International interventions seen from the ‘Middle’: Perceptions of intermediary actors in Côte d’Ivoire and Lebanon

This article examines the perceptions of domestic actors in international governance and statebuilding interventions. To further decentre a research field that has so far focused primarily on the perceptions and representations of actors in the Global North, the article reconstructs how a specific set of domestic actors sees the presence of donors in international interventions and their own interactions with them. Drawing on recent advances in relational sociology, our analysis focuses on how domestic intermediary actors in two post-war political settings exposed to external state-building interventions conceive of and navigate their social relations with the interveners. We find that they frequently view interveners as mainly interest-oriented, bureaucratic and erratic actors. In contrast to studies that posit a clear-cut and static hierarchy between Northern interveners and Southern targets of interventions, the article moreover paints a more nuanced picture of the interactions and relations between interveners and ‘the intervened upon’. The article illustrates its argument by drawing on a series of problem-centred and expert interviews in Côte d’Ivoire and Lebanon.