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In this paper we suggest that taking a relational view of peace serious is a fruitful avenue for expanding current theoretical frameworks surrounding peace as a concept. Paving the way for such an approach, this paper conducts a review of the literature which takes on peace as a relational concept. We then return to how a relationship is conceptualized, before turning to how such components would be further defined in order to specify relational peace. Based on this framework, we argue that a peaceful relation entails non-domination, deliberation and cooperation between the actors in the dyad, the actors involved recognize and trust each other and believe that the relationship is one between legitimate actors and ultimately an expression of friendship. It clarifies the methodological implications of studying peace in this manner. It also demonstrates some of the advantages of this approach, as it shows how peace and war can co-exist in webs of multiple interactions, and the importance of studying relations, and how actors understand these relationships, as a way of studying varieties of peace.

While previous research has focused on the conflicts and division in Mitrovica, Kosovo, the present article explores how peace and conflict are intertwined in the post-war city by focusing on sites where communities live side by side in an otherwise segregated city. A key finding is that the most conflictual residential areas in northern Mitrovica also are places where what we call peace acts, peace issues and peace perceptions are found. Our research suggests that even in spaces in the city where a history of violence is entrenched, the situation can seldom be reduced to be seen only as purely conflictual; rather, these 'hotspots' often prove to be spaces where reproduction of peace – however quotidian – also occurs at the same time. This points us to the complexity of the realities of peace, where remnants of war and potential for a co-existing peace often overlap and are sometimes intrinsically intertwined.

For decades, peace and conflict studies have devoted more attention to conflict than to peace, and despiteits centrality, peace itself has been under-conceptualized. In this paper, we propose a theoretical frameworkand methodologies to make peace beyond the absence of war researchable. The framework is designed to capture varieties of peace between and beyond dichotomous conceptions of positive versus negative peace, or successful versus failed peace processes. To capture the complexity of peace in its empirical diversity, our framework approaches peace in three different ways: as a situation or condition in a particular locality; as a web of relationships; and as ideas or discourses about what peace is or should be. These approaches provide different avenues for researching peace, and taken together they provide a fuller picture of what peace is, how it is manifested, experienced, and understood. We argue that this framework provides a way forward in advancing conceptual understandings and empirical analyses of peace that can facilitate systematic, comparative, qualitative analyses while at the same time accounting for the complex, multifaceted nature of peace.

Power sharing is increasingly recognized as an important tool for creating sustainable peace in war-torn societies. However, we have limited knowledge concerning why political, territorial, and military power-sharing pacts are reached and implemented. This article addresses this gap by providing a global study examining the signing and implementation of powersharing pacts in intrastate armed conflicts. We focus on how the type of political regime can influence these choices and theorize about the strategic incentives for warring parties in different types of regimes to sign and implement different pacts. Our large-N analysis is based on data on power-sharing provisions in eighty-three peace accords in forty intrastate armed conflicts between 1989 and 2004. In line with our theoretical expectations, we find that political and military pacts are more likely to be signed in autocracies, whereas territorial pacts are more common in democracies. Somewhat surprisingly, we find no difference in the implementation patterns across regimes.

The Varieties of Peace research program aims to analyze long-term effects of peace processes in conflicts that ended in the 1990s. The central research questions are: What characterizes peace after the peace processes initiated in the 1990s and how does it vary? How can this variation be described and explained? Peace processes have been studied using short time perspectives, usually in "lessons-learned" evaluations five years after conflict termination, and usually with theories of conflict as a starting point. The Varieties of Peace research program is an ambitious initiative, which starts from a theoretical understanding of peace, its quality and character, and views peace and peace processes as dynamic and transformative. It will investigate and evaluate different types of peace processes from a comparative perspective and 25–30 years after they started, with the ambition of producing generalizable knowledge about peace, what it is and how it can be achieved. As a starting point, the program studies explanatory factors in five areas: 1) the actions, capacity and resilience of civil society, 2) the interests and strategies of the elites, 3) the aims and character of the agreements, 4) the societies' institutions and resilience, and 5) international involvement. These issues will be studies in at least ten projects, with the ambition to capture and explain variation, internal dynamics and ultimately the results and effects of peace processes, studied over a longer period of time. The Varieties of Peace program is funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond: the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, 2017-2024. For more info, please visit our webpage at www.varietiesofpeace.net.

The UN ambition to promote democratization via peacebuilding operations in post-civil war cases has largely failed. Suboptimal choices for democratization, such as power-sharing, are chosen as a result of the bargaining power of the former warring parties. Many issues, such as who belongs to the citizenry, are not settled and political parties not defined by the conflict lines have little chance of gaining power. While past experience shows that there is not one single pathway of democratization after civil war, it is suggested that these issues are important for democracy after civil war. For democracy to take root, it is also necessary to engage more seriously with the local networks and individuals who work to change behaviour and attitudes to become more democratic.

This article analyses the narratives of survivors of violence in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and addresses the relationship between local violence, politics and agency in a post-conflict setting. In particular, the study advances an understanding of how local political violence serves to increase or decrease agency. In line with previous research on emotions and agency, our study suggests that fear and anxiety encourage risk avoidance and have a pacifying effect on survivors of violence. It also indicates that anger and enthusiasm are emotions experienced by those who have a strong sense of agency and have become politically mobilised after violence. The study contributes to the debate on local capacity for peacebuilding and democracy by showing how local agency is affected by violence and how survivors of violence can become agents of change through politics.

In the 1990s, a number of protracted armed conflicts were finally ended. This period can be described as a paradigmatic shift with regards to how armed conflicts are brought to an end. When the logic of the Cold War no longer hindered the United Nations (UN) to intervene, the number of UN peace operations rose dramatically and became more comprehensive. In addition, conflicts increasingly ended through negotiated settlements rather than military victory. The peace processes of the 1990s gave rise to great optimism that negotiations and peacebuilding efforts, often with considerable international involvement, would bring sustainable peace to war-affected countries. The outcomes of these peace processes, however, appears to be far from unanimously positive. Today, 20 years after the war endings of the 1990s, it is therefore imperative to critically analyze and evaluate these peace processes and their long-term results. What is the situation like today in countries where conflicts ended in the 1990s? What has become of the peace? In this paper, the long-term outcomes of peace processes that took place in the 1990s are evaluated through brief analyses of a number of cases,demonstrating that the nature and quality of peace today show great diversity. The paper also includes a conceptualization of the "peace triangle" aimed at distinguishing between different forms of peace, as well as a study of the relationship between peacebuilding and democracy in UN peace operations in the 1990s, concluding that outcomes with regards to democratic development in the intervened countries are generally poor.