Description: Together the essays provide a theoretical and empirical critique of global liberal governance and, as they note challenges to regional and international cooperation, they reveal that global liberal governance may threaten fragile governments and endanger human security at all levels.
Review Quotes:
"Scholars investigating the nexus of neoliberal governance and geopolitics, those interested in the practical limitations of international law, and those exploring everyday, lived experience of international policy will all find sections of this thoughtful, well researched volume useful."--African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review
"A strong, multi-regional analysis of global liberal governance, its practice, and outcomes. By adopting a critical discursive approach to these questions, these essays challenge conventional narratives about recent operations, both the most turbulent and the most successful."--Kenneth Omeje, editor of Conflict and Peacebuilding in the African Great Lakes Region
"Abu Bakarr Bah provides an incisive analysis of the different trajectories of war, peace building, and state reconstitution in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte D'Ivoire. Rich in empirical data and theoretical reflections, it shows how the international community, driven by new humanitarian and political paradigms, contributed to resuscitating these decaying states from the maelstrom of the 1990s and 2000s. It offers veritable lessons for everyone invested in a stable and prosperous West Africa."--Ismail Rashid - Vasser College
"In International Statebuilding in West Africa, Bah and Emmanual tackle a critically important but almost always overlooked question in the study of civil war and "failed states" how can states be built transformatively in the wake of civil wars? All too often, the moment of rebuilding in the wake of war focuses on patching together the state that was, typically with all their flaws and often replicating the very features that nurtured war. This book asks what might be possible if this moment was utilized to imagine new states, states that reflect the diverse peoples, needs, and cultural histories of their nations. Through a careful articulation of what happened in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Cote d'Ivoire, Bah and Emmanuel offer fresh and vitally important insights for the possibilities of building better states, and ensuring peaceful and prosperous futures. A must-read for peace studies scholars."--Dr. Catherine E. Bolten - University of Norte Dame