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AbstractOver the last two decades, there has been a 'democratic turn' in peace and conflict research, that is, the peculiar impact of democratic politics on a wide range of security issues has attracted more and more attention. Many of these studies are inspired by Immanuel Kant's famous essay on 'Perpetual Peace'. In this article, we present a critical discussion of the 'democratic distinctiveness programme' that emerged from the Democratic Peace debate and soon spread to cover a wider range of foreign policy issues. The bulk of this research has to date been based on an overly optimistic reading of a 'Kantian peace'. In particular, the manifold forms of violence that democracies have exerted, have been treated either as a challenge to the Democratic Peace proposition or as an undemocratic contaminant and pre-democratic relict. In contrast, we argue that forms of 'democratic violence' should no longer be kept at arm's length from the democratic distinctiveness programme but instead should be elevated to a main field of study. While we acknowledge the benefits of this expanding research programme, we also address a number of normative pitfalls implied in this scholarship such as lending legitimacy to highly questionable foreign policy practices by Western democracies. We conclude with suggestions for a more self-reflexive and 'critical' research agenda of a 'democratically turned' peace and conflict studies, inspired by the Frankfurt school tradition.

This paper discusses security and development issues in Europe's recent history and immediate future. The issue is how the security system affects the pattern of economic development and, conversely, the long-run effects of development on security. To understand this relationship a longer historical perspective is needed. Too much attention has been given to the EC `1992 project' compared to the more unplanned `integration' or political homogenization of greater Europe. Three distinct phases in terms of security orders are distinguished: the Hundred Years' Peace (1815-1914), the Cold War security system (1949-89) and an emerging system called the New European Security Order. We are at present entering a turbulent transition period in which several paths are open. A number of risk factors are identified and analysed. The way the security order is established and immediate security crises managed will influence the possibilities of developing a stable peace order, defined as a structure free from major contradictions and low conflict propensity. A European Peace Order, as distinct from a European Security Order, would presuppose a global peace order, the crucial feature of which will be regionalization on various levels of the world system in accordance with the model of `benign mercantilism', including Europe itself, where subregionalism may emerge as a new form of balance of power politics as an alternative to Pax Germanica.

Mediation is a popular process to prevent conflicts over common resources, but there is little clean insight into its effectiveness and mechanisms. Our experimental approach allows for a comprehensive analysis of third-party intervention into potential conflicts and circumvents key problems linked to the analysis of field data. A mediator who credibly threatens punishment in the case of uncooperative behavior achieves the efficient solution in most cases. Similar results are obtained even if the mediator is biased toward one party or has no incentive to intervene. When cooperation fails, communication without credible punishment threats leads to particularly low payouts for the "losing" party.

"Explaining how and why there are such diverging outcomes of UN peace negotiations and treaties, this book offers a detailed examination of peace processes in order to demonstrate that how treaties are negotiated and written significantly impacts their implementation. Drawing on case studies from the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars, Miranda Melcher demonstrates the critical importance of specificity in peace treaties in understanding implementation outcomes for military integration. Based on unique primary source data, including interviews with key actors who have participated in peace treaty negotiations, as well as thousands of previously unassessed UN archival documents, the book offers new insights and policy recommendations for key details whose presence or absence can have a significant impact on how peace processes unfold"--

Abstract
Conflicts globally have reportedly declined even though the number of African countries plagued by internal cross border strife has increased. Given this trend, the African peace and security architecture has evolved considerably over the past decade, culminating in the award of the Nobel Peace Prize – to one of the key actors in peace-making process, Ahmed Abiy Ali. Hence, this paper explores how the inter-state conflicts in Africa, such as the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict, reflect some colonial continuities of violence. We, therefore, stipulate the justification for the Nobel Peace Prize to illustrate how norms evolve, and further, how identities are constituted in peace-making. This, we argue, is parallel to other situations in African countries as manifested through identity, legitimacy, and authority in shaping political decisions, within the mutually constitutive relationships between agents and political structures. The paper, therefore, situates the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea into the African context using a model of the decisive action by Abiy, with limited Western influence towards peace, hence providing rationale for subaltern voices and indigenous peace processes in Africa.

el presente trabajo, el primero de dos entregas, trae a colación investigaciones y reflexiones teóricas que dan cuenta de las experiencias de diversos países que han desarrollado procesos transicionales, teniendo como centro de análisis el proceso de reparación a las víctimas. Es importante anotar que la perspectiva psicosocial constituye el punto de referencia desde el cual se lleva a cabo la revisión y que, en congruencia con ésta, se hace especial énfasis en aquellos estudios que han dado protagonismo a la voz, percepción y significación de las personas víctimas en torno a los fenómenos aquí abordados

This article analyzes the circumstances under which conflict leads to the outbreak of war using a formal model which incorporates both the redistribution of resources as an alternative to war and imperfect information. Countries act as rational agents concerned with both consumption and the public bad of a war. In the first period both countries can either consume or build arms, whereas in the second period there can be either the threat or the use of force to reallocate resources. If both countries are fully informed, then there will be no war but rather a voluntary redistribution of resources. In a situation of asymmetric information, however, in which one country is fully informed and the other is not, a war can occur if the uninformed country uses a separating equilibrium strategy, precommitting itself to a positive probability of war in order to prevent bluffing by the informed country.