The Political Economy Of Regional Peacemaking

In The Political Economy of Regional Peacemaking, scholars examine the efficacy of trade agreements, economic sanctions, and other strategies of economic statecraft for the promotion of peace both between rival states and across conflict-ridden regions more generally. In the introduction, Steven E. Lobell and Norrin M. Ripsman pose five central questions: (1) What types of economic statecraft, including incentives and sanctions, can interested parties employ? (2) Who are the appropriate targets in the rival states—state leaders, economic and social elites, or society as whole? (3) When should specific economic instruments be used to promote peace—prior to negotiations, during negotiations, after signature of the treaty, or during implementation of the treaty? (4) What are the limits and risks of economic statecraft and economic interdependence? (5) How can economic statecraft be used to move from a bilateral peace agreement to regional peace? The chapters that follow are grouped in three sections, corresponding to the three stages of peacemaking: reduction or management of regional conflict; peacemaking or progress toward a peace treaty; and maintenance of bilateral peace and the regionalization of the peace settlement. In each chapter, the contributors consider the five key questions from a variety of methodological, historical, cultural, and empirical perspectives, drawing data from the Pacific, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The conclusion expands on several themes found in the chapters and proposes an agenda for future research.

This work explains how regional rivals make peace and how outside actors can encourage regional peacemaking. Through a qualitative empirical analysis of all the regional rivalries that terminated in peace treaties in the twentieth century - including detailed case studies of the Franco-German, Egyptian-Israeli, and Israeli-Jordanian peace settlements - the text concludes that efforts to encourage peacemaking that focus on changing the attitudes of the rival societies or democratizing the rival polities to enable societal input into security policy are unlikely to achieve peace.

This book focuses on the economic dimensions of peace processes and examines the opportunities and constraints for assisting negotiated exits out of conflict. Various works have addressed the economic characteristics and consequences of armed conflicts over the past two decades, including issues such as ‘blood diamonds’, natural resource wars, economically motivated armed violence, self-financing conflict, or the complicity of companies and state elites in conflict economies. However, rather than treating these issues as obstacles for peace, this book explores whether they can be opportunities for peacemaking by adopting a political-economy perspective. The book looks at income sharing from natural resources as an opportunity for forward-looking peacemaking strategies, and the implications of deal-making in situations in which war economies and insecurity provide strongmen with disproportionate political and economic power. The book also highlights that peace processes are not necessarily about the rectification of a conflict’s ‘root causes’, but rather about what matters most to the main stakeholders at the moment when a peace process starts taking shape. Finally, efforts to establish a lasting peace need to go beyond the traditional set of actors associated with peace processes. The strategic involvement of donor agencies, companies, and diaspora communities can strengthen forward-looking peace processes. The book will help both student and practitioner audiences to better understand armed conflicts and their belligerents, optimize the planning and management of peace initiatives, and shape expectations in peace agreements. It will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict studies, development studies, International Political Economy and International Relations in general.

The book provides critical perspectives that reach beyond the technical approaches of international financial institutions and proponents of the liberal peace formula. It investigates political economies characterized by the legacies of disruption to production and exchange, by population displacement, poverty, and by 'criminality'.

This volume examines and evaluates the impact of international statebuilding interventions on the political economy of conflict-affected countries over the past 20 years. It focuses on countries that are emerging, or have recently emerged, from periods of war and protracted conflict. The interventions covered fall into three broad categories: international administrations and transformative occupations (East Timor, Iraq, and Kosovo); complex peace operations (Afghanistan, Burundi, Haiti, and Sudan); governance and statebuilding programmes conducted in the context of economic assistance (Georgia and Macedonia). This book will be of interest to students of statebuilding, humanitarian intervention, post-conflict reconstruction, political economy, international organisations and IR/Security Studies in general.

This volume examines mechanisms for regional peacemaking and conflict management in Europe and the Middle East. To date little research has been devoted to uncovering the conditions for peace, and the factors that contribute to stabilizing the state of peace. This volume assesses the factors that contribute to regional pacification, the incentives that motivate states in establishing peaceful relations, and most importantly, how regions become peaceful. It discusses the conditions under which various types of ‘peace’ might emerge on a regional level and the factors most likely to determine the outcome. The book takes an innovative approach through a systematic comparison of two regions that are particularly prominent and important for the subject of regional pacification: Europe and the Middle East. While many believe that the European case is the indispensable model for peacemaking, others believe that these two regions are too different for Europe to be a useful framework for the Middle East. This volume occupies a middle ground between these two extreme positions. It argues that while a mindless copying of European models will not lead to peace in the Middle East, important insights can be gained from the most successful case of regional peacemaking to date. This work will be of much interest to students of regional security, peacemaking, conflict management, Middle East politics, European security and IR in general.

A fresh examination of the political economy of the peacebuilding process in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the aftermath of the country's 1992-95 war. Little progress has been made in transforming the country's war-shattered economy into a functioning market economy, this new study explains the principal dynamics that have led to this, and places Bosnia's economic transition process within the context of the country's broader post-conflict peacebuilding process. The central argument this book persuasively advances is that much of Bosnia's ongoing economic crisis, and its current reform stalemate, can be explained by exploring the interactions of an inappropriate international model of economic reform with the country's particular post-conflict and post-socialist political economy. This book is essential for readers who wish to build an understanding of the region and assess its future prospects and hopes.

This book focuses on the economic dimensions of peace processes and examines the opportunities and constraints for assisting negotiated exits out of conflict. Various works have addressed the economic characteristics and consequences of armed conflicts over the past two decades, including issues such as âe~blood diamondsâe(tm), natural resource wars, economically motivated armed violence, self-financing conflict, or the complicity of companies and state elites in conflict economies. However, rather than treating these issues as obstacles for peace, this book explores whether they can be opportunities for peacemaking by adopting a political-economy perspective. The book looks at income sharing from natural resources as an opportunity for forward-looking peacemaking strategies, and the implications of deal-making in situations in which war economies and insecurity provide strongmen with disproportionate political and economic power. The book also highlights that peace processes are not necessarily about the rectification of a conflictâe(tm)s âe~root causesâe(tm), but rather about what matters most to the main stakeholders at the moment when a peace process starts taking shape. Finally, efforts to establish a lasting peace need to go beyond the traditional set of actors associated with peace processes. The strategic involvement of donor agencies, companies, and diaspora communities can strengthen forward-looking peace processes. The book will help both student and practitioner audiences to better understand armed conflicts and their belligerents, optimize the planning and management of peace initiatives, and shape expectations in peace agreements. It will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict studies, development studies, International Political Economy and International Relations in general.