Book Review: Towards a Just and Ecologically Sustainable Peace

Book review of Joseph Camilleri and Deborah Guess (eds): Towards a Just and Ecologically Sustainable Peace: Navigating the Great Transition. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 363 pp.

Central African Republic

Central African Republic (car) has been a theatre of instability for decades, especially following the 2013 coup, which saw crimes that have been found to be premeditated and systematic. This article identifies states collapse, persistent instability and impunity as key factors engendering atrocity crimes in car. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the risk of atrocity crimes, the international response has been inadequate if not passive, and interventions do not consider atrocity prevention in their execution. Thus, subsequent peacebuilding initiatives have not had real and visible impact on the prevention of atrocity crimes. To address this, the establishment of an accountable and functioning state is the overriding condition precedent to preventing and mangaging atrocity crimes in car. The international community should further engage local actors to promote inclusive governance and lay the foundations for stability and sustainable peace. Subsequent restoration of structures for justice and ensuring their effective functioning will help end structural impunity in the country and go a long way in averting future atrocity crimes.

Towards a minimal conception of Transitional Justice

Transitional Justice (TJ) focuses on the processes of dealing with the legacy of large-scale past abuses (in the aftermath of traumatic experiences such as war or authoritarianism) with the aim of fostering domestic justice and creating the basis for a sustainable peace. TJ however also entails the problem of how a torn society may be able to become a self-determining member of a just international order. This paper presents a minimal conception of TJ, which departs from Rawls' conception of normative stability of the international order, which suggests disentangling the two goals of fostering democracy within torn societies and TJ itself. The scope of TJ is therefore limited to enabling these societies to create minimal internal conditions for joining a just international order on equal footing. This paper makes an original contribution to two different debates, namely normative research on TJ, and post-Rawlsian literature in general. First, it provides a new direction for normative theorizing about TJ which takes both its domestic and international dimensions seriously into consideration. Second, it extends Rawls' political liberal outlook to an area where it is not usually understood to apply.

The transition paradigm versus integration in the context of political transformation of the Balkan countries

Three decades since the end of the Cold War and the fall of communism, some of the Balkan nations are not following yet the lessons for building sustainable peace and functioning democracies according to their aspirations (at least in a declarative way) for association with the liberal democracies of the European Union (EU). Rather, the Balkans’ history is transforming into a story of importing the habits and principles from the communism period in a paradoxical way of establishing the illiberal democracies followed by controversies and defects in the process of state-building. More than a decade, the Balkans, from one side, is transformed into a zone of periphery with a focus of the European determination for the support of the institutional reform through the process of integration, but in parallel, it is being self-formatted into a zone of self-isolation of the Balkan nations. This article will discuss the transition paradigm of the Balkans through functional analysis of aspects related to the rhetoric of Balkan countries in the discourse of the criteria of the European integration project; the dimension of the Balkan ancient myth with the new additional attribute of self-isolation; the insisting of the Balkan political elites for catapulting to the European project; and as well as the dynamics of the transition, internal and European integration of the Albanians and other nations of the Balkan region in the general

Cheap talk or costly commitment? Leader statements and the implementation of civil war peace agreements

This article examines how leaders affect the implementation of peace agreements. It argues that implementation is more likely when leaders have publicly committed to peace because public commitments tie leaders’ hands, making it costly to back down from peaceful promises. This effect is hypothesized to hold even under conditions that make implementation costly: when implementing difficult provisions, when spoiler risk is high, and when implementation is unreciprocated. These expectations are tested using novel data from the IPAD dataset on the implementation of peace agreements between 1989 and 2014 and on public statements by state and rebel leaders. Results show that governments and rebel groups whose leaders have publicly committed to peace are significantly more likely to make progress toward implementation. This effect holds for difficult provisions, when spoiler risk is high, and when implementation is unreciprocated. These findings highlight the importance of leaders’ political will for successful implementation of peace agreements and sustainable peace.

Interrogating the Liberal Peace in East Timor

<p>Peace operations from the 1990s have increasingly been driven by the assumption that conflict and social unrest can be ‘solved’ through the establishment and support of liberal structures. Known academically as liberal peace, this approach advocates the liberalisation of politics and economics, and the establishment of rule of law and international human rights norms, claiming such liberal structures offer the necessary foundation to lasting peace. This claim has become unquestioned logic for many of the international bodies and individual actors that participate in the peace industry and has led to a standardised approach to post-conflict situations. However, is this “peacebuilding consensus” justified? Does liberal peace foster sustainable peace? This thesis interrogates the concept and application of liberal peace to assess the extent to which liberal peacebuilding delivers on its claims and provides the foundations of sustainable peace. Due to the enormous size of such a project and the limitations of this thesis, I focus on one case study in my analysis of the liberal peace approach – East Timor. Relying on a single example of peacebuilding allows for a more in depth discussion of efforts, however, it is insufficient to draw broader conclusions about liberal peace. This body of research, therefore, is intended to contribute to existing academic work that evaluates liberal peace. Where this thesis deviates from existing research, however, is in the application of an immanent critique to assess liberal peacebuilding in East Timor...</p>

Interrogating the Liberal Peace in East Timor

<p>Peace operations from the 1990s have increasingly been driven by the assumption that conflict and social unrest can be ‘solved’ through the establishment and support of liberal structures. Known academically as liberal peace, this approach advocates the liberalisation of politics and economics, and the establishment of rule of law and international human rights norms, claiming such liberal structures offer the necessary foundation to lasting peace. This claim has become unquestioned logic for many of the international bodies and individual actors that participate in the peace industry and has led to a standardised approach to post-conflict situations. However, is this “peacebuilding consensus” justified? Does liberal peace foster sustainable peace? This thesis interrogates the concept and application of liberal peace to assess the extent to which liberal peacebuilding delivers on its claims and provides the foundations of sustainable peace. Due to the enormous size of such a project and the limitations of this thesis, I focus on one case study in my analysis of the liberal peace approach – East Timor. Relying on a single example of peacebuilding allows for a more in depth discussion of efforts, however, it is insufficient to draw broader conclusions about liberal peace. This body of research, therefore, is intended to contribute to existing academic work that evaluates liberal peace. Where this thesis deviates from existing research, however, is in the application of an immanent critique to assess liberal peacebuilding in East Timor...</p>