Interest in conflict prevention blossomed throughout the 1990s, and so did the literature on the subject. Moreover, conflict prevention is rapidly becoming a prominent focus of the new global security and global governance agenda with advocacy of preventive policies by international and regional organizations and nongovernmental actors, and the implementation of conflict prevention within many long-term development and post-conflict assistance programs. Nevertheless, the question of how to move from the rhetoric of conflict prevention to one of institutionalized practice still remains the major concern. Following an overview of conflict prevention in historical and contemporary perspective, this article surveys some of the major themes currently found in the literature on conflict prevention. While there are still skeptical views on the viability, legality, and effectiveness of conflict prevention, some significant strides have already been taken in the direction of creating a new normative international climate that permits increasingly the implementation of preventive action.
Reconciliation as a concept and as a political process has received virtually no attention in the literature on international relations, conflict studies, and peace research. In the context of this study, reconciliation refers to a process by which countries can establish structures and procedures for establishing durable peace with their adversaries once they have entered a postsettlement or postconflict phase. One of the major tasks of this article is to explore how reconciliation was realized as a policy process. Drawing on the Franco‐German case, the author reveals how reconciliation functioned as a peace‐building strategy to overcome the historical antagonism between the two countries through the use of cooperative linkages, community building, and the expansion of the societal and cultural ties between France and Germany.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.