Peace, Self-Governance and International Engagement: A Postcolonial Ethic of Pragmatic Peacebuilding.

Postcolonialism is usually associated with a critique of neo-colonial features of global politics where external actors violate internal norms and traditions in the name of peace and development. The mission of building a liberal peace in post-conflict societies through transitional governance is perhaps the clearest example of such a feature in post-colonial times. Nevertheless, while pointing in the right direction, this critique of external interference is insufficient as a basis for more legitimate forms of global governance. The damage of imperialistic colonialism is made, and a postcolonial ethic of non-hegemonic engagement rather than a reactionary politics of disengagement must follow in its wake. Actually, this is more in line with postcolonial theory than a reliance on the internal-external nexus. It is exactly the non-reversible hybridity of the colonial and the indigenous, the modern and the traditional, that postcolonialism is concerned with. On this background, this paper challenges standard conceptualizations of liberal peacebuilding in a search for a better theoretical basis for non-colonial peacebuilding practices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]