Peace Government Research Articles

A contextual review and analysis of the OECD’s new approach to fragile states

The Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD's) new way to deal with delicate states surveys delicacy as an all inclusive issue that can influence all nations in various measurements – not just those generally viewed as "delicate" or struggle influenced. This might prompt a radical new arrangement of improvement mediations, as indicated by OECD Lead Governance Advisor Sara Fyson, who sat down with us to examine the discoveries of the late report States of Fragility 2015 by the Paris-based association's Governance for Peace and Development Team drove by Jolanda Profos.

Hungarian Defence Forces and Regime Change in 1989–1990 : International and Domestic Background

The role of the armed forces in the regime change could cover as wide scale of topics as learned in history. In Hungary we experienced a peaceful regime change in 1989–1990. However, many questions were raised about the military role in contemporary events.It is a fact that the Hungarian Defence Forces were affected by many political changes and challenges in the given time period and it is still a controversial question why and how it was possible that it played a stabilizing role.As a first part of a planned paper series, this article seeks to explain some international and domestic events and influencing factors in the period from 1989 to 1990 with the support of the Janos Bolyai Research Scholarship awarded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

The role of international organizations in regime transitions: How IGOs can tie a dictator’s hands

The level of violence seen during transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule varies substantially. Recently, Tunisia experienced an almost bloodless transition, while in Libya the attempt to oust the Gadhafi regime ended in a civil war. This paper looks at the dynamics of democratic transitions, and attempts to explain why some become extremely violent while others progress peacefully. Specifically, the paper looks at the potential role of international governmental organizations (IGOs) for constraining or altering the behavior of non-democratic regimes, thereby influencing regime transitions. It argues that, by alleviating commitment problems between the outgoing regime and the new elites, and by imposing sanctions that reduce an incumbent regime’s ability to reap the benefits of office, IGOs increase the likelihood of seeing a peaceful transition to democracy. However, the paper also argues that non-democratic leaders should anticipate this, and therefore that regimes that are members of highly interventionist IGOs should be less likely to liberalize at all. The paper finds evidence in favor of the proposition that IGOs increase the likelihood of a peaceful regime transition, and that non-democratic regimes that are members of highly interventionist IGOs anticipate being constrained by these organizations, and therefore are more reluctant to liberalize in the first place.

Unpacking the local turn in peacebuilding: a critical assessment towards an agenda for future research

This article undertakes a critical assessment of the local turn in critical peacebuilding scholarship. It comes to the conclusion that the local turn is hampered by a binary and essentialist understanding of the local and the international, which are presented as the only relevant locations of power or resistance. This leads to an ignorance of local elites, provides a romanticised interpretation of hybrid peace governance structures, overstates local resistance and presents an ambivalent relationship to practice. The article recommends a more nuanced understanding of the actors involved in peace- and statebuilding, based on more empirical scholarship and a multidisciplinary approach.

The construction of gender-sensitive peacebuilding in Australia: ‘Advance Australia Fair’

Australia was the first United Nations member state to commit to the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund when it was established in 2006, and it has made annual contributions since then. Australia has also made significant contributions towards enhancing gender equality in peace and security governance, most recently during its 2013–14 term of office on the United Nations Security Council, recognising that gender matters in and to all aspects of peacebuilding activity. This article offers a discourse-theoretical policy analysis of a range of Australian Agency for International Development guidelines and strategies addressing gender and peacebuilding issues, and reads these against the international framework to explore the discursive construction of gender-sensitive peacebuilding in Australia. The authors argue that the representations of peacebuilding in the documents they analyse shape how Australia engages in peacebuilding-related activities and inform how Australia is positioned internationally as a peacebuilding actor.

The Way to World Peace via an Integrated Kantian and Buddhist Perspective

The age of the global war on terror requires a new route to world peace. Immanuel Kant points out that the gradual evolution of human institutions is the key to world peace and that the principles of laws, morality and politics could be holistically established and systematically promoting the right to self-determination of individuals, peoples and the whole of mankind as a motivating force. An international league for peace, the national republican constitution and the law of world citizenship are the legal tools need to be implemented.Moreover, Buddhism values peace both intrinsically and instrumentally. It identifies the human nature and the structural cause of violence. It has the cultural power to motivate and to hold people morally responsible for achieving peaceful ideals: common basis of values, virtues, rights and responsibilities, culture of non-violence, solidarity and tolerance. By associating with the Buddhists, people around the world may feel powerful enough to deal with the contemporary world issues.Therefore, the Buddhist ethics has been called a conceptual skill for a peace education project and the Kantian ethics has been called a technical skill for a rule of law development movement. Both are the ultimate guarantors for peace, thus becoming the new paradigm for peace governance. Such local collaboration can contribute to the peace-building and peacekeeping processes worldwide. The time is now ripe for such an integrated approach to be introduced.

Enhancing International Cooperation: From Necessity to Urgency in Responding to Intrastate Conflict

IT WAS A PLEASURE TO SERVE A TERM AS COEDITOR OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE together with Tom Farer. Most important, I want to give acknowledgment and unending gratitude to Matthew Klick, who served ably as managing editor of the journal during this tenure. As Torn Farer points out in this issue, our introductory piece in the first issue of volume 16, Enhancing International Cooperation, expressed our view that the current system of global is woefully inadequate to deal with the dramatic economic, social, and political evolution of the international system in the past two decades. Looking forward, we argued that new institutions, approaches, and partnerships will be needed to address these deficits of and the inability of the overall system to respond sufficiently to the increased need for global cooperation, and we invited aspirant authors to the journal to address these deficits. In volumes 16 through 19 of Global Governance, as editors, we were fortunate to publish a strong array of peer-reviewed scholarly research and to provide a place for top practitioners to express their voice on leading issues concerning the inadequacies of present global regimes and ways to improve them. We saw, during our tenure, special issues emerge on critical matters such as the global of international migration (Khalid Koser, guest editor), the hybrid peace governance debates in the field of peacebuilding and statebuilding (Roberto Belloni and Anna Jarstad, guest editors), and the global and local of extractive resources (Gilles Carbonnier, guest editor). Also published were special focus sections on the special representatives of the UN Secretary-General, NATO's roles in post-conflict contexts (led by Alexandra Gheciu and Roland Paris), the Group of 8 in Africa (led by David Black), complex multilateral regimes (led by Amandine Orsini, Jean-Frederic Morin, and Oran Young), and transnational river systems. In addition, there was a wide range of articles on global topics, from sanctions to UN management, climate change negotiations, international trade and financial flows, bioinvasion, support to democracy, power sharing in civil wars, Responsibility to Protect, new Global South alliances, and comparative studies on norm emergence, to mention just a few. There were also top-notch review essays of leading books on human rights, gender, peacebuilding, and global order. We hope that these volumes contribute to scholarly discourse on the specific topics they address and indeed to the understanding of global more broadly in terms of gaps and needed cooperative responses. As our period of tenure of editorial stewardship of the journal comes to an end, it is fitting to address the new urgency that characterizes today's international system in terms of peace and security. In reflection, I believe this new sense of urgency has emerged to dramatically improve global to prevent, manage, and mitigate intrastate conflict and to provide humanitarian relief. The shameful inability of the international community to stem the civil war in Syria, which began in 2011 and by the time of this writing has resulted in more than 100,000 fatalities, created 2 million refugees, and dislocated another 4 million--just as it threatens to escalate into a broader regional conflict--underscores that thinking in terms of necessity is not enough when it comes to global responses to violent intrastate conflict. The 1992 Agenda for Peace, penned by UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali following the first-ever meeting of the Security Council at the level of heads of state in January 1992, ultimately shaped the ability of the world's preeminent organization to adapt to the turbulent systemic change under way in the international system. The agenda reflected the turbulence and change in the early 1990s by reaffirming that volatile transition in political systems could yield state failure, ethnocide, and genocide and pose costly humanitarian tragedies not seen since World War IT; it was a sea change in world order. …

Indigenous Conflict Management Traditions and Industrial Peace: A Leveraging Model

Industrial peace benefits business, government, and society. Cooperative relations between management and labor provide a stable operating environment for business, greater harmony in society, and a greater capacity by government to attract and retain foreign direct investment. Building industrial peace, however, is said to be one of the most challenging aspects of globalization, particularly for emerging economies, since market opening pressures create or exacerbate confrontational employment relations. We propose that businesses can foster industrial peace while simultaneously promoting their own effectiveness by leveraging indigenous conflict management traditions for use in the firm. Drawing on management, industrial relations, anthropology, and international development literature, we present a leveraging model with brief case studies from Sri Lanka. This model illustrates the systematic surfacing, applying and mainstreaming of indigenous conflict management traditions at the enterprise level in orde...

Reasons Making ZANU-PF Party in Zimbabwe Resort to Election Violence Since 2000

Zimbabwe has suffered outrageous violence during electioneering times. During elections rape, murders, beatings, intimidations, expulsions from certain villages or districts and loss of property are common happenings. Issues of possessing the country, diabolic attitudes of politicians to get positions power by hook and crook, fear of losing political and business power, fear of previous corruption and scandals that can take particular persons to The HAGUE, use of loose language, and weak political institutions are some of the reasons identified as igniting violence in Zimbabwe. There is therefore need for tolerance of opposition political parties if democracy is going to be nurtured in the country. Issues of accountability, responsibility, transparency and rule of law are also critical in the hunt for peace and democratic good governance. The content of the article was derived from literature review and the research is basically a desk research.

The international peacebuilding paradox: Power sharing and post-conflict governance in Burundi

At first glance, Burundi represents a successful negotiated transition to peaceful governance through power sharing, and a justification for regional and international peacebuilders' involvement. It is undeniable that Burundi is safer than it was a decade or two ago. Most notably, while Burundi was once known for its ethnic divisions and antagonism, today ethnicity is no longer the most salient feature around which conflict is generated. Nevertheless, this article argues that the Burundian experience illuminates international peacebuilding contradictions. Peacebuilding in Burundi highlights the complex interplay between outside ideas and interests, and multiple Burundian ideas and interests. This is illustrated by the negotiation and implementation of governance institutions and practices in Burundi. Outsiders promoted governance ideas that were in line with their favoured conception of peacebuilding, and Burundian politicians renegotiated and reinterpreted these institutions and practices. Even as international rhetoric about peacebuilding emphasized liberal governance and inclusive participation, narrower conceptions of peacebuilding as stabilization and control became dominant. Thus, encounters between international, regional, and local actors have produced governance arrangements that are at odds with their liberal and inclusionary rhetorics. Paradoxically, the activities of international peacebuilders have contributed to an ‘order’ in Burundi where violence, coercion, and militarism remain central.

Cure or Curse? The Role of Religion in Violent Conflict and Peaceful Governance

From Origins of Religion to Present Impasse Religions emerged in dawn of prehistory, as ubiquitous, diverse responses of humankind to bewildering wonderment of our planet. They celebrated earth's bounty, sky's gifts, and their fundamental unpredictability. Cosmotheandry prevailed: entire cosmos was inhabited by theos, and deemed divine. Everything in universe, under one's feet and above one's head, was considered sacred. Both mother earth and father sky were venerated, their cosmic marriage giving birth to bountiful universe. (1) The inscrutable fertility of women and nature was worshipped. It was unthinkable for our early ancestors to be anthropocentric and believe that all of this marvelous creation was for their species' benefit alone, to be used and disposed at whim. It was self-evident to humans then that their species was but one link in this indivisible chain of life where everything was interconnected, all infinitely different yet seamlessly one. Living in unbroken union with nature, human beings found innumerable geographically specific ways to venerate and entreat elements. Uncovering nature's secrets, they reaped its generosity. Hunters blessed their prey before felling them for sustenance; gatherers learned when, where, and how to enrich their diets; nomads deciphered skies to feed their herds; settlers conjugated water and soil to cultivate crops; humans cooperated with animals to multiply strength of their limbs. Our ancestors found awe-inspiring names to describe forces of nature and indescribable creative energy behind universe. They whispered stories of creation that became their founding myths. (2) Hence, diverse cultures and civilizations of world were born. Inspired by unique geography and endowments of each inhabited piece of Earth, learned devised rituals, replete with wisdom, redolent with symbolism. As cultures evolved alongside ancient religions, communities devised culturally appropriate ways to manage affairs of humankind. Their societies were not utopias: violent conflicts rose, but so did ingenious rites to prevent violence, resolve conflicts, and reconcile enemies. Such cosmotheandric beliefs and peacemaking traditions continue to prevail among ancient spiritual traditions sheltered from modernization, though they have been largely abandoned by subsequent mainstream religions. Over time, as humans became less nomadic and more sedentary, less bucolic and more urban, religions too sought refuge in built-up structures: temples, mosques, churches, and synagogues. Earlier, when humans' umbilical cord to Mother Earth was still vibrant and sensate, wise knew which geographical locations were most replete with electromagnetic energy and connected subterraneously with myriad other spots on planet. These were deemed sacred and housed sites of worship. This rock might harbor a church, synagogue, or mosque and that cavern, a stupa or temple: all coexisted as different notes in hymn to divine. With changing politicoreligious fortunes, mosques or churches were built on ruined synagogues and temples, and vice versa; wise knew these sites were potent, regardless which form of God was worshipped thereon. As walls rose to enshrine deity, differences grew between diverse manifestations, first unwittingly and then deliberately. Demarcation replaced coexistence. Walls not only bonded those within, but also segregated those within from those without. Soon, material wealth and temporal power encompassed within became worth defending at any price, against outsiders: infidels, heathens, enemies. Competing claims arose to being the chosen people. Thus lethal rivalry between and within religions sharpened and spewed blood through subsequent centuries. Eminent anthropologists and sociologists have proposed empirical theories of religion's origins that eclipse my humble exposition. …

Hybrid Peace Governance: Its Emergence and Significance

Abstract In hybrid peace governance, liberal and illiberal norms, institutions, and actors exist alongside each other, interact, and even clash. Such a political, economic, and social order is a far cry from the liberal idea of peace based on legitimate and accountable democratic institutions, the rule of law, human rights, free media, market economy, and an open civil society. This article accounts for the emergence of hybrid peace governance and develops a typology based on the war/peace and liberal/illiberal spectra. Furthermore, it discusses the implications of hybridity and, in particular, whether it can avoid the pitfalls of top-down liberal peacebuilding and provide new opportunities for a more sustainable, locally engrained version of peace.

Hybrid Peace Governance and Illiberal Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka

Hybrid Peace Governance and Illiberal Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka

Indonesia and the Liberal Peace: Recovering Southern Agency in Global Governance

It is necessary to move beyond the marginalization of the global South towards a perspective that takes it as a relational, generative, and agentive site within world politics. Indonesia is an instructive case in this regard: its participation in various multilateral peace projects constitutes a narrative of Southern agency that runs counter to dominant accounts of contemporary global governance. The dominant methodologies of peacekeeping, worked out through various iterations into a project of liberal governance, have been deeply implicated in many sets of illiberal relations. This illiberal side to the ‘liberal peace’ can be seen in the ways particular North–South relations have been structured into peace governance, as well as its instrumentalization by powerful domestic elements of Southern states. This is well exemplified by the Indonesian case, whose postcolonial transitions have been caught up in problematic civil–military relations, with both its governments and armed forces deriving various types of support from the international community at various times. Following the Cold War, and especially post-Suharto, these have intertwined with matters of ethno-religious violence, military authority, democratization, and the rise of political Islam. Indonesia's participation in global liberal governance interventions raises questions about peace operations as a world-ordering technology. Es necesario desplazarse más allá de la marginalización del sur global hacia una perspectiva que la toma como un sitio relacional, generativo y de cambio dentro de la política mundial. En este aspecto, Indonesia es un caso instructivo: su participación en varios proyectos de paz multilaterales constituyen una narrativa de la agencia del sur que va en contra de cuentas dominantes de gobierno global contemporáneo. Las metodologías dominantes de mantenimiento de paz, trabajaron a través de varios ciclos dentro de un proyecto de gobierno liberal, han estado implicadas en varias series de relaciones conservadoras. Este lado conservador de ‘la paz liberal’ puede verse tanto en la forma como las relaciones particulares de norte-sur han sido estructuradas dentro de la gobernanza de paz, como en su instrumentalización bajo los elementos domésticos poderosos de los estados del sur. Esto ha estado bien ejemplificado por el caso indonesio, cuyas transiciones poscoloniales han sido envueltas en relaciones civiles-militares problemáticas, con sus gobiernos y fuerzas armadas, derivando varios tipos de soporte de la comunidad internacional en varias ocasiones. Después de la guerra fría, y especialmente después de Suharto, estos se han ligado con asuntos de violencia etnoreligiosos, de autoridad militar, democratización y el surgimiento del islam político. La participación de Indonesia en las intervenciones de gobierno liberal global, plantean dudas sobre las operaciones de paz como una tecnología de orden mundial. 我们有必要超越全球南方边缘化的想法，迈向一个将全球南方视为世界政治中一个相关的、有生产力、有动力场所的视角。关于这点，印度尼西亚是一个富有教益的案例：其在各种多边和平项目中的参与构筑了对南方能动作用的一种叙述，这种叙述与当代全球治理的主流解释相左。维和的主要方法，是通过各种循环进入自由主义治理项目从而解决问题，这些方法深深地涉及许多非自由主义关系。“自由主义和平”的非自由主义这一面可见于特定的北-南关系被结构为和平治理，以及通过南方国家强有力的国内因素被工具化。这通过印度尼西亚这一个案得到了很好的例证，印尼的后殖民主义转变正逢军民关系困难重重，其政府和武装力量在不同时期都从国际社会获得各类支持。继冷战之后，特别是后苏哈托时期，这些与族群-宗教暴力、军人威权、民主化以及政治伊斯兰的崛起等问题交织在一起。印尼对全球自由主义治理干预活动的参与提出了有关作为世界-秩序技术的和平行动的各种问题。 남반부의 주변화를 넘어서 남반부를 세계 정치 내에서 관계적, 생성적, 행위적 공간으로 연기는 관점을 갖는 것이 필요하다. 인도네시아는 이러한 점에서 교훈적이다: 여러 가지 다자간 평화 프로젝트에 인도네시아의 참여가 현대 지구적 거버넌스에 대한 지배적인 설명에 반대되는 남반부 행위자의 내러티브를 구성한다. 여러 반복을 통해서 자유 거버넌스의 프로젝트를 통해서 만들어진 지배적인 평화유지 방법론들이 비자유적 관계 속에 깊숙히 연루되어 있다. ‘자유주의 평화’의 비자유주의적 측면이 특히 북부-남부가 평화 거버넌스에 구조화되어 있는 방식과 남부 국가들의 강력한 국내적 요소들에 의해서 이루어진 북부-남부 관계의 도구화에서 보여질 수 있다. 이것은 인도네시아 사례가 예시한다. 인도네시아의 정부와 군 모두 여러 차례 국제사회로부터 다양한 형태의 지원을 받으면서, 인도네시아는 포스트콜로니얼 이행이 문제가 되는 민군관계에 포획되어 있다. 냉전 이후 특히 수하르토 이후 이러한 문제들은 인종-종교 폭력 문제, 군의 권위, 민주화, 정치적인 이슬람의 등장과 얽혀 있다. 지구적 자유 거너번스 개입에 인도네시아가 참여하는 것은 세계 질서를 만들어 내는 기술로서 평화활동에 대한 의문을 제기하게 만들었다.

Unnatural rebellion: loyalists in New York City during the Revolution

Thousands of British American mainland colonists rejected the War for American Independence. Shunning rebel violence as unnecessary, unlawful, and unnatural, they emphasized the natural ties of blood, kinship, language, and religion that united the colonies to Britain. They hoped that British military strength would crush the minority rebellion and free the colonies to renegotiate their return to the empire.Of course the loyalists were too American to be of one mind. This is a story of how a cross-section of colonists flocked to the British headquarters of New York City to support their ideal of reunion. Despised by the rebels as enemies or as British appendages, New York's refugees hoped to partner with the British to restore peaceful government in the colonies. The British confounded their expectations by instituting martial law in the city and marginalizing loyalist leaders. Still, the loyal Americans did not surrender their vision but creatively adapted their rhetoric and accommodated military governance to protect their long-standing bond with the mother country. They never imagined that allegiance to Britain would mean a permanent exile from their homes.

Hybrid Peace Governance and Illiberal Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka

This article analyzes hybrid peace governance and illiberal peacebuilding in postwar Sri Lanka. While discussing the kind of hybridity that has emerged, it focuses specifically on the international ...

Introducing Hybrid Peace Governance: Impact and Prospects of Liberal Peacebuilding

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, among other cases, the international efforts to promote peace and democratic institutions frequently clash with different understandings of ...

Decentralisation and Elections in Benin

IntroductionDecentralisation is a type of governance reform that has been undertaken all over the world. African countries are also following this trend. The decentralisation process started in the 1990s as aid conditionality, that is, donor countries required it several years after the commencement of the democratisation process in African countries. Decentralisation is not only an administrative governance reform; it also brought political change and turbulence in African countries. The political impact of decentralisation in Africa has extended from the local level to the national and eventually to its international relations.Many African countries ended the one-party system or the military regimes, and adopted a multi-party system in the 1990s. Elections were carried out under the new democratic system. Some African countries had their very first experience of a legal and peaceful regime turnover through elections. We cannot undervalue the African actors' efforts to develop democratisation even if a sceptical evaluation of the democratisation process in Africa is dominant among political scientists.In African political studies, election were never considered a focal issue especially during the period of military and one-party regimes. However, some African countries continued their democratic process despite difficult conditions. As such, election became a crucial issue. If democratisation advances, decentralisation should have a more direct and greater impact on the political situation in Africa.This article tries to understand the political impact of decentralisation in Africa through case studies on Benin. Since the 1990s, donor countries as well as the Benin Government have considered Benin a model of democratisation in Africa. Hence, it would be meaningful to analyse Benin's case and relate it to the decentralisation process in Africa. Here we study the presidential, the legislative and the local elections held in 2006, 2007 and 2008 respectively, focussing on the first impact of decentralisation on the elections in Benin.Political Influence of Decentralisation in African CountriesBy the beginning of the 1990s, African countries were required to start a political reform process-democratisation by the international community, particularly the donor countries. Several years after, the international community required the African countries to decentralise for the purpose of administration reform. According to the donors, the over-centralisation of executive power and financial resources led to inefficient governance and corruption. These long time failed experiences of development assistance were examined by the donor countries and international organisations which resolved for the need to empower the local government through devolution so as to enable them to achieve social and economic development in the local communities. Decentralisation was therefore recognised as a panacea for governance reform. Eventually however, decentralisation began to expose its dysfunction in Africa (Nack Mback, 2003, 8, 40-41).There are numerous studies on decentralisation in Africa; researchers have analysed decentralisation within the framework of international co-operation and administration studies. They have focused on administrative institutions, but not on political and economic dynamism. Saito mentioned that decentralisation is a process to redefine the roles and responsibilities of the central and the local governments. In addition, decentralisation is essentially a political process (Saito, 2008, 284).As mentioned above, decentralisation is a major political challenge; it increased resources and changed the power balance in local politics. Election monitoring teams were sent by the international community to watch over the local elections in African countries, but not many researchers are interested in the impact of decentralisation on the elections in Africa. In fact, neither did many African countries initiate repeated peaceful elections after the start of decentralisation reforms. …

Securitizing Canadian Federalism: The Supreme Court of Canada and the Proposed Canadian Securities Reform Act

The pending Canadian Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Canadian Securities Reform Act (CSRA) promises to greatly clarify or maddeningly muddle the division of powers between Canada’s provinces and federal government. Yet, two characteristics of the Court should be emphasized. The Court has avoided drawing bright lines regarding the federal government’s commerce power and weighs political factors in defining provincial and federal authorities. Furthermore, this analysis highlights the benefits of not subjecting the CRSA to a full commerce analysis. If the Court faithfully applies the General Motors test it will either (1) lay down a firm rule permitting a mandatory federal securities regulator that may be politically impossible to implement or (2) murky the rules regarding the federal government’s commerce powers. But a third option exists: the Court can justify the CSRA without forcing a definitive answer on whether a federal securities regulation would trump provincial law through the Peace, Order and Good Governance clause. While this may not satisfy supporters of bright-line rules when it comes to Canadian federalism, such an approach seems to follow proclivities of the Court and reflect Canada’s historical approach to federalism.

The Japanese Government's Peace Efforts in the Vietnam War and U. S. -Japan Relations, 1965-68

The Japanese Government's Peace Efforts in the Vietnam War and U. S. -Japan Relations, 1965-68