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The task of writing concluding remarks to this volume is as much as pleasure as it is a challenge. For one, it is impossible to summarize these conceptually sophisticated and empirically rich chapters. I will not even try. Nor will I attempt to understand liberal peace in all its various hybrid forms. The authors already offer numerous innovative takes on how peacebuilding missions in all parts of the world – driven largely by western and liberal–democratic values – frequently clash with the needs, aspirations and actual lives of the people affected by conflict. These clashes have been left under-examined and all too often unaddressed by a policy-making community preoccupied with the grand architecture of liberal peacebuilding and the often abstract principles they embody: the creation of a post-conflict order through security, market economics, rule of law and democratization.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230354234_16

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