The liberal peace is over and it is not coming back: hybridity and the emerging international peace system

Abstract

This article revisits and updates the concept of hybridity in order to take account of the fragmentation of power and structures in a multipolar international and transnational system. Earlier accounts of hybrid peace and hybrid political orders tended to be Eurocentric and concentrated on a liberal peace--local binary. Drawing on interviews with senior peacemakers and mediators, the article rejuvenates the concept of hybridity. A four-part analytical framework is developed to explain the changing international peace landscape: the fragmentation of the rules-based international order, the increasing prominence of non-western peace actors, the stubbornness of the residual international order, and the impact of the so-called local turn. The article puts forward an expanded notion of hybridity and recommends it as a sense-making tool.