ABSTRACT
This chapter engages in ‘conceptual scoping’, investigating how forms and assignments of responsibility in war-torn societies have changed in light of the pluralisation of authority and how they have affected basic criteria of liberal governance, such as accountability, in particular regarding human rights issues. The field of peacebuilding has been transformed by the commercialisation of security functions, which first took place in the markets of Western industrial countries, but extended rapidly to the ‘Global South’. Commercialisation ultimately led to the entry of transnational security suppliers as active players into statebuilding and peacebuilding operations. Shearing and Wood describe the trend as a mix of “planned devolution and unplanned pluralization”. The chapter also explores two strategies to counter the shortcomings of polycentric governance such as institutional disintegration with regard to non-state actors: first, the recovery of state-based authority and control, and, second, the empowerment of marginalised local groups through experimental forms of authorisation.
