On Democratization and Peacebuilding‪.‬

The two subfields addressed in this article did not exist twenty years ago. Scholars had only begun to analyze the beginnings of the "third wave" of democratization in the early 1980s, and the term peacebuilding only gained currency in the 1990s. By the early twenty-first century, the study of democracy and democratization had firmly become a subfield of political and sociological inquiry, as evidenced by the emergence of research centers and journals on the subject. Peacebuilding enjoyed a rapid rise, especially in policy circles, without the same degree of institutionalization. Nevertheless, it is surprising that international relations specialists only recently began to pay more rigorous attention to the relationship between peacebuilding and political governance and, more specifically, the extensive research on democratization. In this article, we analyze the relationship between these two growing subfields. (1) We highlight a central dilemma facing actors seeking to establish or improve postconflict governance. On the one hand, both the concepts and policies associated with international postwar political reconstruction have become broader, more sweeping, and more intrusive in recent years. The concept of peacebuilding now means not only keeping former enemies from going back to war, but also addressing the root causes of conflict and even fostering development in non-postwar societies. In practice, the international community is more bound and determined to create democratic political regimes in postwar settings, recreating the core institutions of state and society largely along Western lines of thought. The largest donors and international organizations have coalesced around a standard postwar political package that Marina Ottaway calls the "democratic reconstruction model," involving constitution making, elections within two ye ars of the end of hostilities, funding for civil society, and extensive state institution building. (2) The postconflict political agenda has very positive elements, especially as it signifies a departure from the great powers' persistent tendency to embrace dictators for strategic reasons.