Journal of Peacebuilding & Development

Reform of state institutions and procedures is a central element in post-war reconstruction. This article examines the reform of local planning practice in Mozambique in the immediate post-war period. The new planning approach – encompassing formulation of district plans and community projects – gave little attention to peace and conflict dynamics. As a consequence, planning initiatives became objects of struggles at material, political and symbolic/narrative levels, distorting the reforms. Resulting planning practices were products of compromise rather than fundamental inputs towards stabilisation and peace.

Practitioners and scholars in the humanitarian internationale focus on partnership type as a hedge against many of the traditional challenges and undesirable outcomes associated with peacebuilding. ‘Active’ partnerships are strongly encouraged; ‘dependent’ partnerships are to be avoided. The West African nation of Sierra Leone and its government-sponsored Community-driven Development (CDD) programme are an ideal lens through which to examine whether and how conventional emphasis on partnership type affects peacebuilding outcomes. A political economy analysis of two empirical case studies of CDD from Sierra Leone's early peacebuilding phase reveals that partnership type is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to accomplish peacebuilding goals. In both cases, CDD exacerbated social exclusion, especially among ex-combatants and war-affected youth, and failed to enhance meaningfully the skills, capacities and knowledge of local actors. Close attention should be paid to the potential positive and negative spillover effects generated by the intersection of peacebuilding, CDD and the chiefdom system.

This paper surveys the nexus between development and armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa from 1980 to 2005. It focuses on war trends, impact of war on development, socio-economic structures as war risks, and policy responses. Several findings emerge that challenge widely held state-centric assumptions that underpin contemporary analyses, data collection and policy priorities. These wars defy conventional analytical frameworks as they commingle state and non-state actors and political with economic and private motives. As the findings illustrate, the state is not a sufficient unit of analysis: more research, data collection and policy attention should be directed to non-state actors and wars and sub-national and cross-border impacts. War is development in reverse, yet in many of these wars, the national economy continued to grow and social indicators improved. At the same time, the destructive impacts were localised, implying that development gaps and horizontal inequalities worsened. Structural risk factors – horizontal inequalities, youth bulge and unemployment, environmental pressure and natural resource dependence – have played a causal or perpetuating role in the wars surveyed. Economic, social and governance reform policies can play a role in conflict prevention by addressing these risk factors, yet at present national and international policy priorities do not systematically address these risks.

This article argues that the distressing situation in Somalia offers an opportunity to introduce new legal institutions with less colonial path-dependence and greater sensitivity to the security and development needs of Somalians. Peace and stability could be enhanced by allowing customary law and Islamic courts to operate within the framework of the Transitional Federal Charter (TFC). A civil law system with the judicial discretion and selection of a common law system would help to enhance economic development by attracting foreign direct investment. A single court system which unifies ordinary and Sharia courts would create a more enabling legal environment for law and order and economic development than the dual court system. Moreover, as international human rights law is mainly in the form of conventions and treaties in the style of civil law, promotion and protection of human rights may be better served predominantly through a civil law system in which a judge applies particular provisions of specific conventions and treaties. Such a system would also help to harmonise a legal system which is cobbled together from five different sources of law.

The world is witnessing a political-economic passage on a global scale: from economic stagnation, amplified uneven development and financial volatility to worsening primitive accumulation (‘looting’) and socio-economic conflict. Considering Africa's plight in this way suggests intellectual links between the political economy and security disciplines. Reforms proposed at the global level by elite bodies are apparently ineffectual and actions taken by elites in the name of conflict resolution often undermine peace because they reinforce the very dynamic of external looting. If these reforms continue to fail, it is to popular struggles that we should turn, especially in Africa where oppression is most extreme and global and local elites have the least credibility. For social movements, the objective of transforming power relations as the basis for ending conflict and underdevelopment requires engaging this new theoretical approach with the critique of capitalism. Conflict and peace theorists should also consider other innovations in political economy which address uneven and combined development, primitive accumulation and imperialism more broadly.