Globalization, Social Movements, and Peacebuilding

7. Peacebuilding as a Transformative and Deliberative Process

189 7 Peacebuilding as a Transformative and Deliberative Process James Bohman An important and developing feature of contemporary democracy is free and open deliberation, on the basis of which it becomes possible to institutionalize processes of constant change and renewal. While deliberation has many other functions within a political system, one of its important functions is to establish and maintain social peace in cases of conflict. Applying this idea at the transnational level is fraught with difficulties. Even in democracies, violence leads to the suspension of the political process , often at the cost of handing over much of self rule to executive power, with the consequence that democracies can become dominators not only of others but also of their own citizens. Often this process is made possible by negotiations involving various elites or leaders closed from public view. Having excluded the public in order to make the process more open and impartial, such deliberations lack important sources of legitimacy and may even exacerbate festering conflicts. Needless to say, it may be very difficult to initiate such processes after long-term conflict. This deficit of legitimacy, the overcoming of which is necessary for peace, can only be overcome by popular, deliberative, and multi-track peacebuilding. Peacebuilding must not only be deliberative; it must also involve the publics of each party in any conflict, lest it lack legitimacy. In cases of conflict, this sort of deliberative process cannot simply involve a small group of elites, nor even a small group of citizens, such as elected representatives or “minipublics,” the term for a select 190  Peacebuilding from Below group of citizens who make recommendations or decisions on behalf of others. Such political mechanisms of representation require already settled institutions if they are to deal successfully with societal grievances. Rather, postconflict peacebuilding requires difficult, crosscutting, macrodeliberative processes. This important kind of deliberation has not often been discussed by deliberative democrats. My argument aims to show that modern peacebuilding is a macro-deliberative process in three main steps. First, it is clear that the use of deliberative bodies enhances democratic legitimacy in a variety of ways, but in particular in cases of democratic reform. Indeed, peacebuilding as a form of democratic renewal must be legitimate along three dimensions: the process must become formally, deliberatively, and popularly legitimate across communities. But even this kind of legitimacy may be insufficient for the macro-deliberation necessary in many cases of peacebuilding. When confined to states, such processes are undermined by the structural features that lead to contests of sovereignty, in which one party succeeds at the cost of another, even if they occupy the same political space. This leads to my second main argument . As crosscutting, this political space in which peacebuilding occurs is transnational, and works when something analogous to “international society” emerges. The English School of International Relations used the term “international society” to describe a kind of normative order that is not based on an overarching authority. But “transnational society” may be the more apt term, precisely because such a normative order emerges as involving a variety of societies, groups, and individuals rather than sovereign states (Bohman 2007). The third dimension of successful peacebuilding concerns the role of civil society. While transnational spaces necessarily include publics and civil society as constitutive of them, peacebuilding requires organizations that act as purveyors of publicity and intermediaries that cut across the parties and mediate the creation of new societal bonds through processes of deliberation. These types of intermediaries have included the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom founded after WWI and the World Social Forum, which seek to establish not only publicity but also the conditions of collective agency needed for peacebuilding. In order for peacemaking to become a deliberative process, intermediaries like these Peacebuilding as Transformative and Deliberative Process  191 are necessary, as can be illustrated in various successful processes of peacebuilding, such as those that occurred in Northern Ireland. Given the need for society-wide or macro-deliberation, a more complex conception of transnational political legitimacy is required if we are to understand why such processes of peacemaking succeed, sometimes even in the face of deeply entrenched conflicts. The World Social Forum offers us a transnational understanding of peacebuilding based on processes of translation and mutual understanding that make it possible to promote more comprehensive and inclusive alternatives. Democratically Legitimate Reform In order to explore a conception of transnational political legitimacy related...