Hybrid Peace: The Interaction Between Top-Down and Bottom-Up Peace

TLDR

The article examines the interface between internationally supported peace operations and local, traditional, indigenous, and customary peace practices. It argues that peace in post‑conflict societies is a hybrid of external and local elements, and it conceptualizes how this composite peace is constructed and maintained. The authors propose a four‑part conceptual model showing that hybrid peace results from the interplay of liberal peace agents’ compliance and incentive powers with local actors’ capacity to resist, adapt, or sustain alternative peacemaking structures.

Abstract

This article is interested in the interface between internationally supported peace operations and local approaches to peace that may draw on traditional, indigenous and customary practice. It argues that peace (and security, development and reconstruction) in societies emerging from violent conflict tends to be a hybrid between the external and the local. The article conceptualizes how this hybrid or composite peace is constructed and maintained. It proposes a four-part conceptual model to help visualize the interplay that leads to hybridized forms of peace. Hybrid peace is the result of the interplay of the following: the compliance powers of liberal peace agents, networks and structures; the incentivizing powers of liberal peace agents, networks and structures; the ability of local actors to resist, ignore or adapt liberal peace interventions; and the ability of local actors, networks and structures to present and maintain alternative forms of peacemaking.