Adapting to survive: The peculiar fate of liberal governance models in east timor

Abstract

The prospects for grounding forms of governance responsive to socio-economic rights claims are dependent on dynamics of bargaining, negotiating, and engaging with local elites who mediate the potential relationship between interest articulation by local citizens and potentially emancipatory forms of intervention by the international community. These dynamics are explored in the context of East Timor. This chapter explores the liberal-legalist processes of trial and truth commission (the Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation [CAVR] truth commission and Special Panels for Serious Crimes) pursued there to account for pro-Indonesian violence in the early 2000s and persistent subordination of these international models of transitional justice to the very different development rationales of early Timorese governments that foregrounded reconciliation with its major trading partner in Jakarta. It furthermore explores the contemporary reality of an East Timor exploiting its vast oil reserves where the government consistently circumvents the complex regulatory regime designed by the international community to safeguard transparency in spending resource wealth to fund clientelist networks. In so doing, it contends that localised forms of elite political socialisation enjoying their own forms of rationality and legitimacy will inevitably mediate, compromise, or bend even thoroughly revised forms of liberal intervention like transitional justice in ways that have ambiguous benefits for marginalised communities.