This book explains why international donors may succeed in putting war-torn countries on the path of democratic transition and negative peace, but fail to consolidate the gains they make. Critical of neo-institutionalism, but sympathetic to historical and normative institutionalism, this book advances 'complex realist institutionalism' theory.
Peacebuilding is an interactive process that involves collaboration between peacebuilders and the victorious elites of a postwar society. While one of the most prominent assumptions of the peacebuilding literature asserts that the interests of domestic elites and peacebuilders coincide, Costly Democracy contends that they rarely align. It reveals that, while domestic elites in postwar societies may desire the resources that peacebuilders can bring, they are often less eager to adopt democracy, believing that democratic reforms may endanger their substantive interests. The book offers comparative analyses of recent cases of peacebuilding to deepen understanding of postwar democratization and better explain why peacebuilding missions often bring peace—but seldom democracy—to war-torn countries.
Tackles questions on how democracies can deliver social and economic rights, include all citizens in decision making and reduce poverty. This new publication is a two-volume set that explores ways in which democratic practice can contribute to the management of contemporary conflicts and promote the realization of security and development objectives. Volume I contains analysis and recommendations based on wide-ranging research and evaluation of lessons learned from democratization processes, past and ongoing. Volume II presents essays and case studies by leading specialists from around the world that further develop the themes and findings presented in Volume I. Democracy, Conflict and Human Security argues that effective democracy building moves beyond the process of elections and technical assistance and examines how democratic practice relates to human security. Governments may hold free elections but fall short in other democratic measures such as the separation of powers, the freedom of the press, and guarantees of human rights. These two volumes are aimed at practitioners, parliamentarians, politicians, government officials and policy makers concerned with problems such as social exclusion, the quality of democracy and new forms of authoritarian regimes.
The scale, ambition and approach of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, and its SDG framework, are unprecedented. The SDGs are global in nature and universally applicable; they consider national contexts, capacities, and levels of development and challenges. SDG 16 was developed from the need to ensure proper actions towards achieving peace, justice and strong institutions to support and guarantee the sustainability of the entire development structure; the national contexts are the basis for its advancement. Global and regional organizations have an important role to play in achieving SDG 16. They can provide support, expertise and knowledge products, and bring together best practices and lessons learned to the operational levels, to better inform all stakeholders for a better, effective, collaborative and coordinated decision-making process. This Discussion Paper was developed with input gathered from official key partner organizations that attended several gatherings to discuss the role of global and regional organizations in the advancement of SDG 16, held using the platform provided by the Inter-Regional Dialogue on Democracy at International IDEA.
The agenda of external actors often includes a number of objectives that do not necessarily and automatically go together. Fostering security and stability in semi-authoritarian regimes collides with policies aimed at the support of processes of democratization prone to conflict and destabilization. Meanwhile, the promotion of national self-determination and political empowerment might lead to forms of democracy, partially incompatible with liberal understandings. These conflicting objectives are often problematized as challenges to the effectiveness of international democracy promotion. This book presents systematic research about their emergence and effects. The contributing authors investigate (post-) conflict societies, developing countries, and authoritarian regimes in Southeast Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. They identify the socio-economic and political conditions in the recipient country, the interaction between international and local actors, and the capacity of international and local actors as relevant for explaining the emergence of conflicting objectives. And they empirically show that faced with conflicting objectives donors either use a ‘wait and see’-approach (i.e. not to act to overcome such conflicts), they prioritize security, state-building and development over democracy, or they compromise democracy promotion with other goals. However, convincing strategies for dealing with such conflicts still need to be devised. This book was published as a special issue of Democratization.
Settlements to civil conflict, which are notably difficult to secure, sometimes contain clauses enabling the combatant sides to participate as political parties in post-conflict elections. In Electing Peace, Aila M. Matanock presents a theory that explains both the causes and the consequences of these provisions. Matanock draws on new worldwide cross-national data on electoral participation provisions, case studies in Central America, and interviews with representatives of all sides of the conflicts. She shows that electoral participation provisions, non-existent during the Cold War, are now in almost half of all peace agreements. Moreover, she demonstrates that these provisions are associated with an increase in the chance that peace will endure, potentially contributing to a global decline in civil conflict, a result which challenges prevailing pessimism about post-conflict elections. Matanock's theory and evidence also suggest a broader conception of international intervention than currently exists, identifying how these inclusive elections can enable external enforcement mechanisms and provide an alternative to military coercion by peacekeeping troops in many cases.
This fully updated third-edition of Contemporary Peacemaking is a state of the art overview of peacemaking in relation to contemporary civil wars. It examines best (and worst) practice in relation to peace processes and peace accords. The contributing authors are a mix of leading academics and practitioners with expert knowledge of a wide arrays of cases and techniques. The book provides a mix of theory and concept-building along with insights into ongoing cases of peace processes and post-accord peacebuilding. The chapters make clear that peacemaking is a dynamic field, with new practices in peacemaking techniques, changes to the international peace support architecture, and greater awareness of key issues such as gender and development after peace accords. The book is mindful of the intersection between top-down and bottom-up approaches to peace and how formal and institutionalized peace accords need to be lived and enacted by communities on the ground.
