Building peaceful states and societies: A critical assessment of the evidence (original) (raw)
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Peacebuilding: Problems and Prospects
Efforts to build or rebuild institutions of the State from the outside have often run into three types of contradictions: the means available are inconsistent with the ends, the resources at hand are inadequate to the task, and the implicit model of a State may simply be inappropriate to the circumstances on the ground. Resolving these contradictions requires clarity in three areas: (i) the strategic aims of the action; (ii) the necessary institutional coordination to put all actors — especially security and development actors — on the same page; and (iii) a realistic basis for evaluating the success or failure of the action.
Peacebuilding and state building have been discussed in the past as concepts having a difficult relationship with one another, at times involving trade-offs and even dilemmas. Analysing this relationship on the basis of relevant OECD/DAC documents, this briefing paper argues that the two concepts have in fact increasingly converged, representing today two different perspectives on one underlying problem. Regarding their positive vision, their action-guiding principles and even the areas of engagement they suggest, they are now largely congruent. This surprisingly high degree of common ground most likely reflects lesson-drawing from past state-building efforts and the older peacebuilding debate. Consolidating the two strands of the debate into one common framework and moving “from fragility to resilience” could be a logical way forward.
Approaches to Peacebuilding: An Analysis
Printing Area International Research Journal, 2015
The post-Cold war world has witnessed the resurgence of intra-state conflicts coupled with gross violation of human rights and failure of the state machinery to take care of its own population. This particular development has given rise to an increase in the number of fragile or failed states in different parts of the world and has posed grave challenges to international peace and security. It has become a matter of growing concern for the international community to restore peace in these states by placing legitimate state machinery in power. This necessitated the adoption of a comprehensive approach to deal with such regions to stabilize them and restore peace and harmony. So, the international community has come up with the concept of peacebuilding which has come to be regarded today as one of the well-established sub-fields of international peace operations. Despite lacking a universally accepted definition, this postconflict intervention has continued to be actively used by the international community by deploying a variety of approaches. This paper seeks to discuss some of the most commonly used approaches used in peacebuilding missions around the world.
From Conflict to Peace: The Features of Post-Conflict State-Building
From Conflict to Peace: The Features of Post-Conflict State-Building, Armenian Journal of Poltical Science 1(4), 15-44, 2016
The article discusses the historical and structural legacies of state-building, the issues of state-building in modern global environment, as well as the main factors conditioning the process of state-building and their features in post-conflict areas. The article also refers to the impact of legitimacy, as the latter is of notional importance both for state-building and stateness processes. The analysis of each factor is accompanied by the review of possible manifestations of key actors' role, their impact and "centerperiphery" relations.
Statebuilding Versus Peace Formation
This article outlines the often countervailing forces and norms of state formation, statebuilding, and peacebuilding according to their associated theoretical approaches, concepts and methodologies. It introduces a new concept of ‘peace formation' which counterbalances the previous concepts' reliance on internal violent or externalised institutions' agency, reform and conditionality. Without incorporating a better understanding of the multiple and often critical agencies involved in peace formation, the states which emerge from statebuilding will remain as they are- failed by design, because they are founded on externalised systems, legitimacy and norms rather than a contextual, critical, and emancipatory epistemology of peace. Engaging with the processes of peace formation may aid international actors in gaining a better understanding of the roots of a conflict, how local actors may be assisted, how violence and power-seeking may be ended or managed, and how local legitimacy may emerge. It may also provide an understanding of how newly forming peaces may influence international order and the liberal peace.