Catalog
- Sort by
From Chechnya to Bosnia, from the Kurds to the Palestinians, demands for separatism are fueling bitter and bloody conflicts. Yet, as this innovative study demonstrates, disputes between central governments and independence-minded minorities need not always escalate into violence and secession. Autonomy, by virtue of its essential adaptability, can offer a workable and peaceful compromise.
Ruth Lapidoth first dissects the concept of autonomy, exploring its origins, examining the roles it can play, and distinguishing among its types. With scrupulous objectivity, she then presents more than a dozen richly documented case studies of autonomy in action. Drawn from four continents and detailing failures as well as successes, these studies underline autonomy’s variety and versatility. Lapidoth’s pragmatic approach and impeccable scholarship frame the issues and lay out the factors likely to foster successful outcomes.
A major work from a seminal figure in the field of conflict resolution, Building Peace is John Paul Lederach's definitive statement on peacebuilding. Marrying wisdom, insight, and passion, Lederach explains why we need to move beyond "traditional" diplomacy, which often emphasizes top-level leaders and short-term objectives, toward a holistic approach that stresses the multiplicity of peacemakers, long-term perspectives, and the need to create an infrastructure that empowers resources within a society and maximizes contributions from outside.
Sophisticated yet pragmatic, the volume explores the dynamics of contemporary conflict and presents an integrated framework for peacebuilding in which structure, process, resources, training, and evaluation are coordinated in an attempt to transform the conflict and effect reconciliation.
Building Peace is a substantive reworking and expansion of a work developed for the United Nations University in 1994. In addition, this volume includes a chapter by practitioner John Prendergast that applies Lederach's conceptual framework to ongoing conflicts in the Horn of Africa.
Ambassador Ould-Abdallah arrived in Burundi with a mandate from the United Nations to rescue the country's fledgling democracy and bring together political and ethnic rivals. His original mandate was for three months; he stayed two years. When he left, Burundi was by no means tranquil, but his efforts to foster political power sharing and to rein in extremism had done much to avert all-out civil war and to save Burundi from the genocidal fate of neighboring Rwanda.
In Burundi on the Brink, Ould-Abdallah pulls no punches as he describes the challenges he faced—not only from Burundians but also from members of the international community. He is equally revealing about how he sought to boost the limited leverage available to a UN special envoy by bold action, personal example, and close coordination with the local, diplomatic, and NGO communities.
The volume concludes with a stimulating, often unconventional analysis of what Burundi tells us about what does and what doesn't work in the practical realm of preventive diplomacy.
Conflict Analysis: Understanding Causes, Unlocking Solutions is a guide for practitioners seeking to prevent deadly conflict or mitigate political instability. This handbook integrates theory and practice and emphasizes the importance of analyzing the causes of peace as well as the causes of conflict. It stresses that conflict analysis is a social as well as an intellectual process, helping practitioners translate analysis into effective action.
After years of relative neglect, culture is finally receiving due recognition as a key factor in the evolution and resolution of conflicts. Unfortunately, however, when theorists and practitioners of conflict resolution speak of “culture,” they often understand and use it in a bewildering and unhelpful variety of ways. With sophistication and lucidity, Culture and Conflict Resolution exposes these shortcomings and proposes an alternative conception in which culture is seen as dynamic and derivative of individual experience. The book explores divergent theories of social conflict and differing strategies that shape the conduct of diplomacy, and examines the role that culture has (and has not) played in conflict resolution.
As recent events demonstrate, violence, especially ethnic violence, is exceptionally hard to extinguish. Cease-fires almost never bring a complete end to the killing, and formal peace agreements are more often than not undone by men unwilling to forsake the gun. As John Darby argues in this original, holistic, and comparative treatment of the subject, “even when political violence is ended by a cease-fire, it reappears in other forms to threaten the evolving peace process.”
Unlike most scholars, Darby focuses on peace processes that have involved actors other than the United Nations. He analyzes the nature and impact of four interrelated kinds of violence: violence by the state, violence by militants, violence in the community, and the emergence of new violence-related issues during negotiations. For each kind of violence, the author draws out the policy implications, suggesting how the “guardians” of the peace process can defeat would-be spoilers and change a culture of violence. The volume concludes by distilling five propositions on the relationship between violence and peace processes.
Insightful, concise, and highly readable, the book will engage the scholar, inspire the policymaker, and inform the student. In-depth profiles of the five featured cases (Northern Ireland, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Israel-Palestine, and the Basque country) provide ample background and enrich understanding.
Every summer since 1993, the woods of Maine have witnessed a remarkable attempt to plant the idea of peace in the hearts and minds of the next generation of Middle East leaders. For three weeks, 300 Arab and Israeli teenagers leave behind the violence and hatred ingrained in their homelands to meet their “enemies” face to face. At times it’s an emotionally wrenching process, but it can produce surprising friendships and an enduring belief in coexistence.
Seeds of Peace makes the most of the adaptability and enthusiasm of youth, creating a secure environment in which teenagers—supported by trained counselors—can dare to argue with and play alongside one another, to challenge preconceptions, and to envisage a peaceful Middle East. The author vividly describes the camp experience and follows the youngsters’ return home, where despite criticism from friends and families many of them continue to promote Arab-Israeli coexistence.
This highly engaging and accessible account of peacemaking in action also includes photographs and feature boxes that help bring alive the complex issues involved.
In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, secessionist forces carved four de facto states from parts of Moldova, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Ten years on, those states are mired in uncertainty. Beset by internal problems, fearful of a return to the violence that spawned them, and isolated and unrecognized internationally, they survive behind cease–fire lines that have temporarily frozen but not resolved their conflicts with the metropolitan powers. In this, the first in–depth comparative analysis of these self–proclaimed republics, Dov Lynch examines the logic that maintains this uneasy existence and explores ways out of their volatile predicament.
Drawing on extensive travel within Eurasia and remarkable access to leading figures in the secessionist struggles, Lynch spotlights the political, military, and economic dynamics—both internal and external—that drive the existence of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, and Nagorno-Karabakh. He also evaluates a range of options for resolving the status of the de facto states before violence returns, and proposes a coordinated approach, spearheaded by the European Union, that balances de facto and de jure independence and sovereignty.
Slim but packed with information and insight, this volume also offers instructive lessons about the dynamics of intrastate and ethnic conflict and the merits of autonomy and power sharing in places as diverse as Kosovo, Northern Cyprus, and Chechnya.
Can Russia and the United States really move beyond their bitter Cold War rivalry to a genuinely cooperative relationship?
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country; its citizens are perhaps the best educated on the continent. It is the world’s sixth-largest producer of oil. Nigeria also has probably the most elaborate system of government in the region. Yet the country teeters perilously close to massive civil upheaval.
In this compelling new work, Suberu examines the profound political contradictions that make up Nigeria, a nation whose leaders have constantly tinkered with a colonial federal legacy that sought to balance the country’s three major ethnic groups. He explores the evolution of Nigerian federalism through its various constitutional experiments and administrative redesigns, including those in the periods of military rule.
While acknowledging the genius of Nigerian federalism in trying to subdue ethnic and regional conflict, Suberu expertly analyzes the troubling flaws in a system that breeds corruption, prioritizes distribution over development, and encourages the country’s further political fragmentation.
In the book’s final chapter, Suberu outlines bold constitutional reforms that seek to promote institutional innovation in Nigerian federalism to keep pace with the country’s growing demographic and ethnopolitical complexity.