Abstract :
The ‘liberal peace’ is undergoing a crisis of legitimacy at the level of the everydayin post-conflict environments. In many such environments; different groups often locallyconstituted perceive it to be ethically bankrupt, subject to double standards, coercive andconditional, acultural, unconcerned with social welfare, and unfeeling and insensitivetowards its subjects. It is tied to Western and liberal conceptions of the state, to institutions,and not to the local. Its post-Cold War moral capital, based upon its more emancipatoryrather than conservative claims, has been squandered as a result, and its basic goal of aliberal social contract undermined. Certainly, since 9/11, attention has been diverted intoother areas and many, perhaps promising peace processes have regressed. This has divertedattention away from a search for refinements, alternatives, for hybrid forms of peace, or forempathetic strategies through which the liberal blueprint for peace might coexist withalternatives. Yet from these strategies a post-liberal peace might emerge via critical researchagendas for peacebuilding and for policymaking, termed here, eirenist. This opens up adiscussion of an everyday ‘post-liberal peace’ and critical policies for peacebuilding
