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Paper short abstract

This paper shows how liberal peacebuilding reforms in Pakistan’s former FATA, were reshaped by local elites. Drawing on ethnography, it argues reforms were used through patronage to sustain exclusionary politics, challenging liberal peace and attempts to romanticize “the local.”

Paper long abstract

This paper explores how internationally driven liberal peacebuilding reforms, intended to address security and governance in Pakistan’s former FATA—mainly via the Political Parties Act to counter militant influence—were interpreted and appropriated by new local political elites. Drawing on political settlement theory and ethnographic fieldwork, the study shows that new actors instrumentalized reforms through patronage, networks, and clientelism, producing exclusionary political marketplaces. The paper challenges liberal peacebuilding by exposing the limits of externally imposed reforms. It also challenges post-liberal peace by contesting romantic claims that ‘the local’ is participatory or emancipatory, showing instead that it often reproduces exclusionary politics.