The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding Ten Years on: Critical Reflections and Stimulating Ideas on an Evolving Scholarship

ABSTRACT

The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. This special volume opens up with a selection of nine of the most influential articles published in the journal. JISB's editorial team has asked the authors for their reflections on their original articles, telling us more about the writing process at that time, what they would do differently (with hindsight), or how they see their articles contributing to current debates on intervention and statebuilding. We have selected one article per volume, and we have ordered the contribution starting from volume 1 (2007) to volume 9 (2015). The articles will be made open access for the year, and we highly recommend (re-)reading the original articles along with the comments from the authors.

KEYWORDS:

• Liberal peacebuilding
• post-liberal peacebuilding
• hybrid peace
• critical theory
• democratization
• regime change
• armed intervention

Reconstruction, by Amitai Etzioni

Original article: Etzioni, Amitai (2007) ‘Reconstruction: An Agenda’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 1 (1): 27–45, DOI: 10.1080/17502970601075881

Strong data provided by Minxin Pei and Sara Kasper support the thesis of the limits of the democratization that can be brought about by foreign powers. In their study ‘Lessons from the Past: The American Record on Nation Building', they examined 18 US interventions seeking to promote democratization by coercive regime change prior to the recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They found that 13 failed to produce long-term democratic rule, including sustained attempts in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. The five successful interventions include a tiny country (Grenada); one that is far from clearly democratic (Panama); Italy (in which the US did not play much of a role), and two that are indeed great successes: post-World War II Germany and Japan (Pei and Kasper 2003).

I hence set out to ask what sociological conditions set these cases apart from the others, and whether these might be reproduced in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. I found that these conditions include (a) cessation of all hostility, (b) a high level of domestic security, and (c) local acceptance of the foreign occupation and the democratization drive. In addition, these nations had (d) a strong national unity, (e) competent government personnel, and (f) a low level of corruption. Furthermore, they had (g) strong economic fundamentals, including strong industrial bases, established infrastructure, educated populations, and vigorous support for science and technology, corporations, business and commerce. Their (h) cultural values included hard work, high levels of saving, and other forms of self-restraint and capacity to defer gratification, essential for democratic development. (i) Finally, the US commitment, including provision of adequate funding and troops, was strong (Etzioni 2007a, 43; Gvosdes 2015).

Indeed, few of the necessary sociological conditions for democratizations were available in Iraq, Afghanistan, or most of the rest of the Middle East and Africa.

This is not to argue that there is something biological or otherwise inherent in Muslim or Arab culture or society that prevents these countries from becoming sound democracies one day. It is only that currently their sociological conditions are not those needed for democratization.

Recently there has been a growing consensus that the US and its allies’ interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq failed to produce liberal democratic regimes, although a few attribute this failure to insufficient investment of time and resources rather than to profoundly unrealistic objectives (see Nagl 2014). Hence, a growing number of foreign policy experts argue that the US should refrain from future land wars in Asia, or ‘boots on the ground'. For example, former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates stated at West Point in February 2011 that ‘any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should “have his head examined”' (Shanker 2011). In December 2014, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a measure authorizing the use of military force against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, but barring the use of ground troops.

This conclusion is based on a gross misunderstanding of what failed in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both nations, the military victories were swift and came at low human and economic costs. Only $56 billion had been appropriated for the Iraq War by the time President Bush declared ‘Mission Accomplished' on 1 May 2003, and 172 coalition servicemen had died. Only 12 US soldiers died during the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, where the fighting was carried out largely by locals of the Northern Alliance. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the combined costs of the Afghanistan war for 2002–3 related to security were only $535 million. Most of the casualties (and the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted) were caused by attempts that followed the initial military victories—to build stable, liberal democracies in these two nations where the sociological conditions for democratization were not in place and could not be imported.

It follows that if the goal of the armed intervention is to defeat the military of another nation in the Middle East or Africa—this goal can be achieved quite readily. The model for such interventions is the 1991 Gulf War in which the US pushed Saddam's forces out of Kuwait and punished him for invading another nation, a campaign that lasted a few weeks and had few American or allied casualties. However, once the military victory achieved by boots on the ground was in hand, the US and its allies disengaged. The US role in the 1998–99 Kosovo War was also limited and decisive. There the US achieved its goals of stopping the ethnic cleansing, without any combat casualties of its own (and with low costs) and disengaged.

One may point out that the 1991 disengagement meant that the people of Iraq continued to be subjected to a tyrannical regime (and a harsh sanctions regime). In response, one notes that in the decade that followed the overthrow of Saddam in 2003, conservative estimates find that at least 120,000 Iraqis were killed, 250,000 maimed, and millions turned into refugees. Sunnis and Shias that used to live together in relative peace (although under Saddam, the Sunni were privileged and Shia suffered many injustices) became mortal enemies. Iraqis gained many rights, but many became less secure. They came to fear each other more than they feared the Saddam regime. One cannot conclude that Iraqis were better off under Saddam, but one can surely see that their new conditions were not much better, and a far cry from what one would expect for living in a stable, liberal democratic regime. Nor did their nations turn into pro-Western allies or eradicate terrorism.

In short, future military interventions, including boots on the ground, should not be tabooed; however, they should not be coupled with a certain-to-fail democratization mission. For instance, for reasons discussed below, the US could readily defeat ISIS if it truly engaged, but it could not democratize Syria. The model for military intervention is the US action in Kuwait in 1991 (though fighting in other arenas might well be more challenging).

Hybrid Polities and Indigenous Pluralities: Advanced Lessons in Statebuilding from Cambodia, by David Roberts

Original article: Roberts, David (2008) ‘Hybrid Polities and Indigenous Pluralities: Advanced Lessons in Statebuilding from Cambodia', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 2 (1): 63–86, DOI: 10.1080/17502970701592298

This article originated in a journey through the interior of Cambodian politics and the exterior of a new order of global peacebuilding, throughout 1991. I had been visiting a series of dry, dusty and empty Cambodian ministerial offices that reminded me of the run-down, partly abandoned national library, bereft of books and haunted by humidity and bats. Those skeletal administrative husks in the heart of Phnom Penh spoke to where political power and purpose lay in this post-conflict, postcolonial country. The bypassing of the formal by the informal intrigued me. Cambodians were encountering democracy but the outcome had not been democratization. By ‘encountering democracy’, I mean that democratization had been externally instigated but neither internally adopted as had been expected, nor rejected out of hand. It seemed to be a process not dissimilar to Arturo Escobar's expression of the reaction to ‘development’ by postcolonial societies’ responses to external pressures to ‘modernization’ after decolonization.

Like then, democratization's appearance led to adaptation of the external to the internal in a meshing of old and new; a hybrid itself that in the early stages appeared to favour authoritarianism and neopatrimony. It became my expectation that postconflict states encouraged towards liberalism by the West would transform again, from an already hybridized form into a new hybrid complex of the postcolonial and the postconflict. It would be a mix of neopatrimony and neoliberalism which served the interests of postconflict elites.

After the peacekeeping operation left Cambodia in 1993, I returned frequently. I found the same ministerial offices draped in the nomenclature of liberalism but devoid of such political function. As before, the offices were husks, concealing a continuing practice of informal, neopatrimonial governance. For elites, it was necessary: genuinely democratic competition could have robbed them of the power and privilege to which they had become acculturated over millennia. Imperial governance was not really a great departure from the character of precolonial leadership; rather, it had continued pre-existing authoritarianism under white rule, more so in French Indochina, with its reputation for brutality widely evidenced in postcards sent home of beheaded Asian dissenters. The royal courts, the colonial state and in its turn the postconflict state share in common the assumption that the state was the legitimate means to domination and exploitation of society by elites. How could democracy compete? Democratic elections may have relocated political contest between elites from the battlefield, but they did not necessarily, or even often, lead to peaceful political conflict.

Democracy was mauled in Cambodia: elites used its nomenclature to conceal the persistence of ‘the past in the present’. Political and economic relations were undertaken the old ways. Why should democracy be encountered but rejected? I turned to Joel Migdal's dictum to help me make sense of this. Rehashed, it suggests that people will only adopt the new if it's better for them than the old. It felt right to me; it echoed what Khmer politicians had been telling me since 1991. Democratization did not give elites what they needed; it enabled challenges to trenchant elites who persisted with old systems to retain power, whilst new challengers, if enthroned, reverted to past behaviours to preserve their new status. In the house of patrimony, democracy does not work, so it is not used. It walked like a democracy and talked like a democracy, but it was a hybrid polity, and it wasn't hard to see why.

Cambodia is more than a metropolitan polity, and I wanted to know whether there were such barriers to democratization beyond the metropolis. Amongst the rural majority, it was clear there were benefits experienced by many Khmers, especially regarding commerce. But it was also clear that the old ways persisted. Rural land ownership was often still mediated by chiefs and monks because the rule of law, now dominated by rich and often crooked metropolitan lawyers, rendered it unaffordable to many poorer rural people. Conflict was still routinely managed by the police or village chiefs rather than the courts.

In many post-conflict spaces, a similar story unfolded, and my research moved to Sierra Leone. I did not find a greatly dissimilar story. I came to understand that democracy was not undesirable; it just wasn't imminently preferred and apposite, leaving me wondering what would be valued locally. This unknowingness on my part led me back to the postcolonial, developmental and post-developmental debates about epistemology, and shifted the nature and pattern of my research. Up to this point, I would not really change the content and conclusions of my 2007 article. But from the point at which knowingness entered my equation, my direction changed and I would no longer propose the ‘reef theory’. This suggested a more limited UN intervention approach, privileging local elections with less foreign meddling, so that local people could determine their own directions to indigenous autonomy. Instead, I would advocate a strong international role, but organized around local preferences identified through asking people what they wanted and in what order.

I came to this conclusion because I had started to wonder what peacebuilding would look like if it served the interests of the masses rather than focusing on the fantasy of changing the elites, who sometimes only swapped military fatigues for civilian suits and carried on as before. For that to happen, peacebuilders would have to know what was important to people. It was at the time a debate that was poorly tolerated, judging from the remarks of various editors of respected International Relations journals. But I could draw no other conclusion than that in order to build stable peace, peace had to be relevant and locally legitimate. I was left knowing that we could not know what was relevant without asking people what they wanted (as opposed to giving them what we thought they should have). What is presently given is contextual on external assumptions about what is best for people, as per the imperial era. But those external assumptions are made in a different context, where landmines do not determine food and firewood supply; where income generation for food and housing may be considered more important than a free media or elections in a disconnected metropolis; where roads, schools and hospitals might—or might not—be more imminently desired than the rule of law. My lack of knowing forced me to ask the obvious question: how could we know?

I got very lucky with a supportive US aid organization and was able to run a survey (n = 779) in South Sudan in 2011 that asked what South Sudanese people wanted from their encounter with democracy and statebuilding. It was clear from this that many wanted democracy, whatever that meant to people; but it was also clear that people wanted roads and schools as much as, and often more or sooner than, the provision of democracy. Coming into contact with those people's will and desire led me to establish the Hearing Voices Project (http://www.hearingvoicesproject.org/). The site will, I hope, encourage and enable people in post-conflict or conflict spaces anywhere to text and email their priorities for peace. The site can then be accessed by any institution and anyone who wishes to contribute to peace. It's demand-oriented, instead of supply-dominated, in line with hegemonic prescription throughout the architecture of global governance. The site is the culmination of research begun before and after the 2007 article; that article contextualized and necessitated a shift in interests that has led directly to where I am now.

Peace beyond Parochial Liberalism and Techno-Neoliberalism, by Oliver P. Richmond

Original article: Richmond, Oliver P. (2009) ‘Becoming Liberal, Unbecoming Liberalism: Liberal-Local Hybridity via the Everyday as a Response to the Paradoxes of Liberal Peacebuilding', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 3 (3): 324–344, DOI: 10.1080/17502970903086719

The article I wrote for JISB in 2009 now looks dated, though I am pleased it sparked some debate. It was of its time, being part of a whole swathe of work I did on peace and its development during the 2000s, drawing on peace and state building examples from around the world, which had concluded with some thoughts on the potential of hybrid peace (Richmond, 2005: 198; Richmond and Franks 2009). It mainly worked within the liberal church, in effect querying the fit of liberalism in different conflict-affected contexts. It was nevertheless trying to push beyond the disciplinary borders of political liberalism and neoliberalism. Influenced by my readings of critical and Marxist-influenced debates in International Relations (IR), including Gramsci, De Certeau, Lefebvre, Foucault, J.S. Scott, Spivak, some IR scholars such as Andrew Linklater, Vivienne Jabri, Rob Walker, and others who had previously worked upon the everyday from peace and gender perspectives, including the Bouldings and Christine Sylvester, it looked at issues of resistance, legitimacy and agency, against a putative ideal state that peacebuilding appeared to propose.

Peace at that time was mainly seen in the broad context of the end the Cold War. However, my article's emancipatory intent and gentle criticism of the mainstream, some of the risks of literal understandings of liberalism, and the shift to neoliberalism, are now even more in tension. At the time the debates were just beginning to push against the post-Cold War Washington/New Consensus, but these are now long dead in scientific terms. It has become more doubtful whether an emancipatory form of peace can be found by merely resolving identity issues and recognizing the risks of Eurocentricism, translated into abstract rights, without major structural change, deeper forms of justice, and not merely contextual sensitivity, but environmental change.

Thus, the import of my argument now seems to me to be too tentative: working within the system and epistemological framework of that time suffers from too many internal contradictions to resolve conflict, bring about an emancipatory or empathetic peace, or to facilitate local agency in its attempt to do more than cope with an everyday struggle. The peace thinking and policy of its time, which translates into programming, the nature of the state, and international architecture, could not settle claims for autonomy and self-determination, or deal with the progressive concerns of post-colonial and post-communist subjects. Peacebuilding and statebuilding were becoming conservative rather than emancipatory projects. The potential remains, if only direct, structural, and governmental forms of power can be persuaded to reform according to the many claims, dynamics, and sensitivities on and about power (and if the king can be persuaded to cut off his own head). In an increasingly oligarchical and capitalist framework for international politics (as opposed to the liberal-internationalist, democratic and human rights-observing framework which still seemed barely plausible even then), where foreign policy has been replaced by sticking-plaster humanitarianism and grudging aid strategies mainly aimed at domestic stability, structural change seems unlikely. Unlike in 2009, the international system (the United Nations (UN), International Financial Institutions (IFIs), International Governmental Organisations (IGOs), International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs)) aimed at peace and development now seems moribund: it is no longer merely a question of adjusting the tools in a world of limitless possibility. Indeed, my 2009 article began the process—for me at least—of rethinking further about the need for structural change in the face of new possibilities and agencies being exhibited by ‘conflict-affected’ and developmental populations, and about how populations are imprisoned within moribund political and epistemological frameworks, but are yet finding ways of acting politically and ethically.

The capitalist-technological response to the limitations of the liberal international architecture and the political violence it either ignored or unleashed is making for a much more Orwellian understanding of peace in neoliberal terms, in the contemporary international environment. In contrast, and somewhat inevitably, the concept of peace has been stretched intellectually by the everyday far beyond old notions of peace and diplomatic settlements, various international ‘programmes’, or reforming the state: it now reaches far and wide, into post-liberal ethics, into historical and distributive injustice, new mobility and networks, fluidity and stasis of identity, and environmental concerns. The tension between rights and capital, rights and boundaries, and the limitations in addressing historical and distributive justice have now been thrown into much sharper relief by new research. Much of this points to questions of justice and equality, historical continuity, the limitations of rights, hidden racism and eurocentrism, the transmittal of trauma across generations, new forms of hegemony and oligarchy, mobility and networks, the critical import of the Anthropocene, to mention a few angles. It also points to new events, including the rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the environmental and credit crises, the move into power of networked capital, the emergence of more new/old wars, new levels of spatial mobility, new technologies, transport and communications, and the collapse of any attempt towards UN reform or global restructuring. Indeed, the failure of the experiment with liberal peacebuilding of the last 25 years now points to the need to engage with these matters of rights, justice, identity, capital, trauma, and the environment across time and space and in view of increasing levels of mobility, if wars are to be settled, structural violence dealt with, and political claims represented.

Thus, if I were to rewrite this article, producing identity and institutional hybridity through juxtaposing the everyday and its agencies for peace with existing liberal international architecture would have to be measured against the excruciating lack of political will there appears to exist amongst political and financial elites and in geopolitical frameworks. They have little appetite for subaltern claims for far broader rights, far more equal forms of material development, deep structural change, environmental sustainability, and very prominent forms of distributive and historical forms of justice, in the context of new networks, technology, and mobility, which are already reshaping the everyday. To understand and redress violence within such frameworks means jettisoning the epistemological and methodological baggage of the states-system and nationalism: all of which point to the many roots of conflict, which have now become too inconvenient for policymakers (and indeed many theories) to address. The everyday has underlined the limits of liberalism and the need for structural change. Similarly, some ‘local agency’ has surpassed the states-system and the liberal international architecture in both practical and ethical terms. The state, liberal international architecture, capital or technology have not been able to resolve their contradictions; nor has there been much evidence of new emancipatory thought or policymaking in the areas of peace or IR, reshaping the state or the international. The alliance of capital, technology, and oligarchy appears for now to have surpassed previous approaches.

It remains to be seen what type of peace, state, and international system will emerge in this latest epoch. We are now in a position to engage with peace in multiple layers: as a long-standing ethical project, as a response to colonialism, the end of World War II, the collapse of the Soviet Union, globalized flows, networks, and mobility, the environment, and new technology, thus rethinking emancipation and social justice for the twenty-first century. These are admittedly broad matters of concern. Yet, so far, 15 years into this century, it seems to me that we are merely treading water in a leaking pool of narrow liberalism, hoping to be rescued by the ‘new’ alliance between technology and capital. So far the results are not encouraging for conflict-affected populations around the world.

The Fortified Aid Compound reloaded, by Mark Duffield

Original article: Duffield, Mark (2010) ‘Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound: Everyday Life in Post-Interventionary Society', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 4 (4): 453–474, DOI: 10.1080/17502971003700993

Published in 2010, the ‘Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound' was the unexpected outcome of a consultancy completed for United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in South Sudan in 2008. It was the first time I had been back to the south since the end of the 1990s. With a brief to look at how UNHCR was handling refugee repatriation, the consultancy itself was fairly pedestrian. What was different, remarkable even, was how the culture of aid had changed. During the 1990s, at a time of civil war, aid agencies moved around and operated from within the war zone with relative autonomy. Despite the peace, what was noticeable in 2008 was how contained and restricted everything seemed. You travelled outside the now guarded compounds only by following mandatory security protocols. Through pre-arranged and managed encounters, even meeting aid beneficiaries was, effectively, by appointment only. There was little room for exploration or spontaneity. Most striking, however, was not containment as such, but the willing acceptance shown by most of the aid workers encountered. For international staff, restriction and remoteness was a normal part of the job.

Since the article's publication, this naturalization has deepened. Host governments and armed groups continue to restrict the remit of outside agencies. Working from the opposite direction, such moves have been reinforced by the culture of risk-aversion now dominant among international organizations. It is also clear that the trend toward physical remoteness is not confined to aid workers. A similar international distancing affects, for example, journalists, diplomats and, not least, academic researchers. Reflecting the importance now attached by universities to risk management and ethical guidelines, together with the high cost of insurance cover, the difficulty of completing academic fieldwork outside the ramparts of Fortress Europe has become a research topic in its own right. When permission is granted, students are either confined to what are deemed safe locations or, quite often, because the researcher has gained admittance to an aid agency's local security system; the student thereby becoming as contained as the aid workers within it.

Physical distancing and the naturalization of remoteness have continued to shape my research agenda. However, rather than the culture of containment, on which the original article focused, I am interested in how remote aid workers and academic researchers recoup distance? That is, how do they gain understanding or situational awareness when they are several steps removed? For aid agencies, this merges with questions of remote management or, basically, the arm's length administration of local subcontractors able to operate outside the security protocols that restrict an international presence.

It would be reasonable to expect this development to have empowered local aid workers. Not only are they in the majority; many are skilled in things like need assessment and project management. In general, however, international distancing has not translated into increased local responsibility. The opposite appears to be happening. While there are several reasons for this, from my own research, the skills that local aid workers possess belong to a body of terrestrial expertise that is being outmoded by the technological infrastructure currently being developed to recoup distance digitally. Following the globalization of connectivity, this involves a combination of remote sensing, media informatics and the increasing automation of aid data collection. Despite the rhetoric of decentralization, technology-enhanced remote aid management is one aspect of an emerging global infrastructure that actualizes a will to externally govern effects on the ground from a distance.

Remoteness is both a loss and a gain. For many, the disappearance of the face-to-face interaction and reciprocity that presence made possible has been positively compensated by the emergence of distance-shrinking sense-making tools and affirmatory interactive technologies. Global connectivity needs a digital infrastructure to call forth the new methodologies and epistemologies it embodies. Africa's burgeoning mobile telecommunication network, for example, is being connected by a combination of terrestrial fibre-optic and satellite technologies. Operating as an unregulated laboratory, biometric, medical and data informatics are being piloted in ways that would be politically difficult in the global North. In rolling out a connectivity infrastructure, the aid industry, in partnership with the private sector, is playing a central role. Millions of Africans have been fingerprinted or iris scanned as a precondition for aid eligibility or citizenship recognition. Refugee and cash transfer programmes are particularly important sites of innovation.

In cybernetic terms, the spread of digital infrastructure creates a feedback loop linking service providers with millions of atomized screen interfaces. Feedback has allowed, for example, disaster-affected populations to be rediscovered as socially distributed information systems. When coupled with remote satellite sensing, a powerful tool of surveillance, consumer manipulation and remote effect management has emerged. However, drawing the human terrain near by digital means is not like focussing an optical telescope from a balloon. A process of mathematical abstraction takes place whereby the artefacts of human reason, like history, philosophy and subjective belief, are negated in the on-screen rendering of the human terrain as the simulacra of mathematical correlations, ecosystem networks and behavioural patterns. In this rendering, the artefacts of reason, causality and memory are replaced epistemologically by the synchronicity, complexity and data storage/retrieval systems of a logistical and essentially behavioural cybernetic rationality. Theory has been banished by the triumphal empiricism of pattern recognition.

In 2010, I concluded ‘Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound' with the following sentiment : ‘After more than half a century of development activity, if the fortified aid compound represents a point of arrival, then it is symptomatic of the aid industry reaching a strategic dead-end.'

At the time, I was unaware that the development–security nexus was already in the process of escaping this dead-end. It was pivoting digitally from the ground into the volumetric dimension of the electronic atmosphere. This is the last global redoubt from which one-sided and piratical political and economic action is still possible. As a strategic plane, the electronic atmosphere unites humanitarian efforts to strengthen resilience remotely through smart-messaging, digital entrepreneurs pioneering how to exploit the chronically poor, and drone pilots for whom the entire planet is now a machine-rendered manhunt reserve. All are using the same digital infrastructure and cybernetic rationality—arguably even the same moral compass—to manage terrestrial effects from a distance; this time from much safer remote hyper-bunkers rather than increasingly redundant in-country fortified aid compounds.

Learning since ‘Learning to Live with Militias’, by Ariel I. Ahram

Original article: Ahram, Ariel I. (2011) ‘Learning to Live with Militias: Toward a Critical Policy on State Frailty', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 5 (2): 175–192, DOI: 10.1080/17502977.2011.566479

I wrote ‘Learning to Live with Militias: Toward a Critical Policy on State Frailty’ as I came to the end of my dissertation, a project which eventually became Proxy Warriors: The Rise and Fall of State Sponsored Militias (Ahram 2011a). My work examined how states recruit and retain armed non-state actors to provide security at the local level. Interest in states and statebuilding was growing, spurred largely by the collapse of states and civil wars in Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Policy makers, military practitioners, and development specialists were increasingly adopting state- or ‘nationbuilding’ as mantra, intent on helping frail states reassert the monopoly over the use of force. Yet my findings suggested that this could be a quixotic and even counterproductive policy. Instead of trying to extend the writ of the army and police, many states actively or tacitly collaborated with militias, vigilantes, criminal organizations, and other non-state actors. These arrangements had proven to yield a measure of sustainable stability in many circumstances. JISB offered me an opportunity to voice my scepticism of orthodoxies that deemed strong states a prerequisite for security and development. Rather than trying to repair dysfunctional states, I argued that efforts to promote human and international security should engage the armed non-state actors who were often actually responsible for ruling.

We are learning more and more about both the promise and peril of living with militias (Jentzsch, Kalyvas, and Schubiger 2015). Research on counterinsurgency highlights the pivotal role of state alliances with armed non-state actors. Locally raised, informal forces are often better positioned to identify insurgents within the population and to issue credible threats against civilians for noncooperation than are regular troops (Lyall 2010; Biddle, Friedman, and Shapiro 2012, Staniland 2012a; Stanton 2015). The opportunity to join pro-government militias motivates rebel fighters to defect (Staniland 2012b; Oppenheim et al. 2015). Cross-national surveys suggests that use of militias significantly increases the chances of government victory in civil war (Peic 2014). Taking these examples to heart, David Kilcullen, doyen of contemporary American counterinsurgency theory, urges counterinsurgent forces ‘to develop solid partnerships with reliable local allies' (Kilcullen 2010, 18).

Yet researchers also warn that militias can pose a profound danger. Militias offer states a means to attack civilians while maintaining plausible deniability, disavowing the acts of ostensibly ‘free agents’. Militias typically lack training and discipline. They harbour ulterior motives to use violence for criminal or pecuniary purposes. Not surprisingly, militias are implicated in some of the worst human rights violations, such as rape, ethnic cleansing, and even genocide (Carey, Mitchell, and Lowe 2013; Mitchell, Carey, and Butler 2014; Ahram 2014; Cohen and Nordås 2015). Militias might even turn on the very states that patronize them and undermine any hopes of re-establishing state sovereignty (Marten 2012).

The current crises in Iraq and Syria illustrate the ambivalent role that militias play. State authority has collapsed. Rebel factions, including the so-called Islamic State, have seized large swaths of territory and are fashioning their own proto-state apparatuses. With the regular army and police in disarray, both Baghdad and Damascus have turned to armed non-state actors for their defence. In Syria, the shabiha (apparition) militias originated in smuggling and racketeering networks closely tied by family relationships to the Assad regime. They have been accused of numerous atrocities, including ethnic cleansing. At the same time, they have provided a measure of protection for Alawite and Christian communities from the onslaught of rebel Sunni factions. Similarly, Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF; hashid sha'bi) emerged in response to calls from Shi'i sectarian political parties and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's pre-eminent Shi'i religious authority. The PMF have been critical in the defence of Baghdad and the counterattack against the Islamic State. Yet Human Rights Watch and other humanitarian organizations have also documented the militia's patterns of intimidation, abuse, torture, and extra-judicial killings of Sunnis. These militias, therefore, can drive communities to seek out rebel protection. Once militias are unleashed, it is unclear whether these states can regain institutional cohesion (Wehrey and Ahram 2015). In such contexts, it is the armed non-state actors that are truly indispensable. Finding ways to support local ceasefires and agreements among the various armed groups to permit the flow of humanitarian aid and foster protection for local civilians is the most likely path to a liveable, albeit markedly illiberal, political order.

What was I thinking?, by Roger Mac Ginty

Original article: Mac Ginty, Roger (2012) ‘Between Resistance and Compliance: Non-participation and the Liberal Peace', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 6 (2): 167–187, DOI: 10.1080/17502977.2012.655601

Introduction

Almost everything we write, even a shopping list or a scrawled note for our office door, is autobiographical. What we write says much about us. It can give insights into what and how we read. It can reveal much about our worldview and our positionality. It can capture mood and emotion, and transform the two-dimensional page into a multi-dimensional signifier of time, place and sentiments.

Even academic works that are rendered into apparently static formats such as a journal article or book chapter can be extremely telling about a moment in the author's intellectual journey. This journey is perhaps most visible in hindsight. When an author is in the middle of collating information to write an article and faced with multiple deadlines and other pressures, it is unlikely that he or she will have the presence of mind to step back and situate the article under construction as a waypoint in that intellectual journey. Moreover, most of us probably need a few grey hairs and the shadow of middle age to be able to look back with any degree of confidence and self-awareness. And even then, are authors the best people to judge their own work?

Being able to revisit something that is already published is a rare treat. Most publications are ‘fire and forget’. As long as they pass the gatekeeping provided by reviewers, then they are sent off to the publisher, proof-read and that it is. They stay frozen in ink and, in the case of this author's corpus, largely ignored.

So what was I thinking?

How can I place the ‘Between Resistance and Compliance’ article in the Mac Ginty corpus, and more broadly in the context of an evolving academic debate on liberal interventionism? I would like to be able to say that the article was part of a strategic professional plan to contribute to an on-going debate. That I had sat back like a wise sage, looked at the literature with cool detachment, and decided how I could best contribute to the debate.

The truth is less heroic—and more autobiographical. The article was actually inspired by thinking about my father. I grew up in Northern Ireland in the midst of ‘the Troubles’, a small but very bitter civil war. The particular area my family lived in was very heavily militarized, with much tension, and reasonably common incidents of shooting and bombing. The level of militarization (called ‘security’ by the state) was oppressive, provocative and very clearly a political act to support one community and to disrupt the other.

In such a context, it was very difficult to avoid politics. If every road journey was interrupted by a ‘security’ checkpoint, if surveillance or troop-carrying helicopters constantly droned overhead, if politics and murders dominated the local news, if society was bifurcated into two opposing camps (Catholic–nationalist–republican versus Protestant–unionist–loyalist) then how did one escape politics? It was everywhere. Schools, shops, pubs and cultural pursuits catered for Catholics or Protestants, rarely both. Even apparently innocuous aspects of life were riven with politics. The allocation of guide dogs for the blind, for example, was marred by a sectarian bias in favour of one community. There was virtually no neutral space. And yet my father was not particularly political. He would vote and would react with the usual emotions to the television news. But he was too busy being a husband, a father and a worker. In truth, even in a highly politicized environment he was not particularly interested in politics.

My father came into my mind as I saw the debate on academic agency and the liberal peace take shape. It was yet another case of academic debates in seminar rooms, conference panels and journals not reflecting what I had seen from my own experience. The debate on agency in peacebuilding contexts seemed to suggest that there were two options: that people could comply with internationally sponsored peacebuilding or that they could resist it. A normative subtext accompanied this debate and seemed to suggest that compliance was for the weak, cowed or powerless, or those in cahoots with power. Resistance, on the other hand, was seen as normatively positive and in keeping with the thinking of ideological preferences of those critiquing the liberal peace.

A corrective to a binary

The ‘Between Resistance and Compliance' article can be read as a corrective to the dichotomized literature that seemed to lump people into two categories: resistors or compliers. It seemed to me, and I have explored this further in other work—particularly my ‘Everyday Peace' article (Mac Ginty 2014)—that this does a disservice to the ingenuity, flexibility and inconsistency of people. Humans are simply too awkward, and find themselves in such a variety of circumstances, for them to fit neatly into one category or another. To me, it seemed as though academics were over-writing the experiences of people on-the-ground.

The article was making a very simple point: things are more complicated than the literature is suggesting. Re-reading it, I am struck by two things. The first is my usual over-burdened prose style. I wish I could write more clearly. The second is to ask why I felt the need to cite usually impenetrable post-colonial authors to make a very simple point. Maybe I felt that to be taken seriously I would have to include references to authors that—to be honest—I struggle to understand.

If I were allowed to re-edit it, I would fillet out the pretentious stuff and mention my father and how he preferred to spend the little time he had on his hands in cutting our lawn. He was not simply a complier or a resistor. He fashioned his own existence that involved compliance and resistance, but a lot more too. Lots of other people do that too. They weave in and out of different phases in their life, they engage in activities that are surprising and under the radar of most academic observers, and they hold inconsistent, even incoherent, views. They are wonderfully awkward and defy our neat academic categories.

Securing Liberia Post-Ebola and Post-UNMIL: Thinking beyond the Hybrid, by Sukanya Podder

Original article: Podder, Sukanya (2013) ‘Bridging the “Conceptual–Contextual” Divide: Security Sector Reform in Liberia and UNMIL Transition', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 7 (3): 353–380, DOI: 10.1080/17502977.2013.770242

My article on ‘Bridging the “Conceptual–Contextual” Divide: Security Sector Reform in Liberia and UNMIL Transition', based on field research during late 2011, provided a true account of security sector reform (SSR) progress and some of the problems that could be discerned both in terms of planning and implementation. The piece was based on rigorous empirical research in the capital Monrovia and, because of the breadth of institutions and actors interviewed and strategic-level documents accessed, the data produced was rich and valuable. It communicated strategic-level thinking on issues of internal security capacity among local and international elites, and through its use of a two-pronged analytical framework highlighted (1) the tensions between international approaches and local realities; (2) dichotomy of purpose and practice between the monopoly model of security and the reality of multi-actor security provision, and (3) focused on the efficiency of output in terms of actual reform achieved.

Since the research was conducted, some developments of note have taken place. First the Ebola outbreak, a national tragedy that claimed 4,353 Liberian lives and infected a reported 9,798 between March 2014 and March 2015, created broader security, political, humanitarian and economic implications (UNMIL 2015, 1). In terms of security, the epidemic revealed the lack of public trust in the national security apparatus and the political leadership. Allegations that Ebola was a government ploy to attract funding from the international community added one more version to the numerous conspiracy theories surrounding the outbreak. The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) transition has been slower than planned. United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions 2190 (2014) and 2215 (2015) set 30 June 2016 as the new deadline for the Government of Liberia (GoL) to fully assume its complete security responsibilities from UNMIL (2015, 10).

In preparation a GoL Plan for UNMIL Transition has been developed, although with UNMIL support, and in consultation with relevant national stakeholders. An Agenda for Transformation and the National Security Strategy has also been drawn up. It emphasizes community engagement, sustained operational effectiveness; anti-corruption measures and aims to enhance public trust by improving accountability, professionalism and oversight in the security sector. The GoL has also upped its financial commitments to the security sector in preparation for the transition. An estimated US$105 million has been budgeted towards implementing the transition plan (UNMIL 2015, 10).

While these facts and figures may create initial reassurance that ‘all is well’ with the progress, under the surface the core arguments of the 2013 piece, namely of high levels of dependency on UNMIL and international donors, a mismatch between international policy and local practice; tendencies towards encouraging European models of security provision in a context of low reliance on formal institutions; and self-help forms of security in a context of low public trust/reliance on the national security and justice institutions remain. So do the problems of infrastructure, capacity, human resources, corruption and elite control. On reflection, using hybridity as an analytical framework had its merits in that it helped to explain both the context and the reality of reform. In retrospect, I could have focused more on the hybrid security debate by examining how multiple models of security provision, not simply actors, were emerging and how these models are legitimated normatively (from a top-down perspective) and whether these models are effective (whether they are helpful) from a bottom-up perspective.

What appears an interesting area that researchers need to address is the nature of multi-layered security that will emerge in a post-UNMIL context. If this research were to be extended today, it would be necessary to look at three specific areas. First, an interrogation into a multi-level and multi-actor adaptation process once UNMIL exits and the forms of national and local adaptation that is emerging. For example my earlier research did not look at the County Security Councils (CSC) structure—the Liberian government's guiding principle for national security and is part of national peacebuilding efforts to ensure decentralization or access. It incorporates the paramount, clan and town chiefs into the mix, providing much-needed civilian input into security policy making at the sub-national level.

Second, how useful will Liberia's five regional Justice and Security Hubs (JSH) be in the future? To date only the Gbarnga hub is operational; while the government has committed US$1 million over 2014–16, in addition to the funds provided by the Peacebuilding Fund, to support the construction of the Harper and Zwedru hubs (UNMIL 2015, 13). This model of decentralization and access remains difficult to operationalize because of constraints related to finance, infrastructure and capacity (human and material). Further, the JSH concept did not address the issue of civilian oversight of security and justice institutions or the issue of legitimacy. This makes it worthwhile to purse a comparative study of national models of adaptation versus international or UNMIL-led models such as JSH.

Third, rebuilding the legitimacy of the security system in post-conflict states presents complexities beyond technocratic capacity building. In light of the continuing dichotomy between regime security and people's security, and the continuing ability of elites to buy justice in a neopatrimonial society, it is important to pursue a study into the types of actors and their security-related provision by relating these types with a perception of legitimacy metric.

Since this piece was written, my research on SSR more generally has evolved to look at how reform processes are managed by both international actors and local elites. Insights into management practices are of particular relevance as they can add value both normatively and empirically. Normatively, such a prism helps dissect how specific security cultures can resist or accept reform requirements. Empirically, such a focus enables a documentation of the sequence of events that explain what resulted from a particular SSR process.

The second area of focus is refining the hybridity framework in the context of SSR. In particular I am interested in defining how useful hybrid outcomes are—i.e. in what ways they enable better security (in terms of quality) and for whom; and what types of hybrid outcomes face resistance and from whom. Is SSR resisted from the top down (elites) or from the bottom up (end users)? And what are the different reasons for resistance or acceptance in a given context?

Strategic Rhetorical Balancing and the Tactics of Justification in Afghanistan, Libya and Beyond, by Jack Holland and Michael Aaronson

Original article: Holland, Jack, and Michael Aaronson (2014) ‘Dominance through Coercion: Strategic Rhetorical Balancing and the Tactics of Justification in Afghanistan and Libya', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 8 (1): 1–20, DOI: 10.1080/17502977.2013.856126

Our article ‘Dominance through Coercion' set out to explore how political elites win arguments. This is an important exploration because, we argue, elected officials in the United States and United Kingdom are not free to pursue any foreign policy they wish (see also Holland 2013a, 2013b). In particular, when it comes to questions of military force, intervention and war, Bush, Blair, Obama and Cameron have been required to craft foreign policy discourse instrumentally in order to account for domestic politics and populations. It is the audience at home that matters. And it is interpretations of the domestic electoral and political landscape that inspire the strategic framing of foreign policy (see also Holland 2010, 2012).

There already exists much work (e.g. Barnett 1999) that considers how it is that elected officials construct arguments in order to appeal to specific domestic audiences, for example through the invocation of the national identity. Our argument does something slightly different by turning to one of the most interesting areas of Critical Constructivist literature in IR today, which considers processes of rhetorical coercion. Drawing on this literature (e.g. Bially Mattern 2005; McDonald and Merefield 2010), we argue that political elites not only frame foreign policy to appeal to core constituencies, but moreover that they employ a tactic of justification for foreign policy that seeks to balance their arguments rhetorically, in order to close down the discursive space from which an opponent might launch a counter-argument (Krebs and Jackson 2007, Krebs and Lobasz 2007, 2009). Potential opponents are deprived of the tools required for the construction of a sustainable counter-narrative; they are silenced, and coerced into acquiescence (Holland forthcoming 2016).

Our empirical analysis shows that, in the case of Afghanistan in 2001 and Libya in 2011, political elites in the US and UK achieved this rhetorical balancing through the strategic emphasis of secondary justifications for intervention (Holland and Aaronson 2014). National interest-premised justifications were balanced with recourse to humanitarian concerns, and vice versa, in order to deny opponents unhindered access to novel, alternative, positions (Holland and Aaronson 2014). Very simply, in Afghanistan it was much harder for opponents to construct alternative policies premised on concerns about the humanitarian costs of military action once political elites had already argued that intervention would deliver vital humanitarian benefits. Likewise, in Libya opponents were left struggling to argue that intervention was not in the national interest once political elites tactically emphasized this secondary justification for action, alongside ongoing fears of human rights violations (Holland and Aaronson 2014).

We would do very little differently were we given the chance to revisit the article; however we believe it is imperative to extend the analysis it develops in three ways. First, we have focused on the dominant voices of political elites in power. Studying the dynamics of discursive wars of position at home, between government and opposition, as well as other groups, such as the media, could usefully complement our original focus. Far from the rational construction of a national interest-premised policy, democratic and electoral dynamics have lain at the heart of many military interventions. Studying more of the central components of the democratic process in the formulation of foreign policy is likely to generate fresh insights.

Second, more work remains to be done in the area of rhetorical coercion. In particular, theorizing the nature and process of rhetorical coercion is a vital area of focus for constructivist research. In particular, the strategic balancing of justifications for war, through the instrumental emphasis of secondary justifications, is a new argument that must be woven into extant research about rhetorical coercion. Likewise, conceptualizing the complex and interwoven relationship of coercion and resonance is an exciting and important area for theoretical innovation. How do political elites simultaneously paint a picture of the world conducive to their chosen policy path, whilst also appealing to important audiences at home and securing the acquiescence of those who would try to argue against? Here, a nuanced understanding of coercion should complement multifaceted understandings of resonance—incorporating elements of appeal, assemblage and affect (Holland and Solomon 2014).

Third, although broad for an article, our focus was necessarily constrained by four states and two wars. Empirically, this work can and should be extended back through history, to explore past wars, as well as forward to the present, given the fierce urgency of understanding discourses of intervention and non-intervention in Syria, as the world's great powers compete in an international discursive war of position. Here, we do intend to develop our work, exploring in detail how it is that interventionist and non-interventionist policies have ‘won out’ at various points since conflict began in Syria in 2011. The US, UK, France, Russia and China have all contributed to this international discursive war of position over Syria. In the US and UK, in the face of continuing resistance to intervention from Russia and China, the position of ruling and oppositional parties has shifted through four phases, in 2011–12 as humanitarian concerns were at the fore, in 2012–13 as chemical weapons norms were discussed, in 2014 as the so-called Islamic State has surged to pre-eminence, and from 2015 with the onset of proxy war. Synchronic and diachronic analysis of this war of position is required to understand how it is that the people of Syria have simply been left to their fate.

Ships in the Night? A Feminist Reflection, by Laura McLeod

Original article: McLeod, Laura (2015) ‘A Feminist Approach to Hybridity: Understanding Local and International Interactions in Producing Post-Conflict Gender Security', Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 9 (1): 48–69, DOI: 10.1080/17502977.2014.980112

The fields of critical peacebuilding and feminist scholarship on peace and post-conflict reconstruction are rather like two magnificent ships passing by each other in the night.

(McLeod 2015, 64).

That was how I started the conclusions of my article ‘A Feminist Approach to Hybridity’, published in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding in 2015. That thought was also the starting point for the article. On the one hand, I was frustrated with the literature on critical peacebuilding for not utilizing relevant feminist scholarship. But also I was frustrated that feminists so rarely drew upon many of the concepts being used by critical peacebuilding scholars. These frustrations inevitably resulted in sketching out some thoughts about what a feminist perspective on hybridity could look like, where I sought to draw together insights from critical peacebuilding along with feminist scholarship on peace and post-conflict studies. While it is obviously problematic to talk of two ‘sides', my concern here is that a lack of engagement between the two approaches serves to sustain the marginalization of feminist research within critical peace studies. In this commentary, I expand on the poetic metaphor of ‘ships that pass in the night’ to reflect further on the feminist perspective for why these ‘ships' might pass each other in the night.

The etymology of the phrase ‘ships that pass in the night’ comes from an 1863 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, titled Tales of a Wayside Inn:

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,

Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;

So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,

Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

(Longfellow 1863)

Ships, then, pass in the night because their encounters are transitory, accidental, and the relationship fails to have a meaningful and lasting significance. The suggestion is that ‘only a signal shown’ can be a powerful description of how gender is conceptualized for those working in critical peacebuilding: as a category to be aware of rather than a lens through which to understand the world. Furthermore, the reference to ‘only a look … then darkness again’ is a compelling reminder of the ways in which gender is treated in a transitory and instrumental manner. However, there is a fast-growing body of work which seeks to integrate insights from both critical and feminist approaches to peacebuilding.

One example of this is Catia Confortini's consideration of Johan Galtung's theory of violence. She highlights how a gendered understanding of the structures underpinning processes of violence means that Galtung's theory is better able to conceptualize torture in war (Confortini 2006, 338–339). In part, this is because a ‘gender-conscious approach would explore hidden power relations, uncover the ways in which torture becomes conceivable at the individual and global level, and expose how the system of torture is reliant on gender relations to survive’ (Confortini 2006, 338–339). That is, a gendered approach pays particular attention to processes that contribute to violence. By doing this, Confortini demonstrates that gender is far more powerful than a simple category to add, or a box to tick. We miss the power relations that are at stake if we merely add gender in an instrumental way. To explain the processes and practices underpinning peacebuilding in a more textured way, gender needs to be far more than just a signal. Gender needs to be a powerful lens through which we view the world. Feminists point out that adding gender in an instrumental way is fraught with risks, from the essentialist picture of women as passive, maternal peace-lovers (Sylvester 2002, 207–223); to the failure to ensure a gender-just peace (Björkdahl and Mannergren Selimovic 2015).

This is more than merely a theoretical or conceptual issue: how gender is conceptualized profoundly affects the practice of peacebuilding interventions. For instance, when I asked why South-Eastern Europe Small Arms Clearinghouse (SEESAC) (the case study covered in the ‘Feminist Approach to Hybridity’ article) had chosen to focus its gender mainstreaming agenda towards domestic violence concerns, the response was that,

It's difficult in heavy work like destruction and stockpile management to include gender, so of course we would focus on the softer side of awareness and violence prevention.

(Interview, SALW Awareness officer, 11 May 2008, cited in McLeod 2016, 130).

In this approach, including gender concerns means dealing with ‘softer’ and different issues. That is, gender is separated from the overall agenda rather than integrated throughout the agenda. Stockpile management and destruction of small arms and light weapons could be usefully understood as a profoundly gendered concern tied to social perceptions about masculinity and femininity. Understanding small arms disarmament in this way could result in the development of subtle policies which may target men and women differently. Furthermore, adopting a gender perspective encourages development of an inclusive approach which potentially results in ‘fuller ownership of efforts to eradicate the illicit trade in small arms’ (IANSA 2014). An approach which considers gender as purely an instrumental ‘add on' or box to tick may miss the opportunity to take gender seriously through all aspects of a work programme. So, while many critical peacebuilding scholars might include gender as a category of analysis, or peacebuilding practitioners might have an initiative targeted at women, from the feminist perspective, this is merely a transitory, limited, instrumentalist and/or essentialist way of including gender within peacebuilding research and practice.

Encounters between feminist and critical peacebuilding need to have a meaningful and lasting impact. The inclusion of a gendered lens from a feminist perspective can add noticeable texture and depth to analyses that utilize concepts and approaches from critical peacebuilding. Annika Björkdahl and Johanna Mannergren Selimovic (2015), for example, draw upon ideas from critical peacebuilding about ‘the local turn’ (cf. Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013) and investigate the implications of theorizing such agency as gendered. Via this exploration they demonstrate the various ways in which agency can manifest—ways which are noticed by paying specific attention to women's participation in transitional justice processes. Maria O'Reilly (2012) draws on much of the critical discourse around liberal peacebuilding and statebuilding interventions to explore the gendered articulations of Paddy Ashdown as High Representative to Bosnia-Herzegovina. She highlights how gender serves to sustain, promote and impose liberal policies and norms, with ramifications for the pattern of post-conflict reconstruction in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In both cases, authors have drawn upon concepts in critical peacebuilding and, with a gendered lens, reveal something important for our understanding of the post-conflict process. Ultimately, it is worth paying attention to the ‘kinship’ (Björkdahl and Mannergren Selimovic 2015, 168) between critical and feminist approaches to peacebuilding: together, they can provide a very powerful explanation of agency and power in practices and processes of post-conflict interventions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Michael Aaronson was a Director General (chief executive) from 1995–2005 of Save the Children UK, and from 1988-1995 was the charity's Overseas Director. Mike is a founder member, and from 2001–2008 was Chair of the Board, of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva. An Honorary Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, he is also an Honorary Visiting Professor and Director of cii - the Centre for International Intervention - in the Department of Politics at the University of Surrey, where from 2011–15 he was also a Professorial Research Fellow. He has been a Senior Adviser to NATO on the political/military aspects of NATO transformation, and has lectured at the UK Defence Academy on civil/military collaboration in peace support operations. He is the co-editor of ‘Precision Strike Warfare and International Intervention’ (Routledge, 2014). ([email protected])

Ariel I. Ahram is associate professor in Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs in Alexandria, Va. He is the author of the book Proxy Warriors: The Rise and Fall of State Sponsored Militias (Stanford, 2011), as well as numerous articles and op-eds. ([email protected])

Mark Duffield is Emeritus Professor at the Global Insecurities Centre, University of Bristol. He has taught at the Universities of Khartoum, Aston, Birmingham, Leeds and Lancaster. Outside of academia, he was Oxfam's Country Representative in Sudan during the 1980s. Mark has extensive experience of conflict and humanitarian disasters in Africa, the Balkans and Afghanistan. His books include Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (2001) and Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of People (2007). His current book project for Polity Press has the working title Becoming Remote.…Drawing Near: Humanitarianism as Algorithmic Governmentality. ([email protected])

Amitai Etzioni is a University Professor and Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University. A study by Richard Posner ranked him among the top 100 American intellectuals. He is the author of numerous books, including The Moral Dimension, The New Golden Rule, and My Brother's Keeper. His latest book, Privacy in a Cyber Age, was published by Palgrave in 2015. ([email protected])

Jack Holland is Associate Professor in International Security at the University of Leeds. He is the author or editor of Selling the War on Terror (Routledge), Security: A Critical Introduction (Palgrave), Obama's Foreign Policy (Routledge) and The Obama Doctrine (Routledge). His research has been published in journals such as European Journal of International Relations, International Political Sociology, Millennium Journal of International Studies, and British Journal of Politics and International Relations. ([email protected])

Roger Mac Ginty is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Manchester. He edits the journal Peacebuilding (with Oliver Richmond). ([email protected])

Laura McLeod is a Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Manchester, UK. Laura's research interests include gender, feminism and security in post-conflict contexts, in particular ex-Yugoslavia. Her current research asks about how we ‘know’ gender in peacebuilding, concentrating upon ways in which ‘gender knowledge’ is produced and accumulated in post-conflict contexts. Her first book, Gender Politics and Security Discourse was published by Routledge, London in July 2015. Laura is also the co-editor of the Conversions Section in the International Feminist Journal of Politics. ([email protected])

Sukanya Podder is Lecturer at the Centre for International Security and Resilience, Cranfield University. Her research, advisory and consulting work is focused upon issues of post-conflict reconstruction, state building, non-state armed groups, security sector reform, and youth involvement in conflict and peace building. She is co-editor of Child Soldiers: From Recruitment to Reintegration (2011) and co-author of Youth in Conflict and Peace Building: Mobilization, Reintegration and Reconciliation (2014). Recent work has been published in Third World Quarterly, Peacebuilding, Civil Wars, International Peacekeeping, Contemporary Security Policy, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Conflict, Security and Development and Politics, Religion and Ideology. ([email protected])

Oliver Richmond is a Research Professor in IR, Peace and Conflict Studies in the Department of Politics and the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester, UK. He is also International Professor, College of International Studies, Kyung Hee University, Korea and a Visiting Professor at the University of Tromso. His publications include Peace Formation and Political Order in Conflict Affected Societies (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2016), Failed Statebuilding (Yale University Press, 2014), A Very Short Introduction to Peace, (Oxford University Press, 2014), A Post Liberal Peace (Routledge, 2011), Liberal Peace Transitions, (with Jason Franks, Edinburgh University Press, 2009), Peace in IR (Routledge, 2008), and The Transformation of Peace (Palgrave, 2005/7). He is editor of the Palgrave book series, Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies, and co-editor of the Journal, Peacebuilding. ([email protected])

David Roberts is Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at Loughborough University. He has worked in Southeast Asia for 20 years and more recently in Sub-Saharan Africa, where his present research agenda lies. ([email protected])