Political Economies of Illiberal Peacebuilding in Asia

With Claire Smith

This project aims to increase our understanding about how to bring about peace after violent conflict. Peacebuilding policy and practice is dominated by efforts to build liberal democracies and free markets, despite mixed results in places like Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Timor-Leste. Peacebuilding scholarship is also very normative and overly focused on this liberal paradigm. What is mostly overlooked is how some post-conflict states have taken a very different route to peace, using illiberal means to achieve political stability, physical security, and economic growth over the medium-term. The pressing questions are whether illiberal methods can create durable peace and openings for future liberalization. These questions can best be answered using a political economy approach that draws on recent scholarship on political settlements and political marketplaces.