The current debate

Mixed outcomes from international missions – their failures, contradictions, and many longer term challenges – have generated a rich body of critical literature on the impact of peacebuilding operations on local communities. The general consensus is that democratic reforms and export-oriented market economies have struggled to deliver on key peacebuilding outcomes such as meaningful participation, and the redistribution of wealth and power.Footnote ³ In the absence of these outcomes, people have developed their own strategies to cope with the debilitating circumstances of post-war spaces; living life at the level of the ‘everyday’, local people have shaped peace through cooperative activity and enterprising endeavours involving significant degrees of agency often overlooked by external peacebuilders.Footnote ⁴ Because of these realities, many nuanced analyses have been produced which challenge the notion that liberal democracy is a panacea for troubled societies emerging from conflict,Footnote ⁵ including Paris himself who provides us with the thesis of ‘institutions before liberalisation’ where democratisation and aggressive economic reforms can be delayed whilst strong state structures are put in place to cope with the changes.Footnote ⁶ The salient question here is whether or not liberal state institutions have any relevance to the people who matter – those who have lived through war.Footnote ⁷ It is the case that international operations do not bear out their claims of ‘local ownership’.Footnote ⁸ This is because grass roots stakeholders and non-elite members of local communities do not take a central role in the peacebuilding process,Footnote ⁹ but are consulted only an a predetermined template for reform,Footnote ¹⁰ often mere observers of the process. This situation is deeply problematic on two counts; first, because it perpetuates the perennial issue of exclusion of the local voting populace and second, because outsiders do not know how to correctly identify peace in complex war-torn environs. Political economies of peace therefore require a ‘paradigmatic shift’ in their negotiation in order to address this democratic deficit, secure legitimacy and find out what the local needs are.Footnote ¹¹ Indeed, lack of legitimacy supports the argument that foreign intervention for post-conflict reconstruction is imperialism by other means,Footnote ¹² often too intrusive, diminishing the likelihood of durable peace.Footnote ¹³ The body of critical literature in this field promotes the assertion that the current asymmetry of peacebuilding power needs rebalancing towards a local approach.Footnote ¹⁴ When peacebuilding does not achieve its objectives or substantiate its claims, what tends to happen is resistance, adaptation, or distortion – described elsewhere as ‘liberal-local’, ‘post-liberal’, or ‘hybrid’ forms of peace.Footnote ¹⁵

Paris argues that the critics are really ‘liberals in disguise’Footnote ¹⁶ because the alternatives they suggest often complement ‘liberal peace’ theorising and can generally be accommodated within the existing framework for post-conflict reforms.Footnote ¹⁷ He notes that, in the absence of any radical new strategies among the critics which are not rooted in liberalism, the suggested alternatives are not incompatible with, and indeed are often complementary to, building market democracies.Footnote ¹⁸ This means that scholars are not working hard enough, or creatively enough, towards a more constructive critical approach rooted in different orthodoxies which might identify distinct and viable alternatives to the more aggressive forms of liberalism which Paris accepts often destabilise societies in transition.Footnote ¹⁹

Paris's comments, and the focus in policy circles on the structures and processes which can produce good governance in peacebuilding operations, reflect the common perception that peacebuilding is, in fact, more to do with statebuilding. Peacebuilding is sometimes used as a synonym for statebuilding.Footnote ²⁰ These connections have not gone unnoticed in the policy discourse as conclusions have been drawn about the ‘high degree of congruence’ between the objectives of peacebuilding and those of statebuilding, the significant ‘overlaps’, and the need to build more ‘integrated’ operations.Footnote ²¹ Even where there are no explicit overlaps between the two, it is argued that ‘complementarity is more likely to prevail than outright competition’.Footnote ²² Within the context of ‘state fragility and conflict’, policy discourse is now focussed on integrating peacebuilding and statebuilding objectives because weak and conflict prone states cannot achieve the global ambitions codified in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),Footnote ²³ and what has emerged from the debate is that peacebuilding is statebuilding for development, and therefore security.Footnote ²⁴ These interesting causal links mean that previously failed or fragile sovereign entities are restructured after war to fit into the international system of states, to fulfil their international as well as local obligations – such as legislation on human rights or employment law – and to enhance global security.Footnote ²⁵ Consideration of the root causes of conflict – and the many and challenging ambitions of the local populace – appear to be somewhat secondary in the process. Commentators have noted that this focus on state institutions – which invariably fail to deliver significant development outcomes – overlooks the reality in many peacebuilding contexts that authority structures with local legitimacy often operate outside the state. Such parallel authorities create ‘hybrid polities’ and can sometimes provide the sort of security and welfare support that central governments fail to deliver.Footnote ²⁶

The arguments in this article do support the claim that contemporary peacebuilding operations are more about the mechanics of statebuilding than the local politics of building peace,Footnote ²⁷ and that there is a disconnect between policy rhetoric and policy implementation.Footnote ²⁸ The article speaks to the concern that contemporary statebuilding operations are not always compatible with national peacebuilding objectives,Footnote ²⁹ and that the most pressing concerns of populations emerging from violent conflict are not best served by the current orthodoxy for reconstruction. This is because the current orthodoxy holds nothing new for traumatised populations; no grand designs for societal transformation or creative approaches to heal the political fractures of the past and the institutions it supports are generally inconsequential to the lives of the ‘everyday’. An empirical study, based on field work during post-conflict transformation in Sierra Leone, provides the local evidence to develop a deeper understanding of the issues – in this case, specifically in the reform of the political and economic spheres.

The claims of international peacebuilding (statebuilding) missions

Peacebuilding is distinct from peacemaking and peacekeeping because it is about long-term security and development and can best be described as the activities involved in building a positive peace which can last.Footnote ³⁰ The stated purpose of international peacebuilding missions is first to understand and identify, in any given environment, the sort of governing structures which can strengthen and solidify peace and avoid any relapse into conflict and, second, to support the construction or reconstruction of those structures.Footnote ³¹ The inference here is that the project should be local, but invariably interventions are already predetermined on the hubris of external actors.Footnote ³² Statebuilding as peacebuilding in divided societies and troubled locales centres on designing structures which will allow future disputes to be settled peacefully. These interventions involve strong emphasis on building state institutions and state capacity, based on the rule of law,Footnote ³³ but the broader goal of modern integrated operations is to transform societies through a multidimensional and multilevel engineering approach which claims to address the causes of war as well as to stop the fighting.Footnote ³⁴ This approach provides support to civil society and focuses on the protection of human rights. It promotes democracy, the rule of law, and good governance for the efficient collection of taxes and delivery of services. It encourages strong, transparent, and accountable leadership and supports an independent and professional security sector. This process has come to be known as the ‘liberal peace’ which has at its foundation the claim that failed states, or weakened states, should be reconstructed to mirror established Western democracies because there is merit in the thesis of the democratic peace.Footnote ³⁵

Interventionist approaches therefore seek to establish a particular kind of state, a liberal one, based on the rule of law, democracy, and a market economy. This is what ‘stateness’ means in the new international order and ‘all states are compelled to struggle to approach this ideal, or at least to pretend to be striving to establish it’.Footnote ³⁶ This is the master plan but, as Eriksen so astutely points out, it only forms the basis for the design of formal institutions as many post-conflict states are far from corresponding to it.Footnote ³⁷ A technical approach to statebuilding, guided by an administrative view of the state, disregards its political and social character in the local context and, creditable though it sounds, there is evidence to suggest that the current model for statebuilding is not always appropriate for post-conflict environs or even embraced by the local leadership, and local populations are mere spectators in the process.Footnote ³⁸ In which case we must ask the question, who is the statebuilding for?

Statebuilding as peacebuilding in Sierra Leone

The genesis of the conflict in Sierra Leone, and the eventual collapse of the state, was extremely complex and nuanced and set against a background of historic structures and their legacies. Similar to the experiences of many African populations, the new and much longed for era of self-government was soon replaced by an aggressive and predatory authoritarian regime.Footnote ³⁹ At independence (1961), Sierra Leone lacked leaders with experience of statecraft beyond the systems of indirect rule left by the retreating colonists yet the introduction of democracy held the assumption that elites had appropriate leadership qualifications, and that the country was a tangible and cohesive unit with a populace which shared common interests, and where the citizenry was expressed as a ‘collective self’.Footnote ⁴⁰ This was not case. The country's ethnic demographics were split into three quite clear divisions at independence; the Krio of Freetown, previously favoured by the British but gradually losing their influence to the mostly southern and eastern Mende dominated hinterland, and the northern Temne/Limba elite who had historically opposed colonial rule and who were subsequently neglected in their resource scarce northern territories.Footnote ⁴¹ What remained was a conglomerate of frustrated and ambitious local elites vying for control of state resources to enrich themselves and their supporters as independence politics became a fight for power between competing elites of all persuasions who knew from colonial experiences that social mobility and wealth were only accessible through control of the state and its resources.

After a short era of multi-party politics, the All People's Congress (APC) came to power and secured a long and unbroken period of government (1968–1992) by evolving a de facto single party system and co-opting or intimidating the opposition.Footnote ⁴² The country's rebellious youth population were accommodated by politicians – not as a legitimate lobbying group among civil society – but as political thugs reliant on patrimony.Footnote ⁴³ The centralised government ‘sustained itself through corruption, nepotism and the plundering of state assets’ to the exclusion of the majority of citizens outside the private networks of governing elites.Footnote ⁴⁴ This marginalisation of the masses and the cynical manipulation of state power had a profound impact on the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Sierra Leoneans whose poverty deepened as they became further disconnected from the levers of power and democracy was denied them.

Gross mismanagement of the state was to have the most severe consequences come the global economic downturn of the 1970s and 80s; international companies withdrew their operations and all associated livelihoods for locals, and the arrival of structural adjustment policies (SAPs) took a heavy toll on jobs. Price fluctuations on the international markets meant a steep decline for the country's mineral economy which dominated trade and was the main source of foreign exchange. The national economy could not withstand such shocks as it had already been withered by the incompetence and greed of politicians, so a shadow economy emerged to feed established patrimonial networks. This involved the illegal mining and export of the country's diamonds by elites and their (mostly foreign) business cronies – a practice that allowed domestic revenue collection to plunge to 18 per cent of levels in 1977–8.Footnote ⁴⁵ Between 1980 and 1987 state spending on health and education declined by 60 per cent with large disparities between the rural areas and the capital city.Footnote ⁴⁶ SAPs increased the pressure on an already weakened state to reform and expose its fragile economy to global markets. Many jobs disappeared swelling the numbers of unemployed and disenfranchising large sections of the community still further, especially the country's youth who experienced vast asymmetry of power with central and traditional authority.Footnote ⁴⁷

All the while, citizens were locked out of the political process. There was no platform for their voice, no access to the levers of power and no justice for their genuine grievances about deepening poverty and abuse of human rights. Dissenting voices including unions, agricultural cooperatives, businesses, professional organisations, and the judiciary were either brought into the patrimonial system or intimidated to such an extent that they migrated, easing any pressure on government to reform.Footnote ⁴⁸ The nation building project, instead of being a united effort towards self-governance, turned into a destructive bid for power among competing elites which had previously been favoured, or sidelined, by the British, whilst deteriorating global conditions eventually brought the national economy to its knees. Bad governance, endemic corruption, and mass abuse of human rights plagued the nation building project, and a profound failure of leadership eventually stripped the country of its dignity and was the precursor for war.Footnote ⁴⁹

One of the main priorities after war, therefore, was political reform. Failures of leadership in the past meant that an effective democratic process was required to produce responsive and representative government accountable to the people and committed to a more egalitarian distribution of the nation's wealth. To secure longer term peacebuilding ambitions and move away from the tensions of the past, citizens needed impartial and accountable politicians to build confidence that the promises of democracy would not be compromised this time, and that their interests would be served through genuine representations. The country needed good governing structures, effective and transparent political processes that would give citizens a role in decision-making. It needed a strong and independent judiciary that could counter-balance any executive excess and protect the rights of civilians, especially the most vulnerable and the victims of the war. Success of the reforms would require a strong and independent civil society, or broader citizen representations, which could monitor government activities and drive through the reforms which were essential for addressing key peacebuilding challenges. In sum, the problematic relationship between the government and the governed – which had so bedevilled the independence years – needed radical and creative reform to produce a more responsive state and a more engaged citizenry after the fighting ended. Good and relevant institutional design was therefore central to the consolidation of peace;Footnote ⁵⁰ could the implementation of liberalising and democratic reform help in this regard?

A new political process: liberalising the body politic

All the accoutrements of liberal statebuilding were marshalled for the reconstruction project. They included rebuilding the security apparatus in a ‘liberal’ way to disconnect it from the levers of power and bring it under civilian control – a most successful enterprise and imperative prerequisite for all the local priorities noted above. Security sector reform (SSR) involved a major undertaking to retrain and re-equip the Sierra Leone Armed Forces (SLAF) by the British Ministry of Defence in collaboration with the International Military Assistance Training Scheme (IMAT).Footnote ⁵¹ Successful securitisation of the country and SSR allowed people to return home and for free, fair, and peaceful democratic elections to take place and removed one of the most serious threats to human security which had been present since colonial times. In particular, the mass abuse of civilians by government troops during the war had left communities deeply fearful of the security services. The removal of this threat in the post-war years cannot be underestimated as a profound contribution to the wellbeing of Sierra Leoneans and their ability to exercise political freedom.

Reform of the National Electoral Commission (NEC) allowed a series of multiparty elections to take placeFootnote ⁵² – presidential and legislature in 2002 and 2007, and local elections in 2004 and 2008. In the 2007 poll, an historic and peaceful changeover of power took place when the Sierra Leone Peoples’ Party (SLPP) made way for the successful APC. For the first post-war elections in 2002, political parties formed around the usual regional groupings as well as interest groups such as women and youth, and the warring factions,Footnote ⁵³ but by 2007 political party participation had shrunk to three main players,Footnote ⁵⁴ and voting patterns suggested that the country had settled back into habits of old where regional and ethnic ties dictated party allegiance. Research and commentary emanating from the field evidenced that ethnicity was re-emerging as a political fracture, manipulated by political elites using youth in political violence. In the absence of a state which could provide jobs or welfare, some youth, mostly former combatants, chose to use old patrimony networks, headed by politicians, to supplement their income.Footnote ⁵⁵ In this respect, the ‘hybrid polity’ was having a most corrosive effect on social cohesion and provided a most undesirable alternative to state provision for excluded groups. Ethnicity was predicted to emerge as a potential threat for future stability,Footnote ⁵⁶ and it was asserted that the system of multiparty politics would feed into this malaise.Footnote ⁵⁷

There were positive developments as new press and media freedoms allowed peaceful forms of political expression to emerge. These included politically charged songs which were popular during campaigning particularly amongst the formerly marginalised youth expressing long held frustrations about their government.Footnote ⁵⁸ After a 32 year absence, decentralisation allowed local voting to take place. Devolution of power from central government was an important component of the reform agenda to correct the highly centralised system of government inherited from previous regimes.Footnote ⁵⁹ This project was well supported by international partners who hoped to bring accountability and participation to the ‘local’ and improve the impact of aid.Footnote ⁶⁰ Through decentralisation, space for participation grew considerably but local political culture remained a challenge. Tensions were recorded between the local councils and central government as a new political class was being established in competition with traditional authorities and roles and responsibilities were being contested.Footnote ⁶¹ Restoration of the chieftaincy system was part of the bid to give ownership to the grass roots but was most contentious because of the problematic relationship between traditional authority and the youth in the history of the war,Footnote ⁶² and new opportunities for chiefs to co-opt local councillors raised concerns that corruption had been decentralised along with devolution.Footnote ⁶³ The behaviour of political elites was showing no signs of reform despite the structural changes going on around them.

At first glance post-war democratisation – in this case based on a multiparty system of government and an elected president – appeared to have gained real traction but in the outcome it was a shallow exercise on several counts. Although reform of the national electoral commission had allowed a series of successful elections to take place, all other accountability mechanisms – parliament, judiciary, etc. – remained dysfunctional. Being able to choose your candidate was somewhat irrelevant when there were no mechanisms to hold them accountable between elections, a situation that meant one unresponsive government could quite easily be replaced by another.Footnote ⁶⁴ The parliament received very little support from either government or donors and remained weak and dysfunctional, and MPs struggled to understand their function or their powers. This had serious implications for law making, the approval of state budgets or the appointment of senior officials and was a situation exacerbated by the change of government in 2007 as new and inexperienced parliamentarians took over. As the government changed the whole bureaucracy was replaced from southern SLPP aligned Mende to northern APC aligned Temne virtually overnight; experienced staff of the previous regime who had benefitted from international support and training were replaced with less experienced workers. Ethno-politics wasted precious human capital.Footnote ⁶⁵ Essential resources were denied parliamentarians; secretarial staff, computerised technology, and well stocked libraries, appropriate buildings or meeting rooms, and the relevant knowledge and expertise among staff.Footnote ⁶⁶ Consequently, as an institution of representation, parliament was unable to fulfil its primary function – the monitoring of the executive and representation of the electorate.Footnote ⁶⁷ This malaise was widely recognised, and the international community was urged to support MPs by building knowledge on simple basics, including theory on the separation of powers, integrity in office, and the rule of law.Footnote ⁶⁸

Parliamentarians themselves had a case to answer. Their commitment to serve the interests of the electorate and not themselves simply could not be relied upon. ‘MPs are bribed and given different incentives to act or not.’Footnote ⁶⁹ Remuneration was so low that most could not afford to travel to their own constituencies to meet citizens or to even ‘exercise a will of their own’.Footnote ⁷⁰ Some were hostile to the needs of their constituents as they consolidated the long established practice of self-remuneration whilst working within the state apparatus.Footnote ⁷¹ A proposed capacity building project for Parliamentary Committees was cancelled by donors because there was insufficient support from key stakeholders within parliament itself – across all party lines.Footnote ⁷² There were also concerns that political elites were co-opting unemployed youths as their ‘political thugs’ during election campaigning in 2007; a reality which was causing concern for the 2012 polls as marginalised youth – many being former combatants still aligned to old command structures – exploited opportunities offered to them by politicians.Footnote ⁷³

The justice sector was similarly weak in terms of reform and functionality. ‘With a judiciary operating under two jurisprudential philosophies and exercising power according to the whims of an overreaching executive, the backbone of a Sierra Leone democracy appeared too weak to succeed.’Footnote ⁷⁴ Justice sector reform was described as an unmitigated failure,Footnote ⁷⁵ the judicial branch being the main impediment for change. Although the salaries of judges and magistrates were bankrolled by the international community, the quality of judicial delivery remained poor and vulnerable to ‘cooption’, and the failure to separate the powers of the executive and judiciary had obvious consequences. The Anti-Corruption Commission's pitiful performance was impacted by the general lack of reform across the justice sector and the close relationship between the office of the attorney general and the executive.Footnote ⁷⁶ Funding from the main donor was withdrawn in 2007 due to failures of the Commission to make any progress in reducing corruption, improve its capacity or make progress on high level convictions.Footnote ⁷⁷ Over a five year period it was estimated that the Commission was effective for only six to nine months, and that there was no real understanding of the investigative doctrine or the desire among higher level staff to improve professional conduct.Footnote ⁷⁸ After a change of government some progress was recorded in terms of the efficacy and functionality of the Anti-Corruption Commission, yet levels of perceived corruption remained high.Footnote ⁷⁹

Deficiencies in the judicial system included ‘extortion and bribe-taking by officials; insufficient numbers of judges, magistrates, and prosecuting attorneys; absenteeism by court personnel; and inadequate remuneration for judiciary personnel’.Footnote ⁸⁰ Extortion and bribe taking by court officials meant that justice was too expensive for most ordinary citizens and lack of representation for those accused meant that a fair trial remained elusive. Failures in judicial reform not only marginalised the general populace from the protection of the law, it also allowed unscrupulous elites to go about their business with impunity. In their manifestos for the 2007 elections, no political party had plans for judicial reform despite the fact that (with the exception of one) none of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's recommendations for reform had been carried out.Footnote ⁸¹ This was a major concern because lack of accountability in the reconstruction, or real commitment to an efficient justice sector, set a precedent for the future.

Official documentation on Poverty Reduction Strategies and debt relief between the government of Sierra Leone and its international partners revealed many references to the importance of civil society for democratic consolidation, and its central role as a public oversight mechanism.Footnote ⁸² The rhetoric was not matched with practical support, however, and funding generally came as small accountable grants to well established and known local actors who were used to working with international partners; in some cases the same personnel worked for different civil society organisations (CSOs).Footnote ⁸³ After the war, the number of CSOs in Sierra Leone reached epidemic proportions – over 500 by 2007 – as people took advantage of the potential opportunities civil society could offer.Footnote ⁸⁴ CSOs became the new entrepreneurs of post-war reconstruction often working donors by ‘skewing’ their projects in line with international agendas on issues which were not necessarily grass roots driven, lacking local legitimacy.Footnote ⁸⁵ Most support went to urban-based organisations, predominantly English speaking and elite led.Footnote ⁸⁶ Far from being watchdogs, it was feared that CSOs themselves had become part of the state apparatus (or even global apparatus) by latching on to preferred agendas; some were even recipients of state patrimony.Footnote ⁸⁷ What had been constructed after war was rather an ‘illiberal’ version of civil society. It was the case that Sierra Leone already had a functioning and strong civil society which had contributed a great deal to the peacemaking and peacebuilding efforts in the country.Footnote ⁸⁸ There was no need to reconstruct what was already functioning well, but the search for wider and more autonomous representations of the broader citizenry – such as labourers’ or farming cooperatives, transport workers’ or market women's associations – where representations could bring meaning to the notion of participation and inclusivity, was not prioritised in the peacebuilding mission. Known actors were favoured, and easily recognisable forms of association were prioritised by interventionists looking for partners on human rights, democracy and gender, for example. This ‘malleability’ of the civic sphere sidelined any ambitious attempts – by local or global agents for change – for a programme of societal transformation.Footnote ⁸⁹

Human rights were low priority on both local and global agendas. The setting up of a Human Rights Commission was promised no later than 90 days after the signing of the Lomé Peace Accord in 1999 but was eventually set up in 2006 and operationalised in 2007.Footnote ⁹⁰ Although public awareness on human rights was mainstreamed in donor programming, there were little funds available in this area.Footnote ⁹¹ Peoples’ experiences living day to day lives were hardly different from those of the pre-war as poverty remained widespread, and the needs of the vulnerable were ignored. For women, things had deteriorated; around 67 per cent of women were victims of domestic violence in 2008, but they experienced persistent barriers to justice.Footnote ⁹² The incidence of rape was judged to be higher in peacetime than it had been during the war and crimes against women often involved former combatants.Footnote ⁹³ Most of the perpetrators got away with their crimes – just 13 out of 896 alleged attackers received a conviction in 2007.Footnote ⁹⁴ The general absence of reparations for war victims reflected the attitude of political elites and also the attitude of the international community to the important issue of reconciliation and human rights. The Lomé Accord promised a Special Fund for War Victims which was made law in Article 7(6) of the TRC Act 2000. The TRC recommended that the Special Fund be created three months after the submission of its final report in 2004, but it was not until 2009 that the first payment of US $246,000 was made by the GoSL, following which the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund donated US $3 million. These donations left the Fund short by approximately US $10 million if it was to reach all those eligible for reparations.Footnote ⁹⁵ Amputees were ostracised and stigmatised by their communities and this made the long wait for reparations more distressing, the victims of war being deeply resentful of former combatants who were getting better treatment than themselves through the DDR.Footnote ⁹⁶ The country remained at, or near, the bottom of the Human Development Index and over half the populace continue to live in the deepest poverty – on less than US $1.25 each day.Footnote ⁹⁷

In sum, the absence of effective key mechanisms of accountability meant that the ambition to bring meaningful democracy and human rights to Sierra Leone was futile even though free and fair elections were remarkably efficient in changing government and a great success, in terms of procedure, for the country and its partners. Although space for participation grew considerably, it was stifled by the general weakness of civilian representations, a dysfunctional judiciary and inutile parliament, and a ‘bad attitude’ among politicians. What remained was a shallow and unconsolidated democracy, a form of ‘feckless pluralism’ characterised by a ‘class of political elites … plural and competitive … [but] profoundly cut off from the citizenry’.Footnote ⁹⁸ This was exactly the issue that had to be addressed to alleviate local concerns that nothing would change in terms of local power structures when the peace mission came to an end. The process was procedural and built around a template not compatible with local conditions and local practices; the central tenets of democracy were not embraced by local elites who appeared to struggle with the very concept. This hollowed out the political sphere as electoral democracy locked the political process in a ‘twilight zone of tentative commitment, illiberal practices and shallow institutionalism’, and reform remained ‘tentative, partial and incomplete’.Footnote ⁹⁹ The result was ‘just enough reform’ to secure aid flows for the country's recovery.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Given the lack of accountability mechanisms, it is not possible to consolidate democracy in Sierra Leone and to try to argue otherwise is misleading, yet the failure to consolidate may not have been altogether unintentional as a true functioning democracy might challenge the liberal internationalism going on outside. The negotiations between global and local elites disconnected the populace from decisions about their future and marginalised them still further from the levers of power. Macroeconomic reform trumped all other priorities; a non-negotiable condition which relocated the political economy of peace external to the country and which constrained any government response to the demands of its citizenry. This reality excluded citizens from meaningful political engagement as deals for reconstruction were brokered outside their sphere of influence; it represented a democratic deficit which the country could ill afford when expectations for change were so high after war.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Economic reform: the ‘hidden hand’ in peacebuilding

In the aftermath of war, Sierra Leone was almost totally dependent on multilateral and bilateral institutions and arrangements for the reconstruction of its state apparatus, humanitarian support, and infrastructure renewal. The challenges facing the country were enormous,Footnote ¹⁰² and compounded by severely limited human, technical and financial capacity, and the legacy of economic mismanagement.Footnote ¹⁰³ Authorship of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) cemented the new relationship between the government and its partners, and determined the way the new economy was to work.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Proponents of PRSPs – unlike their predecessors SAPs and the ESAFFootnote ¹⁰⁵ – claim they represent a ‘locally owned’ and innovative process for determining national development policy because they involve consultations with local stakeholders, albeit on predefined templates for reform.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ The consultations are believed to help secure ‘democratic, equitable and sustainable development’,Footnote ¹⁰⁷ which is measured against the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The commitments made by national governments when authoring the PRSPs, and the implementation of the liberalising reforms, are essential for post-war recovery because the broad sphere of influence of the International financial Institutions (IFIs) – especially the International Monetary Fund – determines the future of developing nations. Without its approval governments struggle to attract private investment or other resource flows, but these realities are not widely known by the general populace; ‘civic education’ and ‘sensitisation’ programming on democracy and human rights does not detail the economic nuance of liberal interventions and, in this respect, democratisation in reconstruction has its limitations – the demands of a powerful external constituency trump those of the local electorate.

What these conditionalities mean in practice is the promotion of liberalising reform in the economic domain which requires a reduced role for government, an improved environment for private investment, and the privatisation of public enterprises. It involves trade liberalisation and the promotion of exports; the reduction or elimination of price controls and subsidies; the removal of trade barriers; the contraction of government wage bill, good fiscal management, and open and transparent processes. This recipe for success is grounded in the notion that the reforms will produce economic growth, that growth will create jobs and reduce poverty, and all this will help with peacebuilding.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Central to the deal is that countries achieve high and sustained growth in order to service their debt.Footnote ¹¹⁰

The debt burden in Sierra Leone was an obstruction to the country's recovery, and commitment to drastic and penetrating economic reform was essential to allow the country relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country's Initiative (HIPCI). The HIPCI legitimises debt relief for the poorest nations and involves the restructuring of national economies to meet several agreed performance criteria. The process is linked to authorship of PRSPs which commit governments to pursuing the MDGs whether or not they have the capacity, wherewithal or resources to do so.Footnote ¹¹¹ The three performance criteria upon which resource flows (and debt relief) are linked include sustained growth in GDP (between 6–7 per cent), low inflation (below 5 per cent) and good levels of international reserves. In Sierra Leone, growth was to be supported through the regeneration of rutile mining, the recovery of agricultural production, the expansion of industry, services and construction, and growth in the fishing and mining sectors.Footnote ¹¹² New trade policies would reduce state protectionism and be enhanced by liberal trading and exchange mechanisms, and also privatisation. These commitments were successful in securing US $21 million in emergency funds during 1999–2001 and consistent flows thereafter. By 2006, the government's economic performance was such that it received eligibility for debt relief at the HIPCI completion point. The country continues to receive good flows from its international partners gaining approval for a further disbursement from the IMF of US $6.83 m in 2010 and between 2009 and 2011 a commitment from DfID for budget support of over BP £25 m.Footnote ¹¹³

The reforms, supported by technical and financial resources from the international community, were hugely successful in stabilising and regenerating the Sierra Leone economy; an impressive feat after 11 years of civil war and an even longer period of economic mismanagement and decline. The previously dysfunctional revenue authority was transformed into an efficient mechanism for revenue generation and export trade increased. Between 2000 and 2007 annual growth averaged around 8 per cent of GDP, although this had slowed somewhat during 2008–9 (5.5 per cent and 3.2 per cent respectively) due in part to the global recession and the fall of diamond prices, settling at around 5 per cent in 2010. The vast majority of economic activity involved informal markets and formal job creation remained elusive;Footnote ¹¹⁴ over 80 per cent of post-war economic activity took place in informal, family, or farm businesses.Footnote ¹¹⁵ This is relevant because informal activities are ‘under the radar’ of revenue authorities and any potential income through taxation is denied the national treasury helping maintain the weakness of the state. This also means citizens have fewer legitimate claims on government than international lenders and donors. Constrained flows to the treasury also perpetuate dependency on external support, stunt capacity building across all sectors and preclude autonomous decision-making free from external constraints. The second performance criteria, controlling inflation, proved to be problematic, especially after 2003 when the consumer price index averaged 12 per cent; this was due to rising prices on the global markets, especially for fuel and rice, which had a severe impact on the many hundreds of thousands who remained out of work. By 2010, inflation stood at 18.4 per cent. Progress accumulating international reserves went well, however, with the country reaching a figure equivalent to around five months of imports by 2009.Footnote ¹¹⁶

Lack of transparency and accountability in the management of public finances continued unabated and plagued the nation's recovery.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Legislation was passed to improve financial management and reduce corruption but actual corruption and perceptions of corruption remained high.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Accounting mechanisms in the national revenue authority were inserted at the very final stages of the revenue process by which time ‘much had already disappeared’.Footnote ¹¹⁹ In 2007 the World Bank judged the country to be one of the ‘worst regulatory environments in the world’ to do business – ranked 148 out of 183 on its ‘ease of doing business’ index – creating challenges for private sector development.Footnote ¹²⁰ It was expensive to register a business; legislation was confusing, building permits problematic, and the taxation system discriminated against non-nationals or small companies. Pervasive corruption increased invisible costs and corporate risks to potential investors.Footnote ¹²¹ Poor infrastructure meant that both foreign and local investment was severely constrained, and the weak regulatory environment and financial sector made matters worse. Private sector investment in agriculture was limited by traditional land laws, administered under an archaic system controlled by local chiefs and which precluded private investment in land or property.Footnote ¹²² Ordinary people failed to benefit fully from development in rural areas, and many communities – especially those in mining areas – continued to live in the deepest of poverty amidst debilitating conditions.Footnote ¹²³

By 2010, growing confidence in the banking sector and global market changes attracted new private investment to the country but the nature of the investment remained a challenge for recovery because it continued to expose local people to future uncertainties on the global markets, and because it tapped into historic exploitative power relations which remained embedded in the countryside.Footnote ¹²⁴

The project for privatisation was also disappointing. The government promised to target state-owned enterprises with a view to enhancing the efficiency of government operations and increasing revenues,Footnote ¹²⁵ but retained its ‘critical mass’ of inefficient and unaccountable parastatals with huge debts.Footnote ¹²⁶ The assumption that private investment could be drawn into failing national authorities was rather missing the point of local conditions and the challenges the country faced for development. Privatising the National Power Authority, for example, would involve investing ‘millions of dollars to get the infrastructure right…’. It was not just a question of producing power for someone to buy. Large amounts of wastage along the collection and distribution lines would produce expensive private power which local people simply could not afford.Footnote ¹²⁷ Added to this, international companies cited corruption in all branches of government as an obstacle to investment in state owned enterprises.

Economic growth was unrelated to significant job creation so ‘illiberal’ or artificial methods became the post-conflict norm. Job creation initiatives remain generally funded by development agencies – the generation of 1,200 jobs or training opportunities through a World Food Programme ‘food for work’ agreement,Footnote ¹²⁸ or the World Bank injection of a US $4 million grant into the Sierra Leone economy creating around 16,000 temporary employment opportunities through 360 cash-for-work projects which was aimed at avoiding riots during the global food crisis of 2008.Footnote ¹²⁹ Even the few jobs that were created in the private sector – the mining of bauxite and rutile for example – were financed by a €25 million grant from the EU.Footnote ¹³⁰ This was not a ‘liberal peace’ or even a ‘post-liberal peace’ because the local environment was simply not suitable or ready for liberalising reform and the patchy implementation of reforms – liberal or otherwise – were failing the local populace. So who was the reconstruction for?

In terms of international objectives the statebuilding project in Sierra Leone was most successful. Stabilisation of the national economy, growth in exports, and improved revenue flows were stated objectives which were met. These successes could have been beneficial for the populace but the proclaimed benefits of such reform – job creation, community development, and a reduction in poverty – failed to materialise in any significant way. The reforms were successful enough to persuade the IFIs to release essential resource flows because debt repayments were assured but, in the outcome, there was little evidence to show that flows from the IFIs compensated ordinary citizens for the little direct benefit they were enjoying from their country's economic recovery. Democratic elections and institutional reform were also key objectives, as was integration of the Sierra Leone economy into the international system and these ambitions were indeed realised. The emphasis in the reconstruction appeared to be on the ability of the state to fulfil its key international responsibilities first and its responsibilities to the local citizenry second. It is conceivable that this was the primary expectation from reconstruction and perhaps this is the point of international missions. If so, they proved successful for international statebuilders but failed the local populace dramatically.

Analysing liberal statebuilding and its relevance for local peace

The evidence from Sierra Leone reveals that ‘peacebuilding as statebuilding’ was centred on securitisation, legitimising government, and restructuring the country's economy to improve its ability to service debt and deliver the MDGs whose objectives – most creditable in their aims – were not necessarily the most pressing concern for longer term peacebuilding locally. The most pressing concern was building a new relationship between state and citizen, between politicians and the electorate, built on trust and mutual respect. The nature of political and economic reform contrived to keep the populace out, however, as democracy failed to consolidate and macroeconomic deals were brokered from outside.

The complicated, demanding, and intrusive nature of interventions put huge strain on a weak government with minimal capacity to deliver anything at all. The special circumstances and vulnerabilities of post-conflict Sierra Leone meant that any genuine liberalising reform was patchy and unlikely to gain real traction in terms of stated aims of liberal peacebuilders – jobs and a reduction in poverty – let alone priorities of the local populace: a stake in government, responsive leadership, protection of rights, and an equitable share of the nation's resources. Assuming that liberal peacebuilding is a tangible concept – and the evidence here suggests that it is not – both external and local policymakers appeared uncommitted to making it work, and local conditions were hostile both in terms of prevailing political culture and lack of government capacity, and also in terms of local infrastructure and critically weak domestic markets.

Trying to conflate local democracy with interventionist politics is, in fact, contradictory, and dangerous when the expectations of the populace are artificially raised. Interventionist politics play into the hands of local elites because having to be accountable to an external constituency rather lets them off the hook locally, but this does not solve the challenge of giving people a stake in government. Local citizens do not feature in the global politics going on around them and local elites seem to benefit most whether or not they are committed to good governance. This lack of real ownership is a challenge facing peaceful recovery because people expect results and they expect democracy to work. External intervention had a major impact on the post-war political process, yet local politics remain deeply problematic, citizens locked out of the process and resentful at persistent abuse of power by governing elite. A legitimate body politic requires more than the coercive power of external benefactors; it requires proper mechanisms to address the demands of the society it serves.Footnote ¹³¹ Free, fair, and peaceful elections allow people some choice and are a welcome departure from politics of the past when citizens were mere pawns in elite contests for state resources. But in the outcome, citizens remain pawns.

What is important for external actors in their statebuilding endeavours, but which is often ‘hidden’ from the electorate, is government commitment to restructure the national economy for export-led growth, yet exporting the country's wealth does not fit well with ambitions to reenergise local markets, produce sustainable jobs for the populace and share the benefits of economic recovery locally. Export orientation earns dollars to repay loans. More inward looking processes do not. This is the priority in statebuilding missions yet the framework for support – codified in the PRSPs and complementary HIPCI – puts in place historically problematic economic structures which hijack the local political economy of development, of peace and of security.Footnote ¹³² Change has not come in the political economy of the everyday.Footnote ¹³³ The electorate is once again locked out and post-war institutional design remains wedded to failed models from the past.Footnote ¹³⁴

Why would external statebuilders wish to alter institutions or challenge a government which has put its economic house in order and is servicing its debt? Why should local priorities for peace influence structures of governance when key international objectives are being met? This is where the power resides, and any redirection of precious state resources in response to local demands may just threaten the capacity of government to sustain its debt repayments. So is it possible to persuade interventionists that structural change might serve their own interests as well as those of the local populace; that it might be in everyone's interests to remove some of the impediments for locals to achieve their own objectives?Footnote ¹³⁵

The answer may lie in one of the key objectives of statebuilding beyond securitisation and debt repayment – the delivery of development. Achieving the MDGs and reducing poverty is central in policy circles because it is believed that development remains closely linked to the security of not only local communities but also Western ways of life, and the international order itself.Footnote ¹³⁶ The widening of security threats to include those of human development is viewed as unproblematic in the policy literature and indeed quite progressive in that it reflects important international advances in humanitarianism after the Cold War. Development has thus become a ‘technology of security’,Footnote ¹³⁷ and the failure to achieve the MDGs in weak states like Sierra Leone might help focus minds on alternative frameworks for delivery.

It is at this point that we see the scope for reconceptualising reconstruction for peace, and also for development, to address local challenges. The evidence presented here suggests that the global preoccupation with development as a central component of counterinsurgency, and the fixation on ‘liberal peacebuilding’, is somewhat delusory and misses the point. The notion that security and development are natural partners is therefore challenged in this context because it is not simply development that Sierra Leone needs for continued stability, it is a sense of a unified nation, shared entitlement, and good leadership. Given these priorities are somewhat sidelined in statebuilding activities, but the need for development as a technology of security is not, why impose such an ineffective model in the reconstruction? The country is unlikely to achieve any of the MDGs. Is it conceivable that a different model for reconstruction may have the potential to address both development and peacebuilding challenges? Could a different model which reshapes the political space achieve better development outcomes and, at the same time, address the historic political fractures which remain the central challenge for durable peace in the country today?

Once state structures are in place changes are costly and complex and risk destabilising the security environment. A faulty model is difficult to correct even if there is a will to do so. Which is perhaps why Paris finds little radical or transformative argument in the general critique of liberal peacebuilding. This reality emphasises the point of getting the structures right from the start, and the responsibility of interventionists to think more creatively. It is also the responsibility of critics and proponents to move away from their obsession with the theoretical and philosophical labelling of events; liberal, illiberal, social, developmental and so on, and focus on what works – most probably a messy and unidentifiable fusion of inter-related processes and mutually re-enforcing structures. The perverse preoccupation with identifying a particular trend is always contestable because local realities never precisely fit the models constructed by Western social science.Footnote ¹³⁸

In the case of Sierra Leone, the point is to think more creatively: to identify a more ‘popular peace’ and new political spaces which can support local needs and local ambitions as well as those of international partners.Footnote ¹³⁹ This might include more deliberative or discursive forms of democracy or different structures of authority nuanced to local norms, values and expectations. Power and control might be exercised more independently away from the centre within a framework which puts justice, representation, and accountability as non-negotiable priorities for the populace. Donors might consult end users on the realities of aid outcomes before rewarding elites with more resources, thus locating power at the ‘everyday’. Change might involve removing ‘tunnel vision’ on economic restructuring so that local markets – not global markets – benefit first from recovery enabling increased grass roots engagement with the benefits of export, trade within the region, and trade in local markets. This would produce local jobs based on local demand and local entrepreneurship, not global jobs based on unreliable global trends. Targeted investment in infrastructure, in public and private enterprises, using national wealth for national projects (not the repayment of debt) in a committed and unambiguous way would create decent work and strengthen the local economy. Consequential job creation would improve human development, put people central in the reconstruction; give rewarding opportunities and sense of worth, and a genuine stake in government.