Policing in South Africa: Replication and resistance to New Public Management reforms

This article is a study of the introduction of local financial management (LFM) to South African policing. Four forms of institutional theory are used to interpret and understand this comparative study. The conclusion of this article is that the deliberate attempt to replicate the English experience in South Africa failed because of the different ideologies and value-laden beliefs that underlay the need for change and the different dynamics of power of the interest groups that were represented in the organizational structure. The taken-for-granted organizational processes that supported the implementation of LFM in English police forces impeded implementation in South Africa.

A pluralistic model rather than a single institutional perspective is shown to be beneficial in understanding institutional impacts on organizations. In particular, different perspectives help in an understanding of how culturally derived norms of behaviour can be in tension with formal rules and how the formal structure must be adaptive to the environment and culture within which people cope with uncertainty by relying on established routines.

The Impact of Military Spending on the Likelihood of Democratic Transition Failure: Testing Two Competing Theories

Many countries complete tenuous transitions to democracy and must work to prevent an authoritarian reversal, which is often at the hands of the military. One of the most important tools the new government has in dealing with the military is the amount of money allocated to the military. This leads to the question, how does government military spending in post-transition democratic countries affect the chances of democratic transition failure? The extant literature provides two answers. The first is to increase military spending to placate the military; the second is to decrease military spending to weaken the military and address social welfare needs. The article tests these two hypotheses by examining democratic transitions from 1967 to 1999 using both logit and survival analysis methods. The results of the study provide robust support for the hypothesis that decreasing military spending decreases the likelihood of a democratic transition failure.

Beyond Kantian Liberalism: Peace through Globalization?

Although globalization has become one of the most salient issues in the study of international relations during the past few decades, its net effect on international conflict remains unexplored. I argue that although the manifold phenomena of globalization may conflict (i.e. produce both positive and negative influences), its overall consequences help foster a common peaceful disposition among national leaders who are then less likely to resort to arms in times of crisis. Based on a cross-sectional, time-series dyadic data analysis for 114 countries during the period from 1970 to 2001, this study reports that socio-economic and political globalization in its entirety generates a dampening effect on militarized interstate disputes. Even when common conflict-related control variables such as democracy, economic interdependence, joint membership in international organizations, and others are incorporated into the analysis, globalization emerges as the most powerful explanatory variable. Consequently, globalization when taken in its entirety represents an unambiguous force for interstate peace.

Understanding Civil War : Evidence and Analysis, Volume 1. Africa

The two volumes of Understanding Civil War build upon the World Bank’s prior research on conflict and violence, particularly on the work of Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, whose model of civil war onset has sparked much discussion on the relationship between conflict and development in what came to be known as the “greed” versus “grievance” debate. The authors systematically apply the Collier-Hoeffler model to 15 countries in 6 different regions of the world, using a comparative case study methodology to revise and expand upon economic models of civil war. (The countries selected are Burundi, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Sudan, Algeria, Mali, Senegal, Indonesia, Lebanon, Russian Federation, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and the Caucasus.) The book concludes that the “greed” versus “grievance” debate should be abandoned for a more complex model that considers greed and grievance as inextricably fused motives for civil war.

Understanding Civil War : Evidence and Analysis, Volume 2. Europe, Central Asia, and Other Regions

The two volumes of Understanding Civil War build upon the World Bank’s prior research on conflict and violence, particularly on the work of Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, whose model of civil war onset has sparked much discussion on the relationship between conflict and development in what came to be known as the “greed” versus “grievance” debate. The authors systematically apply the Collier-Hoeffler model to 15 countries in 6 different regions of the world, using a comparative case study methodology to revise and expand upon economic models of civil war. (The countries selected are Burundi, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Sudan, Algeria, Mali, Senegal, Indonesia, Lebanon, Russian Federation, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and the Caucasus.) The book concludes that the “greed” versus “grievance” debate should be abandoned for a more complex model that considers greed and grievance as inextricably fused motives for civil war.

This article introduces a new dataset on post-conflict justice (PCJ) that provides an overview of if, where, and how post-conflict countries address the wrongdoings committed in association with previous armed conflict. Motivated by the literature on post-conflict peacebuilding, we study justice processes during post-conflict transitions. We examine: which countries choose to implement PCJ; where PCJ is implemented; and which measures are taken in post-conflict societies to address past abuse. Featuring justice and accountability processes, our dataset focuses solely on possible options to address wrongdoings that are implemented following and relating to a given armed conflict. These data allow scholars to address hypotheses regarding justice following war and the effect that these institutions have on transitions to peace. This new dataset includes all extrasystemic, internationalized internal, and internal armed conflicts from 1946 to 2006, with at least 25 annual battle-related deaths as coded by the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset. The post-conflict justice (PCJ) efforts included are: trials, truth commissions, reparations, amnesties, purges, and exiles. By building upon the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset, scholars interested in PCJ can include variables regarding the nature of the conflict itself to test how PCJ arrangements work in different environments in order to better address the relationships between justice, truth, and peace in the post-conflict period.

Origins and Persistence of State-Sponsored Militias: Path Dependent Processes in Third World Military Development

This article uses a sequential mixed method approach to examine the origins and persistence of paramilitaries and state-sponsored militias in the developing world. Combining comparative case studies of Southeast Asia and the Middle East with statistical analysis, it shows that revolutionary decolonization produces more decentralized and localized force structures, while direct inheritance of colonial armies leads to more conventional force structures. Subsequently, the level of competition within the regional system influences whether a state can persist in the use of paramilitaries or must transition to a more centralized, conventional force.

Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace? International Intervention and the Duration of Peace After Civil War

This article examines international interventions in the aftermath of civil wars to see whether peace lasts longer when peacekeepers are present than when they are absent. Because peacekeeping is not applied to cases at random, I first address the question of where international personnel tend to be deployed. I then attempt to control for factors that might affect both the likelihood of peacekeepers being sent and the ease or difficulty of maintaining peace so as to avoid spurious findings. I find, in a nutshell, that peacekeeping after civil wars does indeed make an important contribution to the stability of peace.

African Peacekeeping in Africa: Warlord Politics, Defense Economics, and State Legitimacy

Since the end of the Cold War, sub-Saharan African states have substantially increased their participation in international peacekeeping operations in Africa. Their contributions have become highly valued and even facilitated by major powers. This article examines why certain African states might contribute more than others to peacekeeping. In particular, prominent arguments are considered about the primacy of regime security concerns and the dynamics of warlord politics in the foreign policymaking of African states, the economic incentives of peacekeeping, and the importance of African states’ concerns over their state legitimacy and territorial integrity. First, this study investigates the possibility that peacekeeping might be utilized as a diversionary strategy to divert the attention of both an African state’s military and major powers from a regime’s misrule. Second, this study examines the extent to which financial and material assistance from donor states encourages poorer states to engage in peacekeeping. Third, the study investigates whether states with less legitimate and more arbitrary borders might have greater incentive to contribute to peacekeeping operations to promote the territorial status quo in Africa. Empirical evidence from a quantitative analysis across 47 states of sub-Saharan Africa from 1989 to 2001 suggests that states that are poorer, with lower state legitimacy and lower political repression, participate more often in regional peacekeeping.

Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil War

Timely and pathbreaking, Securing the Peace is the first book to explore the complete spectrum of civil war terminations, including negotiated settlements, military victories by governments and rebels, and stalemates and ceasefires. Examining the outcomes of all civil war terminations since 1940, Monica Toft develops a general theory of postwar stability, showing how third-party guarantees may not be the best option. She demonstrates that thorough security-sector reform plays a critical role in establishing peace over the long term. Much of the thinking in this area has centered on third parties presiding over the maintenance of negotiated settlements, but the problem with this focus is that fewer than a quarter of recent civil wars have ended this way. Furthermore, these settlements have been precarious, often resulting in a recurrence of war. Toft finds that military victory, especially victory by rebels, lends itself to a more durable peace. She argues for the importance of the security sector–the police and military–and explains that victories are more stable when governments can maintain order. Toft presents statistical evaluations and in-depth case studies that include El Salvador, Sudan, and Uganda to reveal that where the security sector remains robust, stability and democracy are likely to follow. An original and thoughtful reassessment of civil war terminations, Securing the Peace will interest all those concerned about resolving our world’s most pressing conflicts.

Getting the Policies Right: The Prioritization and Sequencing of Policies in Post-Conflict Countries

One of the most pressing issues in the post-conflict reconstruction field is how to prioritize and sequence political, social, and economic policies to enable post-conflict countries to sustain peace and reduce the risk of violence re-occurring. Analyzing three cases of post-conflict reconstruction (Cambodia, Mozambique, and Haiti) and expert opinions of 30 academicians and practitioners, this study identifies major reconstruction policies, outlines the preferred way to prioritize and sequence them, and develops a framework to help policymakers better navigate the complexities and challenges of forming appropriate policies.

National Design and State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa

This article examines the political geography of state building in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. The absence of interstate war has produced a unique situation for contemporary state builders in Africa; they have inherited states with relatively fixed borders encapsulating a variety of environmental and geographic conditions, compounded by varying distributions of population densities. The author examines the effects of a variety of strategies that African rulers have employed to enhance their state-building efforts given the type of national design they inhabit. These strategies include the allocation of citizenship, interventions in land tenure patterns, and the adoption and management of national currencies. The author tests the effects of these strategies on several dimensions of state capacity in sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2004 using a variety of statistical analyses. The results indicate that the strategies currently adopted by African rulers have generally failed to substantially augment their capacity.

Who Brings Which Peace?

This study examines the effect of biased versus neutral mediation on the content of peace agreements. The author argues that neutral mediators, who are engaged primarily because of their interest to end the war, will have incentives to hasten the reaching of an agreement to the expense of its quality. By contrast, biased mediators, seeking to protect their proteges, will take care to ensure that there are stipulations in an agreement guaranteeing the interest of ‘their’ side or use their particular access and leverage to make their side agree to costly concessions. Biased mediation processes are therefore more likely than neutral mediation processes to lead to elaborated institutional arrangements that are generally considered conducive to democracy and durable peace, such as power sharing, third-party security guarantees, and justice provisions. Empirical analysis, covering the 1989-2004 period and building on data from 124 peace agreements, supports these claims.

Ending Civil Wars: The Success and Failure of Negotiated Settlements in Civil War

Based on the study of every internationally negotiated civil war settlement between 1980 and 1998, this volume presents the most comprehensive effort to date to evaluate the role of international actors in peace implementation. It looks into promises made by combatants in peace agreements and examines when and why those promises are fulfilled. The authors differentiate between conflicts, showing why Guatemala is not Bosnia, and why strategies that succeed in benign environments fail in more challenging ones. Going beyond attributing implementation failures to a lack of political will, the volume argues that an absence of political will reflects the judgment of major powers of the absence of vital security interests. Overall, the authors emphasize that implementers must tailor their strategies and give priority to certain tasks in implementation, such as demobilizing soldiers and demilitarizing politics, to achieve success.

A Tale of Two Types: Rebel Goals and the Onset of Civil Wars

Previous research has implicitly assumed that civil wars represent a coherent category of events, but given the variety of rebel goals that supposition seems tenuous. We split civil wars into those where the rebels simply want to remove the government (replacement) from those where the rebels want to alter the relationship between the state and society (legitimacy). Theoretically, states are most at risk for a civil war of replacement when they extract substantial wealth from society and the government is weak. In contrast, civil wars of legitimacy are more likely to occur in states where the rebels have both grievances and a means to maintain their future viability. An empirical analysis of civil wars of replacement and legitimacy from 1960 to 1999 confirms both our argument about the different types of civil violence and their differing causes.

National Reconciliation After Civil War: The Case of Greece

This article discusses post-conflict reconciliation in Greece following the divisive civil war of the 1940s. Focusing on the elite political discourse and the relationship between reconciliation and democratization, its chief argument is that in Greece continuing disagreement about the civil war did not inhibit a process of reconciliation because it was voiced within a normative framework in which violence had been repudiated as a political tool. Particularly since the fall of the Colonels’ dictatorship in 1974, reconciliation has been linked to a number of distinct political projects, some of which were as divisive as conciliatory in their effect. In each case, reconciliation meant different things to differing shades of political opinion, but the widespread adoption of the term by both the governing and opposition elites, as well as society as a whole, gradually entrapped politicians of all persuasions into accepting that a process of reconciliation had occurred. Reconciliation in Greece has therefore rested not on the establishment of a single agreed narrative representing the truth about the past, but rather on the righting of perceived injustices and the free articulation of differing interpretations of that past by both left and right within a democratic environment.

Give Peace a Chance: Nonviolent Protest and the Creation of Territorial Autonomy Arrangements

This study examines factors that predict the formation of territorial autonomy arrangements for regionally concentrated ethnic communities. Territorial autonomies are institutional arrangements that allow ethnic groups to express their distinct identities while keeping the borders of host states intact. Although an extensive literature has investigated the capacity of autonomy arrangements to manage interethnic disputes, little research has addressed the precise origins of these institutions. The existing literature considers violent tactics as a primary factor that enables ethnic collectivities to attain territorial autonomy. In this study, the reasoning from the extant literature is juxtaposed with the arguments developed in the research on nonviolent opposition. Nonviolent movements enjoy moral advantage vis-a?-vis violent groups. Moreover, peaceful tactics have the advantage of garnering attention for the concerns of ethnic groups without the liability of provoking the animosity or distrust created by violent conflict. Based on the analysis of a dataset representing 168 ethnic groups across 87 states from 1945 to 2000, it is found that the peaceful tactics groups employ when seeking greater self-rule is the single strongest predictor of the formation of autonomy arrangements. In particular, this study concludes that groups that rely on peaceful tactics, such as protests and strikes, and demand territorial autonomy, as opposed to an outright independence, have a greater potential to achieve territorial autonomy in comparison to those groups making extreme demands through the use of violence.

The New Security in Democratic South Africa: A Cautionary Tale

The broadened and deepened notion of security has been evolving in two dimensions, one primarily intellectual and the other concerned more with political practice and policy. This paper briefly describes these dimensions, and then critically examines the acceptance of the new notion of security in the form a security-is-development thesis in South African security policy. This case shows how the security-is-development thesis affects the functions of security agencies and legitimates their anti-democratic behaviour. The case serves as a cautionary tale about how an intellectual construct, movement and school, originally intended to be a critique of state behaviour, can become a tool of state power at the expense of democracy.

A Framework for the Analysis of Post-conflict Situations: Liberia and Mozambique Reconsidered

For a long time analysts of war-torn societies have understood post-conflict situations primarily as processes of transition towards consolidated statehood. This perspective is increasingly considered unsatisfactory in that it raises false expectations of state-building processes and conceals important dynamics unfolding in situ. This article formulates an integrated analytical framework that allows for characterizing and assessing the dynamics in post-conflict polities. It is argued that any post-conflict polity can be characterized by focusing on the interactions between three post-conflict actors: the formal government, external actors and informal powers. In a second step Amartya Sen’s capability approach is used as an analytical benchmark for measuring state-building achievements. Subsequently, the analytical framework is applied for comparing two diverse post-conflict environments, Mozambique and Liberia, in order to illustrate the potential and limitations of the analytical framework.

The International Military Intervention Dataset: An Updated Resource for Conflict Scholars

As major wars have become uncommon over recent decades and the efficacy of economic sanctions is questioned, foreign military intervention seems to have become increasingly prevalent on the international scene. Military intervention has also gained a degree of moral legitimacy, as it is now often launched for humanitarian ends rather than simply to further the intervener’s strategic or material interests. Despite the apparent increase in the use of foreign military intervention as a policy tool in recent years, the quantitative international conflict literature continues to operate without either a comprehensive or a current inventory of foreign military interventions. The authors attempt to fill this gap by updating Pearson & Baumann’s International Military Intervention (IMI) dataset from 1989 to 2005. IMI has a number of attributes that should make it attractive to quantitative international conflict scholars. One is that it is one of a small handful of interstate conflict datasets that attempts to discern the motives behind state uses of force. Also, its substantive coverage is broad, allowing researchers to separate out and focus on the forms of intervention (supportive, hostile, humanitarian, territorial, etc.) that are relevant to their research. As a preliminary validity test of the updated data, the authors analyze patterns of Cold War and post-Cold War military intervention in the IMI collection to see if they correspond with conventional wisdom on real world events.

Police in Peace and Stability Operations: Evolving US Policy and Practice

The United States has consistently failed to deal with the breakdown in public order that invariably confronts peace and stability operations in internal conflicts. Analysis of experience in Panama, Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans and Iraq demonstrates that indigenous police forces are typically incapable of providing law and order in the immediate aftermath of conflict, and so international forces must fill the gap – a task the US military has been unwilling and unprepared to assume. After 20 years of lessons learned (and not learned), this article argues that the United States must develop a civilian ‘stability force’ of constabulary and police personnel deployable at the outset of on operation to restore public order and lay the foundations for the rule of law.

In Search of Appropriate Peacemaking/Peacebuilding Pradigm in Dealing with Africa’s Intrastate Violent Conflicts: Considering Lederach’s Faith-based Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding Approach

With conditions created by Western colonialism and the dynamics of the Cold War bipolar global rule, the inability of governments to rise beyond corrupt and imbalance political order, and, hence, the resurgence of ethnic, religious, and ideological identity consciousness and identification, Africa has been a bleeding Continent since the end of the colonial era. Contemporary Africa?s conflicts are intrastate, with many protracted. This paper argues that to deal adequately with such conflicts there is a need for an inner-oriented, indigenous-based, organic, and long-term sustainable nonviolent process of conflict transformation and peacebuilding aimed at constructive holistic change. It demonstrates that this is core to the peacebuilding paradigm Lederach develops and so apt for dealing with today?s Africa?s conflicts.

Captured Commitments: An Analytic Narrative of Transitions with Transitional Justice

How can outgoing autocrats enforce promises of amnesty once they have left power? Why would incoming opposition parties honor their prior promises of amnesty once they have assumed power and face no independent mechanisms of enforcement? In 1989 autocrats in a number of communist countries offered their respective oppositions free elections in exchange for promises of amnesty. The communists’ decision appears irrational given the lack of institutions to enforce these promises of amnesty. What is further puzzling is that the former opposition parties that won elections in many countries actually refrained from implementing transitional justice measures. Their decision to honor their prior agreements to grant amnesty seems as irrational as the autocrats’ decisions to place themselves at the mercy of their opponents. Using an analytic narrative approach, the author explains this paradox by modeling pacted transitions not as simple commitment problems but as games of incomplete information;that is, embarrassing information that provides insurance against the commitments being broken. The author identifies the conditions under which autocrats step down even though they can be punished with transitional justice and illustrates the results with case studies from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary.

Problematic Potential: The Human Rights Consequences of Peacekeeping Interventions in Civil Wars

Does peacekeeping intervention improve the human rights situation in states with a history of civil war? While this question has received a myriad of attention and debate within the human rights community, there have been relatively few studies that attempt to answer this question. Examining the characteristics of peacekeeping following civil war from 1980 to 2004, this article finds that peacekeeping can both encourage and undermine respect for human rights. Specifically, the mission and activities of peacekeepers matter. These findings support the human rights community’s stance that peacekeeping can be problematic but holds promise for human rights in post-conflict states.

Closing the Gap Between Peace Operations and Post-Conflict Insecurity: Towards a Violence Reduction Agenda

This article highlights how the instruments for addressing the presumed source(s) of armed violence need to be sharpened and extended to address the heterogeneous character of armed violence present in many post-conflict situations. These extensions require the development of practical armed violence prevention and reduction programmes that draw upon scholarship and practice from the criminal justice and public health sectors. The article argues that reducing organized violence and insecurity in post-conflict contexts requires responding to the wider dynamics of armed violence rather than focusing exclusively on insecurity directly connected to what are traditionally defined as armed conflict and post-conflict dynamics; and this requires attention not just to the instruments of violence, but also to the political and economic motives of agents and institutions implicated in violent exchanges at all levels of social interaction.

A significant number of countries worldwide are described as entering a phase of `post’-conflict transition. Drawing on the experience of the health sector, this paper argues that the nature of the rehabilitation task is often misunderstood. In particular, it is often equated with reconstruction of war-damaged infrastructure and assets. Such an approach derives from a misconception of the origins and nature of contemporary warfare. It also serves to reinforce a linear approach to the transition from relief to development. This paper attempts to redefine the rehabilitation task in situations of `post’-conflict transition, drawing on examples from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Uganda. It argues that the direct effects of military action on the social sector are less significant than the indirect effects of political, economic and social changes which both underlie and are precipitated by conflict. Therefore, rehabilitation needs to go beyond reconstruction and tackle the root causes of instability. Such a reinterpretation of the rehabilitation task raises a number of dilemmas, particularly for international actors concerned to contribute to a sustainable peace. These dilemmas are rooted in both the uncertainty about the legitimacy of incoming governments in transitional situations, and in the organisation of the aid system itself. The paper concludes that confronting these dilemmas implies a fundamental change in the orientation and delivery of aid in `post’-conflict situations.

Corrupting Peace? Peacebuilding and Post-conflict Corruption

Many conflict-affected countries are among the most corrupt in the world, and corruption is frequently reported as a major concern of local populations and foreign aid agencies during transition to peace. Tackling corruption is part of liberal peacebuilding, which seeks to consolidate peace through democracy and free markets economy. Yet liberalization policies may also foster corruption. Using a preliminary analysis of selected corruption perception indicators, this article finds tenuous and divergent support for post-conflict patterns of corruption. Three main arguments linking liberal peacebuilding with higher levels of corruption are then presented for further elaboration, and a research agenda is outlined.

How and When Armed Conflicts End: Introducing the UCDP Conflict Termination Dataset

This article presents new data on the start and end dates and the means of termination for armed conflicts, 1946-2005. These data contribute to quantitative research on conflict resolution and recurrence in three important respects: the data cover both interstate and intrastate armed conflicts, the data cover low-intensity conflicts, and the data provide information on a broad range of termination outcomes. In order to disaggregate the UCDP-PRIO Armed Conflict dataset into multiple analytical units, this dataset introduces the concept of conflict episodes, defined as years of continuous use of armed force in a conflict. Using these data, general trends and patterns are presented, showing that conflicts do not exclusively end with decisive outcomes such as victory or peace agreement but more often under unclear circumstances where fighting simply ceases. This pattern is consistent across different types of conflict, as is the finding that victories are more common in conflicts with short duration. The article then examines some factors that have been found to predict civil war recurrence and explores whether using the new dataset produces similar results. This exercise offers a number of interesting new insights and finds that the determinants for civil war recurrence identified in previous research are sensitive to alternate formulations of conflict termination data. The findings suggest that intrastate conflicts are less likely to recur after government victories or after the deployment of peacekeepers. If the previous conflict is fought with rebels aiming for total control over government or if the belligerents mobilized along ethnic lines, the risk of recurrence increases. The discrepancy in findings with previous research indicates the need for further study of conflict resolution and recurrence, for which this dataset will be useful.

Prevention of Ethnic Conflict: Lessons from Romania

The general aim of the paper is to examine conclusions stemming from empirical research and contribute to the studies on the possibility of ethnic conflict prevention. The analysis has the following goals: a) Exploration of case study related to the situation of the Hungarian minority in Romania since the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu and the 1990 confrontation to the results of 2000 elections and their aftermath. b) Discussion on practical lessons for ethnic conflict prevention that could be drawn from the case after ten years of developments. c) Formulation of initial conclusions concerning the relevance of the Romanian experience for a model of ethnic conflict dynamics.

Securing Health: Lessons from Nation-Building Missions

We define nation-building as efforts carried out after major combat to underpin a transition to peace and democracy. Nationbuilding involves the deployment of military forces, as well as comprehensive efforts to rebuild the health, security, economic, political, and other sectors. The research we conducted focused on one aspect of nation-building-efforts to rebuild the public health and health care delivery systems after major combat. We looked at seven cases- Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. These are some of the most important cases since World War II in which international institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and countries such as the United States have taken part in efforts to rebuild the health sector. These missions also have important health components. To date, a significant amount of academic and policy-relevant work has been devoted to efforts to rebuild such areas as police and military forces. Little comprehensive work has examined efforts to rebuild public health and health care delivery systems, however. The work that has been done on health tends to focus on immediate humanitarian and relief efforts rather than long-term health reconstruction. The goal of our research was to fill this void.

Mind the Gap: Documenting and Explaining Violence Against Aid Workers

The brutal murder of 17 national staff members of Action Contre le Faim (ACF) in Sri Lanka in August 2006 and ambushes, kidnappings, and murders of aid workers elsewhere have captured headlines. This article reviews the prevailing explanations, assumptions, and research on why humanitarian actors experience security threats. The scholarly literature on humanitarian action is fecund and abundant, yet no comparative review of the research on humanitarian security and scholarly sources on humanitarian action exists to date. The central argument here is twofold. First, an epistemic gap exists between one stream that focuses primarily on documenting violence against aid workers “a proximate cause approach” while a second literature proposes explanations, or deep causes, often without corresponding empirical evidence. Moreover, the deep cause literature emphasizes external, changing global conditions to the neglect of other possible micro and internal explanations. Both of these have negative implications for our understanding of and therefore strategies to address security threats against aid workers.

The M-19’s Journey from Armed Struggle to Democratic Politics

The 19th of April Movement was the first of many guerrilla groups in Colombia to start a negotiation process that concluded in a final peace agreement involving its demobilisation as an armed group and leading to some of its members founding a new political party, the Democratic Alliance M19. This not only paved the way for seven other groups to start peace negotiations and ultimately transform from armed to political actors. This study combines interaction between first-hand experience and academic knowledge of this peace process. The study is divided into four sections. The first explores the context in which M-19 emerged, the reasons for its appearance and the way in which it engaged in armed struggle as a political-military movement. The second section considers the internal and external factors that pointed this guerrilla group towards the path of peace. Section 3 analyses the way in which M-19 entered the peace process, negotiated a political agreement and subsequently formed a legitimate political movement that participated in electoral life. A final section draws out the results of this process, highlighting some lessons that could be relevant to other groups who consider a similar path.

Surviving the Peace: Challenges of War-to-Peace Transitions for Civil Society Organisations

This report seeks to address the question “what happens to protagonists for change once that change has been achieved?” by analysing the transformations of peace/human rights civil society organisations (CSOs) during peace processes and democratic transitions in South Africa and Guatemala. Section one clarifies the analytical ground by exploring the conceptual roots, definitional boundaries, organisational and functional characteristics, and normative understanding of CSOs, from an interdisciplinary perspective. Section two adopts a more dynamic approach, assessing the organisational and functional shifts undergone by CSOs during and in the aftermath of peace processes and democratic transitions. This literature survey is then followed, in sections three and four, by two empirical studies on CSOs in South Africa and Guatemala, where interviews were collected in April 2007 with current and former members of relevant organisations. The conclusion, finally, draws a brief comparative summary of the main findings in both case studies, and derives a few conceptual and practical implications for the research, CSO and international donor communities.

Nonviolent Resistance and Conflict Transformation in Power Asymmetries

This article argues that nonviolent resistance should instead be seen as an integral part of conflict transformation, offering one possible approach to achieving peace and justice, alongside other methods of conflict intervention focusing on dialogue, problem-solving and the restoration of cooperative relationships (e.g. mediation, negotiation, restorative justice, etc.). It is especially relevant for the early transitional stage of latent asymmetric conflicts, as a strategy for empowering grievance groups (oppressed minorities or disempowered majorities) looking for constructive and efficient ways to attain justice, human rights and democracy without recourse to violence. While nonviolent techniques have been widely used by single-interest groups such as trade unions and anti-nuclear, indigenous or environmentalist movements, this article refers primarily to nation-wide campaigns by identity or national groups who are challenging internal oppression or external aggression and occupation, and seeking either self-determination or civil rights in a truly democratic and multicultural state. Although nonviolent action has also been advocated as a national strategy of civilian-based defence and dissuasion against external aggression, this article focuses more specifically on ways it has been applied by non-state actors such as social movements and grassroots organisations.

Resurrecting the Rule of Law in Liberia

The rule of law is more than a legal concept. It encompasses more than an established set of rules and legal institutions. In the case of Liberia, there can be no rule of law without the commitment of those relatively few people who administer those rules on behalf of a post-conflict state that has endured twenty-five years of civil war and exploitation. This Essay seeks to prove that existing legal architecture and institutions in a post-conflict state matter less to the rule of law than does the character of the people who run the legal system. The Essay does not suggest that legal rules are, or should be, subordinate to personality in the orderly functioning of a postconflict society. However, it concludes that emphasis on creating new laws to address the perceived causes of state failure will ultimately accomplish little if the judges and lawyers who operate the legal system are not genuinely committed to the rule of law. This argument is developed by outlining, in very broad terms, the pre-conflict Liberian legal system and how it failed to serve as a meaningful bulwark against warlord predators. Then, the Essay focuses on a particular case, decided by Liberia’s Supreme Court on August 23, 2007, involving Liberia’s former head of state, Charles Gyude Bryant, who served as chairman of the National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL) from October 2003 until the inauguration of Liberia’s current President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, on January 16, 2006. The Bryant case provides an example of how the presidential immunity provision in Liberia’s Constitution was invoked in an attempt to trump the rule of law with the rule of impunity, and how the Supreme Court of Liberia’s judgment offers hope for a better day in Liberia’s legal future, notwithstanding the divided opinion of the Court.

America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq

The post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan set standards for postconflict nation-building that have not since been matched. Only in recent years has the United States has felt the need to participate in similar transformations, but it is now facing one of the most challenging prospects since the 1940s: Iraq. The authors review seven case studies – Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan – and seek lessons about what worked well and what did not. Then, they examine the Iraq situation in light of these lessons. Success in Iraq will require an extensive commitment of financial, military, and political resources for a long time. The United States cannot afford to contemplate early exit strategies and cannot afford to leave the job half completed.

Challenges to Peace: Conflict Resolution in the Great Lakes Region of Africa

Efforts to bring peace and reconstruction to the Central African region have been fashioned by contemporary conflict resolution models that have a standard formula of peace negotiations, with a trajectory of ceasefire agreements, transitional governments, demilitarization, constitutional reform and ending with democratic elections. Local dynamics and the historical and multifaceted nature of the conflicts are rarely addressed. Furthermore, participants in the peace process are restricted to representatives of political parties, the state and rebel movements, to the exclusion of civil society. Using as examples the conflicts and peace processes in three Great Lakes countries-Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo-the paper contends that contemporary global frameworks for peacemaking and peace building that rest on the acceptance of neoliberal political and economic models cannot lay the foundations for the conditions necessary for sustainable peace. This necessitates the utilisation of a more inclusive concept of peace, the starting point of which has to be the emancipation of African humanity.

Winning Haiti’s Protection Competition: Organized Crime and Peace Operations Past, Present and Future

This article draws lessons from the experiences of international involvement in Haiti from 1990 to the present day. It argues that if the model of liberal, responsible government championed by the international community is to provide a resolution to the ongoing violence and instability in Haiti, then Haitian society will first have to be wooed away from coercive ‘protection’ by local and transnational organized crime. However, it argues that peace operations as they are currently conceived and deployed are ill-equipped for this task, given their limited territorial ambit and traditional focus on military response rather than political economy. However, the article concludes that experiences in Haiti may also offer lessons about how peace operations could win ‘protection competitions’ by serving as the leading edge of a unified international strategy for the transformation of local political economies.

The Future of the Mujahideen: Legitimacy, Legacy and Demobilization in Post-Bonn Afghanistan

Contemporary Afghan politics is marked by a debate over the “mujahideen.” This contest involves the mythologizing, demythologizing and appropriation of the term by a wide variety of actors, from warlords, tribal combatants, the Taliban and Anti-Coalition Forces to rights activists and journalists. This struggle is a competition for legitimacy over the “right to rule” and the “right to conduct violence”; and it is critical to understanding the dilemmas of statebuilding in Afghanistan. Through such an examination, policy lessons are acquired concerning the role of the Afghan government and members of the international community in confronting armed groups.

The West and Contemporary Peace Operations

In recent years, senior UN officials have raised concerns about the decline of Western contributions to UN peace operations. Although this is a worrying trend for supporters of the UN, it does not mean that the West is playing a smaller role in peace operations per se. Instead, the West has increased its contribution to `hybrid’ peace operations and missions that take place outside of the UN system. This article examines the West’s contribution to both UN and non-UN peace operations since the Brahimi Report and assesses whether its contribution has markedly changed and what impact any changes have had on international peace and security. It proceeds in three sections. The first provides a historical overview of the West’s ambivalent relationship with UN peace operations since 1948. The second analyses the West’s contribution to UN, hybrid and non-UN peace operations. The final section explores what Western policies mean for international peace and security by assessing their impact on the UN’s authority, the extent to which they save lives and their contribution to building stable peace. The article concludes that while in the short term the West’s willingness to participate in hybrid operations displays a commitment to finding pragmatic solutions to some difficult problems, over the longer term this approach may weaken the UN’s ability to maintain international peace and security.

Conflict among Former Allies after Civil War Settlement: Sudan, Zimbabwe, Chad, and Lebanon

The interesting theoretical question about civil war in general is not why it begins (the possible reasons are surely too many to enumerate) or why it stops (all sorts of contingent explanations from simple fatigue to outside force may apply) but why it so often does not resume when it might. We need to comprehend this process of conflict transformation, whereby the conflict either becomes less important or is pursued without using mass violence. Understandably, most analyses and prescriptions for peacemakers focus on relationships between former enemies and attempts to reduce incentives for them to take up arms again. However, a recent analysis of four negotiated settlements of civil wars (Sudan in 1972, Zimbabwe in 1980, Chad in 1987, and Lebanon in 1989) reveals that in all four cases the critical conflict was actually between former allies. The compromises required in negotiated settlements, combined with the other problems of post-civil war societies, make such conflicts likely. In some cases they led to violence; in Zimbabwe and Lebanon conflict again reached the level of civil war. However, the ironic results was that the countries that had experienced the most violence subsequently produced new settlements which essentially confirmed the original ones and appear to be holding. In Sudan, interallied violence was quite low, but the result was that the government changed its policy, the first settlement was undermined, and the original civil war began again. Outsiders should not assume either that wartime cooperation will continue in peace or that `normal’ peacetime behavior will naturally appear of its own accord. Indeed, they should probably anticipate that ad hoc wartime alliances are likely to dissolve with the risk of renewed civil violence.

From Politics to Arms to Politics Again: The Transition of the Gerakan Acheh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement – GAM)

The present peace agreement reached by GAM and the government of Indonesia has brought major changes to the political landscape in the Province of Aceh, transforming GAM from being an armed group to becoming a non-armed poltical movement which has to compete in a regular electoral process. This paper looks at the character of the GAM movement, how it was drawn into the armed struggle, the factors and events that affected its adoption of a political strategy, and the present outcome of its transition. It was co-written by an Acehnese scholar and a German researcher, based on contributions made by two leading GAM members during the course of several focus group discussions.