Introduction, in At War’s End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict

Abstract

This fragment introduces Roland Paris’s argument regarding post-conflict peace building. Paris criticises methods used during the nineties by peace building operations for trying to implement democratic reforms and liberalisation too quickly. Whilst Paris maintains that the principal objective still should be to convert war torn countries into market democracies he believes that the implementation of such reforms without sufficient government institutions can provoke the regression of these countries into conflict. Therefore, he proposes a new strategy “institutionalisation before liberalisation” that first builds a strong institutional base, which he argues may then allow the introduction of democratic and liberal reforms capable of creating a lasting peace.