Could democracy be a trigger for conflict? : The case of democratic violence in Liberia

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is to prove the hypothesis that liberal democracy could trigger conflict when implemented to a post-conflict country. During the last decades there has been a debate regarding whether the implementation of liberal peacebuilding and liberal democracy is a mean for peace or a mean for conflict. Researchers arguing for the importance of democracy claims that it is the most peaceful regime and that democracies almost never engage in war. The critics of the liberal democracy argue that the norms and values that characterizes the liberal democracy is not suited for countries with other norms, that it is not a substantial mean for promoting human development and security and that the peacebuilding efforts of the West simply is a mean to control the world security. I have in this thesis presented the research debate and placed myself amongst the critics of the liberal democracy. The case of Liberia was used to try and prove the hypothesis. The method used is qualitative. I have used a qualitative text analysis as well as the method of process-tracing to process the information. The theories used are the democratic peace theory and the congruence theory. The research questions which I have based my study on are the following; Could the implementation of liberal democracy as a mean for peace, on the contrary bring conflict instead? Was it the liberal democracy that casued a continuation of the conflict in Liberia? The results found is that the transition towards liberal democracy does entail conflictual elements and that there is the possibility of an aggravation of the conflict unless certain factors such as the timing of election and the level of security are thought of. In the case of Liberia there are facts showing that the liberal democracy could have aggravated the conflict, there are however other factors playing a role in this as well and I have therefore not been able to draw the conclusion that my hypothesis is true. Nonetheless I have been able to draw the conclusion that the implementing of liberal democracy is a potential factor behind the continuation of violence in Liberia. The liberal democracy did not create peace as the democratic peace theory suggests.