Measuring peace using household-level data from post-conflict Solomon Islands

The definition of peace and its quantification has challenged many researchers. The extant literature defines and measures peace in contradistinction to violence, thereby making the measure an indirect one. There is scope for the alternative of a direct measure of peace in the form of a Peace Perception Index (PPI) as revealed here. We use household-level survey data from Guadalcanal Province in the Solomon Islands to compute the PPI. Our analysis shows that the once conflict-affected communities on Guadalcanal have attained a PPI of 88 per cent of the level of peace prior to the conflict. That is, the perception of the level of peace in the sampled community has improved to 88 per cent since the installation of a peacekeeping mission a decade back. We argue that recognising the people’s perceptions, rather than the use of the absolute minimalist or maximalist notion of peace provides nuances on the levels of peace reached in a post-conflict situation.     

The Liberal Peace Revisited: The Role of Democracy,Dependence, and Development in Militarized Interstate Dispute Initiation, 1950–1999

We test a model of the liberal peace by examining the initiation of militarized interstate disputes at the monadic level of analysis from 1950–1999. Liberal peace theory contends that both economic dependence and democratic political systems reduce conflict propensities. Extant empirical analyses of the monadic liberal peace, however, are under-specified. First, the concept of economic dependence not only includes trade, but also foreign investment. Second, existing models do not control for the influence of economic development. Previous research on the monadic liberal peace has also failed to distinguish between the initiation of conflict and participation in conflict. We find evidence for a liberal peace: trade dependence, foreign investment, and democracy reduce a state’s propensity to initiate militarized disputes.     

Rescuing Peacebuilding? Anthropology and Peace Formation*

International Relations (IR) and related social science disciplines focusing on peace and conflict studies have enabled a bureaucratic understanding of peacebuilding and a liberal form of peace. This has extended into a neoliberal type of statebuilding. There is now an impressive international architecture for peace, but its engagement with its subjects in everyday contexts has been less impressive. An earlier group of conflict researchers, grouped around John Burton and later A.J.R. Groom, have long argued that this is partly because IR has concentrated on elite power, problem-solving methodology and positivist epistemologies. It has failed to understand the dynamics, agency and hybridity of human society and institutions when it comes to peace, or that inequality is conflict inducing. Rescuing peacebuilding from neoliberal epistemological frameworks requires an anthropological and ethnographic sensitivity.     

De-idealizing the democratic civil peace: on the political economy of democratic stabilization and pacification in Argentina and Ecuador

In the liberal concept of a ‘democratic civil peace’, an idealistic understanding of democratic stabilization and pacification prevails: democracy is seen to guarantee political stability and social peace by offering comprehensive representation and participation in political decisions while producing outcomes broadly in accordance with the common interest of society. This contrasts with the procedural quality and the material achievements of most, if not all, really existing democracies. South America is paradigmatic. Here, the legitimation of liberal democracy through both procedure and performance is weak and yet ‘third wave democracies’ have managed to survive even harsh economic and political crises. The article presents a conceptual framework to analyse historically specific patterns of democratic stabilization and pacification. Analyses of the processes of socio-political destabilization and re-stabilization in Argentina and Ecuador since the late 1990s show how a ‘de-idealized’ perspective on the democratic civil peace helps explain the viability of democratic regimes that systematically deviate from the ideal-type conditions for democratic survival that have been proposed in the literature.     

The failure of a liberal peace: Sri Lanka's counter-insurgency in global perspective

The victory by the Sri Lankan government over the LTTE in 2009 apparently ended over 25 years of civil war. However, the ramifications of the government's counter-insurgency go far beyond Sri Lanka's domestic politics. The military campaign against the LTTE poses a significant challenge to many of the liberal norms that inform contemporary models of international peace-building—the so-called ‘liberal peace’. This article suggests that Sri Lanka's attempts to justify a shift from peaceful conflict resolution to counter-insurgency relied on three main factors: the flawed nature of the peace process, which highlighted wider concerns about the mechanisms and principles of international peace processes; the increased influence of ‘Rising Powers’, particularly China, in global governance mechanisms, and their impact on international norms related to conflict management; and the use by the government of a discourse of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency to limit international censure. The article concludes that the Sri Lankan case may suggest a growing contestation of international peace-building norms, and the emergence of a legitimated ‘illiberal peace’.     

The emerging EU peacebuilding framework: confirming or transcending liberal peacebuilding?

The European Union (EU) is now emerging as a major actor in regional and global peacebuilding. Yet its peacebuilding approach and practices are subject to some significant and familiar contradictions. In this article, we identify the basis for what may become an ‘EU peacebuilding framework’ (EUPF), and argue that, while it aspires to a ‘just and durable peace’ including practical tools and a normative framework, these need to be set in critical relief. The EU's nascent approach to building peace is compared and contrasted with the evolving liberal peacebuilding consensus and the much criticized statebuilding project which has recently emerged. This is evaluated against recent research focusing on developing a more sophisticated form of contextually relevant peacebuilding. Finally, we assess how the embryonic EUPF might contribute to the development of a just and durable peace, and ask what sorts of issues and dimensions this raises.     

International relations scholarship,academic institutions and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

This paper explores the role of academic scholarship and practice in constituting, aggravating, and resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The first section of the paper examines how scholarly discourse and methods of analysis contribute to shaping (mis)understandings of on-the-ground conflict dynamics. To demonstrate this point, the paper first overviews conventional social science methods used in mainstream international relations (IR) scholarship that tend to reify, freeze and homogenize ‘the conflict’ as well as conflict parties and then uses a different scholarly approach—namely a processual, peace-studies-oriented methodology—that provides a very different ‘picture’ of the conflict, its parties and appropriate strategies of engagement in the pursuit of peace. The second section of the paper uses three brief case studies to demonstrate how Israeli and Palestinian academics help constitute ‘the conflict’ and its parties not only through their scholarship but also through their ‘practice’. These examples also show the importance of re-evaluating analytical models to include contextual dynamics such as time, place and sources of available power as well as to recognize the diversity of Palestinian and Israeli views regarding the sources of—and best approaches for addressing—‘the conflict’.     

‘The sword of justice’: South Pacific trade unions and NGOs during a decade of lost development

Trade unions are typified as having ‘two faces’—one of social justice and the other of vested interest. This article examines the tensions and difficulties confronted by trade union movements in the South Pacific seeking to balance the ‘two faces’ of unionism during a period of political and economic instability in the region. It looks at the difficult choices that trade union movements in Papua New Guinea, the Fiji Islands, and the Solomon Islands have had to make to preserve their interests in response to sweeping micro‐economic reforms and how they have sought to work with civil society organisations to restore political and social stability. The paper draws out some tentative lessons that may enable South Pacific unions to better respond to these difficult challenges.     

Eyes wide shut: persistent conflict and liberal peace-building in Nepal and Sri Lanka

The decisive, albeit different, endings of armed conflict in Sri Lanka and Nepal and subsequent post-war developments challenge key assumptions about conflict that have informed post-Cold War international efforts to produce peace in such conflict zones. International intervention—including in Sri Lanka and Nepal—characterises armed conflict as sustained by specific political economies that can only be stably resolved by establishing liberal democracy and market economics. This paper examines liberal peace engagement in Sri Lanka and Nepal to challenge a crucial assumption of the persistent conflict thesis, namely the separation between political contestation and armed conflict. It argues that the divergent post-conflict outcomes of continuing ethnic polarisation in Sri Lanka and constitutional reform in Nepal reveal strong continuities in the dynamics of pre-war, war and post-war politics. This continuity challenges the presumed separation of politics and violence that drove international engagement to produce liberal peace and suggests that such engagement, far from encouraging reform, may have (inadvertently) sustained conflict in both cases.     

Amnesty: a ‘conversation’ within the medium of culture. A dialogue approach to the strategy of amnesty in protracted social conflict situations

In contemporary conflict resolution there are various strategies in place to assist the liberal peace-building project. This article investigates the controversial strategy of amnesty within protracted social conflict situations. It challenges the juridical approach towards the strategy by exploring amnesty as a ‘dialogue’ or ‘conversation’ within the medium of cultures. The author will utilise Feller and Ryan's eight multidisciplinary characteristics of ‘dialogue’ to explore amnesty as a conversation among its participants and wider society. This is supplemented by a case study examining the amnesty process under the Amnesty Act 2000 in the East-Central African nation of Uganda. It concludes with theoretical and policy implications for both scholars and practitioners of conflict resolution.     

Conflict management and conflict resolution

In examining constructive responses to the problems caused by violent ethnic conflict a distinction is often made between the ‘management’ and ‘resolution’ approaches. Indeed, they are often defined so as to make them incompatible with each other. The basic assumptions upon which the differences between these two approaches are based are analysed, and the weaknesses of each are explored. Finally, the assumption of basic incompatibility is questioned, because it is generally unhelpful in promoting conflict resolution; and an attempt is made to show how the two approaches can be combined by introducing the concept of peace‐keeping (management) and peace‐making and peace‐building (resolution).     

Legitimate peace in post-civil war states: towards attaining the unattainable

Within the literature on conflict resolution and peace-building, there is a growing awareness about the need to move beyond ‘minimalist’ (absence of war) and ‘maximalist’ (absence of different types of structural violence) notions of peace. While the first concept is too narrow—it conceals much human suffering and does not take into account the root causes of armed conflict—the latter is too inclusive, open-ended and difficult to measure. There is, despite this growing consciousness, a lack of midterm definitions of peace that can help peacemakers assess whether a peace process is on the right track, say 10 or 15 years after a civil war has been terminated. In fact, when operationalising and empirically measuring how ‘peaceful’ post-civil war societies are, many scholars continue to employ indicators based on minimalist or maximalist visions of peace. In this article we introduce the concept of ‘legitimate peace’, which we argue can function as a midterm benchmark for peacemakers, and outline the benefits associated with its use.     

The Tragedy of Liberalism How Globalization Caused the First World War

The belief that globalization enhances peace, a central tenet of liberal theory, enjoys substantial support in recent scholarship on trade and conflict. To conclude that liberalism is right, however, is premature and wrong. Liberal theory is not sufficiently grounded in international trade theory to show how globalization generates constraints on military force, nor does it adequately link these constraints to strengthened peace. This article uses the Heckscher-Ohlin model of trade to connect globalization's economic effects to increased constraints on military force and then explores how, in the nineteenth century, globalization affected European peace. As liberal theory predicts, globalization generated substantial constraints on military force in prewar Europe. Yet there are important flaws in liberalism's logic linking these constraints to strengthened international peace. Contrary to liberal theory, globalization did not strengthen prospects for peace in prewar Europe but was a major cause of the First World War.     

World views in peace building: a post-conflict reconstruction challenge in Cambodia

This article explores post-conflict reconstruction in Cambodia through an analysis of both the dangers of liberal peace building and the positive role that training in capacity building plays in war-torn societies. The central question addressed is how insider–outsider dynamics influence Cambodia's post-conflict reconstruction projects; and what assumptions do international workers and Cambodian NGO staff make about ‘the good life’ that will be constructed? The article offers an overview of Cambodia's history and cultural context to situate its analysis of liberal peace building and foreign donors, as well as the behavioural characteristics of international peace builders operating within Cambodia. It assesses the potency of elite capture of insider–outsider partnership, specific NGO management practices, and the role of gender to better illuminate the challenges for post-conflict reconstruction. The article concludes with recommendations for improving future partnerships between insiders and outsiders in Cambodian peace-building projects.     

Patterns of Peace

Different strategies are used to conceptualise peace in the literature on International Relations, peace and conflict studies. These have included strategies based upon the notion that peace is geographically contained, and constructed by race, identity, ideology, or power, and has universal qualities, although it is also utopian and unlikely to be fully achieved. What has developed more recently in the relevant literature is a hybrid version of peace—the liberal peace. This is universal, attainable, and dependent upon a specific methodology. The following essay outlines the main discursive characteristics associated with peace, and with the emergence of the concept of the liberal peace. It outlines the patterns of thought prevalent in the conceptualisation of peace, and their ontological and epistemological implications in the context of the liberal peace framework.     

Reconstructing post-war Lebanon: A challenge to the liberal peace?

This piece uses the example of reconstruction following the July–August 2006 Israeli–Hezbollah war in Lebanon to reflect on the existence of alternatives to the liberal peace. The term ‘liberal peace’ is used as shorthand for internationally-sponsored peace-support and reconstruction interventions and it is marked by its increasingly formulaic, top–down and ethnocentric nature. Two significant non-western actors were apparent in Lebanon's post-war reconstruction: the Gulf States and Jihad Al Bina (the reconstruction wing of Hezbollah). Using fieldwork, this article examines the extent to which the reconstruction activities of these non-western actors constitute an alternative to the liberal peace. It finds that these activities do not have the critical mass or ambition to form a fully-fledged alternative but argues that they reveal serious limitations in the liberal peace approach to post-war reconstruction.     

Genealogies of the colonial present: the rediscovery of the local in conflict management interventions in Mindanao,the Southern Philippines

This article argues that the current attention on indigenous institutions, and the ‘local’ more generally, in peace-building and conflict management bears similarities with colonial and post-colonial attempts at pacifying volatile borderlands. This will be illustrated through a historical case study of the Southern Philippine island of Mindanao, which has witnessed a recurring Muslim insurgency throughout different phases of its history. In an attempt to cope with these violent uprisings, both the American colonial authorities and the authoritarian Marcos regime, as well as a range of contemporary international NGOs, have endorsed traditional institutional avenues of informal mediation. The argument for the deployment of the local in state reconstruction and peace-building as propagated in current literature on hybrid peace should therefore be reframed as a reinvention of colonial governance techniques of indirect rule. It will hereby also be argued that the underlying rationale for this current deployment of local/traditional institutions of mediation and governance confirms and builds further upon a colonial framing of the non-Western other as incapable of modern, liberal democracy.     

Multilateral donors and the security-development nexus: discourse and practice in conflict-affected states

This article assesses how the ‘security-development nexus’ has impacted multilateral aid to conflict-affected states; an area until now understudied. Using a mixed methods approach, we examine both the policy discourse and aid commitments of the major multilateral donors: the European Commission, the World Bank and the UNDP. We investigate the extent to which these donors fund the sectors identified within the policy discourse as crucial to ensuring peace and stability – democratisation and peace, conflict, and security activities – and examine the impact of ‘Western’ security concerns on multilateral aid in conflict-affected states. Our new data indicate that in contrast to policy discourse, post-conflict states receive no more multilateral funding for democracy–building than states which have not suffered from conflict and furthermore, that in the context of the security-development nexus, multilateral aid to conflict-affected states is influenced by the key transnational security concerns of Western states. These results point to a potentially dangerous gap between policy and actual aid commitments, ignore the long-term nature of development and weaken the impartiality of multilateral aid.     

The changing phases of the Niger Delta conflict: implications for conflict escalation and the return of peace

This paper discusses the nature and dynamics of the Niger Delta conflict and traces the structural origin of the conflict to a dysfunctional Nigerian ‘state-nation’ that is a product of colonisation. The paper argues that the conflict is best understood as a process viewed in terms of nests or phases. Building on previous findings on the aetiology of African conflicts and contemporary scholarship on African politics, the paper identifies how different phases of the Niger Delta conflict interact to impel the conflict toward escalation. Consequently, it is argued that both the ‘marginalisation-relative deprivation’ and the ‘political economy of war’ theses have been instrumental in furthering our understanding of the conflict along different lines. However, the tendency for both perspectives to claim superiority over the other has meant that each only offers a partial truth and is therefore unable to explain the increasing intensity and longevity of the Niger Delta conflict. Indeed, it is shown how these theses feed into the discursive struggle between militants, militant entrepreneurs and the Nigerian Government in ways that allow for the commodification of the Niger Delta people. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of the emerging issues for the return of peace in the Niger Delta.     

Peacebuilding does not build peace

The concept of peacebuilding is a buzzword of the development policy and practice mainstream. The recent introduction of managerial tools and the focus on measuring the ‘effectiveness’ of peacebuilding have marginalised and depoliticised critical questions about the causes of violent conflict, and have replaced them with comforting notions for donors that peace can be built and measured without challenging Western understanding of economy, governance, and social aspirations of people.