Strengthening Peace in Post‐Civil War States: Transforming Spoilers into Stakeholders
| Author | Amy Smith |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00162_4.x |
| Date | 01 February 2012 |
| Published date | 01 February 2012 |
makes it difficult to decide if he chose the theories that
best suited his cases, or the other way around. But his
arguments are still very convincing, and he gives us a
better understanding of peace in international relations.
Alexander Kleibrink
Alexander Kleibrink is Research Associate at the Hertie
School of Governance in Berlin.
Strengthening Peace in Post-Civil War States: Trans-
forming Spoilers into Stakeholders edited by Matthew
Hoddie and Caroline A. Hartzell. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 2010. 280 pp., £18.50 paperback, 978
0226351254
Negotiated settlements that end civil wars may stop the
fighting, but not necessarily establish an enduring peace.
This edited volume addresses what the international
community can do to generate local stakeholders for
peace, concluding that much of what is being done is
ineffectual at best, counterproductive at worst.
The first part of the book cautions against institutional
recipes for legitimacy. It argues that legitimacy follows
from social order (sometimes coercively enforced) rather
than from formal institutions. If third party interveners
provide order first, citizens will develop a stake in that
order, and will in turn legitimate new institutions. Advo-
cating institutions first gets the process backwards, as
promoting democratic elections ignores the disruptive
influence of those opposed to peace and powersharing
arrangements create new pathologies by reinforcing
existing divisions, inhibiting crosscutting connections,
and institutionalizing fear (hence the need for strong
guarantees of minority rights). Order should come before
restructured institutions, and transitional institutions
should be revised to fit shifting contexts.
The second half of the book concerns ‘soft’ or nonco-
ercive interventions, primarily providing incentives for
political elites, organized civil society, and economic
actors to commit to peace. This consists of such tools as
‘purchase’ (pay-offs or severance packages for militants,
resources to help militias become political parties). For
civil society, it has meant a ‘near exclusive focus’ on non-
governmental organizations. NGOs furnish channels for
international aid delivery and become adept at writing
grant applications, but are often not rooted in local
communities, not accountable to their societies, and not
equipped to hold governments accountable or to pursue
a peace agenda. In the economic realm, the international
community has pursued an axiomatic commitment to
neoliberal policies of privatization, currency stabilization,
and openness to trade, all of which help foreign
investors more than local producers and entrepreneurs.
How successful has the international community been
at fostering stakeholders for peace in post civil war
states? The editors conclude that the record is mixed;
their contributors frequently reach harsher judgments:
counterproductive, pathological. The value of the book
may be the cautionary tales it provides to mediators and
others involved in negotiating settlements and anticipat-
ing their consequences.
The shortcomings of the book parallel the cases it
examines. The book criticizes the international commu-
nity for proceeding from unexamined assumptions
(democracy is good, civil society is pro peace, economic
growth is beneficial) but fails to examine its own
assumptions. One of these is the entity ‘international
community’, whose membership bears some critical
attention, especially as it includes private enterprises
with economic interests in warzones. Another is the nor-
mative issue of third party involvement in the creation
of local stakeholders for peace. The editors say they
want to look at ‘low cost’ options for the international
community to intervene, but do not explore the pre-
mises of that intervention. Not being involved is not an
option, but mere cost effectiveness is an insufficient
basis for guiding intervention.
Amy Smith
Amy Smith Ph.D. is Senior Partner at Social Insight. She
works in international public policy analysis.
United Nations Reform and the New Collective Security
edited by Peter G. Danchin and Horst Fischer. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 450 pp., £75.00
hardback, 978 0521515436
The call for UN reform became evermore urgent after
the US and its allies went to war in Iraq without prior
UN authorisation. The sidelining of the organisation
caused an internal crisis, and then Secretary General Kofi
Annan soon undertook an extensive reform agenda to
restore its reputation. In this book Peter G. Danchin, Horst
Fischer and a group of distinguished scholars set out on
the unenviable task of establishing what such UN reform
might mean in practice. To do so they analyse key docu-
ments in the UN reform process: the High Level Panel
Report, the Secretary General’s ‘In Larger Freedom’
Report, and the 2005 World Summit Outcome document.
The book addresses four key themes: success of insti-
tutional reform, place of international law and concepts
of collective security; the ‘threat’ to collective security
(who addresses it and how); the violation of Human
Rights, and non military threats such as environment,
disease and technology; collective security innovations
and limitations of the recently formed Peacebuilding
Reviews 123
Global Policy (2012) 3:1 ª2012 London School of Economics and Political Science and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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