[TimorLesteStudies] ANU Seminar: 1 March 2012 - Peacebuilding and the Predatory Political Economy of Insecurity: Evidence from Cambodia, East Timor and Afghanistan

[Bu Wilson]

ANU SSGM Seminar
Peacebuilding and the Predatory Political Economy of Insecurity: Evidence from Cambodia, East Timor and Afghanistan
Assistant Professor Naazneen H. Barma

11:00am - 01:00pm
01 March 2012
PSC Reading Room, 4th Floor, Hedley Bull Centre (130), Garran Road, ANU
Abstract

International peacebuilding interventions in post-conflict countries 
are intended to transform the socio-political context that led to 
violence and thereby build a stable and lasting peace. Yet the UN's 
transitional governance strategy of peacebuilding is ill-suited to the 
challenge of dealing with the predatory political economy of insecurity 
that often emerges in post-conflict societies. The approach is typically
 co-opted into a domestic political dynamic that prevents the 
consolidation of legitimate and effective democratic governance and 
leaves post-conflict countries vulnerable to renewed conflict and 
persistent insecurity. Evidence from peacebuilding attempts in Cambodia,
 East Timor and Afghanistan illustrates that the domestic elites 
empowered by the international community subsequently move to 
consolidate their holds on power in a zero-sum political game relying on
 predation and patronage. International interventions can only craft 
lasting peace by understanding the political economy of conflict 
persistence and the potential policy levers for altering, rather than 
perpetuating, those dynamics.


About the Speaker


Naazneen H. Barma is Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs
 at the Naval Postgraduate School. Her research and teaching focus on 
the political economy of development, natural resource governance, and 
international interventions in post-conflict states. She has worked 
extensively for the World Bank, with a regional specialisation in East 
Asia and the Pacific. Barma has published academic articles on political
 economy, governance, innovation, and institution-building in the 
developing world and has co-authored policy-oriented pieces on the 
political economic implications of the evolving international system. 
She is co-editor of The Political Economy Reader: Markets as Institutions and co-author of Rents to Riches? The Political Economy of Natural Resource-Led Development.


--
Dr Bu V.E. Wilson
T: Australia +61  0  407 087 086
T: Timor-Leste + 670 744 0011
E: buvewilson at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/easttimorstudies/attachments/20120228/b9a81d79/attachment.html