Peace Formation and Political Order in Conflict Affected Societies

Abstract

Abstract Throughout history, wherever there has been conflict and violence, institutions and processes aimed at peace stability and order have emerged simultaneously in and across society. Conflict often overwhelms them, though in the long term some form of peace returns, normally of a negative type. Understanding and engaging with the processes of “peace formation,” in which localized, networked political agency is exercised to achieve a range of social, political, economic, and public goods, as well as justice, equality, and reconciliation, has long been an underlying motif of peace thinking and practices. How to achieve an emancipatory form of peace is a question international actors, including key states, such as the United States, and organizations, such as the UN, EU, African Union, World Bank, and a range of NGOs, have long been confronted with. This book argues that the localized formation of peace has not been examined closely enough. Yet it provides important “navigation points for policymakers” and the crucial and, so far, often-missing legitimacy for wider peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts. Without an understanding of the practices of peace formation in any given postconflict context, from Bosnia Herzegovina to Timor-Leste, international actors may not understand the roots of a conflict, how local actors may be assisted, how violence and power seeking may be ended or managed, or how local legitimacy may emerge. Peace-formation processes may also hint at new international orders to come.