Civil Society and Peacebuilding: Book Launch with Thania Paffenholz

On March 11, 2011, ICAR hosted Dr. Thania Paffenholz to discuss her newest publication, “Civil Society and Peacebuilding: A Critical Assessment.”  ICAR Professor Dennis Sandole gave an introduction, praising Paffenholz’s work in the Peacebuilding field in general, and especially focusing on the benefits, both for academics and practitioners, of these newest findings.  After these words, Dr. Paffenholz began a presentation on Civil Society and Peacebuilding, the impetus for the book, the research approach, findings, and policy implications for the field.

Paffenholz’s study was based on the idea of a meta-analysis, using a common analytical framework.  Research teams carried out case studies in twelve countries: Guatemala, Afghanistan, Turkey, Cyprus, Israel/Palestine, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, Nigeria, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Projects analyzed the role of local and national civil society actors in each region, and lasted from 2005 to 2010.  Paffenholz and her team then carried out a comparative assesment of all results collected, including identifying the functions of civil society actors in peacebuilding, assessing the relevance of all of these functions across phases of conflict, and analyzing their effectiveness.  Results are presented both in terms of conclusions for single cases, as well as large-scale-cross-case conclusions and policy implications.

Perhaps the most interesting result of Paffenholz’s study is, in her own words, that it “contradicts a main paradigm in peacebuilding:” that of the middle-out apprach, popularized by the Conflict Transformation school.  Paffenholz’s case study results did not support or confirm the importance of track two peacebuilding approaches in triggering action on tracks one and three.  Instead, she concludes that the success of peacebuilding efforts is not dependent on these tracks, but instead on the phases of the conflict during which these efforts take place, the context, and the ways in which such initiatives are planned and implemented.   On the basis of these findings, Paffenholz’s work calls for a new approach to peacebuilding, where context is seen as the main starting point, and the relevance of different functions is assessed long before proper actors are determined, which ever level they may fall into. 

Although Paffenholz jokingly said that she’d already informed John Paul Lederach that he should take the responsibility of infoming members of the peacebuilding field of his mistakes in focusing so heavily on the importance of track two peacebuilding, she does see very serious policy implications inherent in her findings, and hopes that they may lead both to further research and to some shifts in our approach to practice.  Paffenholz’s talk was warmly received by the ICAR community, who engaged in further disscussion over both the nature of the research and its implications, following her talk.  There is no doubt that this will shortly become a text of great importance for our field.