The dilemmas of a hybrid peace: Negative or positive?

Abstract

Hybrid forms of peace represent a juxtaposition between international norms and interests and local forms of agency and identity. A first stage may be tense forms of hybrid politics that maintain structural violence, fail to resolve the contradictions between local and international norms, and reflect the outsourcing of colonial style rule. This could be characterised as, or lead to, a negative form of hybrid peace. A positive form of hybrid peace would have the advantage of having resolved such contradictions through active rather than passive everyday agency. This article examines this range of dilemmas surrounding debates about hybrid peace.