Today's vision of world order is founded upon the concept of strong, well-functioning states, in contrast to the destabilizing potential of failed or fragile states. This worldview has dominated international interventions over the past 30 years as enormous resources have been devoted to developing and extending the governance capacity of weak or failing states, hoping to transform them into reliable nodes in the global order. But with very few exceptions, this project has not delivered on its promise: countries like Somalia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) remain mired in conflict despite decades of international interventions. States of Disorder addresses the question, 'Why has UN state-building so consistently failed to meet its objectives?'. It proposes an explanation based on the application of complexity theory to UN interventions in South Sudan and DRC, where the UN has been tasked to implement massive stabilization and state-building missions. Far from being ''ungoverned spaces, these settings present complex, dynamical systems of governance with emergent properties that allow them to adapt and resist attempts to change them. UN interventions, based upon assumptions that gradual increases in institutional capacity will lead to improved governance, fail to reflect how change occurs in these systems and may in fact contribute to underlying patterns of exclusion and violence. Based on more than a decade of the author's work in peacekeeping, this book offers a systemic mapping of how governance systems work, and indeed work against, UN interventions. Pursuing a complexity-driven approach instead helps to avoid unintentional consequences, identifies meaningful points of leverage, and opens the possibility of transforming societies from within.

Today's vision of world order is founded upon the concept of strong, well-functioning states, in contrast to the destabilizing potential of failed or fragile states. This worldview has dominated international interventions over the past 30 years as enormous resources have been devoted to developing and extending the governance capacity of weak or failing states, hoping to transform them into reliable nodes in the global order. But with very few exceptions, this project has not delivered on its promise: countries like Somalia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) remain mired in conflict despite decades of international interventions. States of Disorder addresses the question, 'Why has UN state-building so consistently failed to meet its objectives?'. It proposes an explanation based on the application of complexity theory to UN interventions in South Sudan and DRC, where the UN has been tasked to implement massive stabilization and state-building missions. Far from being ''ungoverned spaces," these settings present complex, dynamical systems of governance with emergent properties that allow them to adapt and resist attempts to change them. UN interventions, based upon assumptions that gradual increases in institutional capacity will lead to improved governance, fail to reflect how change occurs in these systems and may in fact contribute to underlying patterns of exclusion and violence. Based on more than a decade of the author's work in peacekeeping, this book offers a systemic mapping of how governance systems work, and indeed work against, UN interventions. Pursuing a complexity-driven approach instead helps to avoid unintentional consequences, identifies meaningful points of leverage, and opens the possibility of transforming societies from within.

This book examines the operational and political challenges facing UN peace operations deployed in countries where civil war and protracted violence have given rise to the complex and distinctive political economies of conflict. The volume explores the nature and impact of such political economies – informal systems of power and influence formed by the interaction of local, national, and region-wide war economies with the political agendas of conflict actors – on the course of UN peace operations. It focuses in detail on the UN’s long-running peace operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Mali, and Somalia. The book is centrally concerned with the interaction of UN missions with the power structures and local conflict dynamics that shape individual mission settings, and the challenges these pose for mediation, protection of civilians, and other tasks. It also offers a critical assessment of the various ways in which the UN ‘system’, from its headquarters in New York to the field, has confronted the policy challenges posed by political economies of conflict-affected states, societies, and regions. It advances a pragmatic set of policy recommendations aimed at improving the UN’s ability to confront predatory and exploitative war economies. At the same time, the volume makes it clear that political and institutional obstacles to more effective UN action are certain to remain profound and are unlikely ever to be fully overcome let alone eradicated. Despite making some progress since the 1990s to better understand the political economy of civil wars, the UN has struggled with how to tackle informal networks of power and their consequences for efforts to end wars. The book will be of special interest to students of war and conflict studies, statebuilding, political economy of conflict, UN interventionism and peacebuilding, and IR/Security in general.

This updated and revised second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Peacebuilding contains cutting-edge analyses of contemporary attempts to reach and sustain peace. The book covers the main actors and dynamics of peacebuilding, as well as the main challenges that it faces, with accessible chapters. The volume is comprehensive, covering everything from the main international institutions for peacebuilding to the links between peacebuilding and climate change, or peacebuilding and trauma. It is also firmly interdisciplinary, with a number of chapters devoted to showcasing how different disciplines interpret peacebuilding and how they contribute to it. Bringing together leading thinkers and practitioners on peacebuilding, many from the Global South, the handbook offers a valuable “hands-on” perspective on how peace can be secured and sustained. There is a significant emphasis on comparison and the book shows how peacebuilding is best examined from the vantage point of multiple cases. The book is organised into six thematic sections: Part I: Architecture and Actors Part II: Reading Peacebuilding Part III: Issues and Approaches Part IV: Violence and Security Part V: Everyday Living Part VI: Disciplinary Approaches This book will be essential reading for students of peacebuilding, mediation and post-conflict reconstruction, and of great interest to students of statebuilding, intervention, civil wars, conflict resolution, war and conflict studies and IR in general.

This volume explores the evolution of theoretical and practical approaches to intervening in protracted conflicts, following the work of Herb Kelman. Interactive problem solving, as developed by Kelman and others, sought to increase understanding about the microprocesses of international relations. Kelman early on emphasised the centrality of an interactive approach for constructing new identities, new narratives, and new ways forward. Transforming conflict systems requires strategic attention to the interactions between agents of change that provide stability or induce shift. This volume on interactive conflict approaches includes both critical reflections and new ideas from scholar-practitioners who have developed, revised, and expanded these approaches. Contributors take up important issues, from the shape and likelihood of solutions in intractable conflicts to how individuals can exist in realities with seemingly irresolvable inner and outer conflicts. The volume represents the best of current thinking about how the mechanisms, theoretical framework, and application of interactive problem solving should be moved into the twenty-first century context of increasing complexity, increasing uncertainty, and increasing polarisation. This book will be of interest to students of peace studies, conflict resolution, and international relations.

Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Its spread has depended upon a reconstitution of state powers such that privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized. State interventions in the economy are minimized, while the obligations of the state to provide for the welfare of its citizens are diminished. David Harvey, author of 'The New Imperialism' and 'The Condition of Postmodernity', here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. While Thatcher and Reagan are often cited as primary authors of this neoliberal turn, Harvey shows how a complex of forces, from Chile to China and from New York City to Mexico City, have also played their part. In addition he explores the continuities and contrasts between neoliberalism of the Clinton sort and the recent turn towards neoconservative imperialism of George W. Bush. Finally, through critical engagement with this history, Harvey constructs a framework not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.

A provocative perspective on the fragile fundamentals, and forces for resilience, in the Chinese economy, and a forecast for the future on alternate scenarios of collapse and ascendance.