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Rasarantnam, Madurika and Malagodi, Mara (2012) 'Eyes wide shut: persistent conflict and liberal peace-building in Nepal and Sri Lanka.' Conflict, Security and Development, 12 (3). pp. 299-327.

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Abstract

The decisive, albeit different, endings of armed conflict in Sri Lanka and Nepal and subsequent post-war developments challenge key assumptions about conflict that have informed post-Cold War international efforts to produce peace in such conflict zones. International intervention—including in Sri Lanka and Nepal—characterises armed conflict as sustained by specific political economies that can only be stably resolved by establishing liberal democracy and market economics. This paper examines liberal peace engagement in Sri Lanka and Nepal to challenge a crucial assumption of the persistent conflict thesis, namely the separation between political contestation and armed conflict. It argues that the divergent post-conflict outcomes of continuing ethnic polarisation in Sri Lanka and constitutional reform in Nepal reveal strong continuities in the dynamics of pre-war, war and post-war politics. This continuity challenges the presumed separation of politics and violence that drove international engagement to produce liberal peace and suggests that such engagement, far from encouraging reform, may have (inadvertently) sustained conflict in both cases.

Item Type: Journal Article
SOAS Departments & Centres: Legacy Departments > Faculty of Languages and Cultures > Department of the Languages and Cultures of South Asia
ISSN: 14678802
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2012.703536
Date Deposited: 06 Aug 2012 08:38
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/14128

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