ABSTRACT
A landmark redefinition of peace from agreement between warring groups towards pacifying societies through democracy has been the 1992 Agenda for Peace put forward by then UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Civil strife and armed conflict are seen to constitute a rupture of normal proceedings; they are a breakdown of peaceful conditions. The chapter is concerned with the two sides of the institutionalist fallacy as it surfaced in the context of conflict managements and the resulting crisis of democracy promotion. It draws out the reconceptualisations of conflict and democratic governance that are beginning to enable a transition from understanding the rise of the social as a limitation to democracy promotion to its transvaluation into a new rationale of intervention and democratic governance. In the absence of a constitutive power of mobilisation and reorganisation, liberal government's public sphere, established through the promotion of representative institutions.
