A paradox of peacebuilding aid: Institutionalized exclusion and violence in post-conflict states

Item

Title
A paradox of peacebuilding aid: Institutionalized exclusion and violence in post-conflict states
Identifier
d_2009_2013:f9725163fa4e:09962
identifier
10011
Creator
Nakaya, Sumie,
Contributor
Susan L. Woodward
Date
2009
Language
English
Publisher
City University of New York.
Subject
Political science | Aid | Civil War | Peacebuilding/state-building | Post-war exclusion and violence | Power-sharing | Tajikistan
Abstract
Exclusion and violence persist in post-conflict states, despite external assistance to the demilitarization of politics, which the literature emphasizes as the primary goal of aid. Through a field-based study of Tajikistan and a survey of an additional three cases (Cambodia, Guatemala, and Sierra Leone), this dissertation finds that aid focuses on economic liberalization in the initial stage of post-war transition. Such an organization of aid empowers a particular group of elites who have privileged access to state assets at the time of civil war settlement, and establishes institutional frameworks that will consolidate the economic control of the incumbent regime elites. As the incumbent regime elites seek to remove wartime commanders and opposition leaders from the state apparatus, thereby nullifying power-sharing and other provisions of peace agreements, violence tends to be instigated by increasingly repressive governments or those facing exclusion from sources of livelihood. Aid thus institutionalizes exclusion and sustains patterns of violence along civil war divisions, rather than transforming existing political and economic structures.
Type
dissertation
Source
2009_2013.csv
degree
Ph.D.
Program
Political Science