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.

This book examines the causes and consequences of post-conflict elections in securing and stabilizing peace agreements without the need to send troops. It will interest scholars and advanced students of civil war and peacebuilding in comparative politics, political sociology, and peace and conflict studies.

In the wake of political evil on a large scale, what does justice consist of? Daniel Philpott takes up this question in Just and Unjust Peace. While scholars have written about many aspects of dealing with past injustice, no general ethic has emerged. Philpott seeks to provide a holistic model that delivers concrete ethical guidelines for societies striving to build peace.

Ideological differences among political parties result in consistently different understandings of the national interest, Brian C. Rathbun shows. These differences between parties are critical as major international events unfold. In the first comprehensive treatment of the effects of partisan politics in foreign affairs, Rathbun examines domestic party disagreements across the 1990s in Britain, France, and Germany regarding humanitarian interventions and the creation of a European Union security force. The different reactions of the left and the right in the Western European nations had, for example, profound implications for the resolution of conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo. Rathbun argues that leftist parties, compared to their rightist counterparts, believe less in the efficacy of force, are more willing to rely on multilateral cooperation to realize their goals, and have a broader conception of the national interest that includes the promotion of human rights abroad. Cultural factors, such as a nation's unique history with the use of force, do not constrain partisan debate but rather make particular issues controversial and help parties resolve value conflicts. Partisan Interventions is based on interviews with dozens of senior party and government officials. Rathbun draws on the experiences of former foreign and defense ministers, heads of the armed services, ambassadors to the United Nations and NATO, and party spokespersons on foreign and defense policy.

This book offers new insights into the close relationship between political discourses and conflict resolution through critical analysis of the role of discursive change in a peace process. Just as a peace process has many dimensions and stakeholders, so the discourses considered here come from a wide range of sources and actors. The book contains in-depth analyses of official discourses used to present the peace process, the discourses of political party leaders engaging (or otherwise) with it, the discourses of community-level activists responding to it, and the discourses of the media and the academy commenting on it. These discourses reflect varying levels of support for the peace process – from obstruction to promotion – and the role of language in moving across this spectrum according to issue and occasion. Common to all these analyses is the conviction that the language used by political protagonists and cultural stakeholders has a profound effect on progression towards peace. Bringing together leading experts on Northern Ireland’s peace process from a range of academic disciplines, including political science, sociology, linguistics, history, geography, law, and peace studies, this book offers new insights into the discursive dynamics of violent political conflict and its resolution.

Gathering together essays by some of the most influential modern political philosophers and theorists, War, Peace, and International Political Realism reveals the twentieth-century roots of the realist tradition and demonstrates the enduring relevance of realist insights for current international relations scholarship and foreign affairs. These essays, all of which were published in The Review of Politics, the majority during the 1940s and 1950s, reflect four major tenets of the classical realist tradition: an obligation to confront large and difficult questions about international politics, a recognition of the fundamentally tragic nature of relations among humans and states, a rejection of historical optimism, and a belief in practical morality. Keir A. Lieber provides an excellent introduction emphasizing the importance of political realism as defined by the contributors. "Political realism is a distinguished intellectual tradition that illuminates the tragic aspects of the human condition. This wide-ranging collection of essays highlights the philosophical depth and topical breadth of postwar realist thought and illustrates both the continuities and divisions that continue to shape that tradition. Readers will gain considerable insight from revisiting these classics, or from discovering them for the first time." --Stephen Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University "This collection of outstanding essays by such intellectual giants as Hannah Arendt, Herbert Butterfield, George Kennan, and Hans Morgenthau shows why conflict has long been at the heart of international politics and why there will never be world peace." --John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago "This volume of essays that were originally published in The Review of Politics provides a unique perspective on the early history of both International Relations and political realism. All of the contributors, including luminaries such as Kennan, Morgenthau, and Thompson, asked profound questions about the nature of man, society, and politics, and should encourage readers to reconsider the purpose of contemporary political science. By focusing on the work of some of the leading realist thinkers who were writing in the 1940s and 1950s, Lieber clearly demonstrates that realism remains extremely relevant to understanding current debates on international politics and American foreign policy." --Brian C. Schmidt, Carleton University

Beginning with a penetrating analysis of party shortcomings in developing and post-communist countries, Thomas Carothers draws on extensive field research to diagnose chronic deficiencies in party aid, assess its overall impact, and offer practical ideas for doing better.