Costly Democracy: Peacebuilding and Democratization After War [Paperback]

Peacebuilding is an interactive process that involves collaboration between peacebuilders and the victorious elites of a postwar society. While one of the most prominent assumptions of the peacebuilding literature asserts that the interests of domestic elites and peacebuilders coincide,Costly Democracycontends that they rarely align.It reveals that, while domestic elites in postwar societies may desire the resources that peacebuilders can bring, they are often less eager to adopt democracy, believing that democratic reforms may endanger their substantive interests. The book offers comparative analyses of recent cases of peacebuilding to deepen understanding of postwar democratization and better explain why peacebuilding missions often bring peacebut seldom democracyto war-torn countries. A consistent and rigorous focus across many different cases of international peacebuilding makes this a standout book. Christoph Z?rcher is Professor of Political Science the University of Ottawa.Carrie Manning is Professor and Chair of Political Science at Georgia State University.Kristie D. Evenson is an independent researcher.Rachel Hayman is Head of Research at the International NGO Training and Research Centre (INTRAC).Sarah Riese is a PhD candidate at Free University Berlin.Nora Roehner is an advisor for the government of Afghanistan in Kabul. Costly Democracyis a welcome addition to the literature on peace-building. It advances a new and important theory and develops a framework of analysis for understanding the peace-building process that has significant implications for both scholarship and public policy. It is methodologically rigorousa model of structured comparative case study analysisand is written with admirable clarity. It is an outstanding book that deserves to be read widely. This book advances a new and important claim about democratic peacebuildingit depends on the politicswithinfragile states. Sophisticated analysis of nine cases shows l“3