A long view of liberal peace and its crisis

Rampton, David; Nadarajah, Suthaharan

Abstract

The ‘crisis’ of liberal peace has generated considerable debate in International Relations. However, analysis is inhibited by a shared set of spatial, cultural and temporal assumptions that rest on and reproduce a problematic separation between self-evident ‘liberal’ and ‘non-liberal’ worlds, and locates the crisis in presentist terms of the latter’s resistance to the former’s expansion. By contrast, this article argues that efforts to advance liberal rule have always been interwoven with processes of alternative order-making, and in this way are actively integral, not external, to the generation of the subjectivities, contestations, violence and rival social orders that are then apprehended as self-evident obstacles and threats to liberal peace and as characteristic of its periphery. Making visible these intimate relations of co-constitution elided by representations of liberal peace and its crisis requires a long view and an analytical frame that encompasses both liberalism and its others in the world. The argument is developed using a Foucauldian governmentality framework and illustrated with reference to Sri Lanka.

Citation

Rampton, D., & Nadarajah, S. (2016). A long view of liberal peace and its crisis. European Journal of International Relations, 23(2), 441-465. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066116649029

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 18, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Jun 16, 2016
• Publication Date: Jun 16, 2016
• Deposit Date: May 2, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: May 2, 2016
• Journal: European Journal of International Relations
• Print ISSN: 1354-0661
• Electronic ISSN: 1460-3713
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 441-465
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066116649029
• Keywords: Liberal peace, international order, liberalism, nationalism, governmentality, Sri Lanka
• Additional Information: Additional Information : First published online by Sage on 16 June 2016