This book examines the limits to cosmopolitan liberal peacebuilding caused by its preoccupation with the values and assumptions of neoliberal global governance. The peace people experience is determined by the processes privileged in peacebuilding. This book is about four things that shape the processes involved. First, it is a critique of orthodox postconflict peacebuilding. It takes the position that the present approach, although seemingly hegemonic, is routinely ignored or manipulated by elites and society and converted into a miasma that to some degree wastes the energies and opportunities involved. Second, it is about alternatives which invoke the kind of peace people might seek in postconflict places if they had more control over the process of peacebuilding, a notion referred to here as ‘popular peace’. It is thus not the kind of critical work that some describe as ‘reflexive anti-liberalism’. Rather, it seeks alternatives that are grounded in the lives of people in postconflict spaces and which also reflect some of the essential values of Liberalism. Third, it is about the role of both informal and formal actors, institutions and practices in the creation of such a peace. For instance, it is concerned with the legitimacy of informal practices that lie beyond Liberal tolerance and which are vital in the pursuit of everyday peace. Fourth, it is about a ‘transversal’ (rather than vertical or hierarchical) relationship of global and local governance in securing a peace that reflects the needs and values of both. In short, this work is a response to the substantial inconsistencies that appear between peacebuilding rhetoric and everyday outcomes in postconflict places. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, post-conflict statebuilding, conflict studies, global governance and International Relations in general.

This book examines the limits to cosmopolitan liberal peacebuilding caused by its preoccupation with the values and assumptions of neoliberal global governance. The peace people experience is determined by the processes privileged in peacebuilding. This book is about four things that shape the processes involved. First, it is a critique of orthodox postconflict peacebuilding. It takes the position that the present approach, although seemingly hegemonic, is routinely ignored or manipulated by elites and society and converted into a miasma that to some degree wastes the energies and opportunities involved. Second, it is about alternatives which invoke the kind of peace people might seek in postconflict places if they had more control over the process of peacebuilding, a notion referred to here as 'popular peace'. It is thus not the kind of critical work that some describe as 'reflexive anti-liberalism'. Rather, it seeks alternatives that are grounded in the lives of people in postconflict spaces and which also reflect some of the essential values of Liberalism. Third, it is about the role of both informal and formal actors, institutions and practices in the creation of such a peace. For instance, it is concerned with the legitimacy of informal practices that lie beyond Liberal tolerance and which are vital in the pursuit of everyday peace. Fourth, it is about a 'transversal' (rather than vertical or hierarchical) relationship of global and local governance in securing a peace that reflects the needs and values of both. In short, this work is a response to the substantial inconsistencies that appear between peacebuilding rhetoric and everyday outcomes in postconflict places. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, post-conflict statebuilding, conflict studies, global governance and International Relations in general.

Liberal peacebuilding too often builds neither peace nor Liberalism. In a growing number of cases, people aren’t rejecting and relegating democracy because it’s bad; they’re challenging it because it isn’t relevant to their priorities and needs. The peacebuilding ‘moment’ – when consent for intervention is present and the opportunity to build a sustainable social contract between peacebuilders and people is most fruitful – is being squandered. This relationship, between governed and governance, relies on mutual needs realization, but there is no formal or informal requirement and mechanism for ascertaining what the ‘subjects’ of peacebuilding might prioritize. Instead, peacebuilders give the ‘subjects’ of peacebuilding what they think they should have. This legitimacy gap – between what peacebuilders give and what subjects want - is the subject of this book. Through a range of empirical case studies conducted by country specialists, the book reveals that, when asked, people often prioritize roads, electricity, jobs, housing, schooling and pertinent justice (amongst other things) in the immediate aftermath of war. We find that mapping this locus of legitimacy may help develop the kind of relationship upon which the sustainability of any social contract between governed and governance rests. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

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

This book helps to better understand how the interaction between local and international peacebuilding actors influences the outcomes of their programs. Based on the case study of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it analyses the relationships between local and international peacebuilding actors over the long term and assesses ways to overcome the obstacles to more cooperative partnerships. Focusing on perceptions, the book nuances existing definitions of war, peacebuilding and peace and allows for a more comprehensive understanding of conflict contexts. Thereby, it contributes to the literature on peacebuilding effectiveness and makes concrete suggestions for translating these findings into practice.

This book aims to understand the processes and outcomes that arise from frictional encounters in peacebuilding, when global and local forces meet. Building a sustainable peace after violent conflict is a process that entails competing ideas, political contestation and transformation of power relations. This volume develops the concept of ‘friction’ to better analyse the interplay between global ideas, actors, and practices, and their local counterparts. The chapters examine efforts undertaken to promote sustainable peace in a variety of locations, such as Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Sierra Leone. These case analyses provide a nuanced understanding not simply of local processes, or of the hybrid or mixed agencies, ideas, and processes that are generated, but of the complex interactions that unfold between all of these elements in the context of peacebuilding intervention. The analyses demonstrate how the ambivalent relationship between global and local actors leads to unintended and sometimes counterproductive results of peacebuilding interventions. The approach of this book, with its focus on friction as a conceptual tool, advances the peacebuilding research agenda and adds to two ongoing debates in the peacebuilding field; the debate on hybridity, and the debate on local agency and local ownership. In analysing frictional encounters this volume prepares the ground for a better understanding of the mixed impact peace initiatives have on post-conflict societies. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, security studies, and international relations in general.

"Featuring a strikingly diverse and impressive team of authors, this is the most comprehensive textbook available for courses on international organizations and global governance. This book covers the history, theories, structure, activities and policies of both state-centred institutions, and non-state actors in global politics"--

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 explains why successful international peacebuilding depends on the unorthodox actions of country-based staff, whose deviations from approved procedures help make global governance organizations accountable to local realities. Using rich ethnographic material from several countries, it will interest scholars, students, and policymakers.

"The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation offers an authoritative and comprehensive overview of peacebuilding, statebuilding, and peace formation. With contributions from over thirty distinguished and leading scholars, the Handbook provides a timely, engaging, and critical overview of conceptual foundations, political implications, and tensions at the global, regional, and local levels. It examines the key policies, practices, examples, and discourses underlining various segments of peacebuilding, statebuilding, and peace formation both as discursive formulations and as policy practices. Organized around four major thematic sections, the Handbook offers a state-of-the-art synthesis of the most pressing contemporary peace and conflict issues and charts new pathways for responding to transnational insecurities"--