Security, Conflict Management, and Peacebuilding: Formal Education in Intrastate Political Agreements, 1989–2016

Abstract

In this mixed methods analysis of a dataset she developed, Giuditta Fontana explores how formal intrastate peace processes have addressed reforms of for mal education since the end of the Cold War. Looking at the frequency of reforms of formal education, the con text for their inclusion, and the framing of their aims, she finds that intrastate political agreements circumscribe the peace building potential of education because they rarely include education as a component, their geopolitical context and broader content are not clearly associated with the inclusion of education reforms, and education reforms are primarily framed as contributing to security and conflict management rather than long-term peace building. With fundamental implications for scholarship and policy, this article shows that peace agreements’ focus on the promotion of negative peace rather than more ambitious positive peace is an obstacle to realizing the peacebuilding potential of education in conflict-affected contexts.