Post-Liberal Peace Transitions

Abstract

Why is it that states emerging from intervention, peacebuilding and statebuilding over the last 25 years appear to be ‘failed by design’? This book explores the interplay of local peace agency with the (neo)liberal peacebuilding project. It looks at how far local ‘peace formation’ dynamics can go to counteract the forces of violence and play a role in rebuilding the state, consolidate peace processes and induce a more progressive form of politics. By looking at local agency related to peace formation, the book finds answers to the pressing question of how large-scale peacebuilding or statebuilding may be significantly improved and made more representative of the lives, needs, rights, and ambitions of its subjects.

The violence of peace and the role of education: insights from Sierra Leone

“…Central in achieving this is to ground education programming in context and conflict sensitive analysis that is firmly rooted in dialogue and participation with local and national stakeholders with the aim of retrieving, valorising and reclaiming the agency of these actors to produce more grounded and transformatory solutions. This links closely to what Richmond has called a 'post-liberal peacebuilding' agenda (Richmond, 2012).…”

“…Paris 2004; Richmond, 2012). There is also a growing interest in the role and potential of education in peacebuilding processes from academic and practitioner circles at global, regional, national and local levels (c.f.…”

TheJournal of Intervention and StatebuildingTen Years on: Critical Reflections and Stimulating Ideas on an Evolving Scholarship

“…It was of its time, being part of a whole swathe of work I did on peace and its development during the 2000s, drawing on peace and state building examples from around the world, which had concluded with some thoughts on the potential of hybrid peace (Richmond, 2005: 198;Richmond and Franks 2009). It mainly worked within the liberal church, in effect querying the fit of liberalism in different conflict-affected contexts.…”

The Politics, Practice and Paradox of ‘Ethnic Security’ in Bosnia-Herzegovina

“…In the critical scholarship on peace-building, both the external vision of security and the preoccupation with institutional performance salient in the liberal peace paradigm have been extensively debated (Newman 2011). The experience of Bosnia-Herzegovina as one of the first countries where this type of international intervention was deployed has bolstered many of the most ardent critiques of the liberal peace thesis (Berdal 2009;Gromes 2009;Richmond 2011;Chandler 2010;Cooper et al 2011). A great deal of attention has focused on how the institutional architecture erected by the General Framework Agreement incentivised exclusive ethnic politics and ' ethnic outbidding.'…”