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Intractable conflict is a long-time violent and self-perpetuating crisis. The peacemaking revolution has the potential to stop the destructive dynamic of the conflict. The purpose of this paper is to present a contractualist model of a peacemaking revolution and its theoretical foundations. It analyzes the revolutionary peacemaking process in Northern Ireland during the 1990s in light of the contractualist model.

The paper presents a contractualist model to describe the interplay between leaders (policymakers) and people (public opinion) and its impact on the strategy to cope with situations of intractable conflict. The paper includes theoretical background and a case study analysis.

The peacemaking revolution is a process of dynamic equilibrium between peacemaking policy and public expectations for change. It progresses from one point of equilibrium to the next.

The paper intends to add a fresh perspective to the study of the peacemaking revolution, in general, and the interplay between peacemaking policy and public support in particular. It points out that a consensus-building process, which combines political-elite diplomacy and public diplomacy, has the potential to create the conditions for a peacemaking revolution. Political-elite diplomacy offers diplomatic channels for leaders to begin a peace process, support it and conclude agreements. Public diplomacy offers instruments to involve the people in the peacemaking efforts, prepare them for a change and motivate the leaderships to conclude agreements.

The main purpose of this paper is to propose a strategy to promote the culture of peace in the Palestinian‐Israeli struggle. The Bangladesh approach to peacemaking offers a dual strategy: conflict management in the Israeli‐Gaza situation and conflict resolution in the Israeli‐West Bank case. The first is designed to reduce the level of violence in intensified conflict. The second intends to build the foundations of a peaceful social order.

The paper develops and elaborates the second part of the Bangladesh approach. It offers a strategy to build the foundations for a peaceful social order in the Israeli West‐Bank situation. The paper includes theoretical background, examples from other cases of intractable conflict, and lessons from the “Minds of Peace Experiment” – a simulation of a potential Palestinian‐Israeli public negotiating congress – which was conducted at the University of Missouri‐St Louis.

The paper presents two competitive models of peacemaking and proclaims them complementary: the political élite and the public assembly. The first intends to reach a peace pact through interactions between political élites. The second intends to prepare the people for a reasonable peace process through the establishment of a major institution for conflict resolution – a public negotiating congress.

The public‐assembly model is new in the Palestinian‐Israeli experience. The paper offers a program to create the conditions for establishing a major Palestinian‐Israeli public assembly: a public negotiating congress. It is the first time in the history of the struggle where ordinary people are intended to be substantially involved in the negotiating and the peacemaking process.

In 2010, the Canadian government introduced the National Action Plan for the Implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security. Approximately 24 countries have developed national action plans to evaluate and monitor the implementation of UNSCR 1325 that calls for the inclusion of all women in peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding and the protection of women. Refugee women were not included in the Action Plan as partners in peacemaking, mentioned only in sections referring to protection and post-conflict reconstruction. As such, refugee women are not considered key players in plans to bring about peace despite evidence that refugee women's organizations can participate in and even lead peacebuilding efforts.

This chapter analyzes the activities of three refugee women's organizations from Tibet, the Sudan, and Burma/Myanmar concluding that it is strategically important to support women's transnational networks and facilitate contact between diaspora, refugee, and local women's organizations interested in conflict transformation. A gendered analysis of refugee peacebuilding capacity reveals gaps in peacebuilding capacity approaches that become evident when female diasporas are the focus of the research. The women's refugee organizations show the capacity for transnational bridge building, that is, the capacity to build and sustain networks across geographical, social and political boundaries with the aim of bringing about nonviolent social change.

This study examines the relationship between gender and religious affiliation to the preferred conflicts styles of 384 student participants living in and attending university in South Africa, Israel, Bosnia‐Herzegovina and Northern Ireland. Participants report living in stressful social contexts that are often characterized by reports of terrorism perpetrated by paramilitaries, the state, violence that is brought on by long standing ethnic hatreds and years of division between major groups contending for control of political and social institutions, civilian uprisings, and in some cases low scale civil war. The results indicate that the independent variables—gender and religion—provide statistically significant observable differences in how people report they engage in conflict as seen in their choice of conflict styles. In particular, the findings on gender differences provide a surprising result that is partially attributed to the contextual factors of warfare and one's active participation in it. The results on religious affiliation provide a number of intriguing patterns among various religions including a desire to accommodate or collaborate with others and a strong dislike of avoidance. There are other more specific patterns that can be partially attributed to contextual factors as well. With so many contexts being present in the study a number of intriguing explanations and working hypotheses are brought forth to help explain why these patterns on gender and religious affiliation exist.

The prolonged army rule in the country has affected the policymaking procedure of the state. Specifically, defence and foreign policies of the country are normally decided by the armed forces of Pakistan as per their own priorities, which is against the norms of democratic culture and supremacy of the civilian rule.

The control of important decision-making process in the hands of the armed forces has generated an arms race in the subcontinent. The major portion of the national budget is being spent on the defence forces and other sectors such as education and health and social welfare are not getting their due share from the revenue of the country. The continued sense of insecurity and animosity with neighbour countries, especially India, has resulted in speeding the acquisition of sophisticated arms in the country.

This research discusses the effects of the military's role in the decision-making of the country and its impacts on the relations between India and Pakistan. The confidence building measures and peacemaking process in South Asia is dependent on the attitude of the military of both the countries.

There is an emerging consensus within the literature on failed and failing states that state failure is contagious across borders. For its part, the literature on regionalisation claims that states within the same region tend to form clusters of security – or insecurity – so that geographical proximity is closely associated with inert security relationships. This article – along with the individual contributions in the volume it introduces – seeks to bridge these two literatures, which otherwise rarely talk to each other. The approach taken throughout the volume is largely qualitative and case-oriented, yet methodologically diverse, while the articles have a shared comparative ambition. This introductory article examines the debate on failing states and contextualises the volume's contributions within that debate. It then does the same in relation to the debate on regional security, before moving on to examine the role and impact of emerging regional responses to insecurity. When we examine recent state-building initiatives, the effectiveness of external actors seems limited, while existing power holders – and the conflicts between them – are at the centre in processes for building states. This calls for studying the practice of state-building, and for rooting policies in viable practices, even when the driving actors are not inherently benign. To a considerable degree, a state's strength and functionality are relational: the state can only be understood in relation to significant other states. Within regions, hegemonic states – and the strategies pursued by other states in their efforts to cooperate with, balance, or counter the hegemon – have major implications for security. Regional cooperation emerges through concrete collaboration to address commonly perceived challenges, at times as an unintended effect of a targeted initiative. Key actors – and the networks of which they form part – are often transnational, spanning the borders of several states. The behaviour of transnational actors, how they interface with the system of states and regions and the potential for their conversion into constructive political forces remain poorly understood. As a whole, these are findings that inspire an agenda for future research at the interface between the state and the region.

This chapter explores how the concept of ‘peace’ has evolved and broadened over time within the Peace Studies Field to include at least seven aspects (Part I), and how a somewhat parallel evolution has occurred within the field of Business Ethics, so that each of these seven aspects of peace has implications for business ethics (Part II). In Part I, peace is defined as different, evolving visions and goals necessary for creating a more peaceful society and world. These seven aspects of peace also build on each other, collectively creating a more holistic, integrative view of peace for the 21st century, along with the need for various forms of nonviolence for bringing about these needed visions and goals. Each of these seven aspects of peace can also be seen as being based on certain underlining principles. What is most interesting to see is that these underlying principles seem to also be at work in the evolution of business ethics, implying that humanity is indeed moving towards addressing evolving aspects of what must be addressed for creating a world that increasingly works for everyone. This is perhaps a surprising but quite significant discovery.

Purpose: National business groups in conflict countries may mitigate the civil war or do the converse. When the economy is mainly point-sourced, which means it mainly exports mineral-based products and/or narcotics, the business community (apart from small-businesses associated with services) is likely to be more pro-war, particularly, if the other side may gain control of the lootable commodities, as in secessionist wars. This tendency will be reinforced the closer are business and political ties, shorter the time horizons are and more difficult it is to make credible commitments to peace. If the economy exports mainly agricultural products excluding those mentioned above or manufactures (diffuse or manufacturing) the commercial case for peace is stronger because of the diffused nature of the core business activity. Even so, there will be some groups who profit from war contracts and arms deals. The peace lobby is likely to dominate in societies where business and political actors are more sharply separated, as well as in countries that have longer time horizons and better institutions of commitment. The pro-peace business lobby may have a stronger case in secessionist wars compared to rebellions, as the former are more likely to be longer and more intractable to purely military solutions.