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ABSTRACT
Over the last decade there has been increasing attention within peace and conflict studies on the so-called ‘local turn’ in peacebuilding where the role of local actors, their agency and their relationship to international actors is strongly emphasised. Still, even with widespread academic optimism about the emancipatory potential of the local, strong caveats of ‘not romanticising the local’ are constantly repeated. By looking at the Balkan countries and their traditional practices of peacebuilding, this article asks whether the local has the potential to be the empowering agent or if such expectations are much too ambitious, both at the academic and policy level. Drawing on the research findings which show the persistence of coercive and noncoercive local peacebuilding practices, the article poses the Paris question once again: should liberal peacebuilding be saved, and if so, where are the locals in this rescue attempt?
Acknowledgements
Previous drafts of this paper have been presented at 10th East Asian Conference on Slavic Eurasian Studies (29-30 June 2018, Tokyo) and Varieties of Peace Asia Conference (22-24 October 2019, Jakarta). I am thankful to Sahara Tetsuya, Lorraine Elliott, Samantha Ruppel and Milan Krstić for insightful comments on the paper and to Peter Locke for helping me to shape the final draft of the paper. Also, I am grateful to the Editor and anonymous reviewers who encouraged me to be more provocative in my approach.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
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Additional information
Notes on contributors
Nemanja Džuverović
Nemanja Dzuverovic is an Associate Professor in Peace Studies at the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science, Serbia. He is Co-Editor of the Journal of Regional Security. His research areas include the local turn in International Relations, welfare in post-conflict environments, and the political economy of liberal peacebuilding and international statebuilding in the Balkans. He has published articles in East European Politics and Society (2020), Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (2020), International Relations (2020), Peacebuilding (2018) as well as a range of book chapters relating to peace and conflict studies.