ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explores the evolution in understandings of international peacebuilding. It argues that frameworks of international intervention have increasingly left behind the top-down oppressive structures of the first decade of the 2000s, thereby meeting the demands made by the academic critiques. The book also argues that hybrid peace frameworks run the risk of dropping their transformational potential and rationalising existing governance rationales. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been at the forefront of innovation policies for development and statebuilding. The critics of liberal peace have constantly privileged difference over universality and pluralisation over pluralism. Peacebuilding critiques – from policymakers who experiment with bottom-up and resilience policies, to scholars who propose a hybrid or post-liberal peace – are animated by a dangerous optimism.
