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 Afghanistan, 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. Peace Intervention “Generations”

Required:

- Williams and Bellamy, “Peace Operations during the 1990s,” and “Peace Operations in the twenty-first Century,” respectively Ch. 4 & Ch. 5 of their Understanding Peacekeeping, Polity, 2021, third edition.

Recommended:

- Richmond, Oliver P. “The Evolution of the International Peace Architecture.” European Journal of International Security 6, no. 4 (2021): 379–400.

3. Evaluating Peace Interventions

Required:

- 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).

- Paul Kirby & Laura J. Sheperd (2016) “The Futures Past of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda,” International Affairs, 92 (2): 373-392.

Recommended:

- Pamina Firchow, “Conclusion,” Reclaiming Everyday Peace: Local Voices in Measurement and Evaluation After War. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

- O. Ramsbotham, T. Woodhouse, H. Miall, “The Statistics of Deadly Quarrels and the Measurement of Peace,” in their Contemporary Conflict Resolution, fourth edition, Polity, 2016.

4. Debating Peace Doctrines

Required:

- Wallensteen, Peter, and Isak Svensson (2014) “Talking Peace: International Mediation in Armed Conflicts,” Journal of Peace Research 51 (2): 315–27.

- 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

Recommended:

- O. Ramsbotham, T. Woodhouse, H. Miall, “Preventing Violent Conflict,” in their Contemporary Conflict Resolution, fourth edition, Polity, 2016.

- Sørensen, Georg. 2001. ‘War and State-Making: Why Doesn’t It Work in the Third World?’ Security Dialogue 32 (3): 341–54.

5. Institutional Reforms for Conflict Management and Resolution

Required:

- Allison McCulloch (2014), “Consociational Settlements in Deeply Divided Societies: The Liberal-Corporate Distinction,” Democratization, 21 (3): 501-518.

- R. Kennedy, C. Pierson, J. Thomson (2016), “Challenging Identity Hierarchies: Gender and Consociational Power-Sharing,” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 18 (3): 618-633.

- Benjamin Reilly (2006) “Centripetalism,” in K. Cordell & S. Wolff, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict, 2014, pp. 288-299.

Recommended:

- Siobhan Byrne & Allison McCulloch (2018) “Is Power-Sharing Bad for Women?” Nationalism & Ethnic Politics, 24 (1): 1-12.

- John Nagle, “Consociationalism is Dead! Long Live Zombie Power‐Sharing!” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 2020, 20 (2): 137-144.

- Paul Dixon (2020), “Power-Sharing in Deeply Divided Societies: Consociationalism and Sectarian Authoritarianism,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 20 (2): 117-127.

6. The Liberal Peace Paradigm

Required:

- Oliver P. Richmond, (2006) “The Problem of Peace: Understanding the ‘Liberal Peace’,” Conflict, Security & Development, 6 (3): 291-314.

- 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]

- Roland Paris (2011) “Saving Liberal Peacebuilding,” Review of International Studies 36(2): 337-365.

Recommended:

- Michael Pugh (2004) “Peacekeeping and Critical theory,” International Peacekeeping, 11 (1): 39-58.

- Barnett, M., Kim, H., O’Donnell, M., & Sitea, L. (2007). “Peacebuilding: What Is in a Name?”, Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, 13(1), 35-58.

7. 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, “From Peacebuilding to Sustaining Peace: Implications of Complexity for Resilience and Sustainability,” Resilience, 4 (3): 166-181.

- Jarstad, A., & Belloni, R. (2012). “Introducing Hybrid Peace Governance: Impact and Prospects of Liberal Peacebuilding,” Global Governance, 18 (1), 1-6.

Recommended:

- Roger Mac Ginty & Oliver P Richmond (2013) “The Local Turn in Peace Building: A Critical Agenda for Peace,” Third World Quarterly, 34 (5): 763-783.

- Roberto Belloni, “Civil Society in War-to-Democracy Transitions,” in Anna J. Jarstad and Timothy Sisk, eds., From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Peacebuilding. Cambridge University Press.

8. 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.

- Thania Paffenholz (2021) “Perpetual Peace: A New Paradigm to Move Beyond the Linearity of Liberal Peacebuilding,” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 15 (3): 367-385.

Recommended:

- Kai Michael Kenkel, “Rising Powers and Peacebuilding,” (Chapter 21) in in Oliver P. Richmond, and Gëzim Visoka (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation, Oxford University Press, 2021.

 

PART 2: Case studies

9 & 10 Case study: Afghanistan

Required:

- Toby Doge, (2021) “Afghanistan the Failure of Liberal Peacebuilding,” Survival, 63 (5): 47-58.

- Phil Williams, (2022) “US intervention in Afghanistan and the Failure of Governance [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2022.2120299],” Small Wars & Insurgencies, 33 (7): 1130-1151.

- Ahmad Murid Partaw (2024) “The Failure of Democracy in Afghanistan,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 51 (4): 810-829.

- Farkhondeh Akbari & Jacqui True (2024), “Bargaining with Patriarchy in Peacemaking: The Failure of Women, Peace and Security in Afghanistan,” Global Studies Quarterly.

Recommended:

- Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, (2022) “The Collapse of Afghanistan,” Journal of Democracy, 33 (1): 40-54.

- Mats Berdal, (2019) “NATO’s Landscape of the Mind: Stabilisation and Statebuilding in Afghanistan,” Ethnopolitics, 18 (5): 526-543.

11 & 12. 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.

- John McGarry and Brandon O’Leary (2007) “Iraq’s Constitution of 2005: Liberal Consociation as Political Prescription,” International Journal of Constitutional Law, 5 (4): 670-698.

- Nadje Al-Ali & Nicola C. Pratt (2016) “Positionalities, Intersectionalities, and Transnational Feminism in Researching Women in Post-Invasion Iraq,” in Annick T.R. Wibben (ed.) Researching War: Feminist Methods, Ethics and Politics. Abingdon: Routledge (76-91).

- Roberto Belloni & Irene Costantini (2025), “Stabilizing Postwar Iraq: The Practical Antinomies of a Promising Concept,” Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 2025, 42 (4): 535-541.

Recommended:

- Roberto Belloni and Irene Costantini (2019) “From Liberal Statebuilding to Counter-insurgency and Stabilisation: The International Intervention in Iraq,” Ethnopolitics, 18 (5): 509-525.

- Jacqueline Parry and Birte Vogel (2023) “An Illusion of Empowerment? A Twenty-Year Review of United Nations Reports on Localization in Iraq,” International Peacekeeping, 30 (5): 211-241.

- “2003-2023: A Twenty-Year Reflection of the Iraqi Invasion, Occupation, and Resulting Interventions, edited by Irene Costantini and Dylan Driscoll, International Peacekeeping, 2023. vol. 30, issue 5.

13 & 14 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.

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.

Recommended:

- Roberto Belloni and Aleksandra Zdeb, “Consociationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina: How to Build an Illiberal State,” in Hamza Preljevic, ed. Shifting Paradigms: Three Decades After the Signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement. London: Springer, 2026.

- Valery Perry, (2019) “Frozen, Stalled, Stuck, or Just Muddling Through: the Post-Dayton Frozen Conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Asia Europe Journal, 17, 107-127.

- Roberto Belloni (2004), “Peacebuilding and Consociational Electoral Engineering in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” International Peacekeeping, 11 (2): 334-353.

15 & 16. Case study: Northern Ireland

Required:

- 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.

- Claire Pierson, “Gendering Peace in Northern Ireland: The Role of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security,” Capital & Class, 43 (1): 57-71.

- 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.

Recommended:

- John Nagle (2018) “Between Conflict and Peace: An Analysis of the Complex Consequences of the Good Friday Agreement,” Parliamentary Affairs, 71, 395-416.

- Roberto Belloni, (2025) “Marching Backward? Conservative Civil Society, Freedom of Religion and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland,” Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, online first.

- Maria-Adriana Deiana (2016), “To Settle for a Gendered Peace? Spaces for Feminist Grassroots Mobilization in Northern Ireland and Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Citizenship Studies, 20 (1): 99-114.

17 & 18. Case study: Syria

Required:

- Christopher Phillis (2015) “Sectarianism and Conflict in Syria,” Third World Quarterly, 36 (2): 357-376.

- Nour Abu-Assad (2017), “De-stabilising Gender Dynamics. Syria Post-2011,” in J. Freedman, Z. Kivilcim, N. Bakacioglu, eds., A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis. London: Routledge (16-25).

- 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.

Recommended:

- Alex Bellamy (2022) Syria Betrayed: Atrocities, War and the Failure of International Diplomacy. New York: Columbia University Press.

- Artur Malantowicz (2013) “Civil War in Syria and the New Wars Debate,” Amsterdam Law Forum, 5 (3): 52-60.

19 & 20. 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, “How Trump Could Make ‘Muscular Mediation’ Work in Ukraine,” Wall Street Journal, 22 April 2025; https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-trump-could-make-muscular-mediation-work-in-ukraine-0d7d77a9

Recommended:

- Serhy Yekelchyk (2015) The Conflict in Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- Petr Kratochvil & Mila O’Sullivan (2023) “A War like No Other: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine as a War on Gender Order,” European Security, 32 (3): 347-366.

- Taras Kuzio (2015) “The Origins of Peace, Non-violence and Conflict in Ukraine,” E-International Relations, https://www.e-ir.info/2015/04/01/the-origins-of-peace-non-violence-and-conflict-in-ukraine/

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