Scholars and practitioners alike have known for long that peacebuilding is about payoffs and expected gains for key stakeholders rather than mere goodwill. Although conflict research has spent considerable efforts on discerning “greed” or “grievance” as conflict drivers, it has so far not adequately addressed the political economy of peace processes. Peace processes are at times seen as an open competition of well-meant ideas in public discourse. This reasoning is in part responsible for the glaring gap between ambition and reality in peace processes.

At the conference, 100 academics and practitioners discussed the political economy of expectations, the logics of participation and consequences for setting priorities and for sequencing in peacebuilding processes under the overarching question: Which incentives could make a difference during negotiations?

Programme

Press release (in German)

Welcome by Beate Wieland, NRW Ministry of Culture and Science

Keynote by Alex de Waal “Peacebuilding as a market place”

"The political economy of expectations". Véronique Dudouet, Günter Bächler, Owen Greene, Andreas Kindl (l. t. r.)

“How inclusive, how exclusive should peacebuilding be?”Andrea Warnecke, Jocelyn Mawdsley, Henk-Jan Brinkman, Jörn Grävingholt (l. t. r.)

“Why do conflicts ‘transform’: Is there a (marginal) gain in protracted conflicts?” Ambassador Kai Eide, Sami Faltas, Wolf-Christian Paes (l. t. r.)

Final roundtable: “Which fundamental issues must be addressed by peace agreements? Lessons learned”. Kai Eide, Elke Grawert, Günter Bächler, Andreas Heinemann-Grüder, Alex de Waal (l. t. r.)

Information: conference2017(at)bicc.de

The conference is sponsored by the Foundation for International Dialogue of the Savings Bank in Bonn and the U.S. Consulate General Düsseldorf.