Description
Why are Western international actors carrying out liberal peace interventions – that prioritise the necessity of democracy, the rule of law and human rights – in post-conflict societies? The prevailing answer to this question in the mainstream critical scholarship on international intervention is that: it is because of their deliberate intention to perpetuate a new Western liberal imperialism for the ideological control of the global society. However, this ‘neo-imperialist intentionality framework’ could not provide a perspective for delving into the agency of non-Western actors in the liberal peace project that is recently spotted. This paper recasts African interveners as non-Western subjects of liberal intervention discourse by asking: why are postcolonial African actors activating their agency in liberal peace interventions? While drawing on interview data, text corpora and critical discourse analysis within the contexts of African liberal interventions in Somalia, South Sudan and The Gambia, this paper locates this agency within the new-Gramscian perspective of hegemony and common sense. More importantly, this paper opens up a conversation for elucidating a broader conundrum in IR intervention discourse on why some non-Western interveners are committing to the liberal project despite its growing characterisation as a Western neo-imperialist scheme.