This book review examines Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson’s The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty, which argues that political liberty emerges only when a capable state is balanced by an organized and empowered society. The authors conceptualize this equilibrium as the “narrow corridor,” a fragile space in which state authority provides order while societal power restrains despotism. Using historical and comparative evidence from Europe, the Islamic world, and contemporary states such as China, India, and the United States, the book demonstrates how deviations from this balance produce either authoritarianism or disorder, both of which erode freedom. The review highlights the book’s contributions to understanding the role of institutions, social norms, and technological change in shaping liberty. Overall, the work offers a coherent and historically grounded framework for analyzing the persistence, decline, and renewal of political freedom.

This brief article introduces a new empirical assessment of the concept of mesopolitical agency to ‎examine youth engagement in peace and conflict in South Sudan. Mesopolitical agency refers to an ‎active role of managing power across multiple spheres of life. Drawing on data from a people-to-‎people peacebuilding project, the assessment focuses on the analytic power of mesopolitical agency to ‎‎(i) explore youth engagement in peace and conflict in the Unity State and, in so doing, to (ii) ‎contribute to advancing peace research and praxis. The assessment was conducted using governance ‎diaries, interviews, focus groups, and documentary data from multiple stakeholders. The findings ‎demonstrate, inter alia, that youth actively engage with local systems of power through conflict and ‎emerging roles in modest peace initiatives. The findings illustrate youth’s exercise of mesopolitical ‎agency, where the substance and extent of their participation or disaffection can significantly shape ‎and be shaped by the dynamics of peace and conflict. Overall, this article notes challenges to ‎essentialist perspectives on youth as subjects of inherent, static, or unidimensional determinable ‎positionalities vis-à-vis peace and conflict. Finally, there are concrete implications for research and ‎practice that may achieve a stronger understanding and optimization of youth’s potential role in peace.‎

This study investigates China’s potential mediation role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ‎considering the geopolitical and economic dimensions of this conflict, diplomatic practices, and ‎the history of involvement. The non-interference policy of China and its balanced relationship ‎with Israel and Palestine may provide an alternative to US mediation, which has been criticized ‎for perceived bias. This is the focus of the research. Using a qualitative abductive desk-study ‎approach, this study employs text, comparative, and policy analysis methods to study China’s ‎mediation potential. The main findings suggest that the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) ‎neutrality and economic power could create trust between parties, leading to a sustainable peace ‎process, though challenges remain due to regional dynamics and historical biases. The study ‎recommends that China could play a significant role in mediating the Israeli-Palestinian ‎conflict through multilateral cooperation and a focus on humanitarian and developmental needs. ‎This claim is supported by China’s activities and efforts in Haiti, Africa, Syria, Gaza, and the ‎Saudi-Iran Deal.

The Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh represents one of the world’s largest humanitarian ‎emergencies. While international agencies dominate large-scale relief, local NGOs play crucial ‎but often overlooked roles in sustaining everyday peace within the camps of Cox’s Bazar. ‎Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork between 2022 and 2024, this paper explores how local ‎NGOs promote conflict resolution through youth engagement, community mediation, ‎psychosocial support, gender-sensitive programs, and rumour management. Findings indicate ‎that these organizations function as trusted intermediaries and informal peacebuilders, yet face ‎severe structural barriers including short-term funding, bureaucratic control, and political ‎sensitivities that limit rights-based work. The paper situates these efforts within broader debates ‎on humanitarian localization and concludes with recommendations to strengthen the role of ‎local actors in sustainable peacebuilding.‎

This paper engages in an in-depth overview, theoretically informed examination of the 2019 ‎Major National Dialogue (MND), assessing its incapacity in addressing the Anglophone Crisis ‎in Cameroon. This paper argues that the failure of the MND was not simply unfortunate but ‎rather a direct result of its fundamentally flawed framework which favoured a state-centric, top-‎down approach against genuine, inclusive peacebuilding. Using qualitative case study approach ‎involving secondary data, reports and documents, the study employs a theoretical framework ‎integrating John Burton's Human Needs Theory and Johan Galtung's concepts of positive and ‎negative peace to dissect the dialogue's fundamental shortcomings. This assessment shows that ‎the MND’s incapacity resulted from a profound lack of inclusivity of key stakeholders ‎‎(belligerents), agenda imposition that shunned discussions about the conflict's root causes, and ‎the notorious non-involvement of a neutral, third-party mediator. The paper concludes that the ‎MND used a surface level approach in conflict management which could only result in a ‎limited, superficial and unsustainable negative peace. By incapacitating the Anglophone ‎population's integral human needs for identity, recognition, and meaningful participation, the ‎dialogue lost its capacity for resolution and fostered conflict intensification and intractability ‎which has unravelled a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in its aftermath.‎

The July 2024 uprising in Bangladesh sparked weeks of unrest and ultimately led to the ‎resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. This study examines how eight leading English-‎language newspapers framed the crisis, using Johan Galtung’s Peace and War Journalism model as ‎a guiding framework. Relying solely on quantitative content analysis, the research analyses 98 ‎news reports published between 14 July and 14 August 2024.‎ While The Daily Star and Dhaka Tribune leaned toward peace journalism, and Daily Sun, The ‎Asian Age, New Age, and The Business Standard reflected war journalism traits, coverage in ‎The Daily Observer and The Bangladesh Today defied clear classification. These two outlets ‎consistently blended elements of both models showing people-centred reporting alongside ‎elite sources, or combining de-escalatory language with victory-oriented framing.‎ This pattern, which the study terms “mixed framing,” challenges the dominant binary lens used ‎in peace journalism research, particularly in South Asia. Rather than forcing news coverage into ‎either peace or war categories, the findings point to a hybrid style that reflects the complexity of ‎contemporary reporting during political upheaval. The paper argues for expanding Galtung’s ‎model to better account for this emerging middle ground.