Journal ArticleDOI
Civil Society and Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina
TLDR
The authors 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.Abstract:
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.read more
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At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict
TL;DR: 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 as mentioned in this paper.
Journal Article
Introducción de “At war’s end: Building peace after civil conflict”
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the implementation of such reforms without sufficient government institutions can provoke the regression of these countries into conflict and propose a new strategy called institutionalisation before liberalisation, which first builds a strong institutional base, which may then allow the introduction of democratic and liberal reforms capable of creating a lasting peace.
Journal ArticleDOI
Demystifying Micro-Credit The Grameen Bank, NGOs, and Neoliberalism in Bangladesh
TL;DR: In this article, an ethnographic study of the effects of micro-credit on gender relations in rural Bangladesh is presented, focusing on the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh and three other leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the country.
Book
From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Peacebuilding
Anna Jarstad,Timothy D. Sisk +1 more
TL;DR: The Perils of War-to-Democracy Transitions: theories and concepts Anna K. Jarstad and Timothy D. Sisk Part I. as discussed by the authors The Dilemmas of warto-democracy transitions: theories, concepts and concepts.
Journal ArticleDOI
Unpacking the local turn in peacebuilding: a critical assessment towards an agenda for future research
TL;DR: In this paper, a critical assessment of the local turn in critical peacebuilding scholarship is made, and it is concluded that this leads to an ignorance of local elites, provides a romanticised interpretation of hybrid peace governance structures, overstates local resistance and presents an ambivalent relationship to practice.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Rise of Illiberal Democracy
TL;DR: Holbrooke as mentioned in this paper argued that if the election was declared free and fair, and those elected are "racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to [peace and r?int?gration], that is the dilemma." Indeed it is, not just in the former Yugoslavia, but increasingly around the world.
Journal ArticleDOI
Too Close For Comfort? The Impact of Official Aid on Nongovernmental Organizations
Michael Edwards,David Hulme +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review the impact of this trend on NGO/GRO programming, performance, legitimacy and accountability and find that much of the case for emphasizing the role of NGOs/GROs rests on ideological grounds rather than empirical verification.
Journal ArticleDOI
Conditions of liberty : civil society and its rivals
Abstract: A slogan is born the two neighbours Islam the Marxist failure the successful Umma a contrast between the Abrahamic faiths civil society completes the circle Adam Ferguson east is east and west is west political decentralization and economic decentralization ideological pluralism and liberal doublethink, or the end of the enlightenment illusion modular man modular man is nationalist friend or foe? the time zones of Europe the varieties of nationalist experience easternmost zone resumed a note on atomization the end of a moral order from the interstices of a command-admin system the definition of socialism a new positive definition towards a desirable unholy alliance democracy or civil society historical overview future prospects internal problems the range of options validation?
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