Peacebuilding and Profit-Making

Abstract

The Political Economy of Transitions to Peace: A Comparative Perspective. By Galia Press-Barnathan. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. 257 pp., $27.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-82296-027-0). The precise nature of the relationship between commerce and peace has long been a reliable source of contention between liberal and realist scholars. The commercial liberalism thesis, a subset of the broader liberal peace debate with roots running back to Kant, holds that trade promotes economic interdependence among states which in turn discourages war between them (Russett and Oneal 2001). While this basic argument continues to underpin the rosier scenarios concerning globalization, others—especially realists—remain skeptical, countering either that trade has little impact on the determinants of peace and conflict or that it exacerbates conflict as each partner seeks to gain at the expense of the other (Barbieri 2002). Despite the increasing methodological sophistication of this debate, which at its core revolves around the fundamental question of whether states care more about relative or absolute gains, it has remained both theoretically and empirically inconclusive. In The Political Economy of Transitions to Peace , Galia Press-Barnathan offers a new take on this old debate. Rather than focusing on the contribution of commerce to the prevention of conflict—what she terms the negative side of the liberal argument—her interest here is on whether economic ties linking former enemies can contribute positively to the building of peace between them. By focusing on peacebuilding between states, Press-Barnathan's book is a departure from much of the contemporary literature on post-conflict peacebuilding, which has been largely monopolized in recent years by a concern with intrastate, rather …