Bridging the Conceptual and Theoretical Divides on Peace and Peacebuilding

Abstract

The debate internationally on the conditions for peace and for sustaining peacebuilding has been characterized by a considerable degree of conceptual confusion and theoretical disagreements. There is a great need for clarification – or even a need to find common grounds to avoid gratuitous or rhetorical differences and to search for more broadly perceived practical recommendations. Although policy makers and practitioners may not ordinarily benefit from theoretical debates among academics, especially if conceptualization is quite abstract, the assumptions and conclusions of these debates can and often do affect public discourses. The current volume attempts to bridge what appear to be six or seven paradigmatic differences founded on different assumptions, questions, and conclusions about what is significant about the peacebuilding efforts that developed since then UN SecretaryGeneral Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace in 1992. As envisaged by Boutros Boutros-Ghali peacebuilding was a concept related to peacemaking, peacekeeping, and so forth. He refers to “peacemaking” as “efforts aimed at resolving the issues that have led to conflict”; “peacebuilding,” as efforts that include “rebuilding the institutions and infrastructures of nations torn by civil war and strife; and building bonds of peaceful mutual benefit among nations formerly at war.” However, these missions are interlinked and inseparable, as they both aim at eliminating the various causes of a conflict (economic, political, social). This is the approach that many contributors to this volume adopt, that the concepts of peacebuilding and peacemaking be examined together, as part of the same whole.