During the 21st century, peace processes have been stagnating, collapsing, or reversed across diverse contexts. At the heart of this unravelling lies a complex and hitherto overlooked phenomenon: the systematic obstruction of peace itself. Counter-Peace: Tactical Blockages to Peace and Strategic Risks for the International System introduces the concept of counter-peace: a set of interconnected, multi-scalar processes that undermine, distort, or reverse peace processes without nece...

This book investigates why peace and reform processes across the world have recently been stagnating or have become blocked. They have failed to maintain security, rights, development, and justice in the liberal international order. The book identifies the related rise of counter-peace processes at the heart of failed peacemaking efforts, and explores the implications for an emerging multi-polar order where local and international tools for peace and reform appear to be ineffective. Across...

This book examines the political and legal challenges of regional governance of the 28 countries of the European Union and the 48 in the Council of Europe. The contributions, dilemmas, and moral hazards from this record of nearly seven decades of regional inter-governmental institutions has kept the peace, but produced episodes of crisis from overstretching jurisdictions, thematically and geographically. Polarization between nationalist and integrative forces has displaced the idealistic a...

In this handbook, a diverse range of leading scholars consider the social, cultural, economic, political, and developmental underpinnings of peace. This handbook is a much-needed response to the failures of contemporary peacebuilding missions and narrow disciplinary debates, both of which have outlined the need for more interdisciplinary work in International Relations and Peace and Conflict studies. Scholars, students, and policymakers are often disillusioned with universalist and norther...