This article applies complexity theory to the peacebuilding field and finds that for a peace process to become self-sustainable, resilient social institutions need to emerge from within, i.e. informed by the local culture, history and socio-economic context. International peacebuilders can assist this process, but if they interfere too much they end up undermining the self-organising processes necessary to generate and sustain resilient social institutions. A complexity-informed approach to sustaining peace suggests that international peacebuilders focus their efforts on safeguarding, stimulating, facilitating and creating the space for societies to develop resilient capacities for self-organisation.

This article explores why international actors assign such high importance to coherence. It argues that the assumptions on which the principle of coherence is based are flawed, and that the empirical and theoretical evidence indicates that there is much less room for coherence than generally acknowledged in the policy debate. It recommends that the international community should lower its expectations and adopt more realistic polices. The current approach tends to put pressure on all partners to adopt a maximal approach to coherence, regardless of their relations to each other and the operational context. Coherence should not be understood as an effort aimed equally at all, nor should all partners be expected to achieve the same level of unity of effort. Coherence should rather be understood as a scale of relationships, and the most appropriate and realistic level of coherence that can be achieved will depend on the exact constellation of organizations in an interdependent relationship in that specific operational context. This article offers a typology of the range of likely relationships, as well as an explanation of the circumstances that may determine the level of coherence that can be realistically expected to develop, depending on the context and the nature of the relationships among the partners.

Over the last two decades, climate security has become an increasingly salient policy agenda in international fora. Yet, despite a large body of research, the empirical links between climate-change and conflict remain highly uncertain. This paper contends that uncertainty around climate–conflict links should be understood as characteristic of complex social–ecological systems rather than a problem that can be fully resolved. Rather than striving to eliminate uncertainty, we suggest that researchers need to learn to cope with it. To this end, this article advances a set of principles for guiding scholarly practice when investigating a complex phenomenon: recognizing epistemological uncertainty, embracing epistemological diversity, and practicing humility and dialogue across difference. Taken together we call this ethos epistemological pluralism, whereby scholars self-consciously recognize the limits of their chosen epistemology for understanding the climate–conflict nexus and engage with other approaches without attempting to usurp them. Reviewing the last decade of climate–conflict scholarship, we show that climate–conflict research already manifests many of these ideals; however, we also identify problematic patterns of engagement across epistemological divides and thus plenty of scope for improvement. To illustrate why a diversity of methods (e.g., qualitative and quantitative) will not suffice, the article critically discusses prior research to illustrate why at least two epistemological approaches—constructivism and positivism—cannot be synthesized or integrated without significant analytical cost, and elaborates why excluding insights from any one would lead to an impoverished understanding of the climate–conflict nexus. We conclude with five practical recommendations of how scholars can help realize the ideal of epistemological pluralism in practice.

Complexity theory offers a theoretical framework for analysing how social systems prevent, manage and recover from violent conflict. Insights from complexity suggest that for a peace process to become self-sustainable, resilient social institutions need to emerge from within, i.e. from the culture, history and socio-economic context of the relevant society. Peace operations are deployed to contain violence and to facilitate this process, but if they interfere too much, they will cause harm by inadvertently disrupting the very feedback loops critical for self-organization to emerge and to be sustained. To navigate this dilemma, the paper proposes employing an adaptive approach, where peace operations, together with the communities and people affected by the conflict, actively engage in an iterative process of inductive learning and adaptation. Adaptive Peace Operations is a normative and functional approach to peace operations that is aimed at navigating the complexity inherent in trying to nudge societal change processes towards sustaining peace, without causing harm.

When the United Nations (UN) Security Council needs to authorize a peace enforcement operation in Africa, its partner of choice is the African Union (AU). Africa has developed significant peace operations capacity over the past decade. In addition to deploying eight AU operations, Africa now contributes 50% of all UN peacekeepers. African stability operations, like its mission in Somalia, are often described as peace enforcement operations. In this article, I question whether it is accurate to categorize African stability operations as peace enforcement? I answer the question by considering what the criteria are that are used to differentiate between peace enforcement and peacekeeping operations in the UN context. I then use the peace enforcement criteria to assess whether AU stabilization operations would qualify as peace enforcement operations. In conclusion, I consider the implications of the findings for the strategic partnership between the AU and the UN.