Imagining Peace Outside of Liberal Statebuilding: Anarchist Theory as Pathway to Emancipatory Peacefacilitation

Abstract

Critical scholarship on peace has coined the term liberal peacebuilding and proven that it is unsuccessful, even counterproductive, in achieving that what it sets out to do—foster peace after violent conflict. The dominant part of this endeavor has been statebuilding. This paper adds to a slowly developing literature that starts to ask the question what an alternative to the reliance on statebuilding could look like. By employing anarchist theory, a new theoretical methodology is introduced to International Relations that allows to imagine forms of peace outside the liberal paradigm whilst preventing imperialistic claims. Such an emancipatory peace practice based on anarchism is envisioned as to build on prefigurative politics and direct action, strengthening autonomy, decentralization, and horizontality as well as challenge all structural forms of domination through radical forms of self-determination. Incorporating such an anarchist agenda offers one perspective on what fostering peace outside decontextualized and imposed liberal nation states could be. I argue that challenging statebuilding foreshadows a greater implication an anarchist research agenda promotes, namely, the need to move away from peacebuilding toward emancipatory forms of peacefacilitation.