This book interrogates the common perception that liberal peace is in crisis and explores the question: can the local turn save liberal peacebuilding? Presenting a case for a liberal renaissance in peacebuilding, the work interrogates the assumptions behind the popular perception that liberal peace is in crisis. It re-examines three of the cases igniting the debate - Cambodia, Kosovo, and Timor-Leste - and evaluates how these transitional administrations implemented their liberal mandates and how local involvement affected the conduct of their activities. In so doing, it reveals that these cases were neither liberal nor peacebuilding. It also demonstrates that while local involvement is imperative to peacebuilding, illiberal local involvement restores an elite-centred status quo and reinforces or creates new forms of conflict and violence. Using both liberal and critical lenses, the author ultimately argues that the conceptual and operational departure from the holistic and comprehensive origins of liberal peacebuilding in fact paved the way for the liberal peace crisis itself. Drawing on analysis from in-depth field research and interviews, this book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, peacekeeping, statebuilding, security studies and International Relations in general.

This book provides new insights into the development of integrated approaches to peace and sustainability in the era of global change. Since the late 1980s, and in order to regulate the increasingly detrimental impacts of humans on the environment, the transition towards sustainability has been high on the agenda of researchers and policymakers alike. Meanwhile, peace considerations have expanded in recent decades to include the varied types and sources of conflict, from inter-state to intra-state conflicts due to various social, political, economic, and environmental factors. Through providing theoretical and empirical insights, this book demonstrates that sustainability and peace as intrinsically interrelated. The book elaborates on the multi-dimensional and constantly evolving concepts of sustainability and peace. In addition, the book contributes to a better understanding of the complex and dynamic interlinkages between peace and sustainability by presenting examples of pathways where sustainability and peace interact considering the different factors and contexts that are constantly shaping and reshaping the conditions for sustainable and peaceful societies

This book interrogates the common perception that liberal peace is in crisis and explores the question: can the local turn save liberal peacebuilding? Presenting a case for a liberal renaissance in peacebuilding, the work interrogates the assumptions behind the popular perception that liberal peace is in crisis. It re-examines three of the cases igniting the debate - Cambodia, Kosovo, and Timor-Leste - and evaluates how these transitional administrations implemented their liberal mandates and how local involvement affected the conduct of their activities. In so doing, it reveals that these cases were neither liberal nor peacebuilding. It also demonstrates that while local involvement is imperative to peacebuilding, illiberal local involvement restores an elite-centred status quo and reinforces or creates new forms of conflict and violence. Using both liberal and critical lenses, the author ultimately argues that the conceptual and operational departure from the holistic and comprehensive origins of liberal peacebuilding in fact paved the way for the liberal peace crisis itself. Drawing on analysis from in-depth field research and interviews, this book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, peacekeeping, statebuilding, security studies and International Relations in general.