The politics of post-war/post-conflict reconstruction

Shalmali Guttal argues that post-conflict/war reconstruction is not simply about rebuilding lives and societies after periods of violent conflicts, crises and upheavals. Reconstruction is about establishing a market based capitalist economic system, twinned with a political regime that is willing to promote and defend free market-capitalism. She proposes that the hallmark of the 'reconstruction model' is neo-liberalism - an unregulated, market economy, liberal democracy, free flow of private capital, privatization, removal of domestic regulations and economic protections, and 'good governance', which in practice means that the fledgling state's responsibilities are re-oriented towards facilitating and protecting free market conditions for creating wealth, much of which is expropriated by private sector actors from outside the country and/or consolidated by national elites. © 2005 Society for International Development.