Transforming the Institutions of Peacemaking
There are two main divisions in my topic of women in peace and security, which are the literature on peacebuilding and security, and the literature on the international status of women. Terrence Lyons and Torunn Tryggestad bring together those two topics.
Lyons’ chapter in Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding titled “Peacebuilding, Democratization, and Transforming the Institutions of War” posits that demilitarizing politics can foster more sustainable peacebuilding.1 He works primarily within the schools of thought that focus on the politics of peace implementation, dealing specifically with post-peace agreement settlement issues.2 His main argument is that peace processes are most effective when demilitarized, and his main points of emphasis are the role that interim administrations can play, the importance of transforming militias into political parties, and the need to demobilize military groups.3
Tryggestad, in her article “Trick or Treat? The UN and Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security,” describes the significance of UNSC Resolution 1325 and the various forces that came together to make it happen.4 The schools of thought she references are international security and the international feminist movement. Her main considerations cover the difficulties inherent to successfully implementing UNSC Resolution 1325 and the status of it in 2009.5 She explains the significance of UNSC Resolution 1325 as “it’s acknowledgment of women’s agency in relation to peace and security matters.”6
The overlap between Lyon’s and Tryggestad’s work is where they become relevant to my research, as I’m investigating the role that women have and can have in peace processes. Tryggestad’s article assesses the general understanding of the international community on women in peace processes, and the efforts that the UN has made in addressing the limited role women currently play in peace and security, while Lyon’s chapter describes a specific way that peace processes can be made more sustainable. Both pieces call for a change in the current methods of peacebuilding.
My research will add to the conversation either by finding the role that women can play in the types of peacebuilding Lyons describes, or by taking the practical implications of Lyon’s work and finding how they can be incorporated into the efforts of the UN to include women in the area of peace and security.
1. Terrence Lyons. “Peacebuilding, Democratization, and Transforming the Institutions of War” in Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding. Editors Louis Kriesberg and Bruce W.Dayton, New York (Routledge, 2009), 92.
2.Ibid, 91-92.
3.Ibid, 91-106.
4.Torunn, Tryggestad. “Trick or Treat? The UN and Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security.” Global Governance 15, (2009), 540.
5.Ibid, 541-542.
6.Ibid, 539-557.
7.Ibid, 540.
Julia — you’ve done a good job of tracing out the main conceptual discussions in each piece of scholarship that you cover here. However, I think that you could go further in your analysis and connect to the course concepts we have covered. What specific factors — variables/hypotheses etc. — emerge from these analysis that you could examine in your own research? How does each author offer a different *explanation* for your puzzle? You start to get at this by noting that Tryggestad emphasized the role of the international community (that gets us towards an *explanation* of why we see certain outcomes), but the connection is less clear in your discussion of Lyons.
Keep working on pulling out the ideas from scholarship that offer different factors or explanations for your puzzle (things that you can then further analyze in your own research). Going forward, remember that you should be sure to engage the *general* scholarship on your *general* puzzle (e.g. scholarship and theories re: inclusion of women, or on how peace processes are constructed more generally) as well. Keep reading and researching and let me know if you have any questions!
Formatting notes: no need to write out full author names or full article titles in the text body (this information is in your citations and bibliography). Referring to works by author last name is standard/sufficient. Make sure to include a bibliography of works cited in your work as well.