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Utilising a wide range of archival correspondence and diaries, this monograph reconstructs the 1974-79 Labour government's policies in Northern Ireland. It covers the collapse of power-sharing in May 1974, the secret dialogue with the Provisional IRA during the 1975 ceasefire, the acquiescence of Labour ministers in continuing indefinite direct rule from Westminster, efforts to mitigate conflict through industrial investment, a major shift in security policy emphasizing the police over the army, the adaptation of republicans to the threat of these new measures and their own adoption of a 'Long War' strategy. In so doing, it sheds light on the challenges faced by British ministers, civil servants, soldiers and policemen and the reasons why the conflict lasted so long. It will be a key text for researchers and students of both British and Northern Irish politics.

A Liberal Peace? is a timely and much-needed critical volume that takes a fresh look at the often-polarised debate over the 'liberal peace' approach to international intervention. Using a multitude of case studies, from Afghanistan to Somalia and Sri Lanka to Kosovo, it examines contemporary peacebuilding and statebuilding practice, investigating the assumptions underlying it and interrogating the arguments critiquing it. In doing so, the collection provides new theoretical propositions for understanding current interventions. Written by some of the most prominent scholars in the field alongside several new scholars making cutting-edge contributions, this is an essential addition to a rapidly growing interdisciplinary area of study.

This book highlights the important role youth can play in processes of peacebuilding by examining music as a tool for engaging youth in such activities. As Lesley J. Pruitt discusses throughout the book, music—as expression, as creation, as inspiration—can provide many unique insights into transforming conflicts, altering our understandings, and achieving change. She offers detailed empirical work on two youth peacebuilding programs in Australia and Northern Ireland, countries that appear overtly peaceful, but where youth still face structural violence and related direct violence at the community level. She also pays careful attention to the ways in which gender norms might influence young people's participation in music-based peacebuilding activities. Ultimately, the book defines a new research area linking youth cultures and music with peacebuilding practice and policy.

A considerable amount of work has been conducted in the field of peace studies, conflict management, peace science in economics, sociology, anthropology and management. This title presents research with an emphasis on theoretical and mathematical constructs in the area of peace economics & peace science.

This book aims to develop new methodology for the study of international relations (IR) based on joy, informed by current thinking about posthumanism, feminist theory and positive psychology. It examines how the mechanistic-deterministic worldview derived from the Newtonian model has influenced the epistemology and methodology of IR (i.e., the idea that the world is constituted of independent fragments), and seeks ways to develop a new methodology for IR by drawing on the potential of a non-fragmented worldview. The author argues that it is this modern Western view of human beings (or societies) as isolated and separate from the world that prevents IR from finding new solutions to the questions of war and conflict. Drawing upon case studies, testimonies and examples from film, this book instead proposes joy as an alternative methodology for studying IR, exploring the possibility of self-healing in physical and emotional trauma in extreme violent conditions.The author also discusses how posthumanism contributes to positive psychology in understanding happiness and empowerment, and demonstrates how these findings can further widen the study of IR. This book will be of much interest to students of gender studies, war and conflict studies, IR theory and critical security studies.

Many in the United States and Israel believe that Hamas is nothing but a terrorist organization, and that its social sector serves merely to recruit new supporters for its violent agenda. Based on Sara Roy's extensive fieldwork in the Gaza Strip and West Bank during the critical period of the Oslo peace process, Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza shows how the social service activities sponsored by the Islamist group emphasized not political violence but rather community development and civic restoration.

Unstable Ground looks at the human impact of climate change and its potential to provoke some of the most troubling crimes against humanity—ethnic conflict, war, and genocide. Alex Alvarez provides an essential overview of what science has shown to be true about climate change and examines how our warming world will challenge and stress societies and heighten the risk of mass violence. Drawing on a number of recent and historic examples, including Darfur, Syria, and the current migration crisis, this book illustrates the thorny intersections of climate change and violence. The author doesn't claim causation but makes a compelling case that changing environmental circumstances can be a critical factor in facilitating violent conflict. As research suggests climate change will continue and accelerate, understanding how it might contribute to violence is essential in understanding how to prevent it.

Recent acts of terrorism and the current unrest in the Middle East remind us how important it is to understand the relationship between violence, peace and democracy. In a challenging and insightful essay, Amartya Sen explores ideas around 'organised violence' (such as war, genocide and terrorism) and violence against the individual. Highlighting the inadequacies of some of the widely accepted explanations for violenceâ  including the idea that the world is experiencing a 'clash of civilisations'â  Sen makes a plea for a global, multilateral debate on the causes of conflict, and an understanding of the multiple identities of the individuals involved. The introductory essay draws on the findings of the Commonwealth Commission on Respect and Understanding, which was chaired by Sen, and established to promote mutual communication and understanding among all faiths and communities in the Commonwealth. Its timely report, \"Civil Paths to Peace\", suggests that governments, media and educatorsâ  indeed, everyoneâ  must take the time to understand the complexities around violent behaviour and its causes, without prejudging what these might be.

This book explores the meaning of local ownership in peacebuilding and examines the ways in which it has been, and could be, operationalized in post-conflict environments. In the context of post-conflict peacebuilding, the idea of local ownership is based upon the premise that no peace process is sustainable in the absence of a meaningful degree of local involvement. Despite growing recognition of the importance of local ownership, however, relatively little attention has been paid to specifying what precisely the concept means or how it might be implemented. This volume contributes to the ongoing debate on the future of liberal peacebuilding through a critical investigation of the notion of local ownership, and challenges conventional assumptions about who the relevant locals are and what they are expected to own. Drawing on case studies from Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti, the text argues that local ownership can only be fostered through a long-term consensus-building process, which involves all levels of the conflict-affected society. This book will be of great interest to students of peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, development studies, security studies and IR.

After suffering years of war, Bosnia is now the target of international efforts to reconstruct and democratize a culturally divided society. The global community's strategy has focused on reforming political institutions, influencing the behavior of elite populations, and cultivating nongovernmental organizations. But expensive efforts to promote a stable peace and a multiethnic democracy can be successful only if they resonate among ordinary people. Otherwise, such projects will produce fragile institutions and alienated citizens who will be susceptible to extremists eager to send them back into war. Paula M. Pickering challenges the conventional wisdom that common people are merely passive recipients of peacebuilding projects. Instead, in Peacebuilding in the Balkans , she shows how ordinary people, particularly minorities in Bosnia, understand elite rhetoric and actively shape reconstruction. Pickering's years of fieldwork-direct observation, interviews, and analysis of many surveys-has yielded a precise understanding of how ordinary citizens react to and influence peacebuilding programs in their neighborhoods, workplaces, municipal agencies, and other real-life social settings. The evidence suggests that international efforts to rebuild an inclusive Bosnia will be futile unless they pay sufficient attention to citizens' varying ties to ethnic groups, indigenous forms of civic activity, and the development of nondiscriminatory employment and responsive political institutions. Pickering's insights from reconstruction in the Balkans have important implications for peacebuilding elsewhere in Eurasia.