Roger Mac Ginty

Pax In Nuce (Peace in a Nutshell) is designed as a forum for the exchange of ideas on the latest thinking in relation to peace and conflict studies. The articles are short (hence ‘in a nutshell’) and accessible, and include contributions from some of the leading thinkers and practitioners on peace and conflict.

Pax In Nuce was established by a group of scholars in the UK, but is not aligned with any one institution or person. It is a site for debate, argument and the floating of ideas.

The site was established out of frustration at the high pay-walls erected by commercial academic publishers. These pay-walls mean that many academic articles are only available to those who are affiliated with (well-funded) academic libraries. This goes against the notion of academic freedom, and we hope that Pax In Nuce can help circumvent the privatisation of knowledge and help with the sharing of ideas and opinions. We welcome contributions from anyone – whether articles or responses to articles. Submit to paxinnuce@paxinnuce.com

http://paxinnuce.com/

Peacebuilding is a peer-reviewed international, comparative, multidisciplinary journal open to articles on making peace in contemporary and historical cases of conflict-affected societies. It aims to provide in-depth analyses of the ideologies, philosophies, interests, and policies that underpin programmes and initiatives designed to build peace, security, and order, and to connect with debates being held by policymakers, civil society, scholars and students. Our interest spans, but is not confined to, critical interrogations of international and local, formal and informal, peace processes, peacebuilding, mediation, peacekeeping and peace-enforcement, development, and statebuilding. We seek to support the examination of these concepts and policies against the backdrop of interdisciplinary theorising connected to realist, liberal, constructivist, critical, post-structural, post-colonial, and non-western theories, as well as encouraging an engagement with emerging theories of global justice, digital international relations, and new materialism, among others.

Peacebuilding is open to quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and particularly welcomes submissions that are prepared to challenge orthodox views and add new empirical insights into scholarly debates. For example, we are interested in submissions from a post-colonial perspective of peace and order, or utilising ethnographic methodologies able to highlight subaltern voices, positionalities, and local claims in the context of hybridity and related power-relations. Contributions from the ‘subjects’ of peace processes, peacebuilding, etc., as well as theoretical and methodological innovations (for example creative, critical and ethnographic work, whether on or in conflict-affected societies, or on donors and international actors) are particularly welcome.

The editors are interested in how dominant ‘peace’ paradigms produce political subjectivity, and how this is responded to by their recipients. Rethinking approaches to peace is particularly crucial if this area of study is to move beyond its current liberal or neoliberal position. Peacebuilding periodically includes reports and field notes on the work of major donors and peacebuilding organisations. We publish collective discussion pieces that decentre and challenge dominant knowledge on peace and conflict studies, and promote new, critical alternatives on peacebuilding.

The rise of India and the EU as global actors ‘governmentality’. This article asks whether
has sparked growing interest in their peace- there is sufficient consistency across either
building approaches. This paper compares actors’ governance interventions to even
the objectives and effects of the EU’s and
speak of a distinct ‘strategy’ or ‘governance
India’s engagement in different conflict
culture’. It illustrates the close relationship
contexts within and alongside their
between governance and conflict response
borders. It examines whether their practices
initiatives but finds that the relationship is
of conflict resolution or peace-building strive
for more than conflict management or often dysfunctional.

European Union (EU) interventions in conflict countries tend to focus on governance
reforms of political and economic frameworks instead of the geopolitical context or
the underlying power asymmetries that fuel conflict. They follow a liberal pattern
often associated with northern donors and the UN system more generally. The EU’s
approach diverges from prevalent governance paradigms mainly in its engagement
with social, identity and socio-economic exclusion. This article examines the EU’s
‘peace-as-governance’ model in Cyprus, Georgia, Palestine and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
These cases indicate that a tense and contradictory strategic situation may arise
from an insufficient redress of underlying conflict issues.

This paper is interested in the meanings and implications of technocracy for the development and maintenance of peace. It aims to illustrate how the bureaucratic imperative explains much about the ascendancy of certain actors to positions of prominence on the peacebuilding landscape, and the types of activities that these actors engage in.

This article seeks to take stock of the critique of the liberal peace and identify what it has and has
not achieved. It also asks ‘where do we go from here?’ The article surveys an agenda for future
research and can also be read as a rebuttal of some recent literature that has attempted to shut
down the liberal peace debate. The article opens with a quick recap of the bases of the critique of
the liberal peace. It then outlines the ‘achievements’ of the debate and examines the failings and
oversights of the original critique. Questions are raised about the epistemology and terms of the
debate, and of the ability of critical intellectual projects to break through the material power held
by mainstream intellectual and policy actors. In its final substantive section, the article asks ‘where
next for the critique of the liberal peace?’ We conclude by highlighting avenues of research that
might be fruitfully explored.