Creating room for manoeuvre: domestic repertoires of action in international post-war interventions

Abstract

This article contributes to debates about the scope and influence of local agency in international state-and security-building interventions by investigating how domestic intermediary actors create and make use of their room for manoeuvre in intervention processes. The article empirically reconstructs a set of distinct domestic repertoires of action in intervention processes to highlight the different ways in which domestic actors 'manage' and 'push back' international donors. The article bases its argument on a qualitative study of domestic agency in two postwar political settings that have been exposed to multiple international state-and security-building interventions. It draws on problem-centred and expert interviews conducted in 2015 and 2016 in Côte d'Ivoire and Lebanon to make its case. KEYWORDS international interventions peacebuilding state-building local turn local agency lebanon côte d'ivoire

International interventions seen from the ‘Middle’: Perceptions of intermediary actors in Côte d’Ivoire and Lebanon

“…We argue that the relationships between donors and domestic actors can be described as one of mutual dependency: domestic actors from either government or civil society rely on donor funding to pursue their own agendas and projects, while donors require local partners to spend their money and to pursue their agendas. To a certain degree, the balance of power shifts with the stage of the funding cycle, with donors having near absolute agenda-setting power in the initial project phases, and domestic actors being more influential during the implementation phases (see further Birkholz, Scherf and Schroeder, 2017). Yet, instead of resulting in two straightforward and alternating power constellations, this mutual dependency plays out in ways that are more complex.…”