Peacebuilding and Ex-Combatants

'One of the great challenges of peacebuilding is to encourage ex-combatants to demobilize and engage constructively in civilian politics. Johanna Söderström’s bookprovides an empirically rich and penetrating investigation of these essential issues and represents an important addition to our understanding of politics after civil war. Embedding her argument at the nexus of the literature on democratization and conflict resolution and at the micro level of analysis, she traces how political reintegration of ex-combatants will shape both the scope and content of their participation in post-conflict politics.'-- Terrence Lyons, George Mason University, USA

'The political mobilization of former combatants is often perceived as a threat, ultimately undermining the security and stability of the state. Their post-war role is complex and should be considered beyond a mere binary of bad or good citizenship. There is a huge need to recognize former combatants’ engagement in multiple political roles: spoilers, victims, disengaged, beneficiaries, as well as motivated and active citizens. Söderström has provided a valuable service in addressing these issues in her timely and path-breaking study in the context of Liberia and practitioners and scholars alike will find this book with keen practical and conceptual insights into the challenges of political reintegration of former combatants.' -- Alpaslan Özerdem, Coventry University, UK

'Rebel soldiering is partially a political activity. However in the aftermath of civil wars ex-combatants are often treated as non-political individuals. Indeed the international community entices rebel movements to create political parties to cater for the political/military elite of these movements. Despite commonplace failure and political marginality of such parties most research on political reintegration of ex-combatants limit their analysis to this. But