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Reparations are among the most tangible, victim-centric, and personal of processes in the transition from violence to peace, symbolizing the recognition that an individual has been harmed and has rights in the eyes of the state or international community. Reparations are also an inherently political project, transforming official visions of violence, responsibility, and victimization into material and psychological benefit. Despite the power of reparations to shape transitions from violence to peace, they have been too often ignored in practice, leaving most victims of gross violations of human rights and serious violations of international humanitarian law without reparation. Partly as a consequence, research has tended to focus more on “harder” processes, like trials and truth commissions, than on the “stepchild of postconflict justice.” Yet, there have been significant developments in reparations theory and practice that motivate key outstanding questions for researchers. Reparations derive their symbolic power from the law, which is an imperfect tool for responding to the varied forms of violence experienced in conflict and to the diverse, sometimes contradictory, priorities and needs that people hold. In such contexts, there is an inherent tension between expanding reparations programs to be inclusive and adaptable and preserving their fundamental distinction as a justice process. This is a difficult balance to strike, but there are frameworks and questions that can offer useful guidance. In particular, the lenses of economic violence and positive peace are useful for articulating the role of reparations in postconflict transitions, offering conceptual expansion beyond transitional justice’s traditional concern for political violence without delving too far into the customary terrain of development or postconflict reconstruction. Yet, the specific mechanisms through which the inward and outward feelings and attitudes and broader social changes that reparations are expected to produce remain undertheorized in transitional justice scholarship, in large part because of a lack of empirical evidence about how recipients experience them in practice. Does the restoration of civic trust, for example, depend upon recipients of individual reparations telling their neighbors about their payments? Does recognition as a citizen depend upon a beneficiary publicly self-identifying as a victim? Questions like these about the particular variables that drive reparations outcomes represent the next frontier for transitional justice researchers interested in the role of reparations in the transition from violence to peace.

The term “peaceocracy” refers to a situation in which an emphasis on peace is used to prioritize stability and order to the detriment of democracy. As such, the term can be used to refer to a short-lived or longer-term strategy whereby an emphasis on peace by an incumbent elite is used to close the political space through the delegitimization and suppression of activity that could arguably foster division or conflict. At the heart of peaceocracy lies an insistence that certain actions—including those that are generally regarded as constituting important political and civil rights, such as freedom of speech and association, freedom of the press, and freedom to engage in peaceful protest and strike action—can spill over into violence and foster division and must therefore be avoided to guard against disorder. Recent history suggests that incumbents can effectively establish a peaceocracy in contexts where many believe that widespread violence is an ever-present possibility; incumbents have, or are widely believed to have, helped to establish an existing peace; and the level of democracy is already low. In such contexts, a fragile peace helps to justify a prioritization of peace; the idea that incumbents have “brought peace” strengthens their self-portrait as the unrivaled guardians of the same; and semi-authoritarianism provides a context in which incumbents are motivated to use every means available to maintain power and are well placed—given, for example, their control over the media and civil society—to manipulate an emphasis on peace to suppress opposition activities. Key characteristics of peaceocracy include: an incumbent’s effective portrait of an existing peace as fragile and themselves as the unrivaled guardians of order and stability; a normative notion of citizenship that requires “good citizens” to actively protect peace and avoid activities that might foster division and conflict; and the use of these narratives of guardianship and disciplined citizenship to justify a range of repressive laws and actions. Peaceocracy is thus a strategy, rather than a discreet regime type, which incumbents can use in hybrid regimes as part of their “menu of manipulation,” and which can be said to be “successful” when counter-narratives are in fact marginalized and the political space is effectively squeezed.

Africa is a place of enormous variation and its countries have had very different postcolonial experiences. However, it is clear that since the 1940s peace has been elusive for many across the continent. A series of wars driven by poverty, identity, political economy, and failing states led to a widespread crisis of governance and extensive international intervention. Reductions in the security capabilities of states have also led to the growth of violent transnational groups, particularly those related to Islamic extremism in the Maghreb, Nigeria, and Somalia but also criminal networks involved with drug and people smuggling. This wide variety of conflicts also generated an equally wide range of responses as the international community began to develop ways of combating conflicts through reform of its own peacekeeping capacity. The optimism of the 1992 Agenda for Peace, which called for the UN to become the central instrument in the prevention and ending of conflicts, has given way to a more sanguine approach, as mixed results have led to diverse outcomes for African countries and Africa’s own peace and security architecture. In the end, despite the rapid development of important local and localized bottom-up peacebuilding initiatives, the state remains central to the overarching aims of peace and stability across the continent. It is here where the variations in performance can be found in conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and post-conflict reconstruction.

Peacekeeping has been one of the main conflict management tools used by the international community to restore or safeguard peace and security. Since 1948, the United Nations has established 70 peace operations and has substantially evolved, adopting approaches to peace that extend beyond purely military concerns. Indeed, the promises of peacekeeping as effective instrument of conflict reduction may, to some extent, explain the evolution toward multidimensional missions and the unprecedented number of peacekeepers deployed in the last decade. As consequence, the growing importance of peacekeeping effectiveness has sparked a new wave of research that empirically investigates whether and under which conditions UN peacekeeping works. Peacekeepers are mostly deployed in conflict or postconflict environments where violence is either ongoing or lingering. Thus, violence remains a priority for peace missions. Consequently, peacekeeping is deemed successful or effective according to whether it curbs conflict in several dimensions. Effective missions are those responsible for decreasing the intensity of battle violence, protecting civilians, and containing conflict diffusion and recurrence in the postwar phase. Each mission, however, is deployed in different contexts and operates under variable conditions that affect the operation’s capacity to influence conflict. Concerning mission features, peacekeeping success is more likely when large contingents are deployed under robust mandates. Mission type, size, and composition signal credible commitment from the international community and empower peacekeepers to halt violence while guaranteeing the implementation of peace agreements. These nuanced understandings of peacekeeping stem from the availability of new data on both conflict and peace operations at the national and subnational levels of analysis. Moreover, the empirical study of the effectiveness of peace operations has recently been flanked by simulation-based forecasting, field experiments, and surveys investigating local-level outcomes of peace missions. Unsurprisingly, the focus on violence and conflict outcomes as indicators of success is debatable. First, in dealing with violence, peacekeeping operations produce spillover effects that are largely neglected, such as refugee flows and terrorist violence. Second, given the wide range of functions performed by UN peacekeepers, including electoral assistance, economic reconstruction, and state building, it is reasonable to include these aspects when defining effectiveness. Third, and relatedly, no assessment of short- versus long-term implications of peacekeeping for political, social, and economic development in the host country has been forthcoming. While reducing infant mortality, inequality, and crime are not necessarily tasks for peacekeepers, it is vital to study whether and how UN missions may have shaped the quality of peace in host countries.

Business—or the sum of privately run enterprises in all sectors of the economy, their owners, and managers—can have an important impact on the holding of peace talks, on agreement substance, and on the speed and depth of implementation. In fact, business has been part of peacebuilding processes in many conflict-affected societies in Latin America, both by spoiling ongoing efforts and by supporting negotiations, social dialogue, and transformative projects. The examples of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia show that there is not a uniform model whereby private sector actors define their interests and strategies in relation to peace talks and peacebuilding processes. Rather, factors related to the nature and intensity of conflict, the economic and international context, company traits and private sector organizational forms, as well as access to the policymaking process play an important role. Whether peace is achieved or not ultimately depends on a variety of factors. However, whether as spoiler, supporter, or simple bystander, the private sector is a crucial actor in societies seeking to build lasting peace.