Franchised States and Beyond

Abstract

This book empirically scrutinizes paradoxes of peacebuilding by showing how the Liberian state was being rebuilt as a global phenomenon through peacebuilding. With regard to the anthropological perspectives on organization and sovereignty, it was possible to see Liberia as a franchised state and thereby argue that even if the ideology behind peacebuilding is built on Western values and ideas, it is not necessarily Western goggles that determine how peacebuilding, and the organizations through which it is implemented, is sub-situated. That is determined by how institutions are built and filled with purpose and content through human practices.

At the aggregate level, it is not inconceivable that states like Liberia could represent a relatively new kind of state formation where the status of the national-state yields terrain to new types of state formations that exist in a combination of state-like agencies such as NGOs, corporations, and international organizations or as franchised states. The book shows how global processes like peacebuilding may challenge our conception of states, causing new kinds of state formations and making it necessary to revisit questions concerning sovereignty.