Peace by Other Means? Ruptures and Neoliberal Continuities in Duque’s Colombia (2018–2022)

Peacebuilding has come to exert a powerful pull in international relations (IR). Yet while considerable attention has been paid to what peacebuilding does to people, far less has been devoted to what it does to political analysis itself. This article explores this question through a poststructuralist analysis of the discourse of Colombia’s former president, Iván Duque (2018–2022). While dominant interpretations portray his administration as a securitarian rollback from the transformative ambitions of the 2016 Peace Accords, such readings obscure the deeper continuities linking the earlier model of “territorial peace” to the subsequent framework of “peace with legality.” After critically re-examining Duque’s discourse on peace and security, the paper turns to a theme that has remained largely overlooked: development and the transformation of territories. For all the important reconfigurations, Duque’s discourse remained structured by a long-standing neoliberal and colonial rationality, oriented towards adapting marginalized populations to the imperatives of capitalist markets. Beyond the Colombian case, the article thus invites a more critical engagement with peacebuilding as a frame for understanding political dynamics in post-conflict settings.