Peacebuilding Paradigms

Peacebuilding is explained by combining interpretive frameworks (paradigms) that have evolved from the subfields of international relations and comparative politics.

The 1990s saw a constant increase in international peace missions, predominantly led by the United Nations, whose mandates were more and more extended to implement societal and political transformations in post-conflict societies. However, in many cases these missions did not meet the high expectations and did not acquire a sufficient legitimacy on the local level. Written by leading experts in the field, this edited volume brings together ‘liberal’ and ‘post-liberal’ approaches to peacebuilding. Besides challenging dominant peacebuilding paradigms, the book scrutinizes how far key concepts of post-liberal peacebuilding offer sound categories and new perspectives to reframe peacebuilding research. It thus moves beyond the ‘liberal’–‘post-liberal’ divide and systematically integrates further perspectives, paving the way for a new era in peacebuilding research which is theory-guided, but also substantiated in the empirical analysis of peacebuilding practices. This book will be essential reading for postgraduate students and scholar-practitioners working in the field of peacebuilding. By embedding the subject area into different research perspectives, the book will also be relevant for scholars who come from related backgrounds, such as democracy promotion, transitional justice, statebuilding, conflict and development research and international relations in general.

This book examines the logic behind the shifts and paradigm changes within the scholarship on peacebuilding. In particular, the book is concerned with examining if, and how, these shifts have significantly altered how we think about peacebuilding beyond the ‘liberal peacebuilding’ paradigm. To do so, the book engages with the logic of critique that has led to the emergence of different theoretical approaches to peacebuilding, from hands-on institutionalisation, to the ‘local turn’. It uses the case of Kosovo to understand how a lessons-learnt approach facilitated the shift towards more invasive and intrusive forms of peacebuilding first. However, it is also crucial to understanding the recent local turn, as the rise of local ownership discourses in Kosovo is fundamentally tied to the critiques of extensive international missions, and the associated resistance and marginalisation of local agency. The book examines the implications of the framing of ‘everyday’ agency in order to assess the extent to which these bottom-up approaches have been able to by-pass the problems attributed to the liberal peace approach. It argues that despite its critical and radical intentions, the local turn retains certain foundational modernist and positivist qualities that have so far characterised the very mainstream approaches these critiques claim to transcend. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, statebuilding, peace and conflict studies, security studies and International Relations in general.

This book provides an in-depth analysis into the ways in which local leaders impact internationally-led democratic transition. Using three key case studies, Burundi, Cambodia and Liberia, it re-evaluates current transition paradigms delivering a new framework for understanding the roles of local leaders in democratic transition and peacebuilding.

What is the relationship between leadership and peace? What kind of leadership styles, processes and strategies are required to gain a deeper understanding of local context while at the same time maintaining the trust and cooperation of host authorities and other stakeholders on the ground? As concerns mount about the continued relevance and efficiency of UN peace operations, Youssef Mahmoud – who led several challenging peace missions in Africa – draws on many years of experience to offer insights into how political leadership might be exercised to help restore and nurture peace. Mahmoud makes the case for a paradigm shift in the type of leadership required to bring about strong, global diplomacy for peace. Making extensive use of the authors' unique personal experiences in Burundi, Central African Republic and Chad, the book offers an unparalleled insight into the leadership challenges of complex and often seemingly intractable conflict situations.

The international community has followed up its 2001 invasion of Afghanistan with a complex, multi-faceted peacebuilding project. However, informed observers believe that this Western-led mission in Afghanistan has failed to address the inherent peacebuilding needs of Afghanistan and has hindered the formation of a locally experienced sustainable peace. In response, emerging peacebuilding theories and rhetoric have pointed to an urgent need for revised peacebuilding paradigms and strategies that hold local, Afghan ownership of peacebuilding activities as a central concern. This book responds to this need for revised peacebuilding paradigms and: (1) introduces the topic of local ownership of peacebuilding in Afghanistan; (2) surveys current shifts in peacebuilding theory and practice that are only starting to be realized on the ground; (3) sets the context for a discussion of local ownership of peacebuilding; (4) reports on the perceptions of foreign and Afghan peacebuilding leaders working in Afghanistan in regards to the journey towards local ownership of peacebuilding; and (5) suggests the creation of a locally designed and led conflict transformation system that might help restructure local-foreign relations and advance the journey towards Afghan ownership of peacebuilding.

Attentive to intersecting issues of colonialism, political marginalization, and ethnic diversity, this book examines the crucial role that local actors play in working towards sustainable peace in Mindanao, Philippines. Interviewees include both those involved in the formal peace process between the Bangsamoro people and the government of the Philippines, as well as those who have worked more broadly in building a local culture of peace through activities such as education, dialogues, awareness-building, or social reconciliation. This book provides provocative insights for multidimensional peacebuilding strategies in conflict-impacted communities, regions, and nations.

The book offers a critical analysis of legitimacy in peacebuilding, with a focus on peace negotiations and civil society participation in particular. The aim of this book is to unpack the meaning of legitimacy for the population in peacebuilding processes and the relationship this has with civil society involvement. There is a growing consensus for addressing local concerns in peacebuilding, with the aim of ensuring local ownership. Moreover, scholars have noted a relationship between civil society inclusion in peace negotiations and legitimacy. Yet, the very idea of legitimacy remains a black box. Using data from original empirical fieldwork – including over 100 semi-structured interviews and 12 focus group discussions – the book focuses on two case studies of negotiations that, respectively, ended a long civil war in Liberia in 2003 and ended the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008. It argues that civil society involvement is conceptually insufficient to show a multidimensional understanding of legitimacy. Instead, the book shows a complex picture of legitimate peace negotiations, based on outcome and participation-based characteristics with the involvement of both ‘guarantors’ of legitimacy and a more general civic agency which includes the general population. Through forms of participative communication, the passive audience become active stakeholders in the construction of legitimacy. This has repercussions for how we think about civil society and peacebuilding more generally. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, security studies and IR in general.