ABSTRACT
Why do we need to study the processes that shaped the march to peace? The central argument of this chapter is that reconstruction is shaped greatly by the processes through which civil war ended and far less, if at all, by the initial conditions that triggered it. Licklider’s study of the consequences of negotiated settlement in civil war presents some very complex scenarios and concludes with a list of questions aimed at answering the question of ‘why some negotiated settlements in identity wars “stick” and others do not and why some victories are followed by mass murder and others aren’t?’ (Licklider, 1995, p. 687). Cramer (2004) provides a broader approach that transcends such narrow specifications: ‘post-conflict and peace-building are not technical projects but are sharply political and largely determined by the coalition of interest groups that dominates the political process’. Interestingly, its overwhelmingly static approach, the new blueprint à la Collier, repeatedly emphasizes that each post-conflict situation is distinctive and ‘that the general principles are merely broad lines’ (Collier et al., 2003, p. 152).
