Peacebuilding’s Origins and History

Abstract

A quarter of a century has passed since peacebuilding entered the UN’s lexicon in An Agenda for Peace of 1992. The concept had antecedents that can be dated to peace between ancient city states, more recently to nineteenth-century free traders, empire builders, and Kantian ideas of international peace. The ideological and actual power of ‘liberal’states grew in the twentieth century, reacting to devastation and informed by ideas about democratic peace and security communities. But given the mixed results, why has modern peacebuilding survived? Frequently and heavily critiqued, increasingly on foundational grounds, perhaps liberal internationalism reached its apogee ahead of rising nationalism in the US and elsewhere. Four interlinked facets are offered: the naming of a void in response to demands for intervention; the post-Cold War occasion and momentum for institutional expansion; a hard-core ‘good governance’ prescription; and the management of contradictions in neoliberal globalization. From the start, however, peacebuilding contained contradictions which obstructed its original aims to address root causes and social justice. While peacebuilding authorities signalled humanitarian and justice imperatives, the undertaking reflected competitive power and its neoliberal practices also cultivated struggle, especially in the sphere of political economy.