Alternatives to Neoliberal Peacebuilding and Statebuilding in Africa

Alternatives to Neoliberal Peacebuilding and Statebuilding in Africa

Author: Redie Bereketeab

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-09-02

Total Pages: 123

ISBN-13: 1000199916

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This book critically interrogates the neoliberal peacebuilding and statebuilding model and proposes a popular progressive model centred around the lived realities of African societies. The neoliberal interventionist model assumed prominence and universal hegemony following the demise of state socialism at the end of the Cold War. However, this book argues that it is a primarily short-term, top-down approach that imposes Western norms and values on conflict and post-conflict societies. By contrast, the popular progressive model espoused by this book is based on stringent examination and analysis of the reality of the socio-economic development, structures, institutions, politics and cultures of developing societies. In doing so, it combines bottom-up and top-down, popular and elite, and long-term evolutionary processes of societal construction as a requisite for enduring peacebuilding and statebuilding. By comparing and contrasting the dominant neoliberal peacebuilding and statebuilding model with a popular progressive model, the book seeks to empower locals (both elites and masses) to sit in the driver’s seat and construct their own societies. As such, it is an important contribution to scholars, activists, policymakers, civil society organisations, NGOs and all those who are concerned with peace, stability and development across Africa and other developing countries.


State Politics and Public Policy in Eastern Africa

State Politics and Public Policy in Eastern Africa

Author: Gedion Onyango

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-03-22

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 3031134907

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This book analyses major themes in twenty-first-century east African politics. Predominantly authored by researchers and academics from the region, it examines recent political developments, public policy and governance across east and southern African countries. The book advocates for a regionally-focused comparative approach across Africa, arguing that it provides a greater level of analysis than a complete continental study. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, it covers numerous topics relating to politics, public policy, state and nation-building in Africa. Filling an important void in current literature, the book will appeal to academics, practitioners, politicians and students of politics, public policy and governance. Chapter 16 and 20 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.


Supranational Institutions and Peacebuilding in Africa

Supranational Institutions and Peacebuilding in Africa

Author: Redie Bereketeab

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-09-06

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1040127827

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This book analyses the role of the African Union and regional economic communities in contributing to peacebuilding in Africa. Big and small conflicts rage across the African continent, and this book argues that the African Union and the five regional economic communities have the potential to greatly contribute to peace and peacebuilding In Africa. Looking across the African Union and the five regional economic communities (the AMU, ECCAS, ECOWAS, IGAD, and SADC), the book considers in detail the organizations’ programmes, engagement, endeavours, success and failure of activities of peacebuilding in their respective regions. Overall, the book argues that an institutionalised and formalised relationship between the African Union and the regional economic communities would not only be decisive for the prospects for peace in the region but would also serve to strengthen the continent’s role on the global stage through asserting its agency, owning its agenda, and designing its own solutions and mechanisms for addressing problems. Drawing together an international team of prominent experts, this book will be of interest to researchers, policymakers, NGOs, activists, and regional and international actors working on African politics, security, governance, and economics.


Regional Economic Communities and Peacebuilding in Africa

Regional Economic Communities and Peacebuilding in Africa

Author: Victor Adetula

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-30

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 100034276X

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This book outlines challenges to the effective operation of regional economic communities (RECs) with regards to peacebuilding in Africa. Critically examining these issues from an interdisciplinary perspective, with a focus on comparative analysis of the status, role, and performances of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), it examines particular constraints to their effective participation in regional initiatives. Focussing on inadequate technical capabilities, the complicity of state and non-state actors in conflicts within a region, the domestic politics of member states, it additionally addresses related theories and practices of peacekeeping, security, development, and the peacebuilding nexus. It also engages provisioning, regionalism, and regional peacekeeping interventions, the legal and institutional framework of RECs, and civil society and peacebuilding. Fundamentally, the book asks how effective the alliances and partnerships are in promoting regional peace and security and how much they are compromised by the intervention of external powers and actors, exploring new ideas and actions that may strengthen capacities to address the peacebuilding challenges on the continent effectively. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of African politics and studies, peace and security studies, regionalism studies, policy practitioners in the field of African peacebuilding, and more broadly to international relations. The Open Access version of this book, available at: http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003093695, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.


Public Policy Lessons from the AIDS Response in Africa

Public Policy Lessons from the AIDS Response in Africa

Author: Fred Eboko

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-29

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 1000215881

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Public Policy Lessons from the AIDS Response in Africa examines how the interplay between national state dynamics in Africa and the global political arena has shaped the global AIDS response, and in this context develops a framework for analysing public policy action more broadly in contemporary Africa. By applying comparative political sociology to AIDS public action, this book identifies four political models that are applicable to public initiatives. Fred Eboko goes on to test these in other domains – namely, the malaria and tuberculosis health subsectors, and the education and environment sectors. By articulating global and national connections and contributing a critical perspective grounded in African scholarship and French political science, the author builds a bold and ambitious framework with the potential to enable coherent and effective public policy action in Africa. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of public health, global health, political science, and development studies, as well as policy-level practitioners in the areas of global health and development.


Pushing the Boundaries of Human Rights Education

Pushing the Boundaries of Human Rights Education

Author: Benjamin Mallon

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-12-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1003814891

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This book pushes the theoretical boundaries of human rights education, engaging with complex questions of climate-related injustices, re-imagining education through a decolonising lens, and problematising the relationship between rights and responsibilities. It presents international studies of HRE in varied contexts (e.g. Uganda, Japan, Ireland) to explore the views and experiences of children who identify as human rights defenders, initial teachers’ understandings of concepts such as teacher agency in conflict-affected settings, and the barriers to children’s political agency. The book also highlights HRE in practice including participatory research with very young children as co-researchers and realising rights through play pedagogies, creative writing approaches and picturebooks. An HRE lens is also brought to bear on emerging subjects such as relationships and sexuality education and well-being. Aimed at educators, researchers and practitioners, and engaging with a range of concepts, contexts and contemporary challenges, this book offers new insights into HRE, particularly in the context of issues relating to children’s rights education and participation.


Partnership Peace Operations

Partnership Peace Operations

Author: Hideaki Shinoda

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-04-09

Total Pages: 131

ISBN-13: 1351396358

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"Partnership" is a key concept in contemporary international peace operations. There is no universal model of peace operations in contemporary international society. Ad hoc arrangements of "partnership" between the United Nations and various regional organizations are consequences of the complex circumstances of international security. The ways in which "partnerships" are organised differently in different regions reflect each region's distinctive security situation. The universal nature of "liberal peacebuilding" is thus maintained only by ad hoc arrangements. All the UN peacekeeping operations in Africa have some partnership linkages with regional or sub-regional organizations ranging from the African Union (AU) and regional mechanisms to the European Union (EU). What are the conditions and characteristics that enable or lead to partnership peacekeeping in Africa? How should we understand lower levels of partnership peacekeeping in other regions? By highlighting key characteristics of partnership peacekeeping, the book explores these issues and argues that partnership is a reflection of political circumstances. The book provides an unexplored but critical perspective to understand the contemporary world for those who study International Relations, Security Studies, International Organizations, and Peace Studies.


Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa

Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa

Author: Devon Curtis

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2012-09-21

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0821444328

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Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa is a critical reflection on peacebuilding efforts in Africa. The authors expose the tensions and contradictions in different clusters of peacebuilding activities, including peace negotiations; statebuilding; security sector governance; and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. Essays also address the institutional framework for peacebuilding in Africa and the ideological underpinnings of key institutions, including the African Union, NEPAD, the African Development Bank, the Pan-African Ministers Conference for Public and Civil Service, the UN Peacebuilding Commission, the World Bank, and the International Criminal Court. The volume includes on-the-ground case study chapters on Sudan, the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the Niger Delta, Southern Africa, and Somalia, analyzing how peacebuilding operates in particular African contexts. The authors adopt a variety of approaches, but they share a conviction that peacebuilding in Africa is not a script that is authored solely in Western capitals and in the corridors of the United Nations. Rather, the writers in this volume focus on the interaction between local and global ideas and practices in the reconstitution of authority and livelihoods after conflict. The book systematically showcases the tensions that occur within and between the many actors involved in the peacebuilding industry, as well as their intended beneficiaries. It looks at the multiple ways in which peacebuilding ideas and initiatives are reinforced, questioned, reappropriated, and redesigned by different African actors. A joint project between the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge.


A Liberal Peace?

A Liberal Peace?

Author: Susanna Campbell

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2011-11-10

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1780320043

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Moving beyond the binary argument between those who buy into the aims of creating liberal democratic states grounded in free markets and rule of law, and those who critique and oppose them, this timely and much-needed critical volume takes a fresh look at the liberal peace debate. In doing so, it examines the validity of this critique in contemporary peacebuilding and statebuilding practice through a multitude of case studies - from Afghanistan to Somalia, Sri Lanka to Kosovo. Going further, it investigates the underlying theoretical assumptions of liberal peacebuilding and statebuilding, as well as providing new theoretical propositions for understanding current interventions. Written by some of the most prominent scholars in the field, alongside several new scholars making cutting edge contributions, this is an essential contribution to a rapidly growing interdisciplinary area of study.


A Post-liberal Peace

A Post-liberal Peace

Author: Oliver P. Richmond

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 0415667828

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This book examines how the liberal peace experiment of the post-Cold War environment has failed to connect with its target populations, which have instead set about transforming it according to their own local requirements. Liberal peacebuilding has caused a range of unintended consequences. These emerge from the liberal peaceâe(tm)s internal contradictions, from its claim to offer a universal normative and epistemological basis for peace, and to offer a technology and process which can be applied to achieve it. When viewed from a range of contextual and local perspectives, these top-down and distant processes often appear to represent power rather than humanitarianism or emancipation. Yet, the liberal peace also offers a civil peace and emancipation. These tensions enable a range of hitherto little understood local and contextual peacebuilding agencies to emerge, which renegotiate both the local context and the liberal peace framework, leading to a local-liberal hybrid form of peace. This might be called a post-liberal peace. Such processes are examined in this book in a range of different cases of peacebuilding and statebuilding since the end of the Cold War. This book will be of interest to students of peacebuilding, peacekeeping, peace and conflict studies, international organisations and IR/Security Studies.