The study focuses on the north and south Sudan conflict and seeks to investigate the continuing threats to a return to war between the two parties since the 2005 Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and after the independence of South Sudan. The study critically analyses the CPA and investigates the dilemmas faced by the two Sudans and examines the conflict resolution/transformation process. This thesis relies on data generated from key informant interviews and archival data as primary sources; complemented by secondary sources of data obtained from books, journals, research documents and relevant literature on the area. The study analyses the background of the north-south Sudan conflict, analysis of the CPA, implications of the negotiation, mediation and the implementation processes of the CPA and the referendum, post-referendum, the post-independence issues and the conflict resolution efforts. These are discussed in order to find the reasons as to why the CPA emerged as it did and its effectiveness. The study uses the concept of the conflict resolution/transformation approaches and their methods (mediation, negotiation and peacebuilding), the Galtung ABC theory and the Liberal peace theory as tools to guide the study in order to measure the data collected from the field. The results of the analysis suggest that history, the mediation and the negotiation process viewed to have been narrow and non-inclusive, the content of the CPA itself, the problems of the previous processes before the referendum, the referendum of Southern Sudan and the Abyei referendum failure provided the basis of the origins of the post-referendum and the post-independence issues. These issues are responsible for the dilemmas faced by the two states and eventually the tensions and the threats to a return to war which exist up to the present. All these issues lie at the heart of the difficulties of the conflict resolution process and the relationship problem of North and South Sudan. However, the 2005 CPA had partial success in that it achieved partial negative peace which in turn led to the separation of north and south Sudan.

Liberia emerged from 14 years of brutal civil conflict, demobilized and “reintegrated” large numbers of ex-combatants, but there are still concerns about ex-combatants’ re-engagement in violence. Yet, adequate knowledge and empirical evidence about this are still sketchy. Qualitative fieldwork among ex-combatants conducted in five locations in Monrovia from 2012-2013, suggests that ex-combatants are re-marginalized. This research presents excombatants’ current status, their re-marginalization, and factors indicative of their re-engagement in violence in post-conflict Liberia. The study contends that ex-combatants were apparently not satisfied with the outcome of the DDRR programme, as it failed to reintegrate them successfully. The study developed a four dimensional analytical framework that includes, (a) re-marginalization (b) re-criminalization (c) exploitation, and (d) economic insecurity, which are then applied to the outcome of the reintegration of ex-combatants in Liberia. On the basis of the data collected in fieldwork, the analytical framework reveals how these factors and dynamics interacted and facilitated the occurrence of violence. The study argues that an awareness of ex-combatants’ vulnerability and re-marginalization should put state actors in a position to better predict their violent inclinations. It further notes that ex-combatant re-engagement in violence is largely manifested at the political and economic levels and this has the potential to lead to a renewed conflict if not mitigated. This study by no means completes the tasks of research and analysis on violence and excombatants, but it outlines theoretical propositions and conclusions, which can hopefully spark further debate and collective efforts among researchers to push this field of study forward.

This thesis aims to contribute to an understanding of how citizenship is constructed, sensed and practiced by people who have experienced violent conflict and displacement. In the Acholi region of Uganda, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) created large-scale insecurity and mass-displacement between the late 1980s until the region returned to stability in 2006. In this thesis I compare two conflict-affected locations in the Acholi region with one non-affected location in Lango region. The overall proposition of this study is that the experience of protracted conflict and displacement leads to a lack of a sense of citizenship and to diminished forms of citizen engagement, due to the limited opportunity for learning and experiencing the practice of citizenship. I used qualitative research methods during ten months of fieldwork in 2010. For an analysis of people's sense of citizenship, I studied how people perceive and feel themselves to be members of the wider political community; as members of the Acholi tribe and as citizens of Uganda. For the analysis of the practice of citizenship I studied various forms of citizen engagement: with local authorities, in community institutions, for development and for accountability purposes. Numerous challenges to citizen participation exist across Uganda. These include a lack of knowledge about the system and lack of self-confidence, barriers associated with the micropolitics of participation, and democratic deficits of the overall political system. However, underlying reasons for non-participation can vary. In Acholi, some of these reasons are attributable to people's experiences during the war. I conclude that protracted conflict diminishes a sense of citizenship and radically changes the social environment in which active citizenship is learnt, through the narrowing and securitisation of institutions and the public sphere. The sense and practice that exist in the post-conflict situation are therefore characterised by certain ideas, perceptions, emotions and behaviours that were developed during the conflict.

Colombia's protracted civil war between Marxist insurgencies and the state has brought grave consequences for the civilian population and the prospects for constructing a viable political community in the country. With up to 5 million internally displaced people, rampant impunity for perpetrators of crimes against humanity and human rights and International Humanitarian Law violations, dozens of politicians and countless members of the armed forces linked to paramilitary organizations, along with increasing social injustices and inequalities, Colombia presents a troubling social-political panorama that has led to what is often referred to as a profound social and institutional 'moral crisis'. Much discussion has centred on the question of achieving some degree of minimal moral and political consensus and 'collective conscience' to humanize and slowly transform the conflict at local, regional and national levels. However, the philosophical and political parameters of this discussion have been and continue to be set firmly within variants of the liberal tradition which, it is argued, does not provide the necessary resources for adequately conceptualizing the problem and conceiving the task of addressing conflict, constructing moral consensus, and seeking social and political coexistence. The thesis argues that the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre can provide such resources. MacIntyre provides a convincing account of the philosophical problems that underlie ongoing intractable disagreement and the conflicts it breeds, offering a philosophy that can inform and underpin efforts at social transformation, resistance, and coexistence as well as aiding the necessary task of social scientific research and analysis of the conflict. The thesis analyses the moral dimensions of the conflict in light of MacIntyre's philosophy but also critically explores the adequacy of his politics of local community for the Colombian context. MacIntyre argues that a rational political community can only be constructed through the praxis of local communities engaging in shared moral-political deliberation. Through an empirical case study of a Constituent Assembly process in a rural community that has suffered the impacts of armed conflict for decades, the thesis explores an attempt at constructing peaceful social and political coexistence in light of MacIntyre's moral-sociological framework.

As developed throughout the dissertation's chapters, I combined a number of different and interconnected agendas with the overall goal being to strengthen and revitalize the field of conflict resolution and peacebuilding research in a number of ways. First, I critiqued the past and current peacebuilding literature in order to present its theoretical, methodological and substantive gaps and inadequacies. Second, I argued for a recognition of the interconnectedness of methodology, reflexivity and knowledge/power in general, and more specifically within the peacebuilding literature. Third, my theoretical and methodological framework constituted a distinctive exemplar for conflict resolution and peacebuilding that begins to ground our research questions, methodologies and discourses as situated knowledges within relations of power. Fourth, I argued academic peacebuilding discourses and practices are not neutral but inherently involved in larger social relations. Fifth, I presented the critical narratives from the locality of Indigenous and non-Indigenous grassroots activists in order to shift the spotlight of peacebuilding discourses and practices onto the transformative possibilities of grassroots community-based peace building. I continued with a reformulated theorization of grassroots community peacebuilding as alternative geographies of knowledge, place-based practices and counter-narratives, important in themselves, and as part of a glocality of bottom-up transformative change. Finally, I conclude with a call for a renewing of the field of Conflict resolution and Peacebuilding based on social justice and community-based praxis.

The question of what agenda drives NGO peacebuilding in post-conflict setting has been raised in a number of literatures which make generalized conclusions that NGOs tend to respond to the liberal peace agenda, and in the process co-opt local peacebuilding initiatives. Liberal peace agenda refers to the post-conflict peacebuilding approach based on the promotion of democracy, economic liberalization, human rights and the rule of law. As such, NGOs are seen as privatizing peacebuilding, marginalizing local initiatives and applying unsustainable approaches to peacebuilding in post-conflict contexts. Provoked by these assertions, I conducted field research in northern Uganda, which up to 2006 had experienced 22 years of conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and Government of Uganda (GOU). I contend in my findings that while to some extent the generalized observations made by liberal peace critics are true, they fail to fully engage with the micro aspects of post-conflict peacebuilding. The macro-analytic assertions of the liberal peace critics ignore the plurality of the NGO peacebuilding practice, the diverse internal organizational culture, and the complexities and diversities of the contextual dynamics of post-conflict settings. My research was based on a micro level analysis and demonstrated that the peacebuilding process in northern Uganda was interactive, and, as such, engendered diverse encounters of sense-making, relationship building and co-construction of peacebuilding discourse and practice between NGOs, donors and local community. The study shows that peacebuilding was essentially relational and developed through a process of relational constructionism, which denotes social processes of reality construction based on relational encounters.

In the last fifteen years, conflict resolution, a collaborative, problem-solving approach to social conflicts, was introduced to new democracies in an attempt to develop civil society's capacity for conflict management (Mayer, 2000). Conflict resolution provides people with an opportunity to advocate effectively for their own interests in a non-violent, constructive manner through systematic educational efforts, skills trainings, dialogue initiatives, and mediation practices (Mayer, 2000). It empowers people to address, manage, and transform difficulties and antagonism into a source of positive social change and, thus, change people's negative psychological responses to conflicts (Bush & Folger, 1994). In this view, conflict resolution in new democracies' civil society provides citizens as well NGO practitioners with the skills and opportunities to practice how to express and resolve differences in a safe and constructive environment (Shonholtz, 1997). In an effort to provide additional information about civil society's conflict resolution practices and their affect in new democracies, this dissertation examines the existing efforts of South Korean civil society organisations to promote conflict resolution methodologies. Specifically, three organisations are examined to understand better South Korean civil society's response to PCR issues. Furthermore, by closely examining these three civil society organisations, this dissertation aims to explore what affect increased awareness and engagement in conflict resolution methodologies have on the democratic quality of civil society.

In this thesis I develop a critical theory of public participation and deliberation in post-communist Romania. Primarily, this theory is developed from a critical assessment of two intermediate-level Romanian institutions: the deliberative system that has formed to debate the authorisation of a proposed gold mining project in Roșia Montana, Romania and the legitimacy claims of the series of hybrid forums that were convened as part of that project's Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The hybrid forum legitimacy claims were assessed based on a standard of hybrid forum legitimacy developed in this thesis from deliberative democracy theory and practice. Grounded in new institutionalism theory, this thesis describes the historical and contemporary socio-economic conditions that have shaped Romanian public participation and deliberation.

This thesis considers the extent to which decentralisation in the Republic of Macedonia between 2005 and 2012 has been effective in reducing ethnic inequalities that exacerbate social divisions and can lead to conflict. Guided by the concept of horizontal inequalities, it identifies the factors which influenced the decision to devolve responsibilities to the municipalities after 2001. It examines the particular institutional design that Macedonian decentralisation took, and demonstrates how its use of local power-sharing mechanisms was intended to address the concerns of the Albanian and Macedonian communities simultaneously. This thesis takes an integrative approach to studying the political, administrative, and fiscal dimensions of decentralisation's implementation, and considers whether the reform has indeed contributed to the reduction of inequalities between Macedonia's ethnic groups. Where decentralisation's potential has not been reached, obstacles to its successful implementation are identified. While decentralisation alone may be unable to address all of the grievances raised by the Albanian community prior to 2001, this thesis argues that the reform has the potential to address many of the horizontal inequalities that were responsible for raising inter-ethnic tensions during the 1990s. However, decentralisation in Macedonia between 2005 and 2012 has only been partial, and advances in the administrative and political aspects of the reform have been undermined by limited progress in its fiscal dimension. Attempts to solve self-determination conflicts through decentralisation will fail if local self-governance exists only in form but not in substance.

This dissertation examines the nexus of complexity theory and peace education and its implications for developing educational praxis that engages with the demands of global complexity. In this thesis, I argue that as societies become more globalized and complex (global complexity) there is an onus upon education to adapt its methods so people can understand the workings of these processes better and further develop the ethical and creative resources needed for responding to system dynamics effectively. My central thesis is that the most appropriate way to do this is to use methods that are congruent with the subject matter of global complexity - that is to align one's pedagogy with one's subject area. This dissertation therefore investigates the situated and contingent responses of peace educators working in the field to the challenges and opportunities that arise when attempting to adapt to local/global dynamics. It utilizes ethnography, narrative inquiry, and autoethnography and draws its data from interviews with over 50 educators in India, Japan, and the US. This research demonstrates that when engaging with global complexity, peace educators adapt both their ontological understanding and methodological orientation in ways congruent at times with the insights of complexity theory. While this understanding can be at odds with mass educational methodologies, this tension also is a touchstone for peace educator's creative formulation of novel praxis in response to the demands of global complexity. This dissertation thus examines some of the possibilities for learning within complex knowledge production systems and highlights the need for further research into the dynamics and processes at play within global educational 'networks'.