Perpetual Peacebuilding: A New Paradigm to Move Beyond the Linearity of Liberal Peacebuilding

Academics and policy-makers have accepted that the linearity of the liberal peace neither reflects, nor should it drive, the tumult of peacebuilding. Nevertheless, practitioners have made merely cosmetic changes to their approaches. 
Introducing ‘perpetual peacebuilding’, THANIA PAFFENHOLZ states that within the paradigm, peacebuilding is envisioned as an ever-developing process manifested in a series of (re-)negotiations of the social and political contract. Notions of success and failure and concepts such as ‘tracks’ and ‘peace agreements’ are abandoned, and peace is both utopian and subjective. Lastly, the peacebuilding community is called upon to display greater courage and creativity.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN, has called for an immediate ceasefire in all corners of the globe,” PAFFENHOLZ states in ‘Perpetual Peacebuilding: A New Paradigm to Move Beyond the Linearity of Liberal Peacebuilding’, published in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. Nevertheless, peacebuilding perseveres amidst persistent violence. We must therefore ask: how can we begin upon the pathway to perpetual peacebuilding? Critical rethinking must be the starting point. 
“I propose that peacebuilding, in response to violence, must be viewed as entailing continuous negotiations, and re-negotiations, of the social and political contract of a society and polity, with pathways to peace marked by opportunities, setbacks, catalysts, friction and resistance. Embracing this re-conceptualisation is an essential precondition for truly abandoning the linearity of the liberal peacebuilding model.” 
In addition to surveying relevant academic and policy literature, the author explores the peacebuilding which has taken place in Kenya post-2007 and Syria post-2011, processes which have been conducted amidst cycles of violence; this scholarly and empirical evidence informs the paradigm developed.
It remains crucial for those engaged in peacebuilding to participate in critical reflections of their own assumptions, biases, traditions and practices, the author states. The tenets outlined represent a lens through which peacebuilders and their supporters may be able to meaningfully rethink the ways in which they can contribute to sustaining peace, deploying creative, innovative, malleable and long-lasting approaches grounded in local, national, regional and international realities. 
The tenets will help to bridge the void between research and policy on the one hand and practice on the other, and to move towards generating a multitude of perpetual pathways to inclusive, peaceful and just societies. Crucially, these tenets shift the focus away from the international peacebuilding ‘industry’, foregrounding instead the communities facing conflict and the local and national actors that build their peace. Retreating into the background while reconceptualising the very notion of peacebuilding may represent the only means through which international peacebuilders can retain their relevance.
However, further effort will also be required to embark upon this new paradigm. That which is required are formal and informal processes which challenge and disrupt the prevailing system(s). Change-oriented governments, accompanied by think tanks, practitioners and activists, must ‘push’ until the policy frameworks surveyed within this article become an operational reality. This will demand courage and willingness to transform the dominant discourses at the global level, and will require in-country testing of this new paradigm to gather experiences and evidence to support this new practice of peacebuilding and mediation. Future research must contribute to this endeavour by investigating in-depth case studies, further confirming the non-linearity of peacebuilding, and documenting and assessing alternative approaches in order to continue to develop this new paradigm.

Thania Paffenholz (2021) Perpetual Peacebuilding: A New Paradigm to Move Beyond the Linearity of Liberal Peacebuilding, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, DOI: 10.1080/17502977.2021.1925423

A Quantitative Approach to Studying Hierarchies of Primary Institutions in International Society: UN General Assembly Disarmament Resolutions 1989-1998

LAUST SCHOUENBORG and SIMON F. TAEUBER aim to contribute to two contemporary debates within the English School: The debate about how to observe primary institutions and the debate concerning hierarchy between primary institutions. 

Writing in the journal Cooperation and Conflict, they specifically analyze references to primary institutions in United Nations General Assembly disarmament resolutions in the decade 1989–1998 and their distribution using descriptive statistics. 

In this way, the article, ‘A quantitative approach to studying hierarchies of primary institutions in international society: The case of United Nations General Assembly disarmament resolutions, 1989–1998’, offers a novel approach to identifying primary institutions empirically, and provides some insight into the hierarchy-question in the sense of documenting the relative numerical presence of references to different primary institutions in a specific issue area and temporal context. 

With respect to the latter, the key finding is that great power management, diplomacy and international law are by far the most prominent primary institutions in the analysed material. 

This is an intriguing finding, not least given the importance attached to them by Hedley Bull in his classic work The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. 

The main contribution of the article is thus to spell out a new approach to how the aforementioned debates might proceed empirically.

Schouenborg L, Taeuber SF. A quantitative approach to studying hierarchies of primary institutions in international society: The case of United Nations General Assembly disarmament resolutions, 1989–1998. Cooperation and Conflict. 2021; 56(2): 224-241. doi:10.1177/0010836720965998

A Peacekeeping Mission in Afghanistan: Pipedream or Path to Stability?

RYAN C. VAN WIE analyzes how an international peacekeeping operation (PKO) can support an intra-Afghan peace settlement by mitigating information and commitment problems and fostering compliance during the settlement’s implementation phase. 

To frame the information and commitment problems currently hindering an intra-Afghan settlement, he briefly reviews noncooperative bargaining theory, its application to civil conflicts, and how PKOs can lessen mutual uncertainty and foster stability. 

Anchoring this research on Afghanistan, he analyze the first peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, the 1988–1990 United Nations Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan (UNGOMAP). UNGOMAP’s eventual failure to foster peace highlights Afghanistan’s complexities and the dangers of an insufficiently resourced PKO operating in a state without a viable, incentive-compatible settlement, VAN WIE writes in the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs.

The author applies these lessons to policy analysis, where he explores possible PKO options and their potential for incentivizing compliance with a future intra-Afghan deal. 

“Though a viable PKO currently seems improbable given Afghanistan’s ongoing violence and the Taliban’s insistence on the complete withdrawal of foreign forces,” VAN WIE writes in the article titled ‘A Peacekeeping Mission in Afghanistan: Pipedream or Path to Stability?’ “future conditions may change.”

He highlights necessary prerequisites where a PKO may become possible. If designed properly, an Afghanistan PKO can fill a critical monitoring and verification capacity and bolster Afghanistan’s prospects for long-term stability.

Meaningful Political Participation: Lessons Learned From UN Mediation in Afghanistan and Syria

In this Bonn International Center for Conversion policy brief, ESTHER MEININGHAUS and KATJA MIELKE present lessons learned and subsequent policy implications from an in-depth analysis of the United Nations peace processes on Afghanistan and Syria. 

The authors argue that in both processes, the ability of peace process participants who come from Afghanistan and Syria to politically participate in their respective process was and is severely limited, thus hindering the prospects of successful conflict transformation. 

By political participation, the authors mean that peace process participants not only attend negotiations (“are being included”) but are in a position to (co-) determine who is negotiating the agreement (incl. which representation mechanism is adequate), what is the format of peacemaking (incl. methods of consultation), and what are the issues negotiated in which order (agenda-setting). The authors call this ‘meaningful political participation’.

Emphasising “inclusivity” in peace processes over meaningful political participation is highly problematic for potential progress towards longer-term/sustainable peace. Potential organisers of peace negotiations and related pre- and post-peace agreement measures (whether outside actors or ‘indigenous’) should strengthen political participation and process legitimacy for representatives from the populations concerned. This would contribute to opening a new pathway towards more sustainable peace processes, also beyond the Syrian and Afghan cases.