ABSTRACT This article engages with the role of ‘the local’ in international peacebuilding, using two cases where peace was achieved after extreme violence: Somaliland, and North and East Syria (NES). We explore how local actors understand the violence that they overcame and find that in both places, they emphasise the violence of international structures and norms. We show that where problem-solving scholarship advocates ‘turning local’ to locate the sources of durable peace, local peacebuilders also advocate ‘turning international’ to locate the sources of ongoing violence.

ABSTRACT This article explains why local perceptions of international interventions in Mali have changed so drastically over time. Based on an analysis of data collected in the Mali-meter surveys and op-eds published in the local news media from 2012 to 2022, we argue that the duration of the missions plays an important role in people's increasing disillusionment with international assistance. The longer international interventions last, the more their legitimacy among local actors diminishes and the higher people's initial hopes for a positive impact of these missions, the more critical they become if the interventions fail to deliver on their promises.

ABSTRACT Looking back at mundane cooperation between Armenians and Azerbaijanis at the Sadakhlo market in Georgia, this article asks why international actors were unwilling and/or unable to effectively support this everyday peace formation. By applying political economic perspectives on peacebuilding, it argues that disconnects between neo-liberal projects and everyday peace agency on the ground were related to intervening actors’ lack of reflexivity and an inability to explore, understand, and accommodate the relevance of situated knowledge and informal relationalities of petty traders. The authors articulate the need for changes in knowledge production and alternative economic approaches to support everyday peace agency.

ABSTRACT Traditional and Indigenous peacemaking has largely been sidelined in post-liberal discussions of peacebuilding, thanks in part to the debate’s early focus on structural power, liberation and hybridity. While later discussions have emphasized self-determination, resilience and the existence of a plurality of peaces, they continue to overlook the role of multiple axes of difference in peacemaking. To address these interrelated gaps, this article calls for a more balanced approach that combines critique with reflexivity, deepens engagement with ethnographic studies of place-based social orderings, and proactively examines difference in peacemaking through what I call trans-local and transdisciplinary co-learning for peace from below.

ABSTRACT This article challenges the peace- and statebuilding reflex towards integrating hitherto excluded people into development and markets. What is missing, it argues, is an understanding of the adverse terms by which local populations and communities are already incorporated into systems that are exploitative. Applying an ‘adverse incorporation’ analytical frame to a community of small farmers in Tunisia, it shows how local tensions and grievances are rooted in the interfacing of renewed marketisation at the national level with longer running trajectories of development and change at the local level whose terms may already be unpopular or contested.

ABSTRACT This article interrogates how state officials can influence peace agreement implementation on the ground, focusing on Colombian local-level bureaucrats involved in the implementation of the 2016 peace agreement. Integrating rarely appreciated insights from public administration into peacebuilding research, it presents unique survey and complementary qualitative evidence generated through long-term research on-site (2021–2023). The article argues that, despite legal, institutional and administrative constraints, Colombian state officials significantly shape the inclusivity of the sub-national implementation process and support community actors to varying degrees and in diverse ways. Therefore, it advocates for greater attention to state officials in peacebuilding research more generally.

ABSTRACT Despite calls for enhanced international cooperation in building sustainable peace in post-conflict countries, previous studies highlight coordination problems rather than exploring what forms of field cooperation exist. This article examines the coordination efforts of international and state actors in peacebuilding following the 2016 peace agreement in Colombia. Interviews conducted in Bogotá in 2023 with a number of international and government actors reveal challenges but also map examples of top-down and bottom-up coordination efforts. The study questions the feasibility of increased international coordination, suggesting instead pragmatic adjustments based on practices from the field to enhance post-accord peacebuilding efficiency and effectiveness.

ABSTRACT Peacekeeping missions have sought to contribute to local development, stability, and peace by building ‘sustainable’ infrastructure for co- and post-use by local communities. Yet, the unsuccessful handover of infrastructure at the end of the AU-UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) revealed the contested nature of such a planning process that precedes mission exit. Focusing on the material aspects of the ‘transition’, this article exposes the ambivalent logics that accompany contemporary peace operations. Peace operations' pursuit of sustainability during the closing phase might inadvertently maintain their grip on the landscapes that belong to communities for a post-peacekeeping future.

ABSTRACT Peacemaking policy commonly advances the notion that peace processes unfold across multiple ‘tracks’ that are linked and that complement each other, and that this to fosters greater inclusivity. The policy discourse surrounding what we term the ‘multitrack-inclusion nexus’ thus transports a highly ideal-typical and ‘neat’ understanding of how peace processes should unfold despite the messier practical realities of societies in conflict. In contrast, this Special Issue invites researchers and practitioners to move beyond the metaphor of tracks towards one of ‘patchworked peacemaking,’ which emphasises the interplay between the human, semiotic and material in efforts to end violence and mediate peace.

ABSTRACT Peace and conflict are not the same across territories and scales. Conceptualizing peace as a process based on three core functions of society and related norms – provision of security, participation and conflict transformation – allows us to identify variations in peacebuilding needs and perceptions. Methodologically, the article first develops a conceptual framework and then tests it with a case study of Colombia – a subnationally diverse country with a long history of violence and peacebuilding. The entanglement of different scales shapes the diversity of peace and highlights the opportunities and challenges of peacebuilding and related norms, along with their diffusion and contestation.