Consuming Democracy: Local Agencies and Liberal Peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract

Consuming Democracy offers a perspective on the peace building process in the DRC that emphasises local agencies and their engagements with international peace building interventions. Focusing on the first legislature of the Congolese Third Republic (2006-2011), Consuming Democracy provides a case study of how local agencies consume liberal democracy within the National Assembly. Through practices of consumption local agencies negotiate liberal democracy and make it their own. The liberal democratic framework is kept intact, but cannot function as foreseen. However, the liberal democratic framework itself also provides new tools through which local agencies renegotiate the unwritten rules of local political practices.