One of the most significant challenges facing the international community today is how to stabilize and rebuild societies emerging from civil wars, and this book, which includes both theoretical discussions and empirical applications, considers the various factors of peacebuilding. As it addresses several pertinent academic debates—relating to international interventions and local ownership, international and local conceptions of gender equality, and the legal aspects of peace implementation—this account demonstrates how some postwar countries have made significant strides towards peace and democracy while others have experienced a return to war. A policy-relevant topic, Building Peace, Creating Conflict? will appeal to students and scholars of international relations and peace studies, as well as to practitioners involved in peacebuilding efforts in war-affected countries.

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• CHAPTER 1 - Building peace, creating conflict?
  • Introduction
  • The concept of peace-building
  • Current debates on peace-building
  • Future research on conflict and peace-building
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
• CHAPTER 2 - Just peace postponed
  • Comprehensive vs. gradual peace processes
  • A comprehensive peace agreement
  • Gradualism in practice
  • Peace gaps and spoiling
  • Peace gaps and realizing peace
  • Divided peace and the problem of spoiling
  • Liberal peace, ‘virtual’ realities
  • Virtual peace in BiH
  • Virtual state-building in a ‘new Middle East’
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
• CHAPTER 3 - Peacekeeping and transitions to democracy
  • Preconditionists and universalists
  • Peacekeeping operations and democracy
  • Statistical findings
  • Hypothesizing trust and peace operation mandates
  • Control variables
  • Empirical findings
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Appendix - Measurement and sources
• CHAPTER 4 - Interveners and intervened upon
  • Defining intervention
  • Drawbacks of a top-down perspective
  • The missing link
  • Top-down and bottom-up combined
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
• CHAPTER 5 - Local ownership of peace
  • Local owner as Leviathan
  • Local owner as General Will
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
• CHAPTER 6 - Education through regulation?
  • Analytical perspectives
  • Peace-building: the projection of one’s own political order
  • External views on the DPA, or, defining what is to be owned
  • From indirect to direct control
  • Early OHR intervention in the RS
  • External promotion of ‘multi-ethnic’ local owners
  • Rule by commission and mentored local ownership
  • The return of direct external regulation
  • External promotion of ‘multi-ethnic’ local owners–again
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
• CHAPTER 7 - Individual justice and collective innocence
  • Outlining the paradox
  • Violent past, insecure present
  • Discourses of collective innocence
  • Crazy people
  • Greed
  • Evil from outside
  • The social construction of victimhood
  • Relativizing the suffering of the other
  • Inclusionist use of the ICTY
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
• CHAPTER 8 - Humanitarian assistance and the politics of gender equality
  • Background
  • International–local conflicts and the promotion of gender equality
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
• Appendix - Interviews
• References
• About the authors