Global Governance and Local Peace Accountability and Performance in International Peacebuilding

Why do international peacebuilding organizations sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, even within the same country? Bridging the gaps between the peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and global governance scholarship, this book argues that international peacebuilding organizations repeatedly fail because they are accountable to global actors, not to local institutions or people. International peacebuilding organizations can succeed only when country-based staff bypass existing accountability structures and empower local stakeholders to hold their global organizations accountable for achieving local-level peacebuilding outcomes. In other words, the innovative, if seemingly wayward, actions of individual country-office staff are necessary to improve peacebuilding performance. Using in-depth studies of organizations operating in Burundi over a fifteen-year period, combined with fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nepal, South Sudan, and Sudan, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations, African studies, and peace and conflict studies, as well as policymakers.

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Local peacebuilding and global accountability; 2. The country context - Burundi from 1999 to 2014; 3. INGOs in peacebuilding - globally unaccountable, locally adaptive; 4. International organizations in peacebuilding - globally accountable, locally constrained; 5. Bilateral development donors - accountable for global targets, not local change; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Susanna P. Campbell is an Assistant Professor at American University's School of International Service, Washington DC. She has published extensively on international intervention in conflict-affected countries, focusing on how global governance organizations interact with the micro-dynamics of conflict and cooperation. Professor Campbell has been awarded scholarly and policy grants for her research, including from the United States Institute of Peace. She has led large evaluations of international intervention in conflict-affected countries, including for the United Nations and the World Bank, and conducted extensive fieldwork in sub-Saharan Africa and globally. Her scholarship has contributed to demonstrated policy change at the global and local levels.