The Clash of Paradigms: International Administration and Local Political Legitimacy in East Timor

Abstract

Introduction The paradigm of international intervention to rebuild states that have failed, or to build them where they have not existed, constitutes the Westphalian model with governing institutions developed as a result of European history, including a national executive, legislature, and judiciary. It was the standard of measurement of collapse in Somalia, and the basis of large-scale deployments in Cambodia and the Balkans. The end-state of such operations has invariably been an internationally supervised or organized and conducted free and fair election. This democratic impulse has become institutionalized in missions deployed in the wake of the Cold War, including its consideration as a human right. (2) However, the track record of these exercises, resulting supposedly in democracy, having taken hold after the international community withdraws, has defied their purpose. The idea of the democratic state is that it functions as an entity in which the population participates. What seems to be frequently overlooked is the fact that most populations have never experienced a democratic state nor are their internal paradigms based on liberal-style democratic principles. This is even more true for populations whose paradigms, through which everything new is filtered, came into being in a non-state environment. Traditional society developed to be able to confront a different set of daily and political challenges from the outside. To conduct successful state-building, it is therefore crucial for the international community to understand local social structures and ideas of political authority and legitimacy--that is, the local paradigms. Based on this kind of knowledge, a new state-structure can be set up and the implementation of it can happen in a way that will gain local recognition. A government or state-bodies that do not fit with the population's ideas of political legitimacy might be in accordance with international human rights, but contradict local participation. The international community adheres to its own values, but the population ends up with a government and state-bodies that are not accepted within the worldview of the local population (though capable of formal recognition by the international community). The recent attempt at state-building in East Timor illustrates this clearly. The Transitional Administration built institutions based on the assumption that there were no strong concepts and ideas existing on the local level, and that the population just had to be taught democracy. This ignored the fact that human beings grow up in a social environment with powerful ideas of how to classify and understand their world. Local perception of practices was perceived as cultural folklore and was not accorded much significance. Therefore, international attempts often failed or had marginal impact. If planners had accounted for local paradigms, Timorese history, and the evolution of local power structures and political ideas, they might have realized the resilience and stability of local structures. The actual scale of the hurdles of democratization and state-building would have become apparent. This story can be told through the prism of local political leadership in East Timor. Village and sub-district chiefs and political authorities on these levels are clashing on points of traditional ideas and modernity. These power-holders are the most influential and visible ones for the majority of the population. Hence, it is at these levels one can follow the fate of democratization. Social structures and concepts of political authority are the basic matrix on which the holistic socio-cosmos of the local populations is built. Local Social Structures and Political Concepts In traditional East Timorese societies, the kinship and marriage system forms an important basis of the social structure. …

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