Post-conflict societies are commonly constructed as weak, fragile, and failed states. Economic recovery, risks of renewed violent conflict, natural resource degradation, and poverty alleviation become prioritized agendas of donor countries and international institutions. Billions of dollars on development policy and governance reform have been invested. However, misapplication, ineffectiveness, and foreign aid dependency have become a controversial debate on "whose policy, whose governance, and whose outcomes." To understand the problems, the author employs a blend of social constructionism and discourse theory to establish a platform for understanding and discussing hegemonic aid conditionality on recipient governments. The theories also help analyze how the meanings of "post-conflict governance" are socially, economically, and politically constructed and used in state building, state apparatuses, institutional building, and policy-making process. He reveals that the philosophical and theoretical knowledge that underlies the interface between the mode of governance and policy design create the consensus of values, norms and indicators between experts, public servants, donors and communities in post-conflict settings. The author also shares illuminating case studies by way of his considerable wealth of experience leading reconstructive efforts in Afghanistan and Cambodia.

Foreword Frederick D. Barton Preface Derick W. Brinkerhoff 1. Governance Challenges in Fragile States: Re-Establishing Security, Rebuilding Effectiveness, and Reconstituting Legitimacy Derick W. Brinkerhoff Part 1. Governance and Post-conflict: Perspectives on Core Issues 2. Does Nation Building Work? Reviewing the Record Arthur A. Goldsmith 3. Constitutional Design, Identity and Legitimacy in Post-Conflict Reconstruction Aliza Belman Inbal and Hanna Lerner 4. Election Systems and Political Parties in Post-Conflict and Fragile States Eric Bjornland, Glenn Cowan, and William Gallery 5. Democratic Governance and the Security Sector in Conflict-affected Countries Nicole Ball Part 2. Actors in Governance Reconstruction: Old, New, and Evolving Roles 6. From Bullets to Ballots: The U.S. Army Role in Stability and Reconstruction Operations Tammy S. Schultz and Susan Merrill 7. The Private Sector and Governance in Post-Conflict Societies Virginia Haufler 8. Rebuilding and Reforming Civil Services in Post-Conflict Societies Harry Blair 9. Contributions of Digital Diasporas to Governance Reconstruction in Fragile States: Potential and Promise Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff Part 3. Reforming and Rebuilding Governance: Focus on the Local 10. Decentralization, Local Governance, and Conflict Mitigation in Latin America Gary Bland 11. Subnationalism and Post-conflict Governance: Lessons from Africa Joshua B. Forrest 12. Subnational Administration and State Building: Lessons from Afghanistan Sarah Lister and Andrew Wilder About the Contributors Index

When the guns are silenced, those who have survived armed conflict need food, water, shelter, the means to earn a living, and the promise of safety and a return to civil order. Meeting these needs while sustaining peace requires more than simply having governmental structures in place; it requires good governance. Natural resources are essential to sustaining people and peace in post-conflict countries, but governance failures often jeopardize such efforts. This book examines the theory, practice, and often surprising realities of post-conflict governance, natural resource management, and peacebuilding in fifty conflict-affected countries and territories. It includes thirty-nine chapters written by more than seventy researchers, diplomats, military personnel, and practitioners from governmental, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental organizations. The book highlights the mutually reinforcing relationship between natural resource management and good governance. Natural resource management is crucial to rebuilding governance and the rule of law, combating corruption, improving transparency and accountability, engaging disenfranchised populations, and building confidence after conflict. At the same time, good governance is essential for ensuring that natural resource management can meet immediate needs for post-conflict stability and development, while simultaneously laying the foundation for a sustainable peace. Drawing on analyses of the close relationship between governance and natural resource management, the book explores lessons from past conflicts and ongoing reconstruction efforts; illustrates how those lessons may be applied to the formulation and implementation of more effective governance initiatives; and presents an emerging theoretical and practical framework for policy makers, researchers, practitioners, and students. Governance, Natural Resources, and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding is part of a global initiative to identify and analyze lessons in post-conflict peacebuilding and natural resource management. The project has generated six books of case studies and analyses, with contributions from practitioners, policy makers, and researchers. Other books in this series address high-value resources, land, water, livelihoods, and assessing and restoring natural resources.

Post-conflict peacebuilding has become a primary concern of international politics. Indeed, the UN reform agenda, including the creation of a peacebuilding commission, makes clear that more must be done to prevent societies from falling back into violent struggle. Building up domestic capacity to provide security in an accountable manner plays a crucial role in this context. Applying a security governance perspective, this volume examines a number of key issues that must be addressed by both post-conflict societies and the international community as they confront the task of rebuilding after armed conflict. This includes security sector reform (SSR), disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR), rule of law and transitional justice. Alan Bryden is deputy head of research at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (Switzerland). Heiner Hnggi is assistant director and head of research at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces.

Under what conditions does a post-conflict government have authority? What challenges to its legitimacy does it face? To what standards can it be held accountable? Via case studies of Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, and detailed accounts of extant international law, Matthew Saul explores the international legal framework which regulates popular governance of post-conflict reconstruction.

Governing after War examines how civilians' and rebels' wartime relations affect post-war state-building, development, and violence. When rebels win the war, how do they govern afterwards? Drawing from multiple cases in Africa, Shelley Liu argues that wartime rebel-civilian ties are important to answer this question. Her findings offer implications for recent rebel victories and, more broadly, for understanding the termination, trajectories, and political legacies of such conflicts around the world.

This book explores the challenges of the governance and public policy in the midst and after conflicts, revolutions, and civil wars in the Middle East and Africa. As anywhere else, the task of rebuilding peace and institutionalizing stability in countries experiencing a conflict or just emerging from it is daunting, uncertain and context specific. Yet, focusing on the Middle East and Africa is of particular relevance, as these two regions feature the highest numbers of inter- and intra-state conflicts on the one hand, and the central states are more often contested than in the rest of world regions. The first half of the book proposes different cases addressing the fundamental challenge of inclusion and cohesion as well as the recurring issue of exclusion in conflict-affected situations, with four different cultural and institutional settings. The second half of the book offers more theoretical insights and proposed pathways to develop more inclusive and peaceful governance settings in Africa, the Middle East and beyond. This edited book has been designed to be a helpful contribution to the analysis of conflict and post-conflict governance and peacebuilding. To do so, it deploys different lenses of social sciences, especially public policy and international relations, but also benefits from social psychology, political anthropology, and other disciplines that enable a more comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted, complex and dynamic issues at play.