Liberal peace and peacebuilding: global and local debates in the context of Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper examines the key global debates on liberal peace and peacebuilding and their nexus with the Sri Lankan conflict, the efforts to resolve the conflict and the ensuing local discourses. The end of the cold war heralded the possibility of a liberal world order. This triumph of the liberal order underlined a normative assumption of “the end of history”, not as a static closure, but as embodying an ideology with the potential for delineating the optimal form of governance for a state, its economy and citizens1. Since the end of the cold-war, liberal peace has become the main policy framework that has been used by the International Community (IC) to engage with and intervene in conflict ridden states as a means for creating global peace by stabilising states and strengthening global markets2. However, the liberal peace thesis and the attendant liberal peacebuilding interventionist frameworks for local and global peace have spurned a critical discourse that questions the validity of the thesis and the effectiveness of its policy and practice outcomes. Sri Lanka mirrors the global debates and policy impact of the ideological framework of the global thesis, as it has a history of liberal governance (traceable to the 19th century) and liberal peacebuilding (traceable to the 20th century).