carefully managed with uncertain outcomes. In short, this is a must read on the subject of what it takes to produce successful nation-building.

This is a provocative and useful book. Besides making a case that the attempt to impose a liberal political and economic order on states recovering from civil war often fails and is sometimes a disaster, Paris provides a nice introduction to several of the most important recent attempts at international post-conflict reconstruction.

But Paris' argument is oversimplified, and sometimes just plain wrong. He paints the international effort as ideologically unified around a liberal order, when in fact those carrying out the economic program (neoliberalism) scarcely talk to those carrying out the political reforms and reconstruction. In fact, the complaint that the two work at cross purposes -- with World Bank and IMF reformers insisting on economic austerity ("fiscal stability"), liberalization, and privatization policies that undermine efforts to provide people with a "peace payoff" -- has become common among those who work and write in this area.

Paris also worries that, in failing to address the poverty and inequality that lay at the root of civil conflicts, the international community has laid the groundwork for future conflicts even in success cases like El Salvador. In fact, the evidence is that political reforms that incorporate dissident elites into the political system satisfied the central "root cause" of civil war. There is lots of inequality and poverty around the world, but it rarely leads to civil war without a political leadership determined to mobilize people against what they see as a repressive and exclusionary regime.

Finally, Paris proposes an alternative model that would have the international community playing a more directive role, taking over the civil administration of countries recovering from civil conflict until institutions are strong enough to manage democracy and economic liberalization. But he ignores the fact that most civil conflicts leave governments standing that are strong enough -- and determined enough -- to resist international meddling. Even in Cambodia, where the UN was given sweeping powers to oversee the civil administration, the Hun Sen government was determined to maintain control and there was not much UNTAC could do to stop it. The illusion that "we" can just step in and impose our agenda is widespread in this country and accounts for the notion that the United States could (and, for some, still can) bring peace and democracy to Iraq if we could just commit enough time and troops to the effort. Paris should ground his recommendations in the real world and not in American fantasies of omnipotence.