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The Politics of Post-war/post-Conflict Reconstruction

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Development Aims and scope

Abstract

Shalmali Guttal argues that post-conflict/war reconstruction is not simply about rebuilding lives and societies after periods of violent conflicts, crises and upheavals. Reconstruction is about establishing a market based capitalist economic system, twinned with a political regime that is willing to promote and defend free market-capitalism. She proposes that the hallmark of the ‘reconstruction model’ is neo-liberalism – an unregulated, market economy, liberal democracy, free flow of private capital, privatization, removal of domestic regulations and economic protections, and ‘good governance’, which in practice means that the fledgling state's responsibilities are re-oriented towards facilitating and protecting free market conditions for creating wealth, much of which is expropriated by private sector actors from outside the country and/or consolidated by national elites.

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Notes

  1. Remarks delivered by Ambassador Carlos Pascual at The Center For Strategic & International Studies, 20 October 2004.

  2. See the resources gathered by the Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge (CORKR), www.yale.edu/cpg/corkr.html; The Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge, sometimes known as ‘CORKR’ or the ‘Cambodia Campaign’, was a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) founded in 1989 to advocate progressive change in US policy towards Cambodia. In February 1995, CORKR merged with several other Asia-oriented advocacy groups into the Asia-Pacific Advocacy Center, based in Washington, DC.

  3. See, for example:

  4. UN Human Rights Investigator in Afghanistan Ousted Under U.S. Pressure. Thursday, April 28th, 2005. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/28/1346246

  5. Bretton Woods Project: http://brettonwoodsproject.org/article.shtml?cmd[126]=x-126-16554. Also see, ‘Bank's policy on development cooperation and conflict,’ World Bank web page.

  6. Bretton Woods Project: http://brettonwoodsproject.org/article.shtml?cmd[126]=x-126-43345

  7. Bretton Woods Project: http://brettonwoodsproject.org/article.shtml?cmd[126]=x-126-43345

  8. The Paris Club of creditor countries includes Austria, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.

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Authors
  1. Shalmali Guttal
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Critiques ‘reconstruction model’ in the light of neo-liberalism

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Guttal, S. The Politics of Post-war/post-Conflict Reconstruction. Development 48, 73–81 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.development.1100169

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.development.1100169

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