Abstract
The interplay between diverse types of non-state actors in conflict and post-conflict settings have recently gained increased attention in IR. Various interventions in the post-colonial countries and subsequent coalitions assembled on the ground have brought together actors with different identities, goals, resources and rationalities, creating hybrid institutions and practices during the process.
This paper looks in particular at security practices and development projects of UNIFIL's civil and military agents in southern Lebanon. These small and middle scale development programs, executed in the context of weak state authority and concurrent Hezbollah's parallel military and 'resistance society-building' project, are realized by UNIFIL within a mixture of specific developmental and security rationalities.
As such, they aim to transform societal environment, where the mission is taking place, to more secure and favorable for its personnel. Using the insights from governmentality studies, Bourdieu's social theory and abovementioned case study, this paper investigates how the international liberal actor engages with post-colonial hybrid political and security order.
It argues that the interplay of various liberal rationalities and local field of practice leads to renegotiation of hybrid order, rather than to liberal state as envisioned by international liberal actors.