B8539 - PEACEBUILDING AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Learning outcomes

The course provides students with tools to analyze the practice of conflict resolution, especially as emerged after the end of the Cold War, through a review of key theories, concepts and practices of international interventions aimed at peacekeeping and peacebuilding. At the end of the course, the student will be able to: - Identify and distinguish the different approaches to peacekeeping and interventions - Discuss the empirical aspects of international interventions, identifying strengths and weaknesses of different types of action - Connect different practices of peacekeeping and peacebuilding with changes in the international system and foreign policies

Course contents

As of exchange students: the course is open only to students (Erasmus, Turing, Overseas…) enrolled in Master’s level degrees).

This is a course based both on lectures and students’ participation and active engagement in class discussions and exercises. Its success depends on students being well prepared for each session.

It is divided into 2 main parts. The first section (16 hours) will introduce students to the key theoretical and analytical tools necessary to understand and critically evaluate the practice of conflict management and resolution – including the post-settlement peacebuilding phase – and its evolution. It will discuss the main peace intervention doctrines and the challenges encountered in their implementation. It will present and discuss the role of the key actors (above all states and international organizations) in different cases.

The second part of the course (12 hours) will take into consideration some contemporary cases. Students will apply concepts and theoretical tools to the analysis of Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, Syria and Ukraine. For this part students are divided into two groups and will attend one of the two weekly lectures (thus, as a whole students will attend a total of 28 hour of classes). Students are required to read the material in advance of the class meetings and be ready to engage with both the instructor and their peers. Attending students will also present and discuss a particular case in class. The instructor will explain and discuss expectations (and how to use the literature) with attending students prior to their class presentation and provide instructions on how to structure and organize the class presentations.

*Please note that the final version of the syllabus may contain few minor changes and will be uploaded on “Virtuale” shortly before the beginning of the semester

Readings/Bibliography

PART 1: Lectures

1. Introduction: Conflict and Peace Intervention in the International System

Required:

• P. Williams and Alex Bellamy, “Peace Operations in Global Politics,” & “Who Deploys Peace Operations,” respectively Ch. 1 & Ch. 2 in their Understanding Peacekeeping, Polity, 2021, third edition.
• Students should acquaint themselves with the UN Department of Peace Operations website (https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/department-of-peace-operations )

  2. Evaluating Peace Interventions

  Required:

• S. P. Boulanger Martel et (2024). “Peace with Adjectives: Conceptual Fragmentation or Conceptual Innovation,” International Studies Review, 26 (2).
• Roger McGinty & Pamina Firchow, “The Data Myth: Interrogating the Evidence Base for Evidence-Based Peacebuilding,” Data & Policy, 2024, 6: e80.
• Pamina Firchow, “Introduction”, in Pamina Firchow, Reclaiming Everyday Peace: Local Voices in Measurement and Evaluation After War. Cambridge University Press, 2018 (pp. 1-26).

  3. Debating Peace Doctrines

  Required:

• Allard Duursma (2026) “Mediation in a Fragmented World: Competing Approaches and Enduring Practices,” Peacebuilding, March, Online First.
• Alan Kuperman (2022), “Muscular Mediation and Ripeness Theory,” Ethnopolitics, 21 (2): 163-177.
• Edward Luttwak, “Give War a Chance,” Foreign Affairs, June/August 1999, pp. 36-44

  4. Institutional Reforms for Conflict Management and Resolution

  Required:

• Joseph Lacey and Nenad Stojanović (2024), “Consociationalism,” in Richard Bellamy & Jeff King, The Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory, Cambridge University Press (568-584).
• Donald Horowitz (2014) “Ethnic Power Sharing: Three Big Problems,” Journal of Democracy, 25 (2): 5-20.
• John Nagle, “The End of Consociational Power-sharing? Its Causes and What can Be Done,” Cogent Social Sciences, Online first, 2025.

  5. The Liberal Peace Paradigm

  Required:

• Giulio Levorato (2026), “Evolution, Crisis and Resurgence of the Liberal Peace,” in G. Levorato, Liberal Peacebuilding in Times of Change, London: Routledge, ch. 1.
• Laura McLeod & Maria O’Reilly (2019) “Critical Peace and Conflict Studies: Feminist Interventions,” Peacebuilding, 7(2), pp. 1-14 and pp. 21-22 [skim “Introducing the Special Issue: What is Different when Feminists do Peace and Conflict Studies?”, pp. 15-20]
• Peter Finkenbush, “Liberal peace: from civilizing mission to self-doubt,” Global Change, Peace and Security, 2021, 33 (2): 163-176.

  6. The “Local Turn” in Peace Studies

  Required:

• Thania Paffenholz (2015) “Unpacking the Local Turn in Peacebuilding,” Third World Quarterly, 36 (5): 857-874.
• Cedric De Coning (2020), “Adaptive Peace Operations: Navigating the Complexity of Influencing Societal Change Without Causing Harm,” International Peacekeeping, 27 (5): 836-858.
• Roger Mac Ginty (2025), “The Liberal Peace is Over and it is not Coming Back: Hybridity and the Emerging International Peace System,” Third World Quarterly, 46 (16): 1999-2018.

  7. The Crisis of Peace Intervention

  Required:

• D. Lewis, J. Heathershow, N. Megoran, (2018) “Illiberal Peace? Authoritarian Modes of Conflict Management,” Cooperation & Conflict, 53 (4): 486-506.
• Roberto Belloni & Francesco N. Moro (2019), “Stability and Stability Operations:

  Definitions, Drivers, Approaches,” Ethnopolitics, 18(5): 445-461.

• Nick Hynek, “Beyond ‘turbulence’: a forum reply, epistemic failures, and a research manifesto for peace and conflict studies,” Peacebuilding, 2026, Online first.

  8. A Digital Peace?

• Danish Masood Alavi et al. (2022), “Using Artificial Intelligence for Peacebuilding,” Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 17 (2): 239-243.
• Ioannis Tellidis & Stefanie Kappler (2016), “Information and Communication Technologies in Peacebuilding: Implications, Opportunities and Challenges,” Cooperation & Conflict, 51 (1): 75-93.
• Mark Duffield (2016), “The Resilience of the Ruins: Towards a Critique of Digital Humanitarianism,” Resilience, 4 (3): 147-165.

  9. MID-TERM

  PART 2: Case Studies:

  10 & 11. Case study: Iraq

  Required:

• Toby Dodge, (2013) “Intervention and Dreams of Exogenous Statebuilding: The Application of Liberal Peacebuilding in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Review of International Studies, 39, 1189-1212.
• Matthijs Bogaards (2021) “Iraq’s Constitution of 2005: The Case Against Consociationalism Light,” Ethnopolitics, 20 (2): 186-202.
• Irene Costantini (2021), “The Iraqi Protest Movement: Social Mobilization Amidst Violence and Instability,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 48 (5): 832-849.
• Roberto Belloni & Irene Costantini (2025), “Stabilizing Postwar Iraq: The Practical Antinomies of a Promising Concept,” Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 2025, 42 (4): 535-541.

  12 & 13 Case study: Bosnia-Herzegovina

  Required:

  Richard Caplan (2000) “Assessing the Dayton Accord: The Structural Weaknesses of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, 11 (2): 213-232.

• Timofey Agarin, Henry Jarret, “Unfortunate Electoral Designs for Postconflict Democracies: Lessons from Dayton for the Western Balkans,” Nationalism & Ethnic Politics, 2026, 32 (1): 63-84.

  Mirjana Kasapovic (2016) “Lijphart and Horowitz in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Institutional Design for Conflict Resolution or Conflict Reproduction?” Croatian Political Science Review, 53 (4): 174-190.

  David Chandler, (2010) “The EU and Southeastern Europe: The Rise of Post-Liberal Governance,” Third World Quarterly, 31 (1): 69-85.

• Maria-Adriana Deiana (2018) “Navigating Consociationalism’s Afterlives: Women, Peace and Security in Post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Nationalism & Ethnic Politics, 24 (1): 33-49.

  14 & 15. Case study: Northern Ireland

  Required:

• David Mitchell (2025), “The International Significance of the Northern Ireland Peace Process: Revisiting the Lessons Twenty-Five Years after the Good Friday Agreement,” Politics, 45 (2): 258-273.
• Conor Kelly and Etain Tannam (2023) “The Future of Northern Ireland: the Role of Belfast/Good Friday Agreement Institutions,” The Political Quarterly, 94 (1): 85-94.
• John McGarry and Brandan O’Leary (2006) “Consociational Theory, Northern Ireland’s Conflict, and its Agreement 2. What Critics of Consociation can Learn from Northern Ireland,” Government and Opposition, 41 (2): 249-277.
• Cathy Gormley-Heenan and Arthur Aughey (2017) “Northern Ireland and Brexit: Three Effects on the ‘Border in the Mind,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19 (3): 497-511.

• 16 & 17. Case study: Syria

  Required:

• Christopher Phillis (2015) “Sectarianism and Conflict in Syria,” Third World Quarterly, 36 (2): 357-376.
• Samer Abboud (2021), “Making Peace to Sustain War: the Astana Process and Syria’s Illiberal Peace,” Peacebuilding, 9 (3): 326-343.
• Irene Costantini and Ruth Hanau Santini (2022) “Power Mediators and the Illiberal Peace Momentum: Ending Wars and Libya and Syria,” Third World Quarterly, 43 (1): 131-147.
• Juline Beaujouan (2025) “Power Peace: The Resolution of the Syrian Conflict in a Post-Liberal Era of Peacemaking,” Journal of Statebuilding and Intervention, 19 (3): 309-328.

  Recommended:

  Rana Koury, Wendy Pearlman, “Why Syria’s Civil Society is the Key,” Journal of Democracy, 2025, 36 (2): 59-67.

  18 & 19. Case study: Ukraine

  Required:

• Roy Allison (2014) “Russian ‘Deniable’ Intervention in Ukraine: How and Why Russia Broke the Rules,” International Affairs, 90 (6): 1255-1297.
• Kristian Atland (2020) “Destined for Deadlock? Russia, Ukraine and the Unfulfilled Minsk Agreement,” Post-Soviet Affairs, 36 (2): 122-139.
• Mila O’Sullivan (2019), “‘Being Strong Enough to Defend Yourself:’ Untangling the Women, Peace and Security Agenda amidst the Ukrainian Conflict,” International Feminist Journal of Politics, 21 (5): 746-767.
• Lilia Shevtsova (2020) “Russia’s Ukraine Obsession,” Journal of Democracy, 31 (1): 138-147.
• Alan Kuperman, (2025), “How Trump Could Make ‘Muscular Mediation’ Work in Ukraine,” Wall Street Journal, 22 April; https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-trump-could-make-muscular-mediation-work-in-ukraine-0d7d77a9

20. FINAL IN-CLASS EXAM

Teaching methods

Classes will mix traditional lectures, group discussions on assigned readings, and presentations and debates on case studies.

Assessment methods

The assessment method will be different for students regularly attending classes and for students who will not attend.

Students who do regularly attend classes (at least 5 out of 6 class meetings of the second part of class on case studies):

Mid-term exam: 1/3 of the final grade

Participation in class and presentation: 1/3 of the final grade

Final Exam focused on the second part the course: 1/3 of the final grade.

Students who do not regularly attend classes: two-hour in-class written exam. The syllabus/required readings are the same for both attending and non-attending students.

Criteria for evaluation for both attending and non-attending students:

1. Ability to elaborate synthesis of the topics

2. Ability to discuss and assess major approaches to war prevention, mediation, peacebuilding and conflict resolution.

3. Ability to provide an analysis of case-studies

4. Proficiency in writing in academic English language

Students with DSA or temporary or permanent disabilities. It is recommended to contact the responsible University office in good time (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/it): it will be their responsibility to propose any adaptations to the students concerned, which must however be submitted, with a 15-day notice, to the approval of the teacher, who will evaluate the opportunity also in relation to the educational objectives of the course.

Teaching tools

ppt & audio-visual

Office hours

See the website of Roberto Belloni