Peacebuilding as a New Form of Colonialism
A Case Study of Liberia and Sierra Leone
Abstract
Around two decades ago, legal anthropologist Merry posed the question, "what can we learn about law and globalization today from revisiting the law and colonization literature?" She emphasized how colonial arrangements transformed and affected the fundamental character of contemporary and international law. While peacebuilders, development experts, and human rights activists embrace law as a tool for social change, others have looked back on the history of legal development in the Global South to warn that the rule of law served as a framework for social control. It preserved authority and punished rebellious acts that threatened order while promoting development and social progress. As a result of this reminder, the critical peacebuilding literature has begun to pay attention to how the rule of law and transitional justice frameworks may serve as conceptual, lexical, and discursive foundations for post/neo-colonial control. This article used a historical, empirical, and comparative study of post-war Sierra Leone and Liberia to argue that the transplantation of legal norms and technologies has become more professionalized. In contrast, international efforts to rebuild the rule of law have reinforced social domination by legitimizing external actors as peacebuilders and reconstituting the relationship between the domestic political class and global capital. Social domination refers to the attempt to build an unequal playing field, wherein the country's political and economic elites can leverage and reproduce earlier forms of power relations and domination to consolidate their security within the state apparatus and benefit disproportionately from the security created by a large external presence.
Keywords: Liberia, Neo-colonialism, Peacebuilding, Sierra Leone.
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Akinbode Fasakin, “The coloniality of power in post-colonial Africa: experiences from Nigeria” (2021) 42:5 Third World Quarterly 1–20.
Akintola J G Wyse, The Krio of Sierra Leone: An Interpretive History(Washington DC: Howard University Press, 1989).
Amitav Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter? Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism (Cornell University Press, 2009).
Amos Sawyer, The emergence of autocracy in Liberia: tragedy and challenge(Institute For Contemporary Studies, 1992).
Anne-Marie Slaughter, A new world order(Princeton University Press, 2004).
Assaf Sharon, “Domination and the Rule of Law” (2016) 2 Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy 128–155.
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, “Invoking the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict Rebuilding: A Critical Examination” (2008) 49:4 Willian and Mary Law Review.
Benjamin Constant & Etienne Hoffmann, Principles of politics applicable to all governments(Liberty Fund, 2003).
Bonny Ibhawoh, “Historical globalization and colonial legal culture: African assessors, customary law, and criminal justice in British Africa” (2009) 4:3 Journal of Global History 429–451.
Cristopher B Dyck, States of Unrest: Critiquing Liberal Peacebuilding and Security Sector Reform in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone (2001-2012) and Liberia (2003-2013) (PhD Thesis, University of Albert, 2013).
Courtney Jung, Canada and the Legacy of the Indian Residential Schools: Transitional Justice for Indigenous Peoples in a Non-Transitional Society (Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International, 2009).
Denis M Tull, “A Reconfiguration of Political Order? The State of the State in North Kivu (DR Congo” (2003) 102:408 African Affairs 429–446.
Deval Desai, Deborah Isser, & Michael Woolcock, “Rethinking Justice Reform in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States: Lessons for Enhancing the Capacity of Development Agencies” (2012) 4:1 Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 54–75.
Douglas Cassel, “Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies” (1998) 92:3 American Journal of International Law 601–604.
Edward Palmer Thomson, Whigs and hunters: the origin of the Black Act(Penguin Books, 1990).Elaisha Stokes, "Riot on the Plantation," Al Jazeera (4 October 2015), online:
Francis Fukuyama, “Transitions to the Rule of Law” (2009) 21:1 Journal of Democracy 33–44.
G John Ikenberry, “The Future of the Liberal World Order: Internationalism After America” (2011) 90:3 Foreign Affairs 56–68.
James Courtright, “Sierra Leone’s Small Towns Learn to Fight Against Land Grabs”, OZY(7 May 2018), online:
James Otto, “Golden Veroleum Liberia Comes under Spotlight Again for not Living Up to MOU," LandPortal(12 August 2021), online:
Jimmy Kandeh, “Intervention and Peace-Building in Sierra Leone: A Critical Perspective” in T Zack-Williams, ed, When the State Fails Studies on Intervention in the SierraLeone Civil War(London: Pluto Press, 2015).
Jane Stromseth, David Wippman, & Rosa Brooks, Can Might Make Rights?: Building the Rule of Law after Military Interventions(Cambridge University Press, 2006).
John Dugard, Human rights and the south African legal order(New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2016).
John Henry Merryman & Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo, The civil law tradition: an introduction to the legal systems of Europe and Latin America(California: Stanford University Press, Cop, 2019).
John L Comaroff, “Colonialism, Culture, and the Law: A Foreword” (2001) 26:02 Law & Social Inquiry 305–314.
John W Creswell & Timothy C Guetterman, Educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research(Pearson, 2019).
Joseph Hanlon, “Is the international community helping to recreate the preconditions for war in Sierra Leone?” (2005) 94:381 The Round Table 459–472.
Lauren A Benton, Law and colonial cultures: legal regimes in world history, 1400-1900(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Lauren A Benton, “Making Order Out of Trouble: Jurisdictional Politics in the Spanish Colonial Borderlands” (2001) 26:02 Law & Social Inquiry 373–401.
Luis Eslava & Sundhya Pahuja, “Beyond the (Post)Colonial: TWAIL and the Everyday Life of International Law” (2012) 45:2 Journal of Law and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America -Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (VRÜ) 195–221.
Mahmood Mandani, Citizen and subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism, Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History (Princeton University Press, 2018).
Martin Chanock, The making of South African legal culture, 1902-1936: fear, favour, and prejudice(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Max Weber, “The Three Types of Legitimate Rule” (1958) 4:1 Berkeley Publications in Society and Institutions.
Michael Bratton & Eric Chang, “State Building and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa” (2006) 39:9 Comparative Political Studies 1059–1083.
Michael Kargbo, “International Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone” in Tunde Zack-Williams, ed, When the State Fails(Pluto Press, 2012) 65.
Meera Sabaratnam, Decolonising intervention: international state-building in Mozambique(London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017).
Mohamed Sema, Sierra Leone -Justice Sector and the Rule of Law(Johannesburg: Open Society Foundations, 2014).
Mohamed Sesay, “Hijacking the rule of law in post-conflict environments” (2018) 4:1 European Journal of International Security 41–60.
Nasser Husain, The jurisprudence of emergency: Colonialism and the Rule of Law, Law, Meaning, And Violence (University of Michigan Press, 2003).
Neal P Cohen et al., Final Evaluation of USAID GEMAP Activities (Governance and Economic Management Assistance Program(USAID, 2010).
Patrick McAuslan, “Property and Empire” (2015) 24:3 Social & Legal Studies 339–357.
Philipp Dann & Felix Hanschmann, “Post-colonial Theories and Law” (2012) 45:2 Verfassung und Recht in Übersee / Law and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America 123–127.
Prince T Mabey et al., "Environmental Impacts: Local Perspectives of Selected Mining Edge Communities in Sierra Leone" (2020) 12:14 Sustainability 5525.
Rachael Knight, “Bad-Faith Contracts & Unjust Investments –How can communities protect their interests?”, Namati (18 September 2018), online:
Richard Waller, “Legal History and Historiography in Colonial Sub-Saharan Africa” (2018) 20 Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History.
Robert A Blair, Sabrina M Karim, & Benjamin S Morse, “Establishing the Rule of Law in Weak and War-torn States: Evidence from a Field Experiment with the Liberian National Police” (2019) 113:3 American Political Science Review 641–657.
Roland Paris, The dilemmas of statebuilding: confronting the contradictions of postwar peace operations(Routledge, 2010).
Ronen Shamir & Daphna Hacker, “Colonialism’s Civilizing Mission: The Case of the Indian Hemp Drug Commission” (2001) 26:02 Law & Social Inquiry 435–461.
Rosa Brooks, “The New Imperialism: Violence, Norms, and the "Ruleof Law” (2003) 101:7 Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works, online:
Sally E Merry, “From Law and Colonialism to Law and Globalization” (2003) 28:2 Law & Social Inquiry 569–590.
Sarah Maddison & Laura J Shepherd, “Peacebuilding and the post-colonial politics of transitional justice” (2014) 2:3 Peacebuilding 253–269.
Shane Chalmers, Liberia and the Dialectic of Law: critical theory, pluralism, and the rule of law(Routledge, 2019).
Sriram Chandra Lekha, Olga Martin-Ortega, & Johanna Herman, eds, Peacebuilding and Rule of Law in Africa: Just Peace? (Routledge, 2010).
Stefania Galli & Klas Rönnbäck, “Colonialism and rural inequality in Sierra Leone: an egalitarian experiment” (2019) 24:3 European Review of Economic History 468–501.
Swati Parashar & Michael Schulz, “Colonial legacies, post-colonial ‘selfhood’ and the (un)doing of Africa” (2021) 42:5 Third World Quarterly 867–881.
Thomas Carothers, “The Rule of Law Revival” (1998) 77:2 Foreign Affairs.
Ugo Mattei & Laura Nader, Plunder: when the rule of law is illegal (Blackwell Pub, 2008)
William Reno, Humanitarian Emergencies and Warlord Economies in Liberia and Sierra Leone (World Institute for Development Economics Research, 1997).
William Reno, Warlord politics and African states(Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999).
William Zartman, ed, Collapsed states: the disintegration and restoration of legitimate authority, Lynne Rienner(Lynne Rienner, 2007).
Zubairu Wai, “Neo-patrimonialism and the discourse of state failure in Africa” (2012) 39:131 Review of African Political Economy 27–43.
Published
2022-09-06
How to Cite
GADKARI, Ahan Mohit.
Peacebuilding as a New Form of Colonialism.
Lentera Hukum, [S.l.], v. 9, n. 2, p. 333-368, sep. 2022.
ISSN 2621-3710.
Available at: <https://jurnal.unej.ac.id/index.php/ejlh/article/view/31125>. Date accessed: 26 apr. 2024.
doi: https://doi.org/10.19184/ejlh.v9i2.31125.
Section
Articles
