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Abstract
This article is a literature review of the current local turn in peacebuilding. After a short introduction on the origins of ‘the local’ in peacebuilding, it gives an overview of current research and policy debates on the issue along two different lines. First, it emphasises the local in peacebuilding as a measure to increase peacebuilding effectiveness, as explored in the literature on the benefits of decentralisation and local governments for peace, as well as in the debates on local capacity and ownership as essential parts of peacebuilding policy. Second, it focuses on the local in peacebuilding as a means of emancipation and inclusion of local agency, expressed partly through the emphasis on voices from below and partly within the critical approaches to how the local has been interpreted in peacebuilding so far, arguing for a peacebuilding that is essentially local.
Notes
1. Brinkerhoff and Johnson, “Decentralized Local Governance”; Paris and Sisk, “Managing Contradictions”; and Richmond, A Post-liberal Peace.
2. Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn,” 771–772; UNDP, Governance for Peace; and Donais, Peacebuilding and Local Ownership, 1.
3. See Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn”, for one such overview.
4. Paris, At War's End; and United Nations, United Nations Peace Operations.
5. Paris, At War's End, 19–20; and United Nations, An Agenda for Peace.
6. Miall, The Peacemakers.
7. See, for example, Bertram, “Reinventing Governments”; and Clapham, “Rwanda.”
8. Lederach, Building Peace, 94. See also Ramsbotham et al., Contemporary Conflict Resolution.
9. Lederach, Building Peace.
10. Curle, “New Challenges for Citizen Peacemaking”; and Woodhouse, “Adam Curle.”
11. Rupesinghe, Conflict Transformation, 81.
12. Fetherston, “Transformative Peacebuilding.”
13. Nordstrom, A Different Kind of War Story.
14. Boulding, Cultures of Peace, 91.
15. Fetherston and Nordstrom, “Overcoming Habitus,” 102.
16. Ibid., 113.
17. United Nations, “Security Council Encourages”; United Nations, “We the Peoples”; and United Nations, Brahimi Report.
18. United Nations, No Exit without Strategy.
19. Paris, At War's End, 5–6.
20. Greener, “Revisiting the Politics”; Leeuwen et al., “Thinking beyond the Liberal Peace”; Mitchell, “Peace beyond Process?”; Paris, “Saving Liberal Peacebuilding”; and Lidén et al., “Liberal Peacebuilding Reconstructed.”
21. Paris and Sisk, Managing Contradictions.
22. Brinkerhoff, Governance in Post-conflict Societies, 17; and Brinkerhoff, “State Fragility and Governance.”
23. Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn,” 771.
24. United Nations, Peace Dividends and Beyond, 24–25.
25. Ibid., 25; and UNDP, Governance for Peace.
26. DFID, Building Peaceful States.
27. World Bank, The State- and Peacebuilding Fund.
28. Bush, Building Capacity.
29. Klem and Frerks, “How Local Governments Contribute.”
30. ACCORD, “Legitimacy and Peace Processes.”
31. Cheema and Rondinelli, Decentralization and Development, 16; and Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies, 41–44.
32. Bland, “Decentralization”; Brancati, “Decentralization”; Brinkerhoff, “State Fragility and Governance”; Jackson, “Who Won and Who Lost?”; Kälin, “Decentralized Governance”; and Schou and Haug, Decentralisation.
33. Brancati, “Decentralization”; Cheema and Rondinelli, Decentralizing Governance; Jackson, “Who Won and Who Lost?”; Kälin, “Decentralized Governance”; and Schou and Haug, Decentralisation.
34. Siegle and O’Mahony, “Decentralization and Internal Conflict.”
35. Brancati, “Decentralization.”
36. Bland, “Decentralization.”
37. Bollens, “Urban Governance at the Nationalist Divide”; Bollens, On Narrow Ground; and Bollens, Urban Peace.
38. Hartmann and Crawford, Decentralisation in Africa.
39. Jackson, “Chiefs, Money and Politicians.”
40. Brinkerhoff and Johnson, “Decentralized Local Governance”; and Brinkerhoff and Mayfield, “Democratic Governance in Iraq?”
41. Kim et al., A Gendered Analysis.
42. Menkhaus, “Governance without Government.”
43. Forrest, “Subnationalism.”
44. Jarstad, “Dilemmas of War-to-democracy Transitions.”
45. Paris and Sisk, The Dilemmas of Statebuilding, 35–36.
46. United Nations, Review of the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture.
47. DFID, “Building Peaceful States”; and USIP, Empowering Local Peacebuilders.
48. World Bank, The State- and Peacebuilding Fund.
49. Initiative for Peace, “A Guidence for Integrating Peacebuilding”; OECD, “Improving International Support”; and United Nations, Report of the Secretary General.
50. Hayman, Ripples into Waves, 1, 9.
51. Donais, Peacebuilding and Local Ownership, 1–21.
52. Chandler, “Post-conflict Statebuilding,” 343.
53. United Nations, From Rhetoric to Practice.
54. Kappler, “Divergent Transformation.”
55. Pietz and von Carlowitz, Ownership in Practice.
56. Jarstad, “Unpacking the Friction,” 384–385.
57. ACCORD, “Creating and Enabling,” 6.
58. Ibid., 7.
59. Donais, Peacebuilding and Local Ownership, 32.
60. Ibid., 37.
61. Björkdahl and Gusic, “The Divided City.”
62. Cheema and Rondinelli, Decentralizing Governance, 9. See also Kälin, “Decentralized Governance.”
63. Hughes, “The Politics of Knowledge”; Hughes, “Friction,” 145–146; and Kappler and Richmond, “Peacebuilding and Culture.” For similar discussions within the field of development, see Hyden, “Sovereignity, Responsibility, and Accountability.”
64. International Alert, Voices from the Villages, 1.
65. Ibid., vii.
66. Paffenholz, Civil Society and Peacebuilding.
67. Schou, “Conflict Resolution.”
68. Moosa et al., “From the Private to the Public Sphere.”
69. Kent and Barnett, “Localising Peace.”
70. Lundy and McGovern, “Whose Justice?”
71. Odendaal, A Crucial Link.
72. Mitchell and Hancock, Local Peacebuilding.
73. Autesserre, The Trouble with the Congo.
74. Ibid., 11.
75. Kappler, “Divergent Transformation.”
76. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
77. Roberts, “Post-conflict Peacebuilding,” 413.
78. Mac Ginty, International Peacebuilding.
79. Richmond, A Post-liberal Peace, 119; and Richmond, “Failed Statebuilding versus Peace Formation.”
80. Pogodda, “Inconsistent Interventionism”; and Pugh, “Local Agency,” 312.
81. Hudson, “A Double-edged Sword?”
82. Pugh, “Local Agency,” 314.
83. Roberts, “Post-conflict Peacebuilding,” 421.
84. Bhabha, The Location of Culture. This is also seen in international development practice. See Hasselskog, “(Re)creating Local Political Legitimacy.”
85. Mac Ginty, “Hybrid Peace”; Richmond and Mitchell, “Peacebuilding and Critical Forms of Agency”; Richmond, “Beyond Local Ownership”; and Richmond, Palgrave Advances in Peacebuilding.
86. Richmond, A Post-liberal Peace.
87. Mac Ginty, “Hybrid Peace”; Pugh, “Local Agency”; and Wilen, “A Hybrid Peace.”
88. Roberts, “Post-conflict Peacebuilding.”
89. Mac Ginty, International Peacebuilding, 11.
90. Richmond, Palgrave Advances in Peacebuilding, 12; and Mac Ginty and Sangera, “Hybridity in Peacebuilding.” See also “McCandless and Tschirgi: Hybridity in Peacebuilding and Development.”
91. de Coning, “Understanding Peacebuilding,” 6.
92. Leeuwen et al., “Thinking beyond the Liberal Peace.”