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Knowing Peace When You See It: Setting Standards for Peacebuilding Success

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13698240802062747

1743-968X

Charles T. Call,

Political Conflict and Governance

Abstract What constitutes a successful peacebuilding outcome? This paper identifies four common standards for peacebuilding success and explores them conceptually and operationally. War recurrence, the most salient marker of peacebuilding failure, is a necessary but insufficient indicator. Yet other standards are also problematic. This paper argues for a standard that includes (a) the recurrence of large-scale organised violence, plus (b) political and institutional elements that minimally indicate a state capacity for resolving social conflicts peaceably. Even as better cross-national indicators of institutionalising peace are needed, national and international decisionmakers should interpret any such standards with caution and in ways that are highly context-specific in developing policies. Acknowledgements This article was initially commissioned by the UN Development Programme's Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Recovery for its first report on Post-Conflict Economic Recovery. The author is grateful to Karen Ballentine, other project participants and to Madalene O'Donnell, Elizabeth Cousens, Bill Stanley, Vanessa Wyeth, Nils Petter Gleditsch and Yolande Bouka. Notes 1. Because these countries' cease-fires did not survive for one year, they are classified here as peacekeeping failures than peacebuilding failures. Although different terms are used in multiple and confusing ways, the concept of peacebuilding used here requires a short-term cease-fire to exist in the first place in order to be sustained (or not). 2. For earlier use, see Johan Galtung, 'Three Approaches to Peace: Peacekeeping, Peacemaking and Peacebuilding' in his Peace, War and Defense: Essays in Peace Research, Vol. 2 (Copenhagen: Christian Eljers 1975) pp.282–304. 3. Boutros Boutros Ghali. 'An Agenda for Peace Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-keeping', Report to United Nations Security Council, 17 Jun. 1992. 4. For definitions and discussion, see Charles T. Call and Elizabeth Cousens, 'Ending Wars and Building Peace', International Studies Perspectives 9 (Feb. 2008) Table 1. 5. Galtung (note 2). 6. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, 'The Incidence of Civil War in Africa', Journal of Conflict Resolution 46/1 (Feb. 2002) p.17. 7. Paul Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap (Oxford: Oxford UP and the World Bank 2003). 8. Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Mans Soderbom, Aid, Policies and Risks in Post-Conflict Societies, Working Paper (Oxford: Oxford Centre for the Study of African Economies, Oxford Univ., Jun. 2006); Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Mans Soderbom, Post-Conflict Societies, Working Paper CSAE WPS 2006-12 (Oxford: Oxford Centre for the Study of African Economies, Oxford Univ., Aug. 2006). See Astri Suhrke and Ingrid Samset, 'What's in a Figure: Estimating Recurrence of Civil War', International Peacekeeping 14/2 (Apr. 2007) p.198. 9. As Suhrke and Samset (ibid. p.197) point out, the term also refers to whether a particular conflict (not country) will recur; to the risk of civil war in countries that have already experienced such conflicts versus those that have not; or to the risk of civil war recurrence within a subset of countries that have already experienced such wars. 10. As Suhrke and Samset (ibid. p.197) point out, the term also refers to whether a particular conflict (not country) will recur; to the risk of civil war in countries that have already experienced such conflicts versus those that have not; or to the risk of civil war recurrence within a subset of countries that have already experienced such wars p.198. 11. Barbara F. Walter, 'Does Conflict Beget Conflict? Explaining Recurring Civil War', Journal of Peace Research 41/3 (2004) p.371. 12. Virginia Page Fortna, 'Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace?' International Studies Quarterly 2 (2004) pp.269–92. 13. After several UN documents reported that 'half' or 'nearly half' of ended civil wars revert to warfare within five years, several scholars sought to refine their analysis, resulting in lower estimations by 2007. See Kofi Annan, speech in Derry, Fall 2004. 14. Roy L. Licklider, 'The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars 1945–93', American Political Science Review 89/3 (1995) pp.681–90, 687; Fortna (note 12) p.288; Andrew Mack, 'Global Political Violence: Explaining the Post-Cold War Decline', Working Paper (New York: International Peace Academy Mar. 2007) p.5. 15. Figure from UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations website, < http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/faq/q9.htm> (accessed 17 Sept. 2007). 16. For example, Haiti's UN-sanctioned peacekeeping deployment and peacebuilding effort from 1994 to 2000, is considered a peacebuilding failure, even though the 1991–94 human rights atrocities and refugee crisis in Haiti was not necessarily a civil war. Nor did East Timor's violence in March 2006 amount to full-scale war. 17. See International Peace Research Institute's (PRIO) case summaries of armed conflicts, Angola section, para. 2; and Somalia section, yearly summaries that show no change from late 1994 through 1996. See also Uppsala Conflict Data Project classifications of each country. 18. See, e.g., Roland Paris, At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2004), and Tanja Chopra and Edith Bowles, 'State-building after Independence: East Timor', forthcoming in Charles T. Call with Vanessa Wyeth (eds) Building States to Build Peace (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). 19. Again, these peacebuilding failures exclude peacekeeping failures where missions ended amidst ongoing warfare like Angola in 1999; Somalia in 1995; and the former Yugoslavia in 1995. 20. Collier and Hoeffler (note 6). 21. See Collier et al. Post-Conflict Societies (note 8). 22. Statement by the President of the Security Council, S/PRST/2001/5, 20 Feb. 2001. 23. Paris (note 18) p.56. 24. Paris distinguishes his standard from one that seeks to solve 'all the country's ills' such as Galtung's call to create 'positive peace' by addressing structural violence. Paris' is a closer approximation to a root causes approach. Ibid. p.57. 25. Paris distinguishes his standard from one that seeks to solve 'all the country's ills' such as Galtung's call to create 'positive peace' by addressing structural violence. Paris' is a closer approximation to a root causes approach p.56. 26. Paris distinguishes his standard from one that seeks to solve 'all the country's ills' such as Galtung's call to create 'positive peace' by addressing structural violence. Paris' is a closer approximation to a root causes approach pp.56–7. 27. Paris distinguishes his standard from one that seeks to solve 'all the country's ills' such as Galtung's call to create 'positive peace' by addressing structural violence. Paris' is a closer approximation to a root causes approach pp. 151, 155. Paris at times seems to conflate evaluating national-level post-war peacebuilding processes with assessment of major UN peacebuilding operations, says that 'some missions were clear successes (Namibia and Croatia); others were obvious failures (Angola and Rwanda). The remaining operations fell between these two extremes'. Yet his implications of the outcomes of the remaining seven missions – Bosnia, Cambodia, Liberia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua – reveal a negative assessment. 28. See also Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elisabeth Cousens, 'Introduction', in Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elisabeth Cousens (eds) Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2002). 29. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, Making War, Building Peace (Princeton: Princeton UP 2006), p. 69. 30. Robert A. Pastor, Not Condemned to Repetition, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview P 2002). 31. Secretary-General of the United Nations, No Exit without Strategy: Security Council Decision-making and the Closure or Transition of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, S/2001/394, 20 Apr. 2001, para. 10, < http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N01/343/62/PDF/N0134362.pdf?OpenElement>. 32. Terrence Lyons, 'Post-Conflict Elections: War Termination, Democratization and Demilitarizing Politics,' Working Paper No. 20 (Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University Feb. 2002). 33. Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence (New York: W. W. Norton 2000). 34. Doyle and Sambanis (note 29). 35. Doyle and Sambanis (note 29) p.73. They actually use two measures, one of which focuses on the renewal of large-scale organised violence only (closer to war recurrence). The other includes participation. 36. 'Failed states' entered the policy lexicon in the early 1990s. See Gerald B. Helman and Stephen Ratner, 'Saving Failed States', Foreign Policy 89 (Winter 1993) pp.3–21. 37. Francis Fukuyama, State-building (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2004) p.1. 38. See Susan L. Woodward, 'Fragile States', Paper presented at the Peace and Social Justice meeting of the Ford Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 29 Nov. 2004. 39. Personal interview, UNHQ, New York, official requested anonymity, Dec. 2004. 40. Personal interviews with Gen. Jacques Paul Klein, Special Representative of the Secretary General, UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), and with officials of the UNMIL Civil Affairs Unit, charged with restoration of state authorities, Monrovia, Aug. 2004. 41. For a description of dozens of governance indicators, see Marie Besancon, Good Governance Rankings: The Art of Measurement, World Peace Foundation Report No. 36 (Cambridge, MA: World Peace Foundation 2003). 42. Ashraf Ghani, Clare Lockhart, and Michael Carnahan, 'An Agenda for State-Building in the Twenty-first Century', Fletcher Forum for World Affairs 30/1 (Winter 2006) p.111. 43. Paul Collier, Lani Elliott, Havard Hegre, Anke Hoeffler, Marta Reynal-Querol, and Nicholas Sambanis, Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy (Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford UP 2003). 44. The five sources postulated 50 percent, 44 percent, 34 percent (all referring to a five-year time frame), 23.6 percent, and 26 percent (the latter referring to a four-year time frame). In personal correspondence in July 2007, Collier cited only reliance on different datasets or pools of civil wars. 45. Nicholas Sambanis, 'What is a Civil War?' Journal of Conflict Resolution 48/6 (2004) pp.814–58; James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, 'Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War', American Political Science Review 97/1 (2003) pp.76–90; Walter (note 11). 46. On Chiapas, see comparison of statistics in Centre for the Study of Civil War, 'The Battle Deaths Dataset, 1946–2005, Version 2.0: Documentation of Coding Decisions', updated Sept. 2006 by Bethany Lacima, < http://www.prio.no/cscw/battle_deaths/Documentation_PRIO-UCDP.pdf>. On Angola, see Ploughshares, Armed Conflict Reports: Angola (Sept. 2003) p.4. 47. Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elisabeth Cousens (eds) Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2002); Paris (note 18); Doyle and Sambanis (note 29). 48. Paul Collier, and Nicholas Sambanis, Understanding Civil War, Vols I and II (Washington, DC: World Bank 2005); Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, and Ramesh Thakur, Making States Work (Tokyo: UN UP 2005). 49. This is not to claim that war is never morally or politically justified.