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Since the end of the Cold War, democracy promotion has been a key part of the peacebuilding strategy of the international community. Even in cases with comparatively little international involvement, as in South Africa’s transition, the process of democratization has often overlapped with a transition from war to peace. The rationale for building peace through democracy is straightforward: a prevailing assumption both within theory and practice has been that peace and democracy are mutually reinforcing. While this may be true in the long-run, a growing body of scholarly work has shown that democratization processes – particularly in war-torn societies – are highly conflictual, and under certain circumstances, democratization can make a return to war more likely. A recent study on the dilemmas of democratization in war-torn societies, From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Peacebuilding (2008), shows how introducing democracy in the wake of civil war raises a stark question: How can societies shattered by war, with all the deep social enmity, personal suffering, and economic devastation that war brings, simultaneously move toward peace and democracy when competitive politics and hard-fought elections exacerbate social and political conflict? One of the key findings is that pursuit of democracy can undermine efforts to secure peace, and efforts to secure peace can undermine the meaning and quality of democracy (Jarstad and Sisk, Eds., 2008). Countries emerging from war are often simultaneously undergoing democratization and peacebuilding. The dilemma arises in that many of the measures taken and reforms initiated to promote democracy – such as holding elections, reform of the media and the security sector – might have the unintended effect of producing conditions that facilitate or encourage polarization and violence. And on another level, efforts to deal with violence and enforce peace – in particular, by using coercive measures and including spoilers in the democratic process – may help to undermine the transition to democracy. How did we get here? Peace and democracy are both desirable outcomes, but promotion of democracy and the pursuit of peace can often work at cross purposes. Some of the context and background can be found in another recent study that assesses the interplay of war and peace, coercive diplomacy, and diplomatic imagination: Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World (2007). The 700+ page volume provides wide-ranging analyses of the sources of contemporary international conflict and of the means available by which that conflict can be prevented, managed, or resolved (Crocker, Hampson, and Aall, Eds., 2007). Leashing the Dogs of War is the third volume in a series of recent publications from the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) Press. The first of the trio, Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict, which appeared in 1996, reflected the humanitarian crises and ethnic violence that sprang up in Africa, the Balkans, and the Caribbean in the early post-Cold War period. By the mid-1990s, dreams of a new world order were already fading fast. There was a new and acute awareness of the feeble state of many societies and the daunting complexity of conflicts rooted in what the editors described as a “rich brew of ethnonationalism, religion, socioeconomic grievances, environmental degradation, collapsed states, globalized markets, and geopolitical shifts (Crocker, Hamspson, Aall, Eds., 1996).” Emerging Dynamics in Conflict Management The successor volume to Managing Global Chaos was Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict, published five years later in August 2001 (and just before September 11). Its carefully chosen title reflected a cautious optimism, optimism that both the frequency and intensity of intercommunal conflict were declining, and that diplomats and policymakers were learning some useful lessons about conflict management and peacemaking. That is, how third parties have some potential to manage or limit conflict, and sometimes to reach negotiated settlements and make them stick (Crocker, Hamspson, Aall, Eds., 2001). The volume editors and authors were under no illusions about the fragility of many recent settlements, the vulnerability of many regions to destabilizing shocks, and the lethal intractability of numerous hot spots. The geopolitical landscape had changed markedly by 2001, with several emerging dynamics that characterized the setting for conflict analysis and management. The first of these was For much of the first decade after the end of the Cold War, analysts focused, and not without reason, on ethnic and internal wars that formed the overwhelming majority of contemporary conflicts. But this concentrated focus on internal conflict may have also distracted us from appreciating the continued salience in some regions of endemic, interstate rivalry or hostility based on the sorts of factors that scholars have long recognized as conflict spurs or accelerants: concern for regional primacy, changing power relations, security dilemmas, regime legitimacy contests, and the absence of universally accepted regional or subregional “rules of the game.” One of the most dramatic illustrations of geopolitics was the open warfare and overt nuclear testing in South Asia in 1998. A second issue identified in Turbulent Peace is the notion that one-dimensional debates about interventionism and isolationism often miss a much richer reality of challenges and trade-offs in conflict management revolving around questions of sociopolitical context, timing, sequencing, and grasping the stages and cycles in the life of a conflict. All too often, the intervention debate has been handled as if the only real issue is military intervention, when there are in fact many other types of third-party-assisted processes by a range of external actors. The debate is framed as if the issue is a simple “yes or no” matter, and an “up or down” vote on support for UN peacekeeping. But a broader concept of intervention touches on such critical issues of feasibility and strategic management; the concept of mediatory peacemaking as a strategic enterprise; ethicalimperatives; the impartiality dilemma; the specific types of peacekeeping that have worked and those that have not; the phasing of intervention; the range of external, third-party, roles (official and non-official) in conflict management; and the problems associated with intervention that freeze or prolong conflicts rather than actually managing or resolving them. A third key issue is the continuing and still unresolved dialogue among scholars and practitioners about the The New Security Environment The new war on terrorism and the consequences of the U.S.-led interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have changed the global playing field in a serious way. The 1990s dilemma of humanitarian intervention and peacemaking are now joined by increasingly salient questions about how to effectively pursue nation-building and democratization processes in states that are internally divided, capacity deficient, and conflict ridden. U.S.-led interventions have also underscored the limits of military power and the vital importance of identifying other instruments to restore political order. The discussion and debate has now shifted to examine post-conflict strategies of conflict management, and what kinds of resources and capacity are required to help states make the transition from war to peace. They are also examining whether further outbreaks of violence and conflict can be successfully prevented. These issues have important implications for the teaching of international relations as a lot of contemporary discussion has focused on questions such as: Can democracy be imposed in states where we intervene? Can we rebuild war-torn societies? What is the role of outsiders in reinstating or creating from scratch a strong civil society? Can we quell or prevent the outbreak of sectarian violence, and if so, how? Introducing democracy in the wake of war has become a standard practice: since the 1990s, democratization is an integral part of international peacebuilding missions in the wake of civil war. The management of security raises a whole host of potential problems, challenges, and obstacles to democracy: the demobilization, return and reintegration of former combatants, lingering threats of political violence, the need for election-related dispute resolution, and solving the “credible commitment” problem through the deployment of peace operations. But the dilemma arises when peacekeepers help provide the security and stability necessary for initial steps toward democracy, while at the same time the very presence of foreign actors can undermine the long-term development. There is a complex relationship between democrat-ization and violence. Democratization creates new opportunities and motives for violence. And measures to combat violence – for instance, through the use of coercive measures and the inclusion of spoilers in politics – can undermine the democratization process. Political transitions have become a critical part of the equation, and power-sharing arrangements are one important way to address the challenge of war-to-democracy. But power sharing is essentially a coalescence of elites at the top, and one of the enduring concerns about power-sharing solutions are their top-down orientation, their perceived inflexibility, and the allegations that in many instances they reinforce ethnic, nationalist, or extremist tendencies. Democracy as a form of government is a way of resolving inherent conflicts in society peacefully. We agree to a set of rules, and focus on such issues as the rule of law, civil-society institution building, and other elements of what can broadly be called governance (or nation building). In making peace, negotiated political transitions (e.g., from communist dictatorship, from apartheid, from oppressive military or one-man rule) place a sharp focus on the significance of these issues since they impose on peacemakers and warring parties alike a seemingly stark choice among priorities: reconciliation, power sharing, justice, accountability to local or international authorities, adherence to democratic norms and universal legal principles, and the quest for peace and stability. The Role of Electoral Systems
Transitions from war to democracy also entail critical choices over electoral processes: the sequencing of elections, the electoral system formula, the nature of elections (e.g. to a legislative, constituent assembly, or both), and other critical election-related issues as application citizenship laws. Benjamin Reilly of the Australian National University evaluated the track record on the pivotal issue of elections in war-torn societies. In particular, he examined the conditions under which electoral processes may promote democratization but undermine peace, when peacebuilding undermines democratization, and the conditions under which electoral processes may contribute to both goals (Jarstad and Sisk, Eds., 2008). Reilly shows how elections held as part of a peace deal following a violent conflict highlight several crucial dilemmas of democratization in post-war societies. “Post-war elections” are now a feature of almost all efforts to democratize war-torn regions, with peace agreements routinely including provisions for elections to be held as part of the process of conflict termination, often with the assistance, supervision or sometimes direct control of the international community. But elections themselves can often become the focus of increasing tension and renewed violence (Jarstad and Sisk, Eds., 2008). Elections and democracy are often seen as the primary means of conflict management, with theorists arguing for the benefits of democratic competition in managing the tensions inherent in all societies, including war-torn ones. But an increasing body of scholarship points to the dangers of holding elections in conflict-prone societies, and the empirical reality that societies in early stages of democratization are often more, not less, conflict-prone. A brief survey of post-war elections shows that there has been a considerable variation in the relative success of elections in meeting the two goals of war termination and consolidation of democracy. In Namibia in 1989, El Salvador in 1994, or Mozambique in 1994, elections were seen to clearly play a vital role in making a decisive break from the past. In other cases, however, such as Angola’s abortive 1992 elections held under the Bicesse Peace Accord, or Liberia’s 1997 elections, flawed elections Haiti’s parliamentary and presidential elections in 1995 led to a first-ever transition of power, but also highlighted administrative deficiencies which undermined the credibility of the broader electoral process. By contrast, in Cambodia’s transitional United Nations polls of 1993, the technically successful elections were soon overwhelmed by the realities of power politics as the “losing” party at the elections returned to power through hardline tactics. In post-war Bosnia, successive elections held under the Dayton Agreement helped nationalist parties cement an early grip on political power, while in Kosovo and East Timor a more measured electoral timetable played a constructive role in terms of political development. Reilly also shows how more recently, in Papua New Guinea’s rebellious island of Bougainville, the combination of an extended electoral timetable, international observation and systematic innovations have helped secure one of the world’s most successful, if little-known, cases of post-war rebuilding (Jarstad and Sisk, Eds., 2008). Similarly, Liberia’s 2005 elections marked the end of a transition following the country’s second civil war, and resulted in Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state, former World Bank employee Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. While it is too early to evaluate the more recent high-profile elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, in both cases it is clear that elections themselves have not led to an end to armed hostilities, and in Iraq may have contributed to the ongoing sectarian conflict. One of the core problems facing post-war elections is the belief that all good things go together, that is, peace and democracy. While well-crafted elections may indeed be important instruments of peacebuilding, polls held in highly conflictual environments often have pernicious consequences. They can push political parties to focus on cultural, linguistic, religious, or other kinds of “ethnic” cleavages, promoting a focus on regional, rather than national, issues. They are inevitably an unattractive option for those groups who see themselves being consigned to permanent minority status (such as Sunni Arabs in Iraq), and are therefore likely to be violently opposed by the potential losers. The result is that many transitional elections are often saddled with unrealistic expectations, and expected to achieve inconsistent and sometimes incompatible goals. What is needed is a more realistic appraisal and recognition that elections can be potentially advantageous or injurious to post-war democratization, and that success is dependent on a careful consideration of timing, sequencing, mechanics, and administration issues. Building peace and promoting democracy in war-torn societies are both desirable goals for the international community, but they often work at cross purposes. The challenge is to find ways to make and sustain peace and promote democracy without one undermining the other. References
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Carlos E. Juárez is Professor of Political Science and Dean of the College of International Studies at Hawaii Pacific University (HPU). A specialist in international relations and comparative politics, he teaches graduate courses on international organization, politics in developing nations, the military in Latin American politics, and peacebuilding and conflict management, as part of HPU’s MA program in Diplomacy and Military Studies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and has been a visiting professor at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, research fellow at Oxford University and the University of California, San Diego, and a Fulbright Scholar to Mexico and the Czech Republic.