With its departure in the challenge of avoiding conflict-issues becoming politics, the present study merges the literatures on reconciliation and post-conflict politics, and asks why a difference in post-conflict political moderation can be observed in individuals. It uses questionnaire- and interview-material gathered in Mostar during spring 2013 to do a comparative case study, testing the hypothesis that reconciliation makes individuals more politically moderate with respect to war-related issues. Results in line with the hypothesis are found, and the relationship appears to be causal. However, the causal mechanism requires additional work, and the issue of confounders needs to be addressed by future studies to ensure robustness. In conclusion, with these caveats in mind, the answer to the question is that the level of reconciliation affects the levels of political moderation.

Countries emerging out of armed conflicts face immense challenges in their efforts to build electoral democracies. Contrary to our intuition that elections can transform violent competition to peaceful political contests, past research suggests that holding post-conflict elections only increases the chance of renewed violence. Why are elections unable to build sustainable democracies as expected? In this dissertation, I examine the question by focusing on two levels of analysis. First, I study the effects of violence on political behavior of mass publics at the individual level using the World Values survey Dataset. I argue that citizens are more inclined to support undemocratic leaders, when they are faced with threats from armed violence. Empirically, I find that presence of pre-election violence in post-conflict elections leads voters to prefer parties that are stronger in terms of their violence-wielding capacities over more moderate and peaceful parties. Second, I investigate how such an outcome might influence the risk of renewed conflicts in a country emerging out of armed conflict. The hypothesized mechanism can only be described as tragic. At individual level, fearful voters support violent parties mainly to maintain the status quo, fearing that parties with a violent reputation are likely to renew conflict if they lose the election. Tragically, however, placing undemocratic and violent parties in power only increases the likelihood of renewed conflicts. I test this expectation using an event history model to analyze all post-conflict countries from 1950 to 2010 and find that the presence of pre-election violence in a country increases its risk of renewed armed conflicts. The study has important implication for policymakers and election monitoring bodies. Rather than the current practice of observing only a single event Election Day, this study emphasizes the importance of creating a secure environment during the pre-election phase, about six months prior to the first election, in order to achieve a sustainable peace in post-conflict countries.

The transitioning of armed actors into political parties following a peace accord is not a new phenomenon and the debate for how we can facilitate such a transition is well explored. A grey area of the debate, however, concerns transitioned actors’ long-term commitment to peace, as relapses are known to have occurred on many occasions. How are successful transitions sustained and what are the facilitating mechanisms? Through a case study of Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland, this thesis aims to contribute to the very limited debate on the facilitation of peace continuity of transitioned actors. Interviews were conducted in Belfast during the fall of 2018. The present-time contextual changes posed by the United Kingdom exiting the European union, which endangers the 1998 peace agreement that helped facilitate Sinn Féin’s transition, provides a good case for studying the institutional resilience to violent relapse of a transitioned actor. The findings show that Sinn Féin display strong levels of institutional resilience, which can help the institution to abstain from relapses into violence caused by contextual changes such as Brexit.

Desde o fim da era das remoções, o foco de preocupação do Estado em relação às favelas tem se deslocado da urbanização para a violência, em especial para o tráfico de drogas. A militarização da questão da violência urbana se manifesta de forma definitiva com a inauguração das Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora nas comunidades carentes cariocas. A despeito dos aspectos positivos imediatos, a ausência de participação popular no processo de ocupação pelo Estado desses espaços segregados têm levantado preocupações, não apenas quanto à eficiência do programa em longo prazo, como também com a possibilidade de instauração de um Estado policial altamente repressivo. Esse trabalho analisa a utilização de mecanismos de gestão e planejamento democráticos como forma de aprimorar o programa de ocupação das favelas, partindo do pressuposto de que a participação política pode contribuir para a maximização dos direitos fundamentais. Para isso, estuda-se com profundidade a história dos atores políticos presentes nessas comunidades, além dos instrumentos existentes e possíveis no Direito Brasileiro para participação popular. Após a análise dos aspectos sociológicos e históricos que explicam a situação atual das favelas cariocas, ao fim, propõe-se um modelo de gestão democrática que aproveite ao máximo seu potencial de participação. / Since the end of the slums removals in Rio de Janeiro, the States main concern in these areas has changed from their urbanization to the issue of violence, especially the drug smuggling. The militarization of the urban violence showed its definite form by the installation of Peace-Making Police Units in poor communities in Rio de Janeiro. Despite immediate positive aspects, the lack of popular participation in the process of occupation of these segregated zones by the State has raised special concerns, not only about the long-term efficiency of the program, but also about the possibility of a highly repressive Police State. This dissertation analyzes the use of democratic administration and planning with the purpose of improving the program of occupation in the favelas, in accordance with the belief that wider political participation can facilitate a maximization of human rights. In order to do this, a detailed study of the history of the political players of these communities is made. Also, the existing and possible instruments of popular participation in Brazilian Law are presented. After the analysis of social and historic aspects that explains the current situation of Rios slums, the author proposes a model of democratic administration which takes maximal advantage of their participation potential.

It is the purpose of this study to propose that perceptions of peacebuilding activities in all tracks of divided societies (political, civil society leaders, and grassroots), and the perceptions of the collaboration between the tracks are essential processes to a sustainable peace agreement at the political level. This study will examine multi-track peacebuilding and the collaboration (or lack of it) between tracks in Cyprus. Additionally, it will analyze the perceptions of the necessity of collaboration across tracks. The analysis of this study is conducted in two phases: (1) analyzing interviews with Track One diplomats and examining previous and existing peacebuilding processes within Cyprus through observation, interviews, and analysis of existing studies; and (2) through student observations and interviews of the Cypriot populace on the perceptions of the conflict and peacebuilding collaborations among and across tracks. The results of this research indicate that there is a need for stronger connections between the political and societal level peacebuilding strategies in Cyprus for a sustainable peace agreement. Furthermore, the findings of this research suggest that multi-track collaboration should be added to Conflict Transformation Theory.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed February 11, 2010). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 681-712).

This study analyzes Colombia's current process of reintegrating former combatants into civil society. By employing four different citizenship perspectives constructed as ideal types it is shown how issues such as participation, political influence and the relation between rights and obligations are being addressed in the Colombian reintegration program. By relating these findings to current debates on the relation between security and development in DDR research, the study aims to reconcile the hitherto rather separated but yet intimately related discourses of DDR and citizenship. The analysis of the Colombian program gives a multifaceted picture of the country’s reintegration process where several citizenship perspectives are discerned in various and sometimes overlapping ways. Beyond contributing to an enhanced understanding of the Colombian process, the study illustrates the numerous ways in which diverging citizenship perspectives may be incorporated into a wider framework of peace and state-building and the potential tensions that are discerned in different approaches to DDR.

This work is a contextual study of five selected biblical texts from the Fourth Gospel: John 2:1-12 and John 19:25-29; John 4:1-42; John 11:1-12:1-11 and John 18:15-17. Its aim is to read the selected texts with a Rwandan woman’s eyes, focusing on her peacemaking role and her potential as an agent of reconciliation. It is motivated by the context of the Rwandan situation during and after the catastrophic genocide of 1994. This work seeks to open the eyes of Rwandan women toward the role of peacemaking and unity-building by using a combined approach to conflict resolution. This approach includes the application of some theories in the domain of sociology, as well as the contextual biblical approach. Thus, it combines the capacity of awareness of conflicts in the community and its pain in the victim, and strives to restore the broken relationship caused by the conflict. The reading of the biblical texts with Rwandan eyes and the dialogue with the texts pointed out that the women used some tools in the gospel for success in the role of peacemaking and peace-building in their communities. The main tools are listed in the data findings of the exegesis. But mainly the transcendence of conflictual myths of origin to with kinship ties was found to be a major tool for breaking the kind of barriers which could lead to genocide. This research also highlights the failure of women in that domain because of their lack of transcendence of obligations based on regional and kinship ties. They fail to display their ubumuntu and their ubunyampinga. They rather point fingers at the victims instead of siding with or shielding them. Various suggestions are made for women to play a successful role in bringing about true and lasting peace and reconciliation, pointing out some ways in which Rwandan women can help to restore unity and trust among the population. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

The rise of the Private Military Industry has been cemented in modern global political reality, but where next will this multi-billion dollar industry go and what form will it take after the market boom of Iraq? Post-Colonial Africa is considered the birthplace of the modern mercenary and historically features prominently as a testament to the potential for immoral privately sponsored military activities within unstable states. Moreover, it is a rich market that the Private Military Industry is increasingly turning its attention to, albeit focussing on support functions for now, but a massive industry with a competitive and poorly regulated market environment will invariably begin to explore different avenues as competition grows. With market diversification grows the ethical risk of abuse. At the same time, peacekeeping efforts across the continent are hampered by numerous factors, not least of all a chronic lack of trained personnel. Could the legal and political legitimacy, not to mention the sustainable market environment sought by the PMI potentially exist in multilaterally sanctioned, privatised peacekeeping and peace support operations in Africa? Can the ethical challenges of mercenarism be suspended or even bypassed for the sake of expedient intervention in potential genocides, or be perhaps pragmatically accepted as an inevitable development that should be embraced rather than condemned, for strategic security reasons? Can the ethical condemnation of the proposed means of peace support be overridden by the potential ends generated by such a move? Is the world ready for privatised peacekeepers? This dissertation explores the ethical background to the privatisation of military operations and how these foreign policy trends and social perceptions of control of force impact on the notion of privatised peacekeeping, particularly in the context of operations in Africa. It investigates the philosophical implications of privatised peacekeeping by way of a constrained pragmatic form of consequentialist evaluation that warns against reckless expediency. Ultimately, this dissertation offers a more philosophically suitable argument to justify and control this seemingly inevitable next step in the trend of privatisation of force. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2008. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-140). Also available via the World Wide Web.