(En)gendered Security? The Complexities of Women's Inclusion in Peace Processes

As peacebuilding discourses increasingly stress the importance of including women, to what degree have security-related practices taken heed? It has been over 10 years since the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security, yet it remains a “confused and confusing” tool for scholars and practitioners in assessing women's inclusion in peacebuilding. This article adds to our understanding on women and peacebuilding by engaging 1325 as an operationalizable concept and then applying it to peace agreements to understand how women's security is addressed as part of formal peace processes. Given previous difficulties in operationalizing 1325’s mandate, this article engages it as a three-level concept useful for studying the ways in which women are “brought into” security, called (en)gendered security. Using this concept of (en)gendered security, I assess intrastate peace agreements between 1991 and 2010 to elucidate where and how women are included in peace processes. This article illustrates the potential of a systematized and practical approach to security embodied in 1325 and a preliminary discussion of what accounts for better approaches to (en)gendered security during peacebuilding.     

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.     

India as a democracy promoter? New Delhi's involvement in Nepal's return to democracy

According to the theory of ‘democratic peace’, India, as the largest democracy in the world and as South Asia's predominant regional power, should be expected to promote democracy in neighbouring countries. However, New Delhi lacks any kind of official democracy-promotion policy, and its past record on democracy promotion efforts in the region is mixed at best. Against this background, the article analyses the substantial role India has come to play in the peace and democratization process in Nepal in the years 2005–2008, asking whether this constitutes a departure from New Delhi's traditional policy of non-interference in its neighbours' internal affairs and a move towards a more assertive approach to democracy promotion. However, the analysis shows that India's involvement in Nepal was the product of short-term stability concerns rather than being an indicator of a long-term change in strategy with the intention of becoming an active player in international democracy promotion.     

Dynamics of peace and democratization. The Aceh lessons

The viability of the thesis that liberalization and democracy foster peace, security and development is at stake. The main critique is that more liberties and elections lead to more conflict and abuses of power. There are three principal responses to this critique. The liberal argument calls for improving the democratic institutions; the institutions first thesis prioritizes strengthening the rule of law and state capacity over democracy; whilst the transformation argument proposes using fledgling democracy to foster gradually more favourable relations of power and popular capacity towards more substantial democracy. This article analyses the relevance of these theses to the remarkable dynamics of peace-building in Aceh, from the introduction of Indonesian democracy in 1998, the impact of the tsunami in 2004 and the Helsinki peace agreement in 2005 to the general elections in 2009. The study concludes that the liberal argument is congruous with the democratic opportunities for peace, while the institutions first and the transformation arguments give prominence to the dynamics that made peace-building possible but also difficult. While the institutions first argument responds to these difficulties by resorting to power sharing, the transformation thesis proposes more citizen participation coupled with interest and issue group representation.     

The Dual Use of an Historical Event: ‘Rwanda 1994’, the Justification and Critique of Liberal Interventionism

This essay places the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in the context of the academic and political rise of liberal interventionism since 1990. It argues that this historical event is important for the debate about ‘humanitarian interventions’ in two different ways: on the one hand, as a signifier, ‘Rwanda 1994’ has been used (or, for that matter, misused) in order to justify an almost unlimited international agenda of liberal interventionism and social engineering; on the other, the genocide that could arguably have been prevented represents the exceptional case where military intervention can indeed be justified—but precisely because it is not in need of a specifically liberal justification. What would have made a military-based prevention of genocide justifiable in this particular case is precisely the aim to prevent something that is universally agreed to be unacceptable (genocide). The liberal twist in the justification narrative, in contrast, tends to emphasize the difference between the (liberal) ‘us’ and the non-liberal ‘them’, consequently claiming the legitimate right for the ‘us’ to decide about the use of force exclusively, that is, without the ‘them’. The continuation of the narrative into answering the post-intervention question ‘what now?’ then leads consequently into the necessity of imposing one's own system of rule as a general norm without due attention to the specifics of the situation ‘on the ground’. The exceptional features of ‘Rwanda 1994’ (the empirical event) thus point in a critical way to all those cases where ‘Rwanda 1994’ (the signifier) has been used to make the case for an ever-expanding agenda of liberal (‘just’) war.     

Civil Society and Peace Negotiations: Beyond the Inclusion–Exclusion Dichotomy

Civil society is generally seen as an important actor in peace processes. But when it comes to reaching an agreement during peace negotiations, much of the current debate is centered on the question of including or excluding civil society. Although most researchers argue that civil society participation makes the process more sustainable and democratic, most practitioners emphasize that enhanced civil society participation makes it more difficult to reach a peace agreement. I argue that practitioners and theorists must both move beyond this dichotomy and, instead, focus on the variety of ways in which civil society actors can be included in a given negotiation process. To this end, I present in this article a comprehensive overview of nine models of inclusion, from most to least direct involvement of civil society, supported by illustrative case studies. Analysis of these models suggests that it will be possible to broaden the participation of civil society in peace negotiations without decreasing the negotiations' effectiveness.     

谈当前世界政治的本质特点

进入新世纪以来 ,世界形势变化多端。印度军事力量悄然兴起 ,克什米尔屡衅争端 ,9.11事件让世界倍感恐怖主义的威胁 ,美国未经联合国授权擅自对伊动武 ,台独势力再次嚣张 ,中国提出了和平崛起的新道路……站在世纪之初的我们 ,面对着风云变幻的世界 ,不禁欲透过这纷繁复杂的现象去追寻其背后的本质。本文主要通过对世界局势的思考 ,谈一点对当前世界政治本质特点的认识     

Kant’s Project of Perpetual Pacification

Richard Tuck locates a conundrum in the Hobbesian world view. Whereas the nation-state is desired to effect the pacification of the domestic sphere, a world state and the promise of global pacification is feared. Kant’s strong program for perpetual peace is presented as a moral imperative to establish through legal means a world republic based on reason and individual autonomy. Kant emphasizes the empirical impossibility of a world republic and hence advocates the weaker program of a world federation of states. This essay argues not the empirical but the logical impossibility of Kant’s strong program and by extension any program of perpetual peace that claims to be essentially different from ‘mere’ peace as truce. In so doing this essay distinguishes between political theory based on the assumption of the ontological priority of peace and political theory based on the assumption of the ontological priority of violence and argues for the necessity of thinking the latter.

全球和合共生系统理论与中国周边命运共同体

全球和合共生系统理论是共生理论与系统理论相互融合而形成的全新框架体系,可以作为构建人类命运共同体和中国周边命运共同体的理论分析范式和理论依据。全球和合共生系统理论认为,世界上的一切事物都是一个大系统中的共生体,必须从全球的角度来构建命运共同体。国际体系各组成部分之间的关系是辩证的,即对立的统一。全球体系内部与中国周边体系内部的互相依赖既有积极的一面,又有消极的一面。积极的相互依存是指相互依存的双方都从关系中受益,而消极的相互依存是指任何一方对相互依存关系的破坏都可能给另一方甚至双方带来损失。构建中国周边命运共同体是全球共生体系高级阶段的目标。全球和合共生系统理论的相互依存论决定了优化中国周边体系以实现中国周边命运共同体的必要性。以相互尊重为前提,以公平正义为核心,以合作共赢为目标,应成为构建中国周边命运共同体的三个关键要素。我们应以此来推进构建新型国际关系,进而建立中国周边命运共同体。     

The real deal? The post-conflict constitution as a peace agreement

Abstract

When intra-state armed conflicts end through a negotiated settlement, the conflict parties frequently agree to amend or replace the country’s constitution. Their aim is to entrench the settlement, address the conflict incompatibility, reform institutions and take other measures to prevent a recurrence of violence. This article argues that post-conflict constitutions (PCCs) should be understood as peace agreements. It motivates this argument on conceptual, functional and legal grounds. It demonstrates that PCCs comply with conventional definitions of a peace agreement, are an intrinsic component of the conflict resolution process and have a range of peace maintenance functions. As supreme law, they become the definitive peace agreement. Research on peace durability following negotiated settlements should therefore focus not only on comprehensive peace agreements (CPAs) but also on PCCs. PCCs should be conceived not as mere components of CPA implementation but as substantive political and legal agreements in their own right and as independent causes of peace.