Pragmatic Peacebuilding: A New Paradigm for Postconflict Efforts toward Peace

Session

Political Science

Description

Peacebuilding failures have sparked calls for alternative ways toward sustaining peace. In practice, peacebuilding has always been hybrid combinations of ideology, interest, capacity and resources. Academic criticism of liberal peacebuilding, most often proposed utilizing local actors but not their institutional and cultural practices. Few advocated pragmatic peacebuilding in a systematic approach, in part because outside funders generally did not support radical departures from democratization and capitalism. This essay proposes a new peacebuilding paradigm, which explicitly advocates that local practices, including illiberal ones, deserve attention, given that three decades of the UN’s formulations have rarely sustained peace. We try to conceptualize pragmatic peacebuilding as a context-driven approach that seeks to implement alternatives to democratization as a prong in peacebuilding, where a country has no experience and have clear alternative preferences for ordering political conflict. Unlike other peacebuilding paradigms, ideology is chosen by local actors, even illiberal ones. Different from other paradigms, the ideology of pragmatic peacebuilding is specified by local actors and attempts to optimize their goals. We try to carve a paradigmatic space for pragmatic peacebuilding by analyzing its ontological, epistemological and practical differences with other peacebuilding paradigms, and then present a series of agenda setting topics to conceptualize, operationalize and hypothesize pragmatic peacebuilding efforts.

Proceedings Editor

Edmond Hajrizi

ISBN

978-9951-550-47-5

Location

UBT Kampus, Lipjan

Start Date

30-10-2021 12:00 AM

End Date

30-10-2021 12:00 AM

DOI

10.33107/ubt-ic.2021.256

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Oct 30th, 12:00 AM Oct 30th, 12:00 AM

Pragmatic Peacebuilding: A New Paradigm for Postconflict Efforts toward Peace

UBT Kampus, Lipjan

Peacebuilding failures have sparked calls for alternative ways toward sustaining peace. In practice, peacebuilding has always been hybrid combinations of ideology, interest, capacity and resources. Academic criticism of liberal peacebuilding, most often proposed utilizing local actors but not their institutional and cultural practices. Few advocated pragmatic peacebuilding in a systematic approach, in part because outside funders generally did not support radical departures from democratization and capitalism. This essay proposes a new peacebuilding paradigm, which explicitly advocates that local practices, including illiberal ones, deserve attention, given that three decades of the UN’s formulations have rarely sustained peace. We try to conceptualize pragmatic peacebuilding as a context-driven approach that seeks to implement alternatives to democratization as a prong in peacebuilding, where a country has no experience and have clear alternative preferences for ordering political conflict. Unlike other peacebuilding paradigms, ideology is chosen by local actors, even illiberal ones. Different from other paradigms, the ideology of pragmatic peacebuilding is specified by local actors and attempts to optimize their goals. We try to carve a paradigmatic space for pragmatic peacebuilding by analyzing its ontological, epistemological and practical differences with other peacebuilding paradigms, and then present a series of agenda setting topics to conceptualize, operationalize and hypothesize pragmatic peacebuilding efforts.