Suchergebnisse

A necessary ingredient for peacebuilding and development after conflict is stable and participatory local governance. Yet peacekeeping and state-building operations conducted by the international community still focus on the establishment of national institutions and do not ensure local participation. The World Bank's Community Empowerment and Local Governance Project (CEP) was supposed to create sub-national governance to supplement the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). The programme was an innovative attempt to combine development with state building in an emergency phase of a post-conflict setting. The results pose questions about the timing of establishing local governance and the degree of social engineering that can be conducted in a post-conflict environment. They show the relevance of sufficient 'local knowledge' in project design and the need for improved inter-organisational cooperation.1

Circumstances that resulted in the United Nation's failed attempt to establish sustainable democratic institutions in East Timor are examined. An overview of traditional East Timorese political dynamics is provided, indicating that authority was conventionally divided between political & ritual authorities, not local & national governments. After reviewing factors that prompted the fragmentation of the National Counsel of Timorese Resistance & the subsequent assumption of political authority by Fretilin, it is stressed that divisions between the legislature & the executive-military forces further complicated East Timorese democratization. It is subsequently asserted that the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor failed to recognize the import of local political & ritual traditions, particularly those concerning legitimate authority, in its attempt to implement Western democratic institutions at the national level. Recommendations for revitalizing East Timor's state-building processes are also offered, eg, gradually integrating local institutions into the democratic state. J. W. Parker

A necessary ingredient for peacebuilding & development after conflict is stable & participatory local governance. Yet peacekeeping & state-building operations conducted by the international community still focus on the establishment of national institutions & do not ensure local participation. The World Bank's Community Empowerment & Local Governance Project (CEP) was supposed to create sub-national governance to supplement the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). The programme was an innovative attempt to combine development with state building in an emergency phase of a post-conflict setting. The results pose questions about the timing of establishing local governance & the degree of social engineering that can be conducted in a post-conflict environment. They show the relevance of sufficient 'local knowledge' in project design & the need for improved inter-organisational cooperation. 15 References. Adapted from the source document.

Centuries of Portuguese rule and decades of Indonesian rule over East Timor did not manage to eradicate local socio-political structures that have proved resilient. It is, therefore, not surprising that a state-building exercise by the international community was unable to have much effect on, let alone transform, the local level. This article assesses the clash between the international paradigm of attempting to (re)build the Western liberal-style, democratic state under UNTAET and the existing indigenous paradigm of traditional political legitimacy that prevails among the majority of the population at the local level. Without reconciling the two in future UN interventions, such efforts will continue to be either irrelevant to a self-evolving reality or in fact cause local systems to collapse without being able to adequately replace them. The puzzle of how to build local government, given the two unrelated paradigms, has to be solved. (Contemp Southeast Asia/DÜI)