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To effectively challenge the bland determinism of liberal peace intervention models, scholars and practitioners have called for more courageous and creative peacebuilding approaches. In support of this agenda, the article offers a critical reading of transitional justice scholarship to elucidate the co-constitutive function between the politicization of emotions, their attempted socialization, and the perpetuation of liberal rationalities in transitions to justice and peace. Mobilizing the feminist concept of "uptake" it argues that the liberal vision of peace and its implicit biases toward negative emotions are retained and reproduced in the temporal, institutional, and ideological dimensions of liberal interventions. With its focus on the micro-level, the concept of "uptake" can help us to observe how they shape the emerging emotional environment in transitions. It foregrounds how dominant visions of order assert themselves by providing pragmatic opportunities for reasonable courses of action to shape people's grievances—thus stifling their potential to inform more challenging practices and conversations. The article aims to support the emergence of a more diverse language and culture of peace by illustrating what a sensitivity for the power of uptake entails and how it can be mobilized to creatively confront the limits of a (neo)liberal vision of peace.

Cambodia's changing relations with the so-called "international community", including the European Union's decision to partially withdraw Cambodia's preferential trade benefits and the closure of the Swedish Embassy in 2020, have given rise to concerns about Cambodia's impending break with the West and tilt towards China. This article examines how Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has negotiated public concerns about the adjustments in international support from donor countries and institutions, particularly following the 2018 elections. Through an examination of his speeches since the early 2000s, this article argues that one of Hun Sen's key rhetorical strategies is his sustained engagement with an inherent paradox of "the international community": the possibility for actors to become morally excluded from, but remain structurally integrated in, the international community. Six themes he thereby developed inform his nationalist message about the advantages arising from the changing nature of Cambodia's international cooperation, in which Cambodia is able to engage the world on an equal footing with other countries while free of any constraints imposed by its international donors. In this vision, the international order becomes a "sphere of opportunity", rather than a "sphere of scrutiny", for Cambodia. (Contemp Southeast Asia/GIGA)

AbstractThe international community is as ubiquitous as it is elusive and its universalist pretensions remain unchallenged in political and academic discourse. In response, this article turns to Bottici's work on political myths. Against the notion of myths as falsehoods, we argue that they create their own sphere of shared social and political reality. The analysis centres on the case of Cambodia, a country that served as an experiment of liberal interventionism. It draws on archival and field research on two consecutive international interventions, a review of public statements by international actors, and interviews with Cambodian actors and activist. We argue that to understand the ideas actors use to orient themselves as they press for change, it is necessary to consider how decades of engagement with the myth have shaped the political imaginary. Our empirical analysis points to three different phases in the use of the myth: Its production during UNTAC, the reinforcement of its narratives through subsequent legal, aid and development interventions, and finally its contemporary use in a post-liberal context. We observe that Cambodian actors increasingly engage the myth to question the terms of transnational cooperation for democracy. Our work has implications for assessments of the legacies of liberal peacebuilding.

While the 'emotion turn' has emerged as an influential analytical lens in International Relations (IR), there is not yet a well-developed understanding of the role that emotions play in facilitating or inhibiting peace. This special issue of Cooperation and Conflict engages with the analytical potential of emotions and the promise this perspective holds for innovative analyses of peace processes and peacebuilding. To demonstrate the political significance of emotions to peace, the contributors explore how emotions shape the bounds and boundaries of actors and alliances committed to fostering peaceful societies. This introductory article offers possible avenues to leverage the analytical potential of IR's emotions agenda to engage with peace and peacebuilding. First, we discuss how the emotions agenda contributes to the conversation about what peace is and should look like. Second, we argue that emotions can help us to articulate peace as an embodied knowledge of complex socio-political relations and power dynamics. To visualize 'peace' without the permanent contrast of violence, we mobilize this perspective to illuminate actors' practices and the constraints they face in the pursuit of a peaceful political order. Third, we discuss what an emotions agenda for peace might entail for critical and constructive peacebuilding studies.

This editorial is a call for radical work that deconstructs and creatively reimagines intervention and statebuilding discourses, processes, practices and tools. For over two decades, critics of liberal interventionism have advocated for the need to rethink its dominant top-down and state centric logics. We now see a new generation of scholars that mobilize feminist, marxist, queer, or decolonial theories to critically engage with the ongoing transformation of the post-liberal order. Interventions and statebuilding processes are key to these changes. As scholars and practitioners, we have an opportunity to partake in shaping emerging visions and nurture hope in complex times.