This book offers novel insights about the ability of a democracy to accommodate violence. In El Salvador, the end of war has brought about a violent peace, one in which various forms of violence have become incorporated into Salvadorans' imaginaries and enactments of democracy. Based on ethnographic research, The Violence of Democracy argues that war legacies and the country's neoliberalization have enabled an intricate entanglement of violence and political life in postwar El Salvador. This volume explores various manifestations of this entanglement: the clandestine connections between violent entrepreneurs and political actors; the blurring of the licit and illicit through the consolidation of economies of violence; and the reenactment of latent wartime conflicts and political cleavages during postwar electoral seasons. The author also discusses the potential for grassroots memory work and a political party shift to foster hopeful visions of the future and, ultimately, to transform the country's violent democracy.

Drawing on the concept of hermeneutics the book argues that the successes and setbacks of conflict transformation in Teso can be understood through analyzing the impact of memory, identity, closure and power on social change and calls for a comprehensive effort of dealing with the past in war-torn societies.

How do emerging states obtain international recognition and secure membership of international organisations in contemporary world politics? This book provides the first in-depth study of Kosovo's diplomatic approach to becoming a sovereign state by obtaining international recognition and securing membership of international organisations. Analysing the everyday diplomatic discourses, performances, and entanglements, this book contends that state-becoming is not wholly determined by systemic factors, normative institutions, or the preferences of great powers; the diplomatic agency of the fledgling state plays a far more important role than is generally acknowledged. Drawing on institutional ethnographic research and first-hand observations, this book argues that Kosovo's diplomatic success in consolidating its sovereign statehood has been the situational assemblage of multiple discourses, practiced through a broad variety of performative actions, and shaped by a complex entanglement with global assemblages of norms, actors, relations, and events. Accordingly, this book contributes to expanding our understanding of the everyday diplomatic agency of emerging states and the changing norms, politics, and practices regarding the diplomatic recognition of states and their admission to international society.

This book presents a new approach for studying peace beyond the absence of war. As war ends, the varying nature of the peace that ensues has been the object of much debate. Through in-depth case studies, including Cyprus, Cambodia, South Africa, Abkhazia, Transnistria/Russia, Colombia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Myanmar, the book illustrates how conceptualising 'relational peace' provides a framework that can be applied across cases and actors, different levels of analysis, a variety of geographical contexts and using different temporal perspectives and types of data. This novel framework enables improved empirical studies of peace. The book contributes nuanced understandings of peace in particular settings and demonstrates the multifaceted nature of peaceful relations - what is termed 'relational peace practices' - making important contributions to the field of studying peace beyond the absence of war. -- .

Performance Affects explores performance projects in disaster and war zones to argue that joy, beauty and celebration should be the inspiration for the politics of community-based or participatory performance practice, seeking to realign the field of Applied Theatre away from effects towards an affective role, connected to sensations of pleasure.

Do international institutions actually contribute to building a lasting peace? Counter-examples and criticisms abound: failures and submissiveness to the interests of the most powerful states. As diplomats, practitioners with these institutions, and experts in their fields, the contributors to this volume underline the strengths and weaknesses that these international actors have created and will not abandon. Their research and investigations reveal that despite the fact that it is possible to wage a war against the will of international institutions, it has become almost impossible to make peace without them. The issues examined--collective security, disarmament, mediation, peace building, human security, reduction of poverty and inequalities, international criminal justice, and multilateralism--make this edited volume a key reference work on international organizations.

If wars are too important to be left to the generals, crises are too dangerous to be left exclusively to the social scientists. Humanistic inquiry has not realized its potential for illuminating these wars of words. Crises occur in a realm foreign to prevailing approaches, but familiar to interpretive approaches to politics. Decision-makers are no longer observers of unmistakable threats: they are interpreters of cryptic texts and symbolic performances. Accordingly, analysts (quite unwittingly) have become interpreters of interpretations--crises inquiry occurs in the archives, not the laboratory. Relying upon a hermeneutic approach used to illuminate crises at other times and places, Hirschbein explores the puzzling aspects of defining Kennedy, Nixon, and Kissinger episodes: Why is Kennedy's joust on the brink enshrined as the unforgettable Cuban missile crises, while Nixon and Kissingers' prudent resolution of a comparable threat is all but forgotten? This novel account of crises construction, management, and remembrance explores how and why these events were handled so differently, and concludes that it is not world that is the source of our crises, but our interpretation of the world.

Questions of crisis construction, management, and remembrance are at the heart of this study. Professor Hirschbein examines why American political figures define an event as a crisis--or not. He then analyzes why some crises are managed prudently, while others are not, despite access to comparable information and resources. Lastly, he tries to determine why some crises are enshrined as templates for future confrontation while others quickly fade into oblivion. Hirschbein argues that it is not the world that is the source of our crises, but our DEGREESIinterpretation DEGREESR of the world. Accordingly, he explicates those official interpretations of the world known as international crises. This fascinating comparative study will be of great interest to students, scholars, and other researchers of American diplomacy and Peace Studies.

This book provides a detailed analysis on the history and development of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS) and the Conference on Disarmament (CD) and the coordination and cooperation between these two fora. Furthermore, it discusses the future challenges that these fora will have to deal with and conclude in which way the current system can change to cope with the evolution of space matters. This is necessary for the proper discussion of space matters because these matters cannot simply be divided between military and non-military, but are interrelated.

This book explores the last 25 years of international peacebuilding and recasts them as a growing crisis of confidence in universal ideas of peacebuilding and self-government. Since current peacebuilding interventions are abandoning domineering, top-down and linear methodologies, and experimenting with context-sensitive, self-reflexive and locally driven strategies, the book makes two suggestions. The first is that international policymakers are embracing some of the critiques of liberal peace. For more than a decade, scholarly critiques have pointed out the need to focus on everyday dynamics and local initiatives and resistances to liberal peace in order to enable hybrid and long-term practice-based strategies of peacebuilding. Now, the distance between the policy discourse and critical frameworks has narrowed. The second suggestion is that in stepping away from liberal peace, a transvaluation of peacebuilding values is occurring. Critiques are beginning to accept and valorise that international interventions will continuously fail to produce sensitive results. The earlier frustrations with unexpected setbacks, errors or contingencies are ebbing away. Instead, critiques normalise the failure to promote stability and peace. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, international intervention, conflict resolution, international organisations and security studies in general.

This book makes the case for a standing UN Emergency Peace Service. With this one development - effectively a UN first responder for complex emergencies - the organization would finally have a rapid, reliable capacity to help fulfill its tougher assigned tasks. To date, the UNEPS initiative has encountered an unreceptive political, fiscal, and security environment. Yet overlapping crises are now inevitable as are profound shifts. This book presents an insightful review of the worrisome security challenges ahead and analysis of two recent high-level UN reports. It addresses the primary roles, core principles, and requirements of a UNEPS, as well as the arguments for and against such a dedicated UN service. Further, it reveals that the primary impediments and lessons learned also help demonstrate what may work and, equally important, what won't. With modest support, the book shows, the next steps are feasible, although it's important to recall that ideas, even good ideas, don't work unless we do.

Sooner or later, if the world keeps following its current course, there will be a nuclear war. Roger Hilsman, who played a significant role during the Cuban Missile Crisis, is convinced that the only way to prevent an eventual nuclear conflict is to abolish war itself. This study examines and critiques all of the various proposals to date for incorporating nuclear weapons into strategic doctrine and concludes that these efforts have failed. Plans for abolishing only nuclear weapons are, according to Hilsman, good-intentioned but ill-advised attempts to rehabilitate war. Instead, he proposes a gradual transition to world government, which will perform the traditional social and political functions that were in the past served only by war.

War will not disappear immediately. The world must still be prepared to deal with three types of war: wars that have the potential for escalating to a nuclear World War III; wars that are self-confining; and civil wars that cry out for peacekeeping intervention on humanitarian grounds. While the United States will have to be responsible for dealing with potentially nuclear wars, an entirely new force structure will be necessary. Self-confining wars, such as Bosnia, pose a particular problem as far as world public opinion for intervention is concerned; this study proposes solutions to such dilemmas. Finally, because national forces are ill-suited to peacekeeping missions in countries ravaged by civil war, the UN must recruit and maintain an international force along the lines of the French Foreign Legion.

In 1991 the politicians of Northern Ireland sat down at the formal negotiating table for the first time in seventeen years. This book tells the fascinating story of the Initiative's three years of painstaking political deals in an enlightening and entertaining narrative, using the words of many of the participants. It shows how the Initiative laid the necessary groundwork for the subsequent Irish peace process and how its failures also illuminate current events.

This book applies cutting-edge methods from cognitive and evolutionary theories to develop models of conflict between hierarchically-structured cognitive entities under circumstances of imprecision, uncertainty and stress. Characterized as friction and the fog-of-war by the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, such conditions impair institutional cognition in real-time conflict and pose a real and continuing threat to organizations, such as the US military. In a linked collection of formal essays and a mathematical appendix, the book explores different aspects of cognitive and evolutionary process as conducted under the direction of doctrine that acts as a kind of genome for retention of what is learned through Lamarckian evolutionary selection pressures: armies and corporate entities learn from conflict, and incorporate that learning into their ongoing procedures. The book proposes models and policy solutions for strategic competence. A central feature of the book is a formal description of the famous OODA loop of the US military theorist John Boyd in terms of the Data Rate Theorem that links control and information theories. That description is expanded to cover more fully the impact of stochastic fog-of-war effects on tactical and operational scales of conflict. Subsequent chapters examine in more detail the role of doctrine, and the particular effect of embedding culture on cognitive and Lamarckian evolutionary processes associated with conflict on tactical, operational, and strategic scales and levels of organization. A scientifically sophisticated exercise in applied mathematics, history, evolutionary theory, and ecosystem theory, this book will be appropriate for researchers and students interested in defense, security, and international relations, as well as non-academic career professionals in government and industry.

This volume provides a critical assessment of the mainstream western childhood constructions and their impact to the developing world. Using African feminist and indigenous epistemological frameworks, the volume decolonizes the understanding of childhood, children, and youth. Specifically, the volume presents Global South contestations to mainstream western constructions by exploring alternative notions to standardized universal understanding of childhood. The author further deliberates childhood as a human right, exploring how armed violence hinders realization of such rights assessing humanitarian assistance during armed violence. Besides childhood, the volume explores the complex intersectional nature of youthhood and its cultural relevance to formerly displaced communities and how this manifests in access to and use of humanitarian assistance.

This book explores the traces of the passage of time on the protracted and intractable conflict of Western Sahara. The authors offer a multilevel analysis of recent developments from the global to the local scenes, including the collapse of the architecture of the UN-led conflict resolution process, the advent of the War on Terror to the the Sahara-Sahel area and the impact of the 'Arab Spring' and growing regional security instability. Special attention is devoted to changes in the Western Sahara territory annexed by Morocco and the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria. Morocco has adapted its governance and public policies to profound socio-demographic transformations in the territory under its control and has attempted to obtain international recognition for this annexation by proposing an Autonomy Plan. The Polisario Front and Sahrawi nationalists have shifted their strategy and pushed the centre of gravity of the conflict back inwards by focusing on pro-independence activism inside the disputed territory.

The "illuminating" (Los Angeles Times) answer to why Israel and Palestine's attempts at negotiation have failed and a practical, "admirably measured" (The New York Times) roadmap for bringing peace to the Middle East--by an impartial American diplomat experienced in solving international conflicts.George Mitchell knows how to bring peace to troubled regions. He was the primary architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement for peace in Northern Ireland. But when he served as US Special Envoy for Middle East Peace from 2009 to 2011--working to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--diplomacy did not prevail. Now, for the first time, Mitchell offers his insider account of how the Israelis and the Palestinians have progressed (and regressed) in their negotiations through the years and outlines the specific concessions each side must make to finally achieve lasting peace.

This book explores how the construction and contestation of victims in societies emerging from conflict impact processes of peacebuilding. It locates its inquiry in Northern Ireland where highly politicized, unresolved narratives of violence and a so-called 'hierarchy of victims' illuminate inherent paradoxes of victimhood in intergroup conflict. The author critiques how mechanisms designed to address the legacy of conflict often reify exclusive 'victim' and 'perpetrator' identities and obscure complex harm. Adopting an interdisciplinary lens, the book examines how the image of the ideal victim interacts with intergroup processes in a polarizing and intractable victim-perpetrator paradigm. The analysis of these issues in Northern Ireland suggests that exclusive policies and mechanisms reinforce rather than repair societal divisions, and that inclusive, complex approaches to victimhood are necessary to build sustainable peace. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of peace studies, transitional justice and criminology.

This book analyses the institutional development that the Peruvian state has undergone in recent years within a context of rapid extractive industry expansion. It addresses the most important institutional state transformations produced directly by natural resources growth. This includes the construction of a redistributive law with the mining canon; the creation of a research canon for public universities; the development of new institutions for environmental regulation; the legitimation of state involvement in the function of prevention and management of conflicts; and the institutionalization and dissemination of practices of participation and local consultation.

The fruit of relentless peace activism and many years of philanthropic work in the Middle East Peace Network, In Search of Israeli-Palestinian Peace is Shai Har-El's unique, non-utopian, proactive approach to Middle East peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Recognizing the magnitude, complexity, and gravity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the evidenced limitations of traditional diplomacy, the author offers ideas how to enhance the Middle East peace process by adding a non-governmental peacebuilding component to the peace efforts. Such citizen diplomacy efforts, he argues, should be launched at a preliminary conflict transformation phase leading up to the final conflict resolution phase. The ultimate objective of this preliminary phase is to create-through alternative avenues, such as private diplomacy initiatives, transnational mechanisms, and backchannels-a win-win environment that is conducive to settling the conflict. This book details the concepts, measures, and techniques involved in the process with the understanding that the keystone for peace is the defiant power of the human spirit in both societies that are hungry for peace.

Ross here presents a comparative historical study of European neutrality policy with special reference to the problem posed to neutral countries by the imposition of international collective sanctions. The study takes the form of an extended and detailed comparative examination of Swedish and Swiss responses to the League of Nation's embargo against Italy in 1935-36 and the United Nation's sanctions against Rhodesia in 1965-79. Through this analysis, the author explores how and why Swedish and Swiss policies toward sanctions have differed over time and what these differences reveal about neutrality policy in general, particularly in relation to collective security actions taken by international organizations. An ideal supplemental text for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in comparative politics, international relations, and international organization, this volume will also be of significant benefit to policymakers interested in reviewing past sanctions cases as a guidepost for determining the feasibility of similar operations in the future.

The book is distinguished by its broad historical approach and by its close comparison of the two countries--not only in terms of their sanctions policies but also in terms of their domestic political structures and individual overall formulations of neutrality policy. Ross demonstrates that despite the many background similarities between Sweden and Switzerland, the two states have differed substantially in their responses to sanctions operations. He analyzes the reasons for these differences, challenging traditionally held views that characterize Sweden's policies as changeable and Switzerland's as consistent. Finally, Ross identifies seven explanatory factors, derived from the four case studies, which can be used to determine how other source states--both neutral and non-neutral--might respond to future cases of sanctions.

The role of emotions is important in explaining conflicts and their resolution. Witness the emotions surrounding the outbreak of wars past and current and their endings. In order to introduce the perspective of emotions as an explanatory scheme of conflict escalation and crises, a comparison to classical conceptions such as the pursuit of power or commercial and financial interests is warranted. On first glance these two explanatory schemes seem to be at opposite extremes. However, new approaches to decision-making and rationality and challenges to the traditional expected utility model make these two conceptions much more compatible. The new perspective of rank dependent expected utility and the closely related notion of utility functions, which can both represent risk averse and risk preferring attitudes in decision-making go a long way in incorporating emotions within otherwise rational choices. One can thus build models that account more easily for conflict escalations but also for conflict resolution. These theoretical considerations are investigated within empirical cases of civil wars and shown to be effective in explaining the origins but also the breakdown of conflicts.

In this collaborative examination two diverse groups of scholars look at Western and Islamic approaches to war, peace, and statecraft from their own perspectives in an effort to bridge the gap of knowledge and understanding between the two traditions. Established scholars in religious ethics and international law--James Turner Johnson, John Langan, David Little, and William V. O'Brien--examine the substantial body of literature on the just war tradition that has been produced over time by historians, theologians, ethicists, and international lawyers. The Islamic tradition, which in both its classical and contemporary forms presents a rich variety of materials for discussions of statecraft, including issues connected with the justification, conduct, and ultimate aims of war, is then assessed by a group of leading Islamicists including Fred Donner, Richard C. Martin, Bruce Lawrence, and Ann Mayer. The two major themes stressed by the contributors are the "historical" and "theoretical" approaches to war and peace in the two great religious and cultural traditions. In every case, the chapters are broadly historical and comparative in nature. Kelsay and Johnson's Just War and Jihad, together with their companion volume, Cross-Crescent and Sword: The Justification and Limitation of War in Western and Islamic Tradition (Greenwood Press, 1990), represent the outcome of interdisciplinary and cross-cultural dialogues. An introduction takes up the various themes present in the chapters and reflects their significance for comparative studies of cultural attitudes on war and peace. In the book's first major division four chapters deal with "foundational" concerns. Here the authors identify sourcesand basic themes of religious thought that influence Western and Islamic approaches to war and peace. The two chapters of Part II take up particular questions connected with the phenomenon of holy war. In the final section two contributors assess the status of the international law on war and peace. For students and scholars of comparative religion, ethics, and international relations this comparative study, which establishes the persistence of certain human concerns across the boundaries of particular cultures, makes timely and important reading.

Great-power conflict and great-power war are still the most dangerous risks the international community is facing today. This edited volume investigates the feasibility of a modern day concert of powers as a way for managing the risk of great power conflicts in the 21st century. The volume takes its inspiration from history. The 19th century European Concert was not only able to ensure a period of exceptional peacefulness among the European great powers, it also limited the scope and duration of the few wars that did break out. The chapter authors discuss the achievements and limits of the historical concert, define the requirements that a new concert would have to meet, critically evaluate obstacles and risks of the approach and indicate how a 21st century concert of powers could complement, and fit into, the present legal and institutional setting of global politics. This volume offers a systematic examination of the norms and tools of the historical template and scrutinizes these tools for their utility in our time. It will be of great interest to a wide range of scholars and students in areas such as International Relations, History and International Law.

As the RtoP moves from norm to operationalization, greater analysis of action to halt crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and ethnic cleansing is needed. This uncovers opportunities and challenges associated with third pillar interventions by looking at legal, economic, political, military and alternative interventions in third-countries.

Increasing inequalities, political movements and violent extremism across the world cause social and political instability in which education is enormously implicated. Placed firmly in this wider global context, this volume explores interactions between education and armed conflict during the ‘People’s War’ (1996 – 2006) in Nepal. Building upon theoretical concepts that deal with multifarious links between education and conflict, Tejendra Pherali provides a critical analysis of the contentious role of education in the emergence of conflict, as well as the effects of violence on education. Pherali engages with sociological and political theories to analyse the emergence and expansion of armed rebellion and discuss implications for peacebuilding and social transformation. He argues that education in Nepal played a complicit role in the conflict, primarily benefitting the traditionally privileged social groups in the society and hence, perpetuating the existing structural inequalities, which were the major causes of the rebellion. Schools, trapped in the middle of the conflict between the Maoists and the security forces, became a significant political space that facilitated critical education, providing intellectual strength to the violent rebellion. Exploring education after the conflict, the author argues that the reconstruction should adopt a ‘conflict-sensitive’ approach to deal with issues concerning educational inequity, social exclusion, and political hegemony of the privileged social groups. The volume provides invaluable insights into post-conflict opportunities and challenges for educational reforms that align with inclusive democracy, social justice and equitable development.