Suchergebnisse

This working paper offers a perspective on contemporary
debates about state-formation, contributing to
ongoing thinking about the role of conflict and specifically
civil war in the emergence of different kinds of
political orders.
Based on a reconceptualization of the likely nature
of the linkages between civil war and political order,
the working paper develops a set of potential causal
pathways linking common conditions of civil war
to likely wartime changes in the political settlement
and state institutions. In doing so, it aims to provide
an organising framework for future research to explore
conditions under which different pathways predominate
and aims to offer an analytical tool to policy makers
and researchers to consider potential impacts and
consequences of violent conflict in contexts of concern.

This paper considers aspects of the relationship between policies promoting private sector investment and growth, and policies consolidating peace. It covers post-conflict transitions where external authorities play a major role. A core contemporary peacebuilding policy assumption is that stimulating economic recovery is vital to sustaining political settlements and social cohesion. Yet how do we respond when policies to stimulate investment and imperatives to consolidate peace lead to contradictory choices? The paper considers framing investment-promotion activities as quasi-regulatory in nature, given that external actors are shaping and influencing private sector impacts on peacebuilding. It reflects on ideas of "transitionalism" as a distinctive policy mindset during exceptional recovery periods. It addresses three questions: (1) what is distinctive about transitional approaches to influencing the ways that business actors may impact peacebuilding (compared with "routine" developmental settings)? (2) What is distinctive about promoting conflict-sensitive business activity and investment, and how might this require different priorities? (3) What is the proper balance in transitional policymaking between attracting investment to capital-starved settings, and requiring investment to be responsible? (author's abstract)

Between 1867 and 1996, approximately 150,000
Aboriginal students went through one of 135 residential schools located across Canada. These schools were created and supported by both the Canadian government and churches. Though the outward goal of the Indian Residential School system had been to educate Aboriginal children, in reality the system was fraught with problems including systemic abuse, neglect, and poor quality of the education. The effects have been
long lasting and profound, and continue to be felt today. In 2008, a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) was launched with the goals of gathering the testimony of former students, determining the complete history of the residential school system, and offer recommendations to aid in the road to reconciliation. In June 2015, the Canadian TRC published a summary of its final report on the Indian Residential School system. The report includes 94 recommendations and describes the Indian Residential School system as cultural
genocide. This paper examines the resistance to the
TRC by both the Canadian government and by Aboriginal Peoples. It argues that the government resisted in order to maintain its narrative of its relationship Aboriginal Peoples, and did so by making it difficult for the TRC to acquire the required documents and archival files. It will also argue that Aboriginal resistance can be explained by a lack of trust in the Canadian government, a sense of re-victimization, and the conception of the TRC.

"Considering the value of archives for dealing with the past processes, especially for the establishment of collective memory and identity, this paper discusses the role of archives in situations of conflicting memories such as in the case of the official Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide. A crucial problem of Turkish-Armenian reconciliation are the divergent perceptions of what to consider as proper 'evidence', i.e. as
objective, reliable, impartial or trustworthy sources of knowledge in order to prove the Armenian genocide. The aim of this paper is to show how in a general atmosphere of distrust or prejudiced credibility judgments, even technically reliable archival records will be perceived as unreliable and biased, lacking any evidentiary status to factually prove a genocide which is categorically denied. Therefore, this working paper discusses how claims to reliability, objectivity and other similar scientifically and epistemically relevant
attributes are understood in archival science as well as memory studies, and emphasizes the problems
related to their instrumentalization by political actors within the context of genocide denialism. The Turkish-Armenian context promises many important empirical as well as theoretical insights on the uses and misuses of these attributes, suggesting that measures ought to be taken beforehand to decrease intergroup prejudice and distrust toward the 'other', so that archives can be effective in the truth-finding process." (author's abstract)

Mediators are expected to include or uphold a growing number of norms in their interventions. For instance, inclusivity, gender equality, transitional justice, democracy promotion and the implementing instruments that accompany them are increasingly incorporated into the strategies of international and regional organizations, states and non-state actors that mandate mediation missions in conflicts around the world. This working paper takes one step back and asks whether mediators actually can, or have the agency to, promote these norms. It presents the analytical framework of a three-year multi-case research project on the role of mediators in norm diffusion. It examines what norms form part of the framework for mediation processes, if mediators promote these norms and how and what norms are internalized in the peace process. Through process-tracing, the research project will apply this analytical framework to mediation processes in Syria, South Sudan and Myanmar.