Abstract

This discussion outlines the often-countervailing forces and norms of state formation, statebuilding, and peacebuilding according to their associated theoretical approaches. It introduces a new concept of ‘peace formation’, which counterbalances a reliance on internal violent or externalised institutions' agency, reform and conditionality. Without incorporating a better understanding of the multiple and often critical agencies involved in peace formation, the states emerging from statebuilding will remain as they are- failed by design. This is because they are founded on externalised systems, legitimacy and norms rather than a contextual, critical, and emancipatory epistemology of peace. Engaging with the processes of peace formation may aid international actors in gaining a better understanding of the roots of a conflict, how local actors may be assisted, how violence and power-seeking may be ended or managed, and how local legitimacy may emerge.

Bio

Oliver Richmond's primary area of expertise is in peace and conflict theory, and in particular its interlinkages with IR theory. Recently, he has become interested in local forms of critical agency and resistance, and their role in constructing hybrid or post-liberal forms of peace and states (see A Post-Liberal Peace, 2011). He is interested in how critical approaches to international theory impact upon debates about conflict and peace, and in concepts of peace and their implicit usages in IR theory (see his book, Peace in International Relations, Routledge 2008). His well known book, The Transformation of Peace was published in 2005/7 and was funded by a Leverhulme Fellowship. It examined the conceptualisation of peace, and in particular the construction of the 'liberal peace', in post-conflict zones. A later volume called 'Liberal Peace Transitions: Between Peacebuilding and Statebuilding' was derived from the Liberal Peace Transitions project at CPCS (2006-8) which resulted from 'Transformation of Peace'. Since his critical work on the liberal peace was first published he has become interested in hybridity, the ‘local’, resistance, and other forms of agency in peacebuilding, as well as their impact on shaping a 'post-liberal peace' (A Post-Liberal Peace, Routledge, 2011). He is now working on a book project on the relationship of the state with local processes of 'peace formation' and international 'peace enablement' (Failed Statebuilding and Peace Formation, Yale University Press, forthcoming, 2013). Finally, he edits a Palgrave Book Series called Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies, which seeks to provide a forum for the development of new and alternative approaches for understanding the dynamics of conflict and of the construction of peace. He is also on the editorial board of the Review of International Studies.

Activity within the Doctoral Programme "International Politics and Conflict Resolution" and the research group Humanities, Migration and Peace Studies (NHUMEP)