This book examines the evolution of liberal peacebuilding in the Balkans since the mid-1990s. After more than two decades of peacebuilding intervention, widespread popular disappointment by local communities is increasingly visible. Since the early 2010s, difficult conditions have spurred a wave of protest throughout the region. Citizens have variously denounced the political system, political elites, corruption and mismanagement. Rather than re-evaluating their strategy in light of mounting local discontent, international peacebuilding officials have increasingly adopted cynical calculations about stability. This book explains this evolution from the optimism of the mid-1990s to the current state through the analysis of three main phases, moving from the initial ‘rise’, to a later condition of ‘stalemate’ and then ‘fall’ of peacebuilding.

This book examines the logic behind the shifts and paradigm changes within the scholarship on peacebuilding. In particular, the book is concerned with examining if, and how, these shifts have significantly altered how we think about peacebuilding beyond the ‘liberal peacebuilding’ paradigm. To do so, the book engages with the logic of critique that has led to the emergence of different theoretical approaches to peacebuilding, from hands-on institutionalisation, to the ‘local turn’. It uses the case of Kosovo to understand how a lessons-learnt approach facilitated the shift towards more invasive and intrusive forms of peacebuilding first. However, it is also crucial to understanding the recent local turn, as the rise of local ownership discourses in Kosovo is fundamentally tied to the critiques of extensive international missions, and the associated resistance and marginalisation of local agency. The book examines the implications of the framing of ‘everyday’ agency in order to assess the extent to which these bottom-up approaches have been able to by-pass the problems attributed to the liberal peace approach. It argues that despite its critical and radical intentions, the local turn retains certain foundational modernist and positivist qualities that have so far characterised the very mainstream approaches these critiques claim to transcend. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, statebuilding, peace and conflict studies, security studies and International Relations in general.

In most post-conflict countries nongovernmental organizations are everywhere, but their presence is misunderstood. In The NGO Game Patrice McMahon investigates the unintended outcomes of what she calls the NGO boom in Bosnia and Kosovo. Using her years of fieldwork and interviews, McMahon argues that when international actors try to rebuild and reconstruct post-conflict countries, they often rely on and look to NGOs. Although policymakers and scholars tend to accept and even celebrate NGO involvement in post-conflict and transitioning countries, they rarely examine why NGOs have become so popular, what NGOs do, or how they affect everyday life.After a conflict, international NGOs descend on a country, local NGOs pop up everywhere, and money and energy flow into strengthening the organizations. In time, the frenzy of activity slows, the internationals go home, local groups disappear from sight, and the NGO boom goes bust. Instead of peace and stability, the embrace of NGOs and the enthusiasm for international peacebuilding turns to disappointment, if not cynicism. For many in the Balkans and other post-conflict environments, NGOs are not an aid to building a lasting peace but are part of the problem because of the turmoil they foster during their life cycles in a given country. The NGO Game will be useful to practitioners and policymakers interested in improving peacebuilding, the role of NGOs in peace and development, and the sustainability of local initiatives in post-conflict countries.

Stabilization as the New Normal in International Interventions provides the first comprehensive analysis of stabilization, which constitutes the new reference point for international intervention in unruly parts of the Global South. The notion of ‘stabilization’ and the practice of ‘stability operations’ experienced a revival over the last decade. The United Nations, the European Union, NATO, as well as most member states of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development have embraced these terms in their foreign policy bureaucracies. The general disillusionment with the achievements of large-scale peacebuilding operations in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the failures of the so-called Arab Springs, contributed to the success of this new discourse. Yet, while widely mentioned and endorsed, stabilization is rarely defined. This volume identifies common elements to stabilization doctrines and examines how they are applied in practice. It dissects how stabilization emerged and unfolds, how different actors adopt it and for what purposes, and how it is linked to the broader security and development discourses. Stabilization as the New Normal in International Interventions will be of great interest to scholars of Peacebuilding, International Intervention and International Relations more generally. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Ethnopolitics.

This encyclopaedia provides a comprehensive overview of major theories and approaches to the study of peace and conflict across different humanities and social sciences disciplines. Peace and conflict studies (PCS) is one of the major sub-disciplines of international studies (including political science and international relations), and has emerged from a need to understand war, related systems and concepts and how to respond to it afterward. As a living reference work, easily discoverable and searchable, the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies offers solid material for understanding the foundational, historical, and contemporary themes, concepts, theories, events, organisations, and frameworks concerning peace, conflict, security, rights, institutions and development. The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Peace and Conflict Studies brings together leading and emerging scholars from different disciplines to provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date resource on peace and conflict studies ever produced.

Activism in Hard Times in Central and Eastern Europe elevates the voices of civic activists from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and analyzes a wealth of information to generate new insights into how activism in the region manages to be vibrant, diverse, and consequential. Because of these countries’ unique historical trajectory, CEE activists have, in important ways, leap-frogged their counterparts in the West. Giving special attention to activists in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, the book focuses on responses to the recent “hard times” – the shrinking of public space for civil society, democratic backsliding, polarization, and Russia’s war in Ukraine. The contributors contend that CEE activists provide important lessons for others confronting similar challenges around the world. The book is well-suited for a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, such as comparative politics, human rights, global governance, social movements, Central and East European politics, and contemporary world politics. This timely and readable book, co-created by academics and activists and written in a conversational tone, will also be of interest to the interested public and practitioners. The book encourages readers to think differently about the role of civil society and activism, as well as about how new tools and polarizing dynamics affect activism in this region.

Focusing on Bosnia after Dayton, this book examines the role of the international community in state-building and intervention, underlining the importance of international participation and building on local resources for increased effectiveness.