
Counter-Peace
Tactical Blockages to Peace and Strategic Risks for the International System
Oxford University Press Inc
Will be published approx. on 25. August 2026
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-0-19-755030-4 (ISBN)
Description
During the 21st century, peace processes have been stagnating, collapsing, or reversed across diverse contexts. At the heart of this unravelling lies a complex and hitherto overlooked phenomenon: the systematic obstruction of peace itself. Counter-Peace: Tactical Blockages to Peace and Strategic Risks for the International System introduces the concept of counter-peace: a set of interconnected, multi-scalar processes that undermine, distort, or reverse peace processes without necessarily reverting to open warfare. Drawing on detailed case studies, this book reveals how counter-peace dynamics have become embedded in peace processes and why the resulting conflict escalation is a symptom of a changing international order. It interrogates the international peace architecture and argues that its failure to adapt to critical insights on justice, legitimacy, and emancipation has rendered it increasingly ine?ective. Rather than viewing peace failures as isolated or technical missteps, the authors examine how blockages to peace are anchored in power structures, neoliberal policies, and geopolitical rivalries. Actors exploit the structural flaws and unintended consequences of peacemaking to pursue revisionist goals with the support of rising actors in the multipolar order. In this sense, peace processes have become an ideological battlefield between the declining liberal and the rising authoritarian international order. Through this lens, peace and counter-peace appear as deeply entangled forces that shape and contest the future of the international order. Rich in empirical evidence and theoretical innovation, this book challenges the traditional explanations that sanitise or depoliticise the idea of peacemaking. It shifts the debate toward systemic analyses of failure, resistance, and legitimacy. Urgent, timely, and critical, Counter-Peace calls for a fundamental rethinking of how peace is conceptualised, built, and maintained. It provides scholars, practitioners, and policymakers with a new framework to understand why peace often fails and how the construction of peaceful social orders needs to be rethought.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
6 b/w diagrams
Dimensions
Height: 242 mm
Width: 165 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
612 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-755030-4 (9780197550304)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Oliver P. Richmond is Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Manchester, UK.
Sandra Pogodda is Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Manchester, UK.
Gezim Visoka is Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University, Ireland.
Sandra Pogodda is Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Manchester, UK.
Gezim Visoka is Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University, Ireland.
Author
Professor of International PoliticsProfessor of International Politics, University of Manchester
Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Peace and Conflict StudiesSenior Lecturer in International Relations and Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Manchester
Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict StudiesAssociate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, Dublin City University
Content
Introduction: International peace architecture, tactical blockages, and counter-peace strategies and systems 1: A theoretical framework to conceptualise counter-peace 2: From tactics to strategy: The stalemate pattern 3: Strategy and its limits: The limited counter-peace pattern 4: Entanglement, new repertoires, and conflict expansion: The unmitigated counter-peace pattern 5: The return of ideological contestation: The international implications of counter-peace Conclusion: Responding to the emerging counter-peace architecture