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Wallensteen argues that further defining and specifying key concepts in peacebuilding will result in increased consistency and contribute to the development of policy-relevant strategies for peace. He suggests that any analysis of peacebuilding efforts should employ a typology of conflicts that distinguishes between interstate war, internal conflict, and new state formation. It should also consider that the state is central to many wars, so it is essential to distinguish among the specific aims or ambitions of post-conflict peacebuilding: limited forms of state-building, democracy-building, security-building, nation-building, and market-building. A review of current research on sustainable peace processes highlights the importance of four factors: how the previous war ended; whether the causes of the war have been addressed; the impact of international actors on local state-building, including the timing of democratization; and the extent to which the regional context is conducive to peacebuilding.

This chapter argues that, although power-sharing pacts may initially be essential for urgently ending the scourge of modern civil wars, over time certain features of power sharing (grand coalitions, electoral system choices, and territorial divisions of power, especially) tend to frustrate the pursuit of sustainable peace. As time passes they need to replaced, through ongoing bargaining and institution building, with agreements that more closely approximate democratic social contracts based on reciprocal rights and mutual interdependencies, and especially cross-communal political parties and civil society.

This chapter argues that local economic actors are critical to the creation and sustainability of the peace, but that the current economic incentives approach fundamentally misunderstands their role and its causes. It begins by laying out the assumptions that underlie the current approach of international economic intervention. It then turns to the conditions under which local economic actors can be expected to be peace-promoting, in two ways—first in terms of the political settlement and second in terms of economic policies that business prefers. The chapter ends by questioning the puzzle of current policy and practice, the silence on, neglect of, and often even disincentives to domestic entrepreneurs and economic activity. This puzzling behavior is particularly surprising given that economic actors are so prominent in the literature of greatest influence on international policy as a cause of civil war and its prolongation, and also that the newest vogue in peace-building policy circles is “private sector development”.

This chapter illustrates what can be learned from Bougainville, one of the few recent successful cases of postconflict state-building. It clarifies and elaborates on a ‘road to sustainable peace’: a mode of reconciliation that carefully involves emotion and incorporates everyone, including ancestral spirits. This process must resist instrumental and short-term temptations, developing instead a sustainable long-term, step-by-step engagement with different layers of problems. Time is crucial in this approach, which revolves around finding out when exactly which people are ready for which step in the reconciliation process. Reconciliation on Bougainville is thus seen as an ongoing process that involves entwined relationships and contains spiritual and ritual dimensions. The latter are, in fact, an integral and indispensable element of conflict resolution, rather than simply aspects of ceremonial functions.

This chapter on the peace process examines the nature of the conflict in Sri Lanka in terms of the conceptual issues involved, the dynamics of the peace process and the government’s approach to sustainable peace. The chapter argues that the peace process has two distinct phases: the first phase involves the ending of an armed conflict and the second phase is defined by the process of addressing the deep-rooted issues related with the genesis of the conflict such as grievances, a sense of insecurity and aspirations associated with identity formation. It suggests that unless these root causes of the conflict are addressed during the peace process in Sri Lanka, the peace achieved in phase one would remain unstable.

This chapter analyzes the factors that determine the success of peace initiatives in Somalia. First, the intensity of conflict before the peace agreement is signed negatively affects the duration of peace. The higher the rate of fatalities during a conflict, the higher the likelihood that the peace agreement that followed it will fail. Second, military capabilities of the disputing clans determine if the peace agreement will succeed in sustaining. Imbalance of military capability reduces the likely duration of peace because the stronger clan may have incentives to renege on the peace accord. Third, third-party enforcement of peace accords by a credible and capable actor is a crucial element of sustainable peace. The enforcer monitors the implementation of the peace agreement and can credibly threaten to punish non-compliance.

This chapter shifts the traditional perception of power relations in order to look at the ways great powers make use of incentives to encourage negotiation, ethnic reconciliation, and continued cooperation after the achievement of peace. The thrust of the analysis is how an external actor, primarily the United States, can use incentives and disincentives, broadly conceived, to promote change of behavior on the ground in an effort to facilitate the process of negotiating and implementing peace agreements, thereby reducing the possibility of continued intense internal conflict. The focus is on soft intervention generally and incentive strategies in particular, in an effort to link ideals related to facilitating an end to civil wars and continuing peace after conflict, as well as protecting vulnerable peoples, on the one hand, with the pragmatism of a strategy that is risk- and cost-effective, on the other hand. Neither avoidance nor military intervention can be viewed as justified in most cases. Rather, a diplomatic approach seems a logical alternative, and it holds out the possibility of greater leverage than is often recognized. But such leverage must meet the tests of timing, legitimacy, and appropriateness. The chapter considers when and what type of incentive should be used at the lowest cost to the intervener, keeping in mind a consideration for the uniqueness of the conflict.