Gëzim Visoka – författare

In addition to being a major area of research within International Relations, peacebuilding and statebuilding is a major policy area within the UN and other international and regional organizations. It is also a concern of international financial institutions, including the World Bank, and a significant factor in the foreign and security policies of many established and emerging democracies. Peacebuilding and statebuilding are among the main approaches for preventing, managing, and mitigating global insecurities; dealing with the humanitarian consequences of civil wars; and expanding democracy and neoliberal economic regimes. Peace formation is a relatively new concept, addressing how local actors work in parallel to international and national projects, and helps shape the legitimacy of peace processes and state reform. The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation serves as an essential guide to this vast intellectual and policy landscape. It offers a systematic overview of conceptual foundations, political implications, and tensions at the global, regional, and local levels, as well as key policies, practices, examples, and discourses underlining all segments of peacebuilding and statebuilding praxis. Approaching peacebuilding from disciplinary perspectives across the social sciences, the Handbook is organized around four major thematic sections. Section one explores how peacebuilding, statebuilding, and peace formation is conceived by different disciplines and IR approaches, thus offering an overview of the conceptual bedrock of major theories and approaches. Section two situates these approaches among other major global issues, including globalization, civil society, terrorism, and technology to illustrate their global, regional, and local resonance. Section three looks at key themes in the field, including peace agreements, democratization, security reform, human rights, environment, and culture. Finally, section four looks at key features of everyday and civil society peace formation processes, both in theory and in practice.

In addition to being a major area of research within International Relations, peacebuilding and statebuilding is a major policy area within the UN and other international and regional organizations. It is also a concern of international financial institutions, including the World Bank, and a significant factor in the foreign and security policies of many established and emerging democracies. Peacebuilding and statebuilding are among the main approaches for preventing, managing, and mitigating global insecurities; dealing with the humanitarian consequences of civil wars; and expanding democracy and neoliberal economic regimes. Peace formation is a relatively new concept, addressing how local actors work in parallel to international and national projects, and helps shape the legitimacy of peace processes and state reform. The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation serves as an essential guide to this vast intellectual and policy landscape. It offers a systematic overview of conceptual foundations, political implications, and tensions at the global, regional, and local levels, as well as key policies, practices, examples, and discourses underlining all segments of peacebuilding and statebuilding praxis. Approaching peacebuilding from disciplinary perspectives across the social sciences, the Handbook is organized around four major thematic sections. Section one explores how peacebuilding, statebuilding, and peace formation is conceived by different disciplines and IR approaches, thus offering an overview of the conceptual bedrock of major theories and approaches. Section two situates these approaches among other major global issues, including globalization, civil society, terrorism, and technology to illustrate their global, regional, and local resonance. Section three looks at key themes in the field, including peace agreements, democratization, security reform, human rights, environment, and culture. Finally, section four looks at key features of everyday and civil society peace formation processes, both in theory and in practice.

During the 21st century, peace processes have been stagnating, collapsing, or reversed across diverse contexts. At the heart of this unravelling lies a complex and hitherto overlooked phenomenon: the systematic obstruction of peace itself. Counter-Peace: Tactical Blockages to Peace and Strategic Risks for the International System introduces the concept of counter-peace: a set of interconnected, multi-scalar processes that undermine, distort, or reverse peace processes without necessarily reverting to open warfare. Drawing on detailed case studies, this book reveals how counter-peace dynamics have become embedded in peace processes and why the resulting conflict escalation is a symptom of a changing international order. It interrogates the international peace architecture and argues that its failure to adapt to critical insights on justice, legitimacy, and emancipation has rendered it increasingly ine?ective. Rather than viewing peace failures as isolated or technical missteps, the authors examine how blockages to peace are anchored in power structures, neoliberal policies, and geopolitical rivalries. Actors exploit the structural flaws and unintended consequences of peacemaking to pursue revisionist goals with the support of rising actors in the multipolar order. In this sense, peace processes have become an ideological battlefield between the declining liberal and the rising authoritarian international order. Through this lens, peace and counter-peace appear as deeply entangled forces that shape and contest the future of the international order. Rich in empirical evidence and theoretical innovation, this book challenges the traditional explanations that sanitise or depoliticise the idea of peacemaking. It shifts the debate toward systemic analyses of failure, resistance, and legitimacy. Urgent, timely, and critical, Counter-Peace calls for a fundamental rethinking of how peace is conceptualised, built, and maintained. It provides scholars, practitioners, and policymakers with a new framework to understand why peace often fails and how the construction of peaceful social orders needs to be rethought.

During the 21st century, peace processes have been stagnating, collapsing, or reversed across diverse contexts. At the heart of this unravelling lies a complex and hitherto overlooked phenomenon: the systematic obstruction of peace itself. Counter-Peace: Tactical Blockages to Peace and Strategic Risks for the International System introduces the concept of counter-peace: a set of interconnected, multi-scalar processes that undermine, distort, or reverse peace processes without necessarily reverting to open warfare. Drawing on detailed case studies, this book reveals how counter-peace dynamics have become embedded in peace processes and why the resulting conflict escalation is a symptom of a changing international order. It interrogates the international peace architecture and argues that its failure to adapt to critical insights on justice, legitimacy, and emancipation has rendered it increasingly ine?ective. Rather than viewing peace failures as isolated or technical missteps, the authors examine how blockages to peace are anchored in power structures, neoliberal policies, and geopolitical rivalries. Actors exploit the structural flaws and unintended consequences of peacemaking to pursue revisionist goals with the support of rising actors in the multipolar order. In this sense, peace processes have become an ideological battlefield between the declining liberal and the rising authoritarian international order. Through this lens, peace and counter-peace appear as deeply entangled forces that shape and contest the future of the international order. Rich in empirical evidence and theoretical innovation, this book challenges the traditional explanations that sanitise or depoliticise the idea of peacemaking. It shifts the debate toward systemic analyses of failure, resistance, and legitimacy. Urgent, timely, and critical, Counter-Peace calls for a fundamental rethinking of how peace is conceptualised, built, and maintained. It provides scholars, practitioners, and policymakers with a new framework to understand why peace often fails and how the construction of peaceful social orders needs to be rethought.

During the 21st century, peace processes have been stagnating, collapsing, or reversed across diverse contexts. At the heart of this unravelling lies a complex and hitherto overlooked phenomenon: the systematic obstruction of peace itself. Counter-Peace: Tactical Blockages to Peace and Strategic Risks for the International System introduces the concept of counter-peace: a set of interconnected, multi-scalar processes that undermine, distort, or reverse peace processes without necessarily reverting to open warfare. Drawing on detailed case studies, this book reveals how counter-peace dynamics have become embedded in peace processes and why the resulting conflict escalation is a symptom of a changing international order. It interrogates the international peace architecture and argues that its failure to adapt to critical insights on justice, legitimacy, and emancipation has rendered it increasingly ine?ective. Rather than viewing peace failures as isolated or technical missteps, the authors examine how blockages to peace are anchored in power structures, neoliberal policies, and geopolitical rivalries. Actors exploit the structural flaws and unintended consequences of peacemaking to pursue revisionist goals with the support of rising actors in the multipolar order. In this sense, peace processes have become an ideological battlefield between the declining liberal and the rising authoritarian international order. Through this lens, peace and counter-peace appear as deeply entangled forces that shape and contest the future of the international order. Rich in empirical evidence and theoretical innovation, this book challenges the traditional explanations that sanitise or depoliticise the idea of peacemaking. It shifts the debate toward systemic analyses of failure, resistance, and legitimacy. Urgent, timely, and critical, Counter-Peace calls for a fundamental rethinking of how peace is conceptualised, built, and maintained. It provides scholars, practitioners, and policymakers with a new framework to understand why peace often fails and how the construction of peaceful social orders needs to be rethought.

In addition to being a major area of research within International Relations, peacebuilding and statebuilding is a major policy area within the UN and other international and regional organizations. It is also a concern of international financial institutions, including the World Bank, and a significant factor in the foreign and security policies of many established and emerging democracies. Peacebuilding and statebuilding are among the main approaches for preventing, managing, and mitigating global insecurities; dealing with the humanitarian consequences of civil wars; and expanding democracy and neoliberal economic regimes. Peace formation is a relatively new concept, addressing how local actors work in parallel to international and national projects, and helps shape the legitimacy of peace processes and state reform. The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation serves as an essential guide to this vast intellectual and policy landscape. It offers a systematic overview of conceptual foundations, political implications, and tensions at the global, regional, and local levels, as well as key policies, practices, examples, and discourses underlining all segments of peacebuilding and statebuilding praxis. Approaching peacebuilding from disciplinary perspectives across the social sciences, the Handbook is organized around four major thematic sections. Section one explores how peacebuilding, statebuilding, and peace formation is conceived by different disciplines and IR approaches, thus offering an overview of the conceptual bedrock of major theories and approaches. Section two situates these approaches among other major global issues, including globalization, civil society, terrorism, and technology to illustrate their global, regional, and local resonance. Section three looks at key themes in the field, including peace agreements, democratization, security reform, human rights, environment, and culture. Finally, section four looks at key features of everyday and civil society peace formation processes, both in theory and in practice.

Despite calls for the decolonisation of knowledge, scholars who come from conflict-affected societies remained marginalised, excluded from the examination of the politics and impacts of liberal interventionism. This edited volume gives local scholars a platform from which they critically examine different aspects of liberal interventionism and statebuilding in Kosovo. Drawing on situational epistemologies and grounded approaches, the chapters in this book interrogate a wide range of themes, including: the politics of local resistance; the uneven relationship between international statebuilders and local subjects; faking of local ownership of security sector reform and the rule of law; heuristic and practical limits of interventionism, as well as the subjugated voices in statebuilding process, such as minorities and women. The book finds that the local is not antidote to the liberal, and that local perspectives are not monolithic. Yet, local critiques of statebuilding do not seek to generate replicable knowledge; rather they prefer generating situational and context-specific knowledge be that to resolve problems or uncover the unresolved problems. The book seeks to contribute to critical peace and conflict studies by (re)turning the local turn to local scholars who come from conflict-affected societies and who have themselves experienced the transition from war to peace. This book is essential reading for students and scholars of peace- and state-building, conflict studies and international relations.

As we face new challenges from climate change and the rise of populism in Western politics and beyond, there is little doubt that we are entering a new configuration of world politics. Driven by nostalgia for past certainties or fear of what is coming next, references to normalcy have been creeping into political discourse, with people either vying for a return to a past normalcy or coping with the new normal. This book traces main discourses and practices associated with normalcy in world politics. Visoka and Lemay-Hébert mostly focus on how dominant states and international organizations try to manage global affairs through imposing normalcy over fragile states, restoring normalcy over disaster-affected states, and accepting normalcy over suppressive states. They show how discourses and practices come together in constituting normalization interventions and how in turn they play in shaping the dynamics of continuity and change in world politics.

Although a great deal is known about the recognition of states, less is known about the practice of derecognition of states, namely why and how states withdraw the recognition of other contested and partially recognized states. The Derecognition of States offers a global and comparative outlook of this unexplored diplomatic practice. Using original empirical research, it addresses the complex processes, justifications, and consequences of state derecognition. In particular, it provides unique insights into five aspirant states facing withdrawal of recognition: Taiwan, Western Sahara, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Kosovo. Gëzim Visoka argues that state derecognition is a highly controversial and unstable practice that has less to do with the unfulfillment of the conditions of statehood by the claimant than with the advancement of the self-interest of the former base state and derecognizing state. The derecognition of states is not a rule; rather, it is an exception in international diplomacy, driven by political expediency and is incompatible with original rationales for granting recognition. Yet, the derecognition of states is far more important than previously recognized in shaping the reversal dynamics of secession and state creation and in influencing regional peace, geopolitical rivalries, and the international order. By analyzing the withdrawal of recognition, the book offers a window into the reversal politics of unbecoming a sovereign state and how the arbitrary beginning and the end of diplomatic relations between states take place.

Although a great deal is known about the recognition of states, less is known about the practice of derecognition of states, namely why and how states withdraw the recognition of other contested and partially recognized states. The Derecognition of States offers a global and comparative outlook of this unexplored diplomatic practice. Using original empirical research, it addresses the complex processes, justifications, and consequences of state derecognition. In particular, it provides unique insights into five aspirant states facing withdrawal of recognition: Taiwan, Western Sahara, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Kosovo. Gëzim Visoka argues that state derecognition is a highly controversial and unstable practice that has less to do with the unfulfillment of the conditions of statehood by the claimant than with the advancement of the self-interest of the former base state and derecognizing state. The derecognition of states is not a rule; rather, it is an exception in international diplomacy, driven by political expediency and is incompatible with original rationales for granting recognition. Yet, the derecognition of states is far more important than previously recognized in shaping the reversal dynamics of secession and state creation and in influencing regional peace, geopolitical rivalries, and the international order. By analyzing the withdrawal of recognition, the book offers a window into the reversal politics of unbecoming a sovereign state and how the arbitrary beginning and the end of diplomatic relations between states take place.

As we face new challenges from climate change and the rise of populism in Western politics and beyond, there is little doubt that we are entering a new configuration of world politics. Driven by nostalgia for past certainties or fear of what is coming next, references to normalcy have been creeping into political discourse, with people either vying for a return to a past normalcy or coping with the new normal. This book traces main discourses and practices associated with normalcy in world politics. Visoka and Lemay-Hébert mostly focus on how dominant states and international organizations try to manage global affairs through imposing normalcy over fragile states, restoring normalcy over disaster-affected states, and accepting normalcy over suppressive states. They show how discourses and practices come together in constituting normalization interventions and how in turn they play in shaping the dynamics of continuity and change in world politics.

This new handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of the theoretical and empirical aspects of state recognition in international politics.Although the recognition of states plays a central role in shaping global politics, it remains an under-researched and widely dispersed subject. Coherently and innovatively structured, the handbook brings together a group of international scholars who examine the most important theoretical and comparative perspectives on state recognition, including debates about pathways to secession and self-determination, the broad range of actors and strategies that shape the recognition of states and a significant number of contemporary case studies.The handbook is organised into four key sections:Theoretical and normative perspectivesPathways to independent statehoodActors, forms and the process of state recognitionCase studies of contemporary state recognitionThis handbook will be of great interest to students of foreign policy, international relations, international law, comparative politics and area studies.Chapter 19 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The international architecture of peacebuilding and statebuilding is currently responding to a shift from ''analogue'' to ''digital'' approaches in international relations. This is affecting conflict management, intervention, peacebuilding, and the all-important role of civil society. This Element analyses the potential that these new digital forms of international relations offer for the reform of peace praxis – namely, the enhancement of critical agency across networks and scales, the expansion of claims for rights and the mitigation of obstacles posed by sovereignty, locality, and territoriality. The Element also addresses the parallel limitations of digital technologies in terms of political emancipation related to subaltern claims, the risk of co-optation by historical and analogue power structures, institutions, and actors. We conclude that though aspects of emerging digital approaches to making peace are promising, they cannot yet bypass or resolve older, analogue conflict dynamics revolving around power-relations, territorialism, and state formation.

The international architecture of peacebuilding and statebuilding is currently responding to a shift from ''analogue'' to ''digital'' approaches in international relations. This is affecting conflict management, intervention, peacebuilding, and the all-important role of civil society. This Element analyses the potential that these new digital forms of international relations offer for the reform of peace praxis – namely, the enhancement of critical agency across networks and scales, the expansion of claims for rights and the mitigation of obstacles posed by sovereignty, locality, and territoriality. The Element also addresses the parallel limitations of digital technologies in terms of political emancipation related to subaltern claims, the risk of co-optation by historical and analogue power structures, institutions, and actors. We conclude that though aspects of emerging digital approaches to making peace are promising, they cannot yet bypass or resolve older, analogue conflict dynamics revolving around power-relations, territorialism, and state formation.

How do emerging states obtain international recognition and secure membership of international organisations in contemporary world politics? This book provides the first in-depth study of Kosovo’s diplomatic approach to becoming a sovereign state by obtaining international recognition and securing membership of international organisations. Analysing the everyday diplomatic discourses, performances, and entanglements, this book contends that state-becoming is not wholly determined by systemic factors, normative institutions, or the preferences of great powers; the diplomatic agency of the fledgling state plays a far more important role than is generally acknowledged. Drawing on institutional ethnographic research and first-hand observations, this book argues that Kosovo’s diplomatic success in consolidating its sovereign statehood has been the situational assemblage of multiple discourses, practiced through a broad variety of performative actions, and shaped by a complex entanglement with global assemblages of norms, actors, relations, and events. Accordingly, this book contributes to expanding our understanding of the everyday diplomatic agency of emerging states and the changing norms, politics, and practices regarding the diplomatic recognition of states and their admission to international society.

This new handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of the theoretical and empirical aspects of state recognition in international politics.Although the recognition of states plays a central role in shaping global politics, it remains an under-researched and widely dispersed subject. Coherently and innovatively structured, the handbook brings together a group of international scholars who examine the most important theoretical and comparative perspectives on state recognition, including debates about pathways to secession and self-determination, the broad range of actors and strategies that shape the recognition of states and a significant number of contemporary case studies. The handbook is organised into four key sections:Theoretical and normative perspectivesPathways to independent statehoodActors, forms and the process of state recognitionCase studies of contemporary state recognitionThis handbook will be of great interest to students of foreign policy, international relations, international law, comparative politics and area studies.Chapter 19 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-State-Recognition/Visoka-Doyle-Newman/p/book/9780815354871

How do emerging states obtain international recognition and secure membership of international organisations in contemporary world politics? This book provides the first in-depth study of Kosovo’s diplomatic approach to becoming a sovereign state by obtaining international recognition and securing membership of international organisations. Analysing the everyday diplomatic discourses, performances, and entanglements, this book contends that state-becoming is not wholly determined by systemic factors, normative institutions, or the preferences of great powers; the diplomatic agency of the fledgling state plays a far more important role than is generally acknowledged. Drawing on institutional ethnographic research and first-hand observations, this book argues that Kosovo’s diplomatic success in consolidating its sovereign statehood has been the situational assemblage of multiple discourses, practiced through a broad variety of performative actions, and shaped by a complex entanglement with global assemblages of norms, actors, relations, and events. Accordingly, this book contributes to expanding our understanding of the everyday diplomatic agency of emerging states and the changing norms, politics, and practices regarding the diplomatic recognition of states and their admission to international society.

This book examines the adverse impacts of liberal peacebuilding in conflict-affected societies.It introduces ‘peace figuration’ as a new analytical framework for studying the intentionality, performativity, and consequences of liberal peacebuilding. The work challenges current theories and views and searches for alternative non-conflicted research avenues that are suitable for understanding how peacebuilding intentions are made, how different events shape peace outcomes, and what are the consequences of peacebuilding interventions. Drawing on detailed case studies of peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Timor-Leste, the book argues that attempts to build peace often fail to achieve the intended outcomes. A figurational view of peacebuilding interventions shows that post-conflict societies experience multiple episodes of success and failure in an unpredictable trajectory. This book develops a relational sociology of peacebuilding impact, which is crucial for overcoming static measurement of peacebuilding successes or failures. It shows that international interventions can shape peace but, importantly, not always in the shape they intended. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, peacebuilding, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR.

Despite calls for the decolonisation of knowledge, scholars who come from conflict-affected societies remained marginalised, excluded from the examination of the politics and impacts of liberal interventionism. This edited volume gives local scholars a platform from which they critically examine different aspects of liberal interventionism and statebuilding in Kosovo. Drawing on situational epistemologies and grounded approaches, the chapters in this book interrogate a wide range of themes, including: the politics of local resistance; the uneven relationship between international statebuilders and local subjects; faking of local ownership of security sector reform and the rule of law; heuristic and practical limits of interventionism, as well as the subjugated voices in statebuilding process, such as minorities and women. The book finds that the local is not antidote to the liberal, and that local perspectives are not monolithic. Yet, local critiques of statebuilding do not seek to generate replicable knowledge; rather they prefer generating situational and context-specific knowledge be that to resolve problems or uncover the unresolved problems. The book seeks to contribute to critical peace and conflict studies by (re)turning the local turn to local scholars who come from conflict-affected societies and who have themselves experienced the transition from war to peace.This book, voted one of the top 10 books of 2020 by International Affairs, is essential reading for students and scholars of peace- and state-building, conflict studies and international relations.

This book examines the adverse impacts of liberal peacebuilding in conflict-affected societies.It introduces ‘peace figuration’ as a new analytical framework for studying the intentionality, performativity, and consequences of liberal peacebuilding. The work challenges current theories and views and searches for alternative non-conflicted research avenues that are suitable for understanding how peacebuilding intentions are made, how different events shape peace outcomes, and what are the consequences of peacebuilding interventions. Drawing on detailed case studies of peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Timor-Leste, the book argues that attempts to build peace often fail to achieve the intended outcomes. A figurational view of peacebuilding interventions shows that post-conflict societies experience multiple episodes of success and failure in an unpredictable trajectory. This book develops a relational sociology of peacebuilding impact, which is crucial for overcoming static measurement of peacebuilding successes or failures. It shows that international interventions can shape peace but, importantly, not always in the shape they intended. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, peacebuilding, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR.

This encyclopaedia provides a comprehensive overview of major theories and approaches to the study of peace and conflict across different humanities and social sciences disciplines. Peace and conflict studies (PCS) is one of the major sub-disciplines of international studies (including political science and international relations), and has emerged from a need to understand war, related systems and concepts and how to respond to it afterward. As a living reference work, easily discoverable and searchable, the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies offers solid material for understanding the foundational, historical, and contemporary themes, concepts, theories, events, organisations, and frameworks concerning peace, conflict, security, rights, institutions and development. The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Peace and Conflict Studies brings together leading and emerging scholars from different disciplines to provide the mostcomprehensive and up-to-date resource on peace and conflict studies ever produced.

This book investigates why peace and reform processes across the world have recently been stagnating or have become blocked. They have failed to maintain security, rights, development, and justice in the liberal international order. The book identifies the related rise of counter-peace processes at the heart of failed peacemaking efforts, and explores the implications for an emerging multi-polar order where local and international tools for peace and reform appear to be ineffective. Across a range of recent cases, from Cambodia, the Balkans, the Sahel region, DRC, Colombia, Afghanistan, and many others, such dynamics are becoming clearer. In particular, small-scale blocking tactics across different peace processes have been evolving into larger political strategies which are then disseminated within revisionist and revanchist international networks. Ultimately, this phenomenon has undermined liberal international order.Spoilers and tactical blockages to peace have connected across local, national, regional and international scales, highlighting ideological divisions. Drawing on counter-revolutionary theory, the concept of counter-peace is used as a tool to critically interrogate a systemic array of blockages to peace. Distinct counter-peace patterns are now entangled in peace and reform processes, including  the stalemate pattern, the limited counter-peace, and the unmitigated counter-peace patterns. Across cases, once tactical blockages begin to form these patterns, they become systemic and ultimately enable conflict escalation. Consequently, the intimate entanglement of the existing international peace architecture with counter-peace processes points to ideological divisions in international order, as well as the growing gulf between diminished practices of peace and reform with critical scholarship on peace, justice, and sustainability.

This book investigates why peace and reform processes across the world have recently been stagnating or have become blocked. They have failed to maintain security, rights, development, and justice in the liberal international order. The book identifies the related rise of counter-peace processes at the heart of failed peacemaking efforts, and explores the implications for an emerging multi-polar order where local and international tools for peace and reform appear to be ineffective. Across a range of recent cases, from Cambodia, the Balkans, the Sahel region, DRC, Colombia, Afghanistan, and many others, such dynamics are becoming clearer. In particular, small-scale blocking tactics across different peace processes have been evolving into larger political strategies which are then disseminated within revisionist and revanchist international networks. Ultimately, this phenomenon has undermined liberal international order.

Spoilers and tactical blockages to peace have connected across local, national, regional and international scales, highlighting ideological divisions. Drawing on counter-revolutionary theory, the concept of counter-peace is used as a tool to critically interrogate a systemic array of blockages to peace. Distinct counter-peace patterns are now entangled in peace and reform processes, including  the stalemate pattern, the limited counter-peace, and the unmitigated counter-peace patterns. Across cases, once tactical blockages begin to form these patterns, they become systemic and ultimately enable conflict escalation. Consequently, the intimate entanglement of the existing international peace architecture with counter-peace processes points to ideological divisions in international order, as well as the growing gulf between diminished practices of peace and reform with critical scholarship on peace, justice, and sustainability.

This book examines the rise of sub-state recognition in the theory and practice of international relations and diplomacy. Sub-state recognition occurs when non-sovereign entities, such as regions, cities, or local governments, recognize or support an aspirant state or entity seeking independence or international recognition. Drawing on original empirical data, the book conceptualizes sub-state recognition as a pluriversal diplomatic approach and traces the actors, justifications, and effects in practice. We argue that sub-state recognition manifests as a compensatory and remedial engagement between aspirant states and sub-state entities that shape the dynamics of contested statehood, alter the conservative international recognition regime from the bottom up, and streamline the formation of decentralized approaches to diplomatic recognition. We find that sub-state recognition is a co-constitutive practice that helps aspirant states compensate for the lack of external sovereignty and enables sub-state entities granting such recognition to consolidate their foreign policy identity and regional autonomy. While sub-state recognition does not legally establish an aspirant entity as a state, it may emerge as a crucial symbolic and performative step towards building national consensus for formal recognition by the central government and the international community. Accordingly, the book contributes to expanding and decentring scholarly and policy focus on state recognition by demonstrating that the agency and pathways to diplomatic recognition are more dispersed and decentralized than previously acknowledged.

This book examines the rise of sub-state recognition in the theory and practice of international relations and diplomacy. Sub-state recognition occurs when non-sovereign entities, such as regions, cities, or local governments, recognize or support an aspirant state or entity seeking independence or international recognition. Drawing on original empirical data, the book conceptualizes sub-state recognition as a pluriversal diplomatic approach and traces the actors, justifications, and effects in practice. We argue that sub-state recognition manifests as a compensatory and remedial engagement between aspirant states and sub-state entities that shape the dynamics of contested statehood, alter the conservative international recognition regime from the bottom up, and streamline the formation of decentralized approaches to diplomatic recognition. We find that sub-state recognition is a co-constitutive practice that helps aspirant states compensate for the lack of external sovereignty and enables sub-state entities granting such recognition to consolidate their foreign policy identity and regional autonomy. While sub-state recognition does not legally establish an aspirant entity as a state, it may emerge as a crucial symbolic and performative step towards building national consensus for formal recognition by the central government and the international community. Accordingly, the book contributes to expanding and decentring scholarly and policy focus on state recognition by demonstrating that the agency and pathways to diplomatic recognition are more dispersed and decentralized than previously acknowledged.

This book explores the prospects and limits of international intervention in building peace and creating a new state in an ethnically divided society and fragmented international order. The book offers a critical account of the international missions in Kosovo and traces the effectiveness of fluid forms of interventionism. It also explores the co-optation of peace by ethno-nationalist groups and explores how their contradictory perception of peace produced an ungovernable peace, which has been manifested with intractable ethnic antagonisms, state capture, and ignorance of the root causes, drivers, and consequences of the conflict. Under these conditions, prospects for emancipatory peace have not come from external actors, ethno-nationalist elite, and critical resistance movements, but from local and everyday acts of peace formation and agnostic forms for reconciliation. The book proposes an emancipatory agenda for peace in Kosovo embedded on post-ethnic politics and joint commitments to peace, a comprehensive agenda for reconciliation, people-centred security, and peace-enabling external assistance.

This book explores the prospects and limits of international intervention in building peace and creating a new state in an ethnically divided society and fragmented international order. The book offers a critical account of the international missions in Kosovo and traces the effectiveness of fluid forms of interventionism. It also explores the co-optation of peace by ethno-nationalist groups and explores how their contradictory perception of peace produced an ungovernable peace, which has been manifested with intractable ethnic antagonisms, state capture, and ignorance of the root causes, drivers, and consequences of the conflict. Under these conditions, prospects for emancipatory peace have not come from external actors, ethno-nationalist elite, and critical resistance movements, but from local and everyday acts of peace formation and agnostic forms for reconciliation. The book proposes an emancipatory agenda for peace in Kosovo embedded on post-ethnic politics and joint commitments to peace, a comprehensive agenda for reconciliation, people-centred security, and peace-enabling external assistance.