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Capacity building

Democratic governance in post-conflict Liberia

Examining international interventions in post conflict Liberia.

Authors: Louise Andersen
Publisher: Danish Institute for International Studies , 2007

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This paper examines the collapse of the Liberian political order and the current challenge of reconstituting order. It addresses the ongoing post conflict state building process in Liberia. One of the most comprehensive peace building interventions in the world has been taking place in Liberia since 2003.It includes:

  • the deployment of 15,000 UN peacekeepers
  • the establishment of international control and oversight of the Liberian state apparatus
  • the formulation of a post-conflict reconstruction program that seeks to enhance national security, revitalise the economy, strengthen governance and rule of law, and rehabilitate infrastructure and basic service delivery
The paper finds that peace keeping in Liberia differs from other countries in that the country has come to serve as a virtual hot house for a new and significantly more coordinated and intrusive form of international engagement in post-conflict situations.

The paper suggests that to reconstitute order, there is a need for a new constitutional paradigm and a new institutional design that departs significantly from those that have failed. It argues for a system of polycentric governance that is better suited to the social and political realities in Africa’s fragile states, suggesting that the imposed system of unitary sovereignty has been a failure. The paper calls for a rethinking of the international community’s approach to state building, arguing that:
  • post-conflict order will only be democratic and sustainable if it is built from the ground up and based on internal capabilities and local knowledge, not on international blueprints
  • attempts to re-establish law and order through a strong central government involve a risk of reproducing the basic structural problems that have characterised the Liberian state since its creation
The paper suggests that Liberia could provide an indicator of the future direction of international intervention, implying a move towards longer and more coherent interventions.