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Connecting the concepts of space, time, and pace, in this article I theorise how distinct narratives of (post-)conflict spaces impact people’s differing experiences of the pace of peace processes and post-war transitions. Drawing on 14 walking interviews in post-war Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina), I identify three experiences of paces of the peace process connected to spaces across town: slow pace of liminality, acceleration of life, and fast-paced neoliberal development. By zooming into narratives about places in the city, I demonstrate that space influences people’s heterogeneous perceptions of slowness and fastness of the peace process. These findings improve our understanding of temporalities in transitional societies by demonstrating how spatial settings shape people’s temporalities of post-war transitions. Moreover, it helps advance the spatial turn in peace and conflict studies by employing spatial analysis to provide insights into the varied paces at which people experience peacebuilding processes and post-war reconstruction. 

Researchers have shown how UN stabilization peace operations mix liberal and illiberal goals and strategies. Yet, further research is needed to theorize and comprehend illiberal peacebuilding features of stabilization operations. This article fills this gap by demonstrating how UN stabilization operations wield illiberal peacebuilding practices. Building upon previous scholarship, we understand illiberal peacebuilding both as an approach and outcome which is oriented by and helps diffuse illiberal norms in the societies where illiberal peacebuilding is instrumentalized by local, regional and international actors. We frame UN stabilization operations in the CAR, the DRC, and Mali as illiberal peacebuilding processes infused with illiberal strategies and show that liberal actors can engage with illiberal strategies for peace promotion. We also analyse peace agreements that accompany these missions as illiberal peacebuilding outcomes and show how these are shaped by illiberal norms. Our key finding is that a set of illiberal norms – exclusion, violence, power inequality and authoritarianism – are central for both UN stabilization operations and peace agreements signed in CAR, DRC and Mali. Therefore, we challenge the UN discourse that stabilization is a needed first step towards liberal and inclusive peace agreements. 

This article explores political dynamics in Cabo Verde, a small island Africanstate. Interviews with members of parliament (MPs) from the two major parties in Cabo Verdeillustrate that their experiences of practicing politics align with those of their counterparts inother small island jurisdictions. Smallness and closeness make it easier for representatives togauge the temperature of the electorate, leading to more appropriate and effective legislation.But closeness, stemming from smallness, also provides fertile soil for friendship corruption andpatronage, especially when it comes to the appointment procedures of anti-corruption agencies.This study also brings new insights to the research field of smallness, islandness and democracy.It shows that Cabo Verdean MPs view islandness as a protecting shield from authoritariantendencies on the continent, facilitating democratic consolidation in their own country.Moreover, it shows that repeated occasions for cross-party dialogue compensate for some ofthe drawbacks of small state politics.  

The spatial turn in peace and conflict studies and the geographies of peace research agendas have underscored the importance of space in (post-)conflict societies. These fields, despite recognising that space and time are inseparable dimensions, often pay more attention to the former compared to the latter. To address this gap, this article explains how space relates to temporality, a concept that delves into the lived experiences of time. More specifically, I analyse how understandings of the past, present, and future shape spatial narratives about war ruins in Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina), where buildings targeted during the 1990s wars remain unreconstructed. Drawing on spatial narratives gathered through walks and elite interviews, I show that temporality is a crucial element of space because lived experiences of time structure individuals' perspectives on war ruins in Mostar. Four temporalities were woven into participants’ narratives: (1) narratives shaped by trauma temporalities where war ruins remind people of wartime violence and collapse past and present; (2) narratives driven by temporalities of nostalgia and opportunities that invite reflections about the future of Mostar; (3) narratives building on a temporality of commodification that sees ruins as marketable attractions for tourists; and (4) narratives framing ruins as barriers to synchronising Mostar to a temporality of modernity, characterised by notions of progress and economic development. Through these findings, I demonstrate that temporalities are a key factor in how individuals perceive space and highlight the importance of temporalities in explaining heterogeneous attitudes toward space in areas affected by violence.

The spatial turn in peace and conflict studies brought valuable insights about space in (post-)conflict contexts. Nevertheless, critiques of this literature call for further engagement with spatial heterogeneity. I suggest that analyzing space–time relationships is a promising avenue, as understandings of space are substantiated by heterogeneous temporal experiences. To capture space–timeheterogeneity, I introduce the concept of ‘spatio-temporal conflicts’, which draws attention to how actors construct spatial narratives based on heterogeneous and conflicting temporalities. I illustrate the analytical usefulness of this concept by employing it to explore conflicting space–time narratives around the Partisan Memorial Cemetery in post-war Mostar.

In this article, we analyse the new and remaining challenges in implementingthe Brahimi Report’s (2000) recommendations more than twenty years afterits publication. The document is considered a milestone in consolidating adoctrinal culture of UN peace operations. However, we argue that this attemptto establish a doctrinal culture has been hampered by normative and practicalcontroversies, which will be explored, methodologically, using documentary analysis.

Inspired by the Critical Social Theory put forth by the Frankfurt School, Andrew Linklater has dedicated part of his career to elaborating a critical and emancipatory research agenda for International Relations. However, his recent research on the restriction of violence in international society, mostly influenced by the English School and by Eliasian Sociology, has pushed Linklater away from an explicit engagement with critical epistemologies and theoretical approaches. Although there is a possibility for close dialogue between these theoretical strands, we claim that Linklater did not articulate these approaches as much as he could have done. Therefore, we make an assessment of his work to discuss some of its epistemological and theoretical inconsistencies. Based on this, we provide a way to bridge Linklater’s initial critical agenda with his most recent analyses on processes of violence restriction and regulation of global harm in the international realm. We argue that by focusing on multiple global processes that contributed to the restriction of violence, Linklater failed to consider the particularities, pitfalls and side-effects of allegedly beneficial processes of violence restriction and, as a result, his work lost critical potential. Accordingly, this article demonstrates how Linklater would benefit from going back to his initial critical agenda to address the limitations of his scholarship on global harm.

In the early 1990s, with the recognition of conflict causes as being socially rooted prompted a normative shift within the United Nations (UN). The organization began to claim for a comprehensive international response to address the roots of intrastate conflict in the aftermath of civil wars. Thisnew idea was captured by the concept of post-conflict peacebuilding, that embraced the idea that building peace required not only the end of direct violence but also the reconstruction of the state and its democratic and market institutions. This paper aims to evidence that the UN peacebuilding approach seeks to ensure the commitment of post-war states to (Western) institutions and rules that underpin what the English School understands as an“international society”. From a critical perspective, I argue that this international society is not free from power relations and that the UNpeacebuilding strategy is a form to impose, through the Foucauldian techniques knows as biopower and discipline, a set of institutions and rules that prioritizes European assumptions of how state and society ought to beafter the end of warfare. To illustrate this argument, this article analyzes the peacebuilding process led by the UN peace operation deployed in Liberia between 2003 and 2018.

Commonly referred to as an intractable conflict, the territorial dispute between Israel and Palestine already lasts decades and its end does not seem near. This article investigates whether there is an intervening relation between the increase of political violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stalled peace talks attempts, and the recognition, by the President of the United States of America (USA), Donald Trump, of Jerusalem as the symbolic capital of Israel, a city that has been claimed by the parties in conflict. Departing from this initial argument, this article intends to identify how the US interference in a central resource can promote an increase in the number of violent events between the parties in conflictand intensify the intractable nature of the dispute. Taking into account (1) the numberof violent events; (2) the perpetrators of violence; (3) the number of reported fatalities;  (4) the territory in which violent events took place; (5) the acts of everyday violence of Israeli against Palestinians, and, finally; (6) the stagnation of the negotiations between the parties in conflict, our findings point out that the US interference in the dispute between Israel and Palestine promoted an increase in violent clashes that contributed to the increased intractability of the conflict.