Book Review: Christopher R. Mitchell and Landon E. Hancock (eds.), Local Peacebuilding and National Peace: Interaction Between Grassroots and Elite Processes
The path to peace is mostly paved with good intentions, but can be perilous to maneuver. Often, the peril does not lie in the policies developed by peacebuilders to build peace, but it is in the implementation of those policies where the best intentions lose their momentum. This is most evident in the interaction between grassroots and elite processes in peacebuilding and the focus of Christopher Mitchell and Landon Hancock’s edited volume Local Peacebuilding and National Peace. The book studies the impact of national actions and policies on local processes of peace and builds on their Zones of Peace book published in 2007, which explores efforts by local communities to achieve safety and democracy amid civil war. Local Peacebuilding and National Peace contains six chapters (apart from the introduction and conclusion), including four detailed case studies of local peacebuilding initiatives and their relationships with national peace processes in Colombia, South Africa, and Northern Ireland. The two chapters that flank these case studies present proposals for new ways of envisioning Zones of Peace. I will begin with these contributions.