Reclaiming the local in EU peacebuilding: Effectiveness, ownership, and resistance

ABSTRACT

Since the early 2000s, the “local turn” has thoroughly transformed the field of peacebuilding. The European Union (EU) policy discourse on peacebuilding has also aligned with this trend, with an increasing number of EU policy statements insisting on the importance of “the local.” However, most studies on EU peacebuilding still adopt a top-down approach and focus on institutions, capabilities, and decision-making at the EU level. This special issue contributes to the literature by focusing on bottom-up and local dynamics of EU peacebuilding. After outlining the rationale and the scope of the special issue, this article discusses the local turn in international peacebuilding and identifies several interrelated concepts relevant to theorizing the role of the local, specifically those of effectiveness, ownership, and resistance. In the conclusion, we summarize the key contributions of this special issue and suggest some avenues for further research.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• peacebuilding
• local turn
• effectiveness
• ownership
• resistance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Filip Ejdus is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade, Serbia. At the moment of submission of this article, he was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Global Insecurities Centre, University of Bristol, UK. His main research interest is the governance of (in)security during crises and beyond borders. While he currently focuses on how the EU projects its power globally, he is also interested in how states in the European periphery cope with critical situations.

Ana E. Juncos is a Reader in European Politics at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol, UK. Her primary research interest lies in European foreign and security policy, with a focus on the development on the EU’s conflict prevention and crisis management capabilities and its role in conflict resolution. She is the Consortium Co-ordinator of the H2020 funded project EU-CIVCAP (http://www.eu-civcap.net). Her previous research project examined the EU’s intervention in the Bosnia since 1991 (EU Foreign and Security Policy in Bosnia, Manchester University Press, 2013). She is also co-editor of EU Conflict Prevention and Crisis Management (with Eva Gross, Routledge, 2011).

ORCID

Filip Ejdus http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7443-1661

Ana E. Juncos https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6913-351X

Notes

1. The term “peacebuilding” is frequently associated with the work of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, although its meaning can vary depending on the context (for different definitions of peacebuilding, see Barnett, Kim, O’Donnell, & Sitea, 2007). In this article, international peacebuilding will be understood in a general sense as any external support to domestic structures and processes aimed to reduce the risk of war and promote sustainable peace. In that sense, all EU interventions considered in this special issue can be characterized as peacebuilding initiatives in a broad sense of the term.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements no.: [653227] and [656971]. The content reflects only the authors’ views, and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.