Journal Articles

War and Dependent State Formation in Ukraine

Peace Rep

June 2025

by Volodymyr Artiukh and Taras Fedirko

Enacting the Humanitarian Development Peace

Peace Rep
January 2025

by Karolina Czerska-Shaw and Roch Dunin-Wąsowicz

Capturing sources of health system legitimacy in fragmented conflict zones under different governance models: a case study of northwest Syria

Authors: Munzer Alkhalil, Rim Turkmani, Mazen Gharibah, Preeti Patel and Zaki Mehchy.

Journal: Globalization and Health 20 (71).

This study highlights the importance of considering the legitimacy of the health system in fragmented conflict zones. It helps explain the effectiveness of the bottom-up approach and community-based governance in enhancing trust, cooperative behaviour, health interventions and achieving sustainability.

Natural bedfellows: corruption, criminality and the failure of international reconstruction. A case study of the Kabul Bank

Author: Marika Theros.

Journal: Conflict, Security and Development 24 (4).

Combining the political marketplace framework with a network analysis, this paper traces how a corrupt network formed around the Kabul Bank, grew and metastasised by leveraging neo-liberal and technocratic economic reform policies, and thus, gravely undermined the country’s governance and stability.

The War Against Ukraine and the Failure of “Great Power Politics”

Author: Luke Cooper

Book: The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Geopolitics (Palgrave Macmillan)

This chapter interrogates the claim that the Russian war against Ukraine represents a “return” or “resurgence” of “great power politics”.

Of Rule not Revenue: South Sudan’s Revenue Complex from Colonial, Rebel, to Independent Rule, 1899 to 2023

Author: Matthew Sterling Benson-Strohmayer

Journal: Comparative Studies in Society and History (Cambridge University Press)

This article analyses revenue raising practices in colonial, post-colonial rebel-led, and independent South Sudan. It is based on archival research in Sudanese and South Sudanese national archives, British colonial archives, and 205 interviews conducted in South Sudan.

Knowledge, power and the failure of US peacemaking in Afghanistan 2018–21

Author: Marika Theros

Journal: International Affairs 99 (3)

The power of narrative and norm entrepreneurship in shaping policy and practice is rarely investigated in the context of international peacemaking and mediation. Applying constructivist analyses and drawing on empirical evidence from US diplomacy in Afghanistan between 2018 and 2021, this article demonstrates how emergent western policy discourses, knowledge production, and the mediator’s ideas and practices interacted in a dynamic context to induce a significant shift in US policy, legitimate it, and fundamentally reshape the conflict and peacemaking landscape.

Local agreements – an introduction to the special issue

Authors: Mary Kaldor, Marika Theros & Rim Turkmani

Journal: Peacebuilding 10 (2)

This article introduces a Peacebuilding special issue on local agreements in intractable conflicts. By ‘local’, we refer to any type of agreement that covers a geographical area less than the entire national territory although the issues and actors may be national, regional, international as well as local.

Local agreements as a process: The example of local talks in Homs in Syria

Author: Rim Turkmani

Journal: Peacebuilding 10 (2)

This article sets out why it is important to conceptualise local agreements as a process of talks that have a value in their own right rather than as a discrete event reached on a particular date. It is based on detailed empirical evidence covering six years of local talks in the city of Homs and its Al-Waer suburb, the article shows that even if an agreement is not reached. It also challenges the main methods of gathering empirical evidence about local peace agreements and discussed potential policy implications.

How local are local agreements? Shaping local agreements as a new form of third-party intervention in protracted conflicts.

Author: Rim Turkmani

Journal: Peacebuilding 10 (2)

Based on two case studies from Syria, this article argues that unilateral external intervention in protracted conflicts is not only about military and financial support to one or other warring party.