Conclusion – everyday struggles for a hybrid peace

Roland Bleiker

pp. 293-309

in: Oliver P. Richmond, Audra Mitchell (eds), Hybrid forms of peace, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

The task of writing concluding remarks to this volume is as much as pleasure as it is a challenge. For one, it is impossible to summarize these conceptually sophisticated and empirically rich chapters. I will not even try. Nor will I attempt to understand liberal peace in all its various hybrid forms. The authors already offer numerous innovative takes on how peacebuilding missions in all parts of the world – driven largely by western and liberal–democratic values – frequently clash with the needs, aspirations and actual lives of the people affected by conflict. These clashes have been left under-examined and all too often unaddressed by a policy-making community preoccupied with the grand architecture of liberal peacebuilding and the often abstract principles they embody: the creation of a post-conflict order through security, market economics, rule of law and democratization.