This chapter investigates the potential of local governments to contribute to peace-building. To analyse this potential, the authors use the notion of social contract as a metaphor for the generally accepted conventions and political mechanisms through which a society strikes a balance between the particular interests of all its members. The authors argue that social contracts can be discerned both at the local and national levels. Peace-building can be pictured as re-establishing these social contracts.
Due to their specific characteristics that position them between citizens and authorities, as well as between the local and the national levels, local governments have the potential to enhance the effect and sustainability of state-building and peace-building, as they strengthen both the national and the local social contracts.
Local governments can do this through an efficient and fair, local
provision of public services, through the representation of citizens and an increase in citizen participation, as well as through a well functioning local democracy. As such, they add the essential element of legitimacy and ownership that all too often is missing in the first phase of
democratization and peace-building.
Moreover, by solving local conflicts, stimulating community building and facilitating reconciliation, local governments not only make their own local societies more liveable in, they also contribute indirectly to the overall peace-building process.
Although local governments possess the potential to contribute to peace, only a minority of them seize this potential. Often local authorities are unwilling or unable to make use of it. If it is a question of lack of ability, then foreign local governments can offer support. Through moral, technical or financial assistance, they can strengthen and stimulate their partners in post-conflict areas in their peace-building activities. Under certain circumstances, foreign local governments can also act as an unbiased intermediary or forum for dialogue and co-operation between specific groups in the local society.
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Summary
1 In this paper, the adjective ‘local’ means ‘sub-national’ or ‘local-level’. It does not refer to the post-conflict country, for which we use the adjective ‘domestic’.
2 Cf. Lunn (1906)
Introduction
For over a century now, sub-national, local1authorities have argued that they can play a role in the prevention and transformation of violent conflicts.2Until recently, however, the role of local governments in conflict prevention and peace-building has been little acknowledged or researched. This has changed of late, as international and national actors increasingly regard local authorities as an instrument they can use in realizing sustainable peace. In addition, local governments themselves are currently professionalizing their peace-building activities, while academics in conflict studies have discovered this gap in their research and increasingly focus on this topic.
This chapter is intended as a building block in the ongoing discussion on how peace can be achieved and best maintained. It links newly gained academic insights to the growing status of sub-national authorities in conflict transformation.
We discuss three central questions:
1 In what way and under which conditions can local governments in post-conflict areas strengthen and sustain the peace-building process?
2 In what way and under which conditions can foreign local governments support their partners in post-conflict areas?
3 How do these activities interact with peace-building initiatives by other actors?
We answer these questions using a social-contract perspective. The notion of a social contract is used here as a metaphor that describes and prescribes how a group of individuals deal with conflicting interests and beliefs. We use this notion to analyze and explain the peace-building role of local governments. We see violent intra-state conflict as a failed social contract and, subsequently, peace-building as a process towards re-establishing the social contract, both on the national and the local levels.
From this perspective, we first present an introduction to conflict and conflict resolution, focussing on state-building and democratization as essential elements of peace-building.
Then we identify the unique traits of local governments, to understand and analyze their contribution to national and local social contracts. We investigate their potential added-value in peace-building, and in particular their contribution to state-building and democratization. Finally, we analyze how municipalities from abroad can strengthen the peace-building initiatives of their partners in post-conflict areas and draw conclusions.
This chapter is based on a review of selected theoretical and applied literature on the topic, and on a wider reading of sources dealing with contemporary conflict. It is furthermore based on the authors’ experiences in conflict analysis and international municipal co-operation in post-conflict areas.
Violent conflict today
Three recent changes in both the number and character of conflicts increase the potential added-value of local governments in peace-building. The ethnic dimension in violent 48
3 Goodhand (2006), p. 31 4 Eck (2008)
5 Woodward (2007), p. 144
6 This division into three ‘schools’ is derived from Woodward (2007).
7 Risley and Sisk (2005), p. 12-3, and Wanasinghe (2003), p. 80-1 8 Bradbury (2006)
conflicts has increased, not least because many conflicts tend to become ethnicized. Parallel to this, the percentage of inter-state conflicts has decreased to less than 10% of the total number of conflicts.3Lastly, and contrary to common perceptions, the total number of violent conflicts, as well as the number of intra-state conflicts, has shown a downward trend since the late 1950s.4Among the reasons for this decrease is the rise in the number and effectiveness of international peace-building interventions.5These changes imply that there is more scope for local governments to contribute to peacebuilding than before, when war was mainly fought between states at the international level.
Root causes Three major schools of thought can be discerned on the root causes of violent conflict. The cultural school argues that the root cause of civil war is cultural difference, often ethnic in nature. Violent conflict arises when grievances over this difference, directly or through elite manipulation, lead to political discrimination against minorities. The economic school asserts that intra-state war is caused by rebels seeking economic gain. This economic ‘greed’ argument is based on aggregated statistical analysis as well as demographic and environmental considerations. To the political regime school, the root of violent conflict lies in the absence of democracy or, more specifically, in the absence of mechanisms to redress problems between groups in society, including cultural minorities.
Although these three schools do at times contradict one another, they are essentially complementary. It is generally accepted that violent conflicts have multiple causes: that only a combination of long-term and short-term socio-cultural, political, economic and military reasons can explain the existence or eruption of conflicts. As a consequence, conflict resolution activities need to factor in this multi-dimensionality.6
War dynamics: linking local and overall conflicts Root causes explain how war breaks out but ending violent conflict requires more than addressing the root causes since dynamics, unrelated to the original causes, develop once violence starts. War generates private and public gains and losses that are unevenly distributed in society. For some individuals or groups, the perpetuation of violence is or may seem a more profitable option in economic or political terms than working towards peace.
A typical war dynamic links local conflicts to the region-wide or nation-wide conflict.
Whether or not they precede the wider conflict, as soon as a wider conflict breaks out, local conflicts are perceived as, or become, part of this larger conflict. Sometimes a large-scale war builds on local conflicts7, sometimes the overall conflict incorporates, subordinates or exacerbates local conflicts8. Hence, it is important to analyze how the different forms and levels of conflict permeate and reconstitute each other.
Despite this entanglement, most peace agreements focus solely on the overall conflict. Even though the implementation of a peace agreement often has to take place at the local level, the
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9 Manning (2003), and Hohe (2003)
10 The only scholars in conflict theory that use the concept of ‘social contract’ are the rational-choice econometrists. They do not see the social contract as a metaphor but rather as a tool to map how potential future benefits for conflict parties could lead to a credible and sustainable end of violence. See for example Addison and Mansoob Murshed (2001).
11 Using metaphors in science is not without risk (Ortony, 1993). The use of the ‘social contract’ metaphor or analogy in this paper is, however, warranted: first, because it enables comprehension of the peace-building contribution of local governments that would otherwise be lost for lack of words and, secondly, because we make clear from the outset that the social contract is a metaphor, and not a real
phenomenon.
dynamics of local conflicts tend to be no part of the agreement.9Local governments, and with them a host of other local-level actors, then face the difficult task of disentangling the roots and consequences of local conflicts from the wider conflict, in order to bring both to an end. It is here that local governments have an added value in the establishment of durable peace.
The social contract
This chapter is primarily built on the political regime argument, but we do not deny the economic, military and socio-cultural causes of conflict. We do not consider conflictper seto be a negative social phenomenon. It is rather the logical consequence of different prevailing interests in society. It is, however, the violent conflict that has a destructive impact on societies. We argue that violent conflict occurs when the system to moderate and balance the various interests in society has failed to such an extent that a critical number of individuals or groups ignore this system altogether, and resort to violence to further their own interests. Hence, rebuilding a legitimate political system is a crucial step in peace-building and in the structural transformation from conflict to peace.
In line with a long tradition in political theory, this political system can be portrayed as a social contract. Although linked to several other concepts in the study of conflicts, the term social contract is not regularly used in conflict analyses and conflict theory. Yet, it reveals better than any other concept how local authorities can contribute to peace-building.10 This article uses the concept of a social contract as a metaphor for the generally accepted convention that describes and prescribes the system through which a society strikes a balance between the particular interests of all its members as well as between individual interests and the interest of the society as a whole. Three components of this definition need further elaboration: (1) the social contract as a metaphor; (2) the social contract as a generally accepted convention that describes and prescribes how to deal with conflicting interests;
and (3) the social contract as a double contract.
Social contract as metaphor A social contract is not a written agreement, but a metaphor.11It denotes the set of rules and consequent sanctions that governs both individual society members in their relationship with other individual members, and the relationship between each member (or group) and society as a whole. In other words, a society with a strong, binding social contract represents a society in which members generally refrain from violence to realize their own interests and instead use the accepted balancing mechanisms.
The metaphor of the social contract emphasizes that root causes of conflict can be too strong to be contained through a hitherto collectively-accepted system of interest allocation.
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12 Manning (2003), p. 31
13 Addison and Mansoob Murshed (2006), p. 138-9
14 A more frequently used metaphor to represent these processes is ‘social capital’, a term coined by Robert Putnam. See Brinkerhoff (2005).
15 Rakner et al. (2007), p. 17
Social contract as a descriptive and normative concept The metaphorical contract is both descriptive in the sense that it shows how the regulating system works, and normative, in the sense that it tells or instructs societal members how to deal with their conflicting interests. All the relevant political actors need to be bound by the same set of rules, by ‘the only game in town’ through which they can seek and exercise power and resolve conflicts.12 Both dimensions are equally important. On the one hand, the social contract denotes the real socio-political institutions in a society. On the other hand, the social contract refers to the trust and expectations of the members of the society that the pertinent socio-political institutions will indeed be used to regulate the conflicting interests.
The willingness of people to respect the social contract depends on whether they expect other society members to do the same, and how they perceive the future. If there is a high level of trust, the metaphor of a strong social contract is appropriate. Or, to put it another way, ‘when the social contract is well-established, the rules of the game create expectations of how people will behave towards each other.’13
Social contracts are not static. On the contrary, in order to remain strong and viable, a social contract must be permanently reinvented to adjust to new developments in society.
The social contract as a double contract Our definition of a social contract effectively refers to a double contract.14On the one hand, it regulates the collision of interests of all members of society vis-à-vis one another and, on the other, it regulates the relationship between each member of society and the overall government that represents society as a whole.
From a peace-building perspective, the first contract signifies the willingness of citizens to interact with one another without resorting to violence and to invest in shared structures and modes of co-operation to resolve their conflicts. Both national and local authorities derive their legitimacy from the second contract. People feel bound to the social contract, and accept the power of the authorities as legitimate, provided they believe that the autonomy they transfer to these authorities is sufficiently compensated by the benefits the state brings them in return: public services, human security, representation and fair, trustworthy balancing of societal interests.
Seeking a sustainable conflict solution boils down, in our view, to establishing a new social contract. From this perspective, peace-building means arriving at a contract to which all parties can agree; and it implies creating institutions, building trust and establishing a belief among all society members that these institutions are indeed the best way to solve societal problems. The creation of trust is a long process because it takes time for reciprocity and vested interests to establish themselves.15
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16 The terms ‘negative and positive peace’ were coined by Johan Galtung in the 1960s. For a more recent elaboration, see Galtung (1996).
17 Suhrke and Samset (2007): over 20% of all ended intra-state wars see new wars within five years. This was a careful calculation, most scholars estimate the percentage as much higher.
18 See Llamazares (2005), p. 2-3 19 Roeder and Rothchild (2005), p. 3-5
20 See Risley and Sisk (2005) who support this claim.
21 Local authorities, however, can and do play a role during the conflict and throughout high-intensity violence. The most striking examples are the so-called ‘zones of peace’, specific territories that the inhabitants declare as non-violent in the middle of the violent conflict surrounding them; see: Hancock and Mitchell (2007). Similarly, municipalities can have conflict-preventative capacities.
22 Manning (2003), p. 29 23 Diamond and McDonald (1996)
Peace-building
Negative and positive peace The process from conflict to peace often involves two steps: initiation and consolidation. At the height of a conflict, the immediate goal is to put an end to the armed violence. This process, often resulting in some sort of peace agreement, is commonly referred to as peace-making. The resulting absence of violence is called ‘negative peace’.16However, silencing the guns without addressing the underlying causes of conflict is often insufficient to permanently end violence. In many cases, large-scale violence restarts soon after the conflict has been ‘ended’.17
Positive peace on the other hand implies the permanent absence of violence, where the conflict’s root causes have been addressed and citizens have built sustainable structures that peacefully solve their problems. The process towards positive peace is generally called peace-building, defined in the UN’s Agenda for Peace as the ‘comprehensive efforts to identify and support structures which will tend to consolidate peace and advance a sense of confidence and well-being among people’.18
Often the measures and interests involved in establishing negative peace are different, or even opposed, to the ones in the second stage, when positive peace is being established.19As the potential impact of municipalities seems to be largest in peace-building20, this chapter primarily focuses on the added value of local governments in the domain of establishing and sustaining positive peace.21
Comprehensive peace-building Peace-building is a transformative, future-oriented process that calls for a contextual, multi-dimensional, integrative approach that includes economic, military and psycho-social measures. The political and institutional realms are essential in this process, as explained earlier through the social contract metaphor. If the members of a society do manage to create a new social contract, then they have made a decisive step in the process towards sustainable peace.22A condition for this approach to succeed is that they ultimately regard themselves as members of one society, whatever their identities.
Actors in peace-building can be categorized in three ways. Firstly, actors can be divided into international and domestic ones. The second approach distinguishes actors according to their origin or character. The concept of multi-track diplomacy calls upon no fewer than nine tracks or components, including government, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), citizens, businesses and journalists, to cooperate in peace-building efforts.23The third classification categorizes the actors according to the level at which they work. A 52
24 Lederach (1997) 25 Llamazares (2005) 26 Manning (2003) 27 Lederach (1997), p. 43 28 Lederach (1997), p. 41-2 29 Licklider (2002), p. 2
frequently used categorization is by Lederach who discerns top, middle and grassroots levels.24
Not surprisingly, most academics and practitioners favour, at least in theory, multi-dimensional, multi-actor and multi-level approaches that implement a single co-ordinated, integrative peace-building process, with each actor contributing where it is best able.25 Practice has taught us, however, that, in all the three actor categorizations, it is difficult to overcome the divisions. The lack of connectedness between, for example, the upper and lower levels of intervention is striking.26A second salient element is that local governments are frequently ignored in the approaches propagated.
Where are the local governments? The fact that local governments are hardly mentioned does not invalidate their bridging potential in peace-building. By connecting the national and the local levels, and linking public policy with the civic realm, local
governments harbour a potentially significant added value in the peace-building process.
While the top leadership have access to information about the bigger picture and possess the capacity to make far-reaching decisions, it does not experience the day-to-day consequences of those decisions, as observed by Lederach. Conversely, people at the grassroots level do
While the top leadership have access to information about the bigger picture and possess the capacity to make far-reaching decisions, it does not experience the day-to-day consequences of those decisions, as observed by Lederach. Conversely, people at the grassroots level do