The Supply and Demand of Peace

Abstract: The purpose of this essay was to examine the structural composition of the global hegemony, and how it was expressed in peace building in Iraq. In order to examine this, the neoliberal hegemony was outlined with the help of Rovert Cox’s notions of structures and other critical scholars’ notions of neoliberalism. The neoliberal hegemony was expressed in Iraq through an extensive marketization forcing the sovereign state of Iraq into an internationalized free-market state with limited possibilities to create a welfare-system of strong labour movements. Focus on free-markets also side-lined a democratic transition, and did also affect the manner in which state building and the Rule of Law was carried out. The study has a critical approach and aims to construct an initial theoretical framework of neoliberal peacebuilding. The material processed is mostly secondary material, but is mainly based on the promulgated orders of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) who was in charge of Iraq after the invasion by the coalition of the willing. The time scope of the study is the time in which the CPA had authority over Iraq.