University of Canterbury Home
    • Admin
    UC Research Repository
    UC Library
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
    View Item 
    1. UC Home
    2. Library
    3. UC Research Repository
    4. Faculty of Arts | Te Kaupeka Toi Tangata
    5. Arts: Theses and Dissertations
    6. View Item
    1. UC Home
    2.  > 
    3. Library
    4.  > 
    5. UC Research Repository
    6.  > 
    7. Faculty of Arts | Te Kaupeka Toi Tangata
    8.  > 
    9. Arts: Theses and Dissertations
    10.  > 
    11. View Item

    Imposing the Liberal Peace: State-building and Neo-liberal Development in Timor-Leste (2015)

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    thesis_fulltext.pdf (1.690Mb)
    Cornish_S_Use_of_thesis_form_2014.pdf (131.7Kb)
    Type of Content
    Theses / Dissertations
    UC Permalink
    http://hdl.handle.net/10092/10287
    http://dx.doi.org/10.26021/4335
    
    Thesis Discipline
    Political Science
    Degree Name
    Master of Arts
    Publisher
    University of Canterbury. School of Language, Social and Political Sciences
    Collections
    • Arts: Theses and Dissertations [2035]
    Authors
    Cornish, Sara Elizabeth
    show all
    Abstract

    From the mid-1990s, the amalgamation of security, development, and humanitarian imperatives under the single umbrella of ‘state-building’ has provided a compelling justification for increasingly intrusive interventions into the political, economic, and social affairs of subject countries. Guided by the assumptions of liberal peace theory, state-building initiatives engage directly with states, seeking to achieve a reformulation of structures of government as a first step towards the implementation of wider socio-economic reforms. The state-building project is geared towards the construction of a particular form of statehood in subject states; state institutions are to be reconstructed in accordance with a liberal template, and tasked with establishing the necessary institutional environment for market-led development and the liberal peace.

    Contemporary discourses of state-building and development are fundamentally interlinked, representing a unified process of neo-liberal replication in subject states, whereby fundamental transformations of social, political, and economic structures are to be implemented and sustained through the construction of liberal state institutions. Pressure to court international approval due to conditions of aid dependence curtails the potential for meaningful democracy in subject countries. Key questions of social and economic policy are subsumed as technical matters of good governance and removed from domestic democratic contestation, facilitating a transfer of formerly domestic considerations into the international sphere. These interlocking processes of state-building and neo-liberal discipline have contributed to an inversion of sovereign statehood, whereby the state serves to channel inward an externally driven agenda, rather than acting as a sovereign expression of domestic interests. This reality raises important questions regarding the nature of democracy in post-conflict environments, and in particular the impact of state-building activities on the prospects for broadly inclusive democracy in subject states.

    This study will examine the evolution of state-building as a critical components of peace-building missions, its central assumptions and goals, and its implementation in practice in Timor-Leste. The state-building process in Timor-Leste has contributed to the formation of an insulated state with little basis in Timorese society. The democratic experience in Timor-Leste has been profoundly disempowering; conditions of aid dependence have constrained elected governments in key areas of social and economic policy, resulting in a loss of popular legitimacy and mounting public disenchantment. Closer examination of food and agricultural policy and management of Timorese oil reserves reveals the extent to which government policy remains constrained by international preferences. In these areas, the government’s inability to act in the interests of the Timorese public has compounded social hardships and popular discontent, contributing to the build-up of anti-government sentiment that manifested itself in the 2006 crisis.

    Keywords
    Timor-Leste; East Timor; state-building; peace-building; development; neo-liberal; good governance; liberal peace
    Rights
    Copyright Sara Elizabeth Cornish
    https://canterbury.libguides.com/rights/theses

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • Building the State and the Nation in Kosovo and East TimorAfter Conflict 

      Buldanlioglu Sahin, Selver (University of Canterbury. Political Science and Communication, 2007)
      The study of externally-led democratisation in conflict-affected societies has expanded over the last two decades. The introduction of democracy from the outside has attracted extensive scholarly interest in accordance ...
    • Domesticating by commodifying the liberal peace? Evidence from the southern Philippines 

      Espesor, Jovanie C. (Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, 2017)
      Liberal peacebuilding is the prominent and popular framework employed by intergovernmental organisations and many international non-government organisations in conflict management and resolution in conflictual societies ...
    • The good governance agenda for civil society : lessons from the Fa'aSamoa : an analysis of the good governance agenda for civil society and its liberal counterpart as they pertain to civil society institutions based on 'affective ties' 

      Iati, Iati (University of Canterbury, 1999)
      This thesis sets out to use the case of Samoa to challenge arguments contained in, the good governance agenda, and a liberal prescription, for civil society. The good governance agenda argues that institutions based on ...
    Advanced Search

    Browse

    All of the RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThesis DisciplineThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThesis Discipline

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics
    • SUBMISSIONS
    • Research Outputs
    • UC Theses
    • CONTACTS
    • Send Feedback
    • +64 3 369 3853
    • ucresearchrepository@canterbury.ac.nz
    • ABOUT
    • UC Research Repository Guide
    • Copyright and Disclaimer
    • SUBMISSIONS
    • Research Outputs
    • UC Theses
    • CONTACTS
    • Send Feedback
    • +64 3 369 3853
    • ucresearchrepository@canterbury.ac.nz
    • ABOUT
    • UC Research Repository Guide
    • Copyright and Disclaimer