or through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers.
Why do international peacebuilding organizations sometimes succeed and sometimes faiL even within the same country?
Bridging the gaps between the peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and global governance scholarship, this book argues that international peacebuilding organizations repeatedly fail because they are accountable to global actors, not to local institutions or people.
International peacebuilding can succeed only when country-based staff bypass existing accountability structures and empower local stakeholders to hold their global organizations accountable for achieving local-level peacebuilding outcomes.
In other words, the innovative, if seemingly wayward, actions of individual country-office staff are necessary to improve peacebuilding performance. Using in-depth studies of organizations operating in Burundi over a fifteen-year period, combined with fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nepal, South Sudan, and Sudan, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations, African studies, and peace and conflict studies as well as policymakers.
“International Peacebuilding Really Can Build Peace—But Perhaps Not How You Expect,” The Monkey Cage. The Washington Post, 11 December 2018.
“What Burundi’s Crisis Says about UN Capacity to Build Peace,” The Monkey Cage. The Washington Post, 18 May 2015.
"Susanna P. Campbell has written a major contribution to our knowledge of peacebuilding. She has some good and bad news. The good news is that there are instances when peacebuilding does succeed. The bad news is that the odds are against it doing so. Why? Because it requires peacebuilders' willingness to be accountable to local populations. To do so, though, they need to work against a peacebuilding apparatus that gives incentives to country offices to take the path of least resistance and listen to those who are higher up on the food chain. Because it is unlikely that the apparatus is going to change, the message is for country offices to use their discretion in ways that give local populations a voice. A rare combination of theoretical sophistication and intensive fieldwork, this is the sort of book that both scholars and policymakers must read."
"Susanna P. Campbell has written a fantastic book. It is one of the very few studies of on-the-ground peacebuilding that helps us to actually understand – and, hopefully, replicate – successful efforts. It is theoretically innovative, and draws on incredibly rich ethnographic material from 14 years of involvement in peacebuilding, both in the field and in the headquarters. All of these make Global Governance and Local Peace essential reading for scholars and practitioners alike."