All fourteen major peacebuilding missions launched between 1989 and 1999 shared a common strategy for consolidating peace after internal conflicts: immediate democratization and marketization. Transforming war-shattered states into market democracies is basically sound, but pushing this process too quickly can have damaging and destabilizing effects. The process of liberalization is inherently tumultuous, and can undermine the prospects for stable peace. A more sensible approach to post-conflict peacebuilding would seek, first, to establish a system of domestic institutions that are capable of managing the destabilizing effects of democratization and marketization within peaceful bounds and only then phase in political and economic reforms slowly, as conditions warrant. Peacebuilders should establish the foundations of effective governmental institutions prior to launching wholesale liberalization programs. Avoiding the problems that marred many peacebuilding operations in the 1990s will require longer-lasting and, ultimately, more intrusive forms of intervention in the domestic affairs of these states. This book was first published in 2004.

At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict

of distinguished and rather senior economists – makes at the end of the book. Their priorities tend to be quick-fixes of problems that might, at least partly, be caused by some other challenge. More importantly, the panellists tend to disregard some of the evidence assembled by the authors. The reactions to the excellent chapter on armed conflict by Collier & Hoeffler illustrate that Nobel awards are no protection against bias. One member of the panel dismisses the economic sources of war that the Oxford economists analyse and points out that free trade is the main pacifying force, while another famous panellist mentions ethnic or religious hatred as a source of conflict. Gerald Schneider

At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict:

Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy

This fragment introduces Roland Paris’s argument regarding post-conflict peace building. Paris criticises methods used during the nineties by peace building operations for trying to implement democratic reforms and liberalisation too quickly. Whilst Paris maintains that the principal objective still should be to convert war torn countries into market democracies he believes that the implementation of such reforms without sufficient government institutions can provoke the regression of these countries into conflict. Therefore, he proposes a new strategy “institutionalisation before liberalisation” that first builds a strong institutional base, which he argues may then allow the introduction of democratic and liberal reforms capable of creating a lasting peace.

Introducción de “At war’s end: Building peace after civil conflict”

The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe. Edited by Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 256p. $22.50. The postcommunist transformations in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have generated a rich body of literature over the past 15 years. Most works on CEE transitions have drawn from the comparative politics literature and treated international factors, at best, as secondary. Yet with the recent eastern expansion of the Council of Europe, NATO, and the European Union, there has been a growing scholarly interest in the impact of international institutions on domestic changes in this region.

The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe

The concept of civil society has acquired an unprecedented worldwide popularity, especially in development programs. This article investigates the international effort to build civil society in Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to foster peace and democratization, this in response to disappointment with traditional economic, military, and political strategies. The results of this major investment of resources, however, have been unsatisfactory. The international community's lack of a coherent long-term strategy and the adoption of a conception of civil society that is often at odds with Bosnian context and history hinder the transition to genuine reconciliation among the three ethnic groups. Examining two major areas of intervention - facilitating the advocacy role of local civic groups and fostering citizens' participation - I show that the international community has failed to comprehend both the political and the social meaning of its involvement. Although the focus on civil society is meant to overcome the limits of external regulation and to emphasize indigenous and community-based contributions to peacebuilding, the international community's approach is to make local development dependent upon the international presence. The result is a failure to address the structural problems that affect the country and to hinder, rather than foster, the formation of an open and democratic civil society.

Civil Society and Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina

1. Introduction 2. Bosnia's Stateness Problem and the Challenge of International Intervention 3. Post-War Democracy Building 4. Elections and Electoral Engineering 5. The Limits and Virtues of Civil Society 6. The Antinomies of Refugee Return 7. From NATO to the EU 8. Conclusion

State Building and International Intervention in Bosnia

In hybrid peace governance, liberal and illiberal norms, institutions, and actors exist alongside each other, interact, and even clash. Such a political, economic, and social order is a far cry from the liberal idea of peace based on legitimate and accountable democratic institutions, the rule of law, human rights, free media, market economy, and an open civil society. This article accounts for the emergence of hybrid peace governance and develops a typology based on the war/peace and liberal/illiberal spectra. Furthermore, it discusses the implications of hybridity and, in particular, whether it can avoid the pitfalls of top-down liberal peacebuilding and provide new opportunities for a more sustainable, locally engrained version of peace.

Hybrid Peace Governance: Its Emergence and Significance

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, among other cases, the international efforts to promote peace and democratic institutions frequently clash with different understandings of ...

Introducing Hybrid Peace Governance: Impact and Prospects of Liberal Peacebuilding

What role do elections play in societies emerging from communal war and what type of institutions can serve as catalysts in deepening peace and compromise? While some analysts argue that ethnicity should be recognized through ‘consociational’ institutions, others maintain that ‘integrative’ devices – in particular, carefully crafted electoral rules – can limit or even break down the salience of ethnicity and increase the possibility for inter-ethnic accommodation. This article examines the post-war electoral experience of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), arguing that elections had a problematic, unintended impact on peacebuilding. First, timid integrative electoral devices were adopted in a consociational system that reifies ethnic division and complicates compromise; second, peacebuilding agencies needlessly manufactured electoral rules that backfired; third, group-based features of the BiH political system run counter to individual human rights. The article ends with suggestions for improving the electoral framework.

Roberto Belloni

Papers

Civil Society and Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina

State Building and International Intervention in Bosnia

Hybrid Peace Governance: Its Emergence and Significance

Introducing Hybrid Peace Governance: Impact and Prospects of Liberal Peacebuilding

Peacebuilding and Consociational Electoral Engineering in Bosnia-Herzegovina'