as is currently happening in Syria.
Because the consequences of persistent violence are so severe, international peace interventions have multiplied since the end of the Cold War. United Nations operations( Daniel 2008, 11; Duffey 2000, 142), non-governmental agencies( Barnett 2011, 3 – 5; Werker and Ahmed 2008, 75), donors( Barnett 2011, 4), diplomatic missions, and regional organizations have become increasingly numerous and influential( Anderson and Olson 2003, 8). For instance, more than 100,000 troops, observers, and police personnel currently serve as United Nations peacekeepers in sixteen operations across four continents( United Nations 2016).
This represents the second-largest deployed force abroad after the US military.
Peacebuilding actors accomplish a very wide variety of tasks. The most widespread— and most skeletal— definition of peacebuilding refers to actions aimed at creating, strengthening, and solidifying peace( Boutros-Ghali 1992). At a minimum, it involves reestablishing a measure of security. Tasks therefore include peacemaking— the process of bringing parties in conflict to an agreement through peaceful means— and peacekeeping( United Nations Security Council 2016), which denotes the“ deployment of international personnel to help maintain peace and security” after a war( Fortna 2008, 5). Most scholars and policymakers consider several other elements beyond this security dimension. A broad consensus has emerged on the need for socio-economic recovery, which in turn calls for humanitarian and development aid( Collier et al. 2003; United Nations Security Council 2001, para. 18 – 20). A fierce debate also exists over what types of political institutions and processes are necessary, but most thinkers include statebuilding, justice, and reconciliation, and numerous authors also add democracy( Call 2008, 183 – 86; United Nations Security Council 2001, para. 10 – 20). In sum, to use Galtung’ s( 1969) well-known distinction, peacebuilding initiatives aim to create not only“ negative peace”— the absence of war and violence— but also“ positive peace”— the conditions that make peace sustainable over the long term— both in interstate wars and in civil conflicts.
These peace efforts have achieved many crucial results. They have helped host nation authorities and populations end widespread violence, reestablish security, promote economic development, and organize democratic elections in Cambodia, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Timor- Leste, among many other places.
Admittedly, although foreign actors routinely contribute to conflict resolution, peacebuilding efficacy relies primarily on the actions, interests, and strategies of domestic entities. Wars can end only when hostile parties at the local, national, and regional levels agree to stop using violence to resolve their differences, and when their fellow citizens concurrently strive to establish and maintain lasting solutions to the conflict. Foreign interveners— including donors, diplomats, peacekeepers, and the foreign staff of international and non-governmental organizations— can, at best, support peace initiatives and undermine efforts to resume violence. That being said, external contributions do increase the chances of establishing a durable peace( Doyle and Sambanis 2000; Fortna 2008; Gilligan and Sergenti 2008; Goldstein 2011; Howard 2008; Walter 2002). Unfortunately, many international peacebuilding efforts never manage actually to promote peace: the rate of failure varies by source from 15 percent( Gilligan and Sergenti 2008) to 75 percent( Weinstein 2005, 11 and 33). Regrettably, the policy and academic ommunities lack analytical insights into how to enhance peacebuilding success. Indeed, both research and practice in international peacebuilding have yielded ambiguous findings. On the one hand, there is the abovementioned agreement that, all else being equal, international support tends to increase the chances of successful peacebuilding. There is also an emerging consensus that local and bottom-up conflict resolution are crucial to controlling violence and promoting reconciliation in many war and postwar environments.( In this article,“ local” means at the level of the individual, the family, the clan, the district, the province, and the ethnic group when it is not a nationallevel one.) On the other hand, many instances in which international actors tried to support local initiatives have