Peacekeeping and Grassroots Peacebuilding: Contributors to Local Peace

• In Event: Central and Local Actors in Conflict and Peace Processes

Abstract

The peacekeeping literature rarely takes into account local institutions and processes that might contribute to or complicate sub-national peace outcomes. This paper focuses on one form of local institutions, grassroots peacebuilding. It argues that grassroots peacebuilding contributes to local peace in non-trivial ways through the attainment of local information and the promotion of local ownership over the peace process. Peacekeepers contribute to local peace by establishing physical order through their security mandate and enforcing the national-level peace agreement. The differences in approach that each exhibit establishes conditions under which the efforts of grassroots peacebuilders and peacekeepers individually influence local peace outcomes. Geo-located peacekeeping data (Fjelde et al. 2019) and data from a community driven development project in Sierra Leone (Casey et al. 2011) are paired to explore local peace on several dimensions. Individual effects are found. Peacekeeping is associated with an increase in trust in others. Grassroots peacebuilding is associated with a decrease in security, whereas peacekeeping is associated with an increase in trust in others. Grassroots peacebuilding is associated with a decrease in security, whereas peacekeeping is associated with an increase in security. A lack of support for the interactive effects of grassroots peacebuilding and peacekeeping suggests that the two may actually act as substitutes or competitors rather than as complements to one another.

Author

• Priscilla Torres, Duke University