Roland Paris Research Articles

Redefining national security using the case of antimicrobial resistance: a literature review

Abstract Background More than two decades after the UN's introduction of the human security concept in 1994, governments, policy makers, and researchers still preference conventional military notions in their policies on national security. Consequently, issues such as global-health security threats receive less attention than they deserve from governments and researchers. The term “human security” is an intellectually loose concept and lacks clear inter-relationships between its components. In this study, I assess some of the leading definitions of security to determine what makes antimicrobial resistance (AMR) a security issue. AMR and health security are presented as starting points for a coherent human security framework and security analysis in general. Methods I undertook a review of the online and print security literature, searching books, Jstor, and Google between Feb 1 and June 30, 2017, for articles in English, using the search terms human security concept, AMR, security, and securitisation theory. I included cases from WHO and the UN, the USA, the EU, Russia, India, South Africa, and Ethiopia that described securitisation of AMR. The entities and countries were selected based on criteria relevant to the analysis, including resistance rates, militarisation level and commitment to human security, democracy, and state capacity to handle a crisis (ie, development status). Findings I included data from 13 reports and one group of online sources in the analysis (WHO and UN [4 reports]; USA [1]; EU [4]; Russia [no official report was used, conclusions based on information contained on government websites, WHO documents and in the academic literature]; India [2]; South Africa [1]; and Ethiopia [1]). Reports and information sources were published between 1994 and 2017. Several themes emerged from the included reports: security is about the protection of core values; a security issue has cascading multisectoral consequences; security is not always about emergencies; and to traditional security scholars, security is about war and conflicts, and is external and state-centric. Further, the human security concept places the individual in focus and has seven components: health, economic, political, community, environmental, personal, and food security. AMR has been declared by governments and researchers as a human security issue with multisectoral effects. Interpretation Traditionalists' view of security is parochial and unrealistic. Use of the human security concept shows that security situations can arise internally. However, understandings of the concept are too broad and vague to be of use in directing research or policy making. A prioritisation of the human security components by governments, agencies, and researchers—as suggested previously by Roland Paris—can help overcome the weakness of intellectual incoherence and this prioritisation can begin with the health sector. Since AMR has short and long-term multisectoral ramifications, it should qualify as a national security matter. Health security cases like AMR hold the key to a coherent security framework because clear interrelationships can be drawn to all other security forms. Funding None.

Liberal Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone: A Critical Exploration

There is increasing awareness and international support for rebuilding states that have gone through conflict. Third-party interventions in bringing peace to countries that have emerged from civil wars have been channeled through a fundamental concept known as liberal peacebuilding. Liberal peacebuilding, even though it faces much criticism, has been a prominent strategy for third-party intervention in post-war countries since the end of the Cold War. This paper deals with the liberal peacebuilding process in Sierra Leone, after its decade-long brutal civil war. The focus lies on Dr Roland Paris’ institutionalization before liberalization (IBL) peacebuilding strategy, its strengths and shortcomings, and its contributions to sustaining peace in Sierra Leone since the end of the war in 2002. Arguing that the IBL strategy has helped to maintain peace in Sierra Leone after ten years of civil war, the paper analyzes how peacebuilding has been implemented in post-war Sierra Leone under the six different pillars of the IBL strategy.

The World Won’t Wait: Why Canada Needs to Rethink Its International Policies, by Roland Paris and Taylor Owen, eds.

The World Won’t Wait: Why Canada Needs to Rethink Its International Policies, by Roland Paris and Taylor Owen, eds.

Humanizing Transitional Justice: Reflections on the Role of Survey Research in Studying Violent Conflict and its Aftermath

An emergent priority in the field of transitional justice is gathering and analyzing empirical data to advance understanding of violent conflicts and responses to the transgressions committed during such events. A major segment of this research focuses on countries, policies, processes, and institutions as the units of observation. Among the limitations of such research, however, is the lack of direct, in-depth attention to relevant individual actors and their roles in these settings. Our article highlights a methodological approach that captures this perspective: surveys. Over recent years, scholars, NGOs, international organizations, and justice institutions have completed surveys of various scales with an assortment of populations, including those implicated in and/or exposed to violent conflict. Such surveys help to illuminate the circumstances and repercussions of conflict for individuals and their families and communities, their expectations about transitional justice, their assessments of contemplated and actual policies, processes and institutions, and the resulting impact on their attitudes, agency, and actions. In the process, these empirical data present a distinctive lens that we argue is integral to appreciating moral David Backer and Anupma Kulkarni 188 Transitional Justice Review, Vol.1, Iss.4, 2016, 187-232 and pragmatic motivations for transitional justice, gauging responsiveness to the needs and interests of key constituencies, and evaluating consequences. We reflect on the merits, shortcomings, mechanics, challenges, and trade-offs of conducting surveys related to transitional justice in conflicted-affected societies. As part of the discussion, we cite examples of key studies from countries around the world, drawing on our own significant first-hand experience as well as research carried out by others. Introduction An emergent priority in the field of transitional justice is gathering and analyzing empirical data to improve responses to violent conflicts and associated transgressions. A major segment of this research focuses on countries, policies, processes, and institutions as units of observation. A limitation of such research is the lack of direct, in-depth attention to individuals in these settings. Transitional justice measures aim to serve interests of people in conflict-affected societies—or are frequently justified by such claims. Therefore, collecting data from and about individuals ought to be fundamental to advancing knowledge, developing policy, and honing practice in this field. Surveys are a key method that emphasizes individuals as a unit of observation and analysis. Scholars, NGOs, international organizations, and justice institutions have undertaken surveys of various scales in conflict-affected societies, focusing on either general publics or specific population segments implicated in and/or exposed to violent conflict. The resulting data present a distinctive individuallevel lens that is integral to appreciating moral and pragmatic motivations for transitional justice, gauging responsiveness to needs and interests of key constituencies, and evaluating consequences of violent conflict and post-violence measures. The surveys illuminate the 1 Oskar Thoms, James Ron, and Roland Paris, “State-Level Effects of Transitional Justice: What Do We Know?” International Journal of Transitional Justice 4.3 (2010): 329-

The R2P Is Dead, Long Live the R2P: The Successful Separation of Military Intervention from the Responsibility to Protect

Roland Paris is one of those authors whose work is always enjoyable, as he exploits so well the gap between the policy world and academia. His best work reveals a high level of policy insight often before many of his colleagues in academia have caught up. His secret is an ability to analyse the shifting understandings at policy level and to then articulate them in academic terms as if critiquing current policies. This enables his work to be both popular with policy-makers and with their erstwhile critics in academia. His 2004 monograph, At War’s End, captured the shift from peacekeeping intervention and ‘early exit’ to the extended remits of international statebuilding (‘Institutionalization before Liberalization’). It provided a wonderful rationalisation of policy shifts that had already occurred in the late 1990s, starting with the extension of international mandates in Bosnia, from 1996 onwards, and further developed with the Kosovo protectorate in 1999. However, this shift was skilfully reposed as a critique of existing policy-understandings.

R2P's ‘Structural’ Problems: A Response to Roland Paris

Roland Paris is a formidable intellectual, one of Canada's foremost mid-career scholars with an enviable international reputation already, who thinks deeply and writes cogently on some pressing con...

Response to Roland Paris Article

In his article, Roland Paris identifies five insurmountable structural problems of preventative humanitarian intervention and that my Pragmatic Standard (as well as others) do little to remedy them...

Whose Problems Are These Anyway? A Response to Roland Paris

It has been more than 30 years since Robert Cox introduced the distinction between problem solving and critical theory to the study of international relations.1 To remind us, Cox took problem-solvi...

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. …

Statebuilding through Liberal Means: Thinking about Challenges, Contradictions, and the Impacts of Local and International Players in Postwar Peace Operations

Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding: Moving from Violence to Sustainable Peace. Edited by Bruce W. Dayton, Louis Kriesberg. New York: Routledge, 2009. 288 pp., $42.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-415-48085-7). The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations. Edited by Roland Paris, Timothy D. Sisk. New York: Routledge, 2009. 366 pp., $42.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-415-77629-5). The Paradoxes of Peacebuilding Post 9/11. Edited by Stephen Baranyi. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008, 440 pp., $29.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-804-76090-4). Waging War, Making Peace: Reparations and Human Rights. Edited by Barbara Rose Johnston, Susan Slyomovic. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2008. 272 pp., $27.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-1-59874-344-9). The end of the Cold War is often considered a turning point for an increasing engagement of the international community on preventing and resolving armed conflicts worldwide. The period also highlights the strengthening of UN efforts to organize multilateral efforts to sustain peace in turbulent regions, mostly through the development of more complex peacekeeping operations that would tackle not only the war violence, but also its causes and consequences. Such involvement was supported by guidelines presented in documents such as the Agenda for Peace (1992) and the Brahimi Report (2000). This new international approach to conflict resolution bases itself on the premise that a peaceful international environment has its foundations on stable, fully functional states that would allow political freedom and economic development to its citizens. In other words, international stability is linked to the Western, liberal model of states, whether target states are culturally and socially fit for such model or not. According to such expectations, a new political concept arose: peacebuilding. By and large, peacebuilding is a set of processes to resolve armed conflicts in order to achieve a sustainable peace and to restore normal politics. It includes, but is not limited to, democratization, political participation, and a free market. The general belief is that by transforming unstable states into fully functional political units, international community would prevent armed conflicts and political violence. Any dispute that may arise would be resolved through normal politics, that is, through non-violent paths. Former enemies would be turned into political rivals and the right to use of violence would be returned to state authorities, under the rule of law. One of the dimensions of peacebuilding is statebuilding. It consists of a set of procedures focused on strategies such as the strengthening of political institutions and the stimulus of economic development, the restoration …

The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations - Edited by Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk

The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations - Edited by Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk

Divided Partners: The Challenges of NATO-NGO Cooperation in Peacebuilding Operations

In this article, I examine the challenges associated with the cooperation between NATO and nongovernmental organizations in peacebuilding operations. I argue that those challenges need to be understood as part of a process of contestation and competition over the redefinition of the of the game in the changing domain of peacebuilding. This process of contestation, I suggest, can significantly undermine NATO's ability to contribute to sustainable peacebuilding in war-torn countries. KEYWORDS: peacebuilding, NATO, reconstruction, humanitarianism, norms, contestation. IN RECENT YEARS, AS PART OF A PROCESS OF REDEFINING ITS IDENTITY AND purpose, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has become deeply involved in complex operations aimed at stabilizing and rebuilding countries emerging from conflict. One of the key assumptions underpinning those operations is that their success depends crucially on systematic coordination between military and civilian actors--governmental and nongovernmental, domestic and international. The official discourse articulated by NATO (often echoing the UN discourse on peacebuilding) assumes that the alliance and a plethora of civilian organizations will mobilize their respective resources and cooperate closely in reconstructing war-torn countries. In practice, however, cooperation between NATO and civilian agencies engaged in reconstruction has been limited and, in some instances, virtually nonexistent. (1) As noted in Alexandra Gheciu's and Roland Paris's introduction to the special focus section, this tends to be portrayed as just one aspect of a larger challenge of coordination among the myriad of actors involved in reconstruction. By contrast, some scholars have highlighted the dangers of focusing too much on procedural efforts to improve coordination, to the detriment of substantive issues and challenges of peacebuilding. Roland Paris, for instance, has noted that the heavy emphasis on the question of coordination tends to conceal deeper disagreements among those actors over the desirable means and ends of reconstruction. (2) Against the background of those debates, this article seeks to shed light on some of the deeper issues that can help explain the inadequate cooperation between NATO forces and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in peacebuilding operations. (3) The relationship between NATO and NGOs is one of the most interesting aspects of the changing sub-field of peacebuilding, not least because these are institutions with very different cultures and mandates that now find themselves in a situation in which they need to collaborate in unprecedented ways. Yet this relationship remains comparatively undertheorized in the--otherwise rich--international relations literature on peacebuilding. I suggest that problems of cooperation between NATO and NGOs need to be understood as part of a process of contestation and competition over the redefinition of the of the game in the changing domain (or subfield) of peacebuilding. Rapid transformations in peacebuilding since the 1990s have blurred the boundaries between activities performed by military and civilian actors, and have destabilized existing norms governing the roles of various actors involved in postconflict reconstruction. In the context of these broad changes, a variety of actors (local and international, civilian and military, governmental and nongovernmental) have mobilized various forms of material and symbolic capital in an effort to cast themselves--and secure recognition--as expert, leading actors in peacebuilding operations. Simultaneously, they have tried to reshape the norms and rules of peacebuilding according to their particular worldviews. Although this article focuses specifically on relations between NATO and the NGO community, it is reasonable to argue that this is part of a larger process of change, which involves practices of contestation and competition among multiple players engaged in postconflict reconstruction. …

The end of history and the last liberal peacebuilder: a reply to Roland Paris

AbstractIn the April 2010Review of International Studies, Roland Paris argued that liberal peacebuilding is the only viable solution for rebuilding war-torn societies, and supported this by assailing critics of the liberal peace. In this article we challenge four key claims made by Paris: imposed and consensual peacebuilding are different experiences; there are no echoes of imperialism in modern peacebuilding; there is no alternative to the capitalist free market; and critics of the liberal peace are ‘closet liberals’. We argue that Paris ignores the extent to which all peacebuilding strategies have had a core of common prescriptions: neoliberal policies of open markets, privatisation and fiscal restraint, and governance policies focused on enhancing instruments of state coercion and ‘capacity building’ – policies that have proved remarkably resilient even while the democracy and human rights components of the liberal peace have been substantially downgraded. There is little space to (formally) dissent from these policy prescriptions – whether international peacebuilders were originally invited in or not. Furthermore, the deterministic assumption by Paris that ‘there is no alternative’ is unjustifiable. Rather than trying to imagine competing meta-alternatives to liberalism, it is more constructive to acknowledge and investigate the variety of political economies in post-conflict societies rather than measuring them against a liberal norm.

Introduction: The Distinctive Role of Culture in Peacekeeping

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Michael Pugh for his invaluable support in realizing this special issue on ‘culture and peacekeeping’. Notes See also Roland Paris's article on ‘global culture’ referring to an international normative environment that shapes the design of peacekeeping operations in fundamental ways: ‘Peacekeeping and the Constraints of Global Culture’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol.9, No.3, 2003, pp.441–73. Amitav Gosh, ‘The Global Reservation: Notes toward an Ethnography of International Peacekeeping’, Cultural Anthropology, Vol.9, No.3, 1994, pp.412–22. Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005, pp.141–3. See Nigel Rapport and Joanna Overing, Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts, London: Routledge, 2000, p.97. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, New York: Basic Books, 1973, p.10. Rapport and Overing (see n.4 above), p.96. Tim Ingold, ‘Introduction to Culture’, in Ingold (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology: Humanity, Culture and Social Life, New York: Routledge, 2002, p.330, original emphasis. Robert Rubinstein, Peacekeeping under Fire, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press, 2008.

A Case Study in ‘Institutionalisation before Liberalisation’: Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina

International attempts to build a sustainable peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina have come close to the recommendations of Roland Paris’ conceptual framework of ‘Institutionalisation before Liberalisation’. The international peace mission in Bosnia has, through this approach, largely succeeded in dampening the dangers posed by the democratization process. This is clearly indicated by progress in stabilizing the civil peace and in democratization. However, this study of international policy highlights that, while the general policy approach of the ‘Institutionalisation before Liberalisation’ framework is a sound one, it is important to caution that care must be taken to avoid negative and unintended consequences.

Moving Beyond Mediation: The OAS Transforming Conflict in Guatemala

In 1995-1996 the hemisphere's multilateral forum, the Organization of American States, launched a conflict prevention and management program in entitled Culture of Dialogue: Development of Resources for Peacebuilding in The overarching goal was to help Guatemalans address ongoing tensions and political disputes, particularly related to the implementation of the historic peace accords. This article provides a detailed account of this OAS attempt to prevent and diffuse conflict, suggesting that it represents a novel effort that draws heavily on the conflict transformation approach to conflict management. Still, it argues that, at the conceptual level, there appears to be a disconnect between this approach to conflict prevention and the Organization's broader approach to peacebuilding, which embraces a free-market path to development, including the implementation of market-oriented economic reforms. KEYWORDS: conflict prevention, Guatemala, Organization of American States, peacebuilding, reconstruction. ********** Since the signing of the historic Peace Accords (1) in December 1996, the hemisphere's multilateral political forum, the Organization of American States (OAS), has supported the country's fledgling democracy through various peacebuilding initiatives. Particularly relevant to the Guatemalan situation is the fact that the OAS recently expanded its peacebuilding agenda to include conflict resolution and prevention programs. (2) It is during the phase following the signing of peace accords that activities aimed at preventing a renewed outbreak of violent conflict are considered especially valuable. With this in mind, the Organization established a special program to help Guatemalans address ongoing tensions and political disagreements, particularly those related to the implementation of the peace accords. The program entitled Culture of Dialogue: Development of Resources for Peacebuilding in Guatemala (OAS/PROPAZ or PROPAZ) focused primarily on strengthening the capacities of governmental, civic, and community institutions to manage and resolve disputes in collaborative ways. (3) This article explores OAS efforts to expand its peacebuilding work into the area of conflict prevention and management through an examination of the PROPAZ program (1995-2003). I do not set out to evaluate PROPAZ's empirical record per se, although I will offer a judgment in this regard. I provide, instead, an informed account of the program's work in order to highlight a shift in OAS peacebuilding theory and practice. I argue that, although the OAS continues to practice conventional peacebuilding work that emphasizes technical assistance to member states, it recently has adopted conflict management approaches that entail greater engagement with civil society actors. Still, at the conceptual level, there appears to be a disconnect between this newer conflict prevention work and the Organization's broader peacebuilding approach, which Roland Paris has termed liberal internationalism. (4) The PROPAZ approach, which places emphasis on the question of social justice and rejects the objective of restoring the status quo ante, sits uncomfortably within a paradigm that privileges order and stability and views social justice as a low priority. Finally, I argue that, although the adoption of this new more comprehensive approach to conflict prevention is praiseworthy, it was not systematically applied in the case of Guatemala. Crucial societal actors related to land conflicts (the private sector and the military) were not invited to participate in the intersectoral or zonal components of the program. While large landowners were invited, they could not be persuaded to participate. Given the critical role of these actors in past and current conflicts, their absence reduces PROPAZ's ability to act as an agent of lasting change. This article serves one other purpose. Andy Knight has rightly noted the lack of conceptual clarity when it comes to peacebuilding. …

Averting failure in Afghanistan

The current US and NATO strategy in Afghanistan involves establishing security with a light footprint. However, the deteriorating security environment demonstrates that this strategy has not been s...

Towards more effective peace building: a conversation with Roland Paris

Since the early 1990s, the international community has become increasingly involved in efforts to (re-)build states that have been torn by war and violent conflict. Today, the United Nations alone is engaged in more than ten political and peace-building missions around the world. Roland Paris's most recent work, At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict (2004) examines 14 of the major UN peace-building missions launched between 1989 and 1999. In particular, Paris questions whether the predominant models of peacekeeping, with their emphasis on rapid democratisation and market liberalisation, are appropriate in fragile post-conflict contexts. In this interview, Roland Paris shares what can learned from the peace-building record about its effectiveness as a means of preventing the recurrence of violence in post-conflict situations.