Promoting Peace? The Past, Present, and Future of International Interventions

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

When do international interventions promote peace? Through diverse methodological approaches and case studies spanning the world, this panel of five papers examines how the broad array of international interventions has -- and has not -- supported weak states in the past, and how it can improve those efforts in the future. In the first paper, by Annamaria Prati, explores a community-level statebuilding project by the United Nations in post-civil war Nepal. Priscilla Torres further investigates local peace promotion in a study on community dispute resolution mechanisms in Liberia. As Cameron Mailhot shows in the third paper, the United Nations and regional organizations can also help formally support the peace process, especially when the peace agreements and the peace enforcement process are disaggregated into their individual processes. Despite these three highlighted possibilities for effective peace promotion, the practical experience of international interventions tells us that these success stories can be elusive. Desh Girod reviews historical works to highlight the racial and imperial histories of foreign aid and the roles of multilateral institutions, arguing that the mechanisms of foreign aid maintained global structural inequalities. In the final paper, Susanna Campbell and coauthors Naazneen Barma and Aila Matanock reconceptualizes statebuilding as a core and central feature of international relations for the past three decades, encouraging scholars to reconsider the importance of statebuilding efforts in foreign policy.

Sub Unit

• Division 17: International Collaboration

Individual Presentations

• Building State Capacity Locally: The United Nations in Nepal - Annamaria Prati, Washington University in St. Louis

• When International Missions Enforce Peace Agreements - Cameron Mailhot, University of Arizona

• Why Aid Fails: Rethinking Donor-Recipient Dynamics - Desh Girod, Georgetown University

• Statebuilding as International Relations - Susanna Campbell, American University; Naazneen Barma, University of Denver; Aila M. Matanock, University of California-Berkeley

Chair

• Sabrina Karim Cornell University

Discussants

• Michael Kriner Cornell University

• Lindsey Pruett Louisiana State University