Understanding Post-Conflict Institutional Reform: Institutional Interactions on the Local, National, and International Level

Abstract

In recent years, research on post-conflict institutional reform processes has vastly increased. Many authors have endorsed the reform of formal political institutions, such as redesigning gov-ernment or electoral systems, as a process of utmost importance for building peace in the after-math of armed conflict (e.g. Paris 2004; Jarstad and Sisk 2008). More critical voices have alluded to potentially destabilizing effects of exporting Western-style democratic institutions to war-torn societies (Heathershaw 2008; Richmond 2009). While both approaches have extensively analyzed the reform processes on the respective local, the national, and the international level, comparatively little attention has been paid to the interaction of these levels of analysis. This panel therefore investigates post-conflict institutional reform, considering particularly the interaction of the local, the national and the international level on institutional reform in post-conflict societies. For instance, how do different forms of international engagement influence the success or failure of national or local institutional reform? Or how are national or international policies implemented at the local level? To this end, the proposed panel deals with questions on the link between different types of institutions and distinct levels of analysis from both a qualitative and quantitative methodological perspective.

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