Domestic Political Dynamics of Peacebuilding: Bringing Power Back In

This paper examines the impact of domestic political dynamics on durable peace, focusing on the interaction of national and local level politics. Although most post-conflict political settlements since 1990 have been based on multiparty competition, much scholarly literature has overlooked the political dimensions of postconflict peacebuilding and the importance of events at local level for national politics and for durable peace. A peace settlement meets its most strenuous tests at the local level, where the costs of war and peace have been felt most directly, where citizens are in closer proximity to those with the power to make and implement the rules that govern their lives , and where there is likely less scrutiny by international actors. One of the biggest challenges of comparative research on the domestic aspects of peacebuilding is the diversity found across a relatively small number of cases. How can we both honor the complexity of distinct local contexts, and build concepts that can travel across multiple cases? I argue that we can do so by taking seriously the concept of power and by focusing our attention on the interrelationships between local politicians and their counterparts at national level. Peacebuilding is a long term, nonlinear process of renegotiating the relationships between these actors. Starting there, we can begin to get a handle on how peacebuilding unfolds in practice. The paper draws on the literature on the “microdynamics” of civil conflict, and applies it to the post-conflict period. It also locates these dynamics in the larger domestic political context and pulls insights from the earlier literature focusing on internationally led peacebuilding, which privileges an external, or at best a national-level, perspective. Using this secondary literature, the paper develops the argument and then tests it, drawing on fieldwork by the author, on two dissimilar cases: Mozambique and Bosnia.