ABSTRACT
The "long peace" of last twenty-five years has linked various forms of intervention—from development to peacebuilding and humanitarian intervention. This "interventionary system/order" model has premised its legitimate authority on human rights to a large extent, also connected to liberal frameworks of democracy, rule of law, and capitalism. The second half of the twentieth century saw international institutions, law, and norms gradually built into an established international and state peace architecture in which there was to be an envisioned synergy between international liberal norms underpinned by the United States and the welfare state. Subaltern agency is weak and often inaudible or ignored, however, because peace theories and conflict resolution tend to value liberal discourse and rational compromises, and sees rights as more legal than material. The state and the international has to respond to and find ways of meeting ever-expanding rights claims, rather than constraining them to a select few Northern or elite citizens in a stratified international and domestic order.
