Sri Lanka’s Schmittian Peace: Sovereignty, Enmity and Illiberal Order

Abstract

The dominant discourses and practices of post-Cold War liberal peacebuilding are increasingly challenged by illiberal and authoritarian alternatives. This article adds to the emerging literature on ‘authoritarian conflict management’ and ‘illiberal peace’ using the work of the controversial German jurist Carl Schmitt, the foremost theoretician of anti-liberal thought in the twentieth-century. I use the case of Sri Lanka to illustrate how Schmitt can be useful in understanding illiberal peace, not merely as an aberration from liberal norms of conflict resolution, but as an alternative paradigm that has an increasing global resonance beyond particular case studies. The Schmittian framework suggests that the most likely trend for postliberal peace is not towards an emancipatory model of hybridity and compromise, but a retrograde ‘illiberal turn’ towards authoritarian political order and highly illiberal practices.