Harnessing Post-conflict Transitions
Harnessing Post-conflict Transitions

Author: Nicholas J. Armstrong

Publisher: Strategic Studies Institute

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 63

ISBN-13: 1584874643

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This monograph addresses the challenging topic of transition in post-conflict stability operations and is intended for a wide audience that includes military and civilian policymakers, international development experts, and scholars in academe. It is a primer, systematic review, and comprehensive assessment of the fields of research and practice. It presents and appraises the major lenses (process, authority transfer, phasing, and end state), categories (war-to-peace, power, societal, political-democratic, security, and economic), approaches, and tools under which post-conflict transitions are conceived. It lays the groundwork for both future research and greater collaboration among diverse international and local actors who operate in post-conflict environments, to develop a comprehensive definition of transition and adequate tools to address all facets of the concept. It provides recommendations for future research and improved transition policy, which include: cross-institutional (political, security, economic) and multi-level (local, regional, national) studies that explore the interdependencies between simultaneous transitions ; underlying assumptions of current transition tools and indicators ; relationships between transition and institutional resilience ; and, thresholds and tipping points between transition phases.

International Law and Post-Conflict Reconstruction Policy
International Law and Post-Conflict Reconstruction Policy

Author: Matthew Saul

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-05-15

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1317669916

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The trend for international engagement in post-conflict reconstruction has produced a host of best-practice postulates on topics such as local involvement in decision-making, accountability for past atrocities, sensitivity to context, and the construction of democratic institutions of governance. International law has potential relevance for many of these themes, yet the question of how the implementation of best-practice policy recommendations might be affected by international law remains under-examined. This book offers a fuller understanding of the role of international law in the practice of post-conflict reconstruction. It explores how international legal issues that arise in the post-conflict period relate to a number of strands of the policy debate, including government creation, constitution-making, gender policy, provision of security, justice for past atrocities, rule of law development, economic recovery, returning displaced persons, and responsibilities of international actors. The chapters of the book work to reveal the extent to which international law figures in the policy of internationally enabled post-conflict reconstruction across a range of sectors. They also highlight the scope for international law to be harnessed in a more effective manner from the perspective of the transition to peace and stability. The book lays out a basis for future policy making on post-conflict reconstruction; one that is informed about the international legal parameters, and more aware of how international law can be utilized to promote key objectives.

Pathways for Peace
Pathways for Peace

Author: United Nations;World Bank

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2018-04-13

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 1464811865

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Violent conflicts today are complex and increasingly protracted, involving more nonstate groups and regional and international actors. It is estimated that by 2030—the horizon set by the international community for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals—more than half of the world’s poor will be living in countries affected by high levels of violence. Information and communication technology, population movements, and climate change are also creating shared risks that must be managed at both national and international levels. Pathways for Peace is a joint United Nations†“World Bank Group study that originates from the conviction that the international community’s attention must urgently be refocused on prevention. A scaled-up system for preventive action would save between US$5 billion and US$70 billion per year, which could be reinvested in reducing poverty and improving the well-being of populations. The study aims to improve the way in which domestic development processes interact with security, diplomacy, mediation, and other efforts to prevent conflicts from becoming violent. It stresses the importance of grievances related to exclusion—from access to power, natural resources, security and justice, for example—that are at the root of many violent conflicts today. Based on a review of cases in which prevention has been successful, the study makes recommendations for countries facing emerging risks of violent conflict as well as for the international community. Development policies and programs must be a core part of preventive efforts; when risks are high or building up, inclusive solutions through dialogue, adapted macroeconomic policies, institutional reform, and redistributive policies are required. Inclusion is key, and preventive action needs to adopt a more people-centered approach that includes mainstreaming citizen engagement. Enhancing the participation of women and youth in decision making is fundamental to sustaining peace, as well as long-term policies to address the aspirations of women and young people.

Popular Governance of Post-Conflict Reconstruction
Popular Governance of Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Author: Matthew Saul

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-07-24

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1107055318

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How can a population influence decision-making on post-conflict reconstruction? This book explores the international legal framework for post-conflict popular governance.

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons
Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons

Author: Dr. Jeffrey Record

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 1786252961

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Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.

The Elgar Companion to Post-Conflict Transition
The Elgar Companion to Post-Conflict Transition

Author: Hans-Joachim Giessmann

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2018-08-31

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 1783479051

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What are the main drivers of political transition and regime change? And to what extent do these apparently seismic political changes result in real change? These questions are the focus of this comparative study written by a mix of scholars and practitioners. This state-of-the-art volume identifies patterns in political transitions, but is largely unconvinced that these transitions bring about real change to the underlying structures of society. Patriarchy, land tenure, and economic systems often remain immune to change, despite the headlines.

When Religion Matters
When Religion Matters

Author: Annie Hardison-Moody

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2016-10-10

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1625645899

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How does starting with women's statements that "God was there" in the moment of wartime violence shift the ways we think about religion, conflict, and healing? Religion and health scholar Annie Hardison-Moody examines this interdisciplinary question through several lenses--postconflict feminist theory, practical theology, and feminist and womanist theory and theology. Drawing on participatory fieldwork with a Liberian community in North Carolina, Hardison-Moody argues that religion matters for many survivors of violence, and that this fact must be taken into account in international conversations about women, violence, and healing. Consequently, she looks beyond the institutional forms of religion, instead studying the ways women live and profess healing and transformation as a part of their everyday lives. This, she argues, is the crucial task for postconflict transformation work. Understanding these "everyday" ways women experience and heal from violence is central to advancing our conceptions of healing and peace as they exist in a world rife with conflict. Scholars, activists, and caregivers will be able to draw on this resource as they attempt to understand and practice healing and transformation with those who have experienced violence and trauma.

Peace in Political Unsettlement
Peace in Political Unsettlement

Author: Jan Pospisil

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-12-11

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 3030043185

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International peacebuilding has reached an impasse. Its lofty ambitions have resulted in at best middling success, punctuated by moments of outright failure. The discrediting of the term ‘liberal peacebuilding’ has seen it evolve to respond to the numerous critiques. Notions such as ‘inclusive peace’ merge the liberal paradigm with critical notions of context, and the need to refine practices to take account of ‘the local’ or ‘complexity’. However, how this would translate into clear guidance for the practice of peacebuilding is unclear. Paradoxically, contemporary peacebuilding policy has reached an unprecedented level of vagueness. Peace in political unsettlement provides an alternative response rooted in a new discourse, which aims to speak both to the experience of working in peace process settings. It maps a new understanding of peace processes as institutionalising formalised political unsettlement and points out new ways of engaging with it. The book points to the ways in which peace processes institutionalise forms of disagreement, creating ongoing processes to manage it, rather than resolve it. It suggests a modest approach of providing ‘hooks’ to future processes, maximising the use of creative non-solutions, and practices of disrelation, are discussed as pathways for pragmatic post-war transitions. It is only by understanding the nature and techniques of formalised political unsettlement that new constructive ways of engaging with it can be found.