Local Peacebuilding and Legitimacy

<p>This volume searches for pragmatic answers to the problems that continue to beset peacebuilding efforts at all levels of society with a singular focus on the role of legitimacy.</p><p></p><p>Many peacebuilding efforts are hampered by their inability to gain the support of those they are trying to help at the local level or those at regional national or international levels; whose support is necessary either for success at the local level or to translate local successes to wider arenas. There is no one agreed-upon reason for the difficulty in translating peacebuilding from one arena of action to another but among those elements that have been studied one that appears understudied or assumed to be unimportant is the role of legitimacy. Many questions can be asked about legitimacy as a concept and this volume addresses these questions through multiple case studies which examine legitimacy at local regional national and international levels as well as looking at how legitimacy at one level either translates or fails to translate at other levels in order to correlate the level of legitimacy with the success or failure of peacebuilding projects and programs</p><p></p><p>The value of this work lies both in the breadth of the cases and the singular focus on the role of legitimacy in peacebuilding. By focusing on this concept this volume represents an attempt to build beyond the critical peacebuilding approach of deconstructing the liberal peacebuilding paradigm to a search for pragmatic answers to the problems that continue to plague peacebuilding efforts at all levels of society. </p><p></p><p>This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding conflict resolution development studies security studies and International Relations. </p>