Abstract
The United Nations Security Council adopts broad mandates and resolutions concerning countries hosting a peacebuilding mission. Because these mandates and resolutions are results of compromises, consensus focus, and big politics, they have to be negotiated, interpreted, and adapted to the situations in the field or the implementation level. This creates a gap between the implementation level and the executive decision-making level and a need for the bureaucrats or the officials on the ground, to create ownership and interpret situations in the field in relation to Security Council mandates. Studying peacebuilding in Liberia through a focus on how formal schemes and informal processes impinge on one another illuminated parts of the peacebuilding process that involved statebuilding-like activities within Liberian ministries. In order for the Liberian government to be able to absorb the complexity of the international operation and presence in the country, these ministries needed assistance. This situation had opened the way for international consultants. The role of the international consultants in the Liberian ministries revealed the snowball effect on peacebuilding processes with regard to how other non-UN actors take on the responsibility for other tasks and projects pertaining to peacebuilding. This chapter explores the function of these consultants in the interface between the international and the national. The paper concentrates in particular on the consultant’s role in the making of new connections, disconnections, new formal stipulations, and thus in the making of new bureaucracy. This, in turn, also opens up for a discussion of the state and notions of sovereignty.
The original version of this book was revised. An erratum to this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65569-7_11
“This chapter is based on a research project involving fieldwork in Liberia carried out together with Benjamin de Carvalho. The chapter draws on a report from the fieldwork (de Carvalho & Schia 2011)”.
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Notes
- 1.
Recent trends have included new norms for deploying operations to a country. One such example is the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), established in 2005 as a UN norm. This norm holds that sovereignty is not only a right: it also entails the responsibility for the state to protect its population. In 2011 the R2P norm triggered the Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 1973, which led to the intervention in Libya that year. The outcome of that intervention has, however, stalled the Security Council from using the R2P norm in more recent relevant situations, as Syria in 2013. Protection of Civilians is another example of such a norm. Because these norms are relatively new and have not yet become fully established, and because they were not relevant when UNMIL deployed in 2003, they will not be discussed here. However, it should be noted that these norms serve to broaden the zones where sovereignty is being negotiated and constituted.
- 2.
A former Scott Fellow (see below), later on a Nike Fellowship working in Liberia.
- 3.
Note the parallel with the League of Nations’ proposal to position delegates from key government positions in Liberia in the 1930s, which was turned down by President Barclay. Nevertheless, the country had to be put under the diplomatic protection of the USA, see Chap. 4.
- 4.
Fellows were generally in their 20s and held degrees such as Masters in International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, MPAs in International Development from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Georgetown University’s Master of Science in Foreign Service program, or Masters in Law and African Studies at the University of Oxford in the UK.
- 5.
- 6.
Interview with international NGO employee, Monrovia, January 19, 2010.
- 7.
Paige West made a similar point about capacity building in her talk “The Elusive Concept of ‘Capacity Building’ in International Development” (Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, January 22, 2014).
- 8.
For more on this, see http://www.unliberia.org/
- 9.
On sovereignty as frontier see Harrison 2004. Exploring the intervention of the World Bank in African indebted states, Harrison stresses the importance of understanding sovereignty as a frontier rather than as a boundary. See also Bartelson (1995), who speaks of sovereignty as a frame which divides the picture (inside) from the wall (outside), while being a part of neither.
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Schia, N.N. (2018). Bureaucratic Entrepreneurship: Liberian Ministries, International Consultants, and Making Connections. In: Franchised States and the Bureaucracy of Peace. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65569-7_7
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