Local Peacebuilding and National Peace: Interaction Between Grassroots and Elite Processes

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Description

Local Peacebuilding and National Peace is a collection of essays that examines the effects of local peacebuilding efforts on national peace initiatives.

The book looks at violent and protracted struggles in which local people have sought to make their own peace with local combatants in a variety of ways, and how such initiatives have affected and have been affected by national level strategies.

Chapters on theories of local and national peacemaking are combined with chapters on recent efforts to carry out such processes in warn torn societies such as Africa, Asia, and South America, with essays contributed by experts who were actually actively involved in the peacemaking process.

With its unique focus on the interaction of peacemaking at local and national levels, the book will fill a gap in the literature. It will be of interest to students and researchers in such fields as peace studies, conflict resolution, international relations, postwar recovery and development.

Reviews

"This book provides a profoundly realistic appraisal of the contributions and limitations of the relations between peacebuilding at the local and national levels. It combines a broad theoretical framework and detailed analyses of various cases where local and national peacebuilding efforts interact and makes exciting contributions to understanding a significant, but too little examined, phenomenon. "-- Louis Kriesberg, Maxwell Professor Emeritus of Social Conflict StudiesSyracuse University, USA
"An important merit of this book is that it offers new and penetrating insights into the long recognized need to link peacebuilding efforts at various levels of society. This timely publication probes the complexity of the relation between local and national activities at different stages of conflict, clearly identifying obstacles, opportunities, and ways in which they may influence each other. The book is an invaluable resource for theoreticians and practitioners alike."-Pedro Valenzuela, Director, Department of Political Science, Universidad Javeriana, Colombia.
[T]he case studies presented from a wide variety of countries make for a valuable contribution to the study of local peace initiatives...The case studies all emphasise the limited role of international interventions and financial support, particularly in the process of initiating the Zone of Peace, making them a valuable contribution to the study of local peace initiatives. In other words, the case studies are really locally driven, and thus have local legitimacy. -- Meike de Goede * LSE Review of Books *

Author Bio

Christopher Mitchell is Professor Emeritus of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, USA. Previously, he taught in England at University College London, Southampton University, and at the City University in London. He also served as Director of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University and is the author of The Structure of International Conflict.
Landon E. Hancock is Assistant Professor of Conflict Management and Political Science at Kent State University, USA. The author of several articles on ethnic conflict and on Northern Ireland, he is the coeditor with Christopher Mitchellof Zones of Peace (2007). He as awarded a Peace Scholar fellowship from the United States Institute of Peace for his dissertation, Peace from the People: Identity Salience and the Northern Irish Peace Process.