Broadening 'Business', Widening 'Peace': A New Research Agenda on Business and Peace-Building

Jason Miklian, Peer Schouten

Conflict, Security & Development 19(1), 1–13, 2019

What role does business play in peace-building and conflict reduction? This special issue tackles this complex question, exploring varied business efforts to bring peace through six rigorous qualitative cases in Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Somaliland, Brazil, Guatemala and El Salvador. Three main findings cut across this issue. First, local context is paramount to success; there is no one universal formula that a regulator, business or peace practitioner aiming to advance a business agenda for peace can employ for operational success. Second, rather than compartmentalising 'peace' into projects that often carry 'win-lose' consequences for local communities, business-peace projects must first understand who they are empowering so that they do not unwittingly make the conflict worse. Third, investment and access are deeply intertwined in fragile and conflict-affected areas, and business-peace projects that simply try to improve business access typically exacerbate inequalities favouring elite actors. We close with a discussion on how to take the business and peace-building agenda forward with scholarship and policy, stressing that business-peace projects must be assessed at the societal and not project level if their impact is to be truly beneficial for a political economy of peaceful development.
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Published version, deposited by the author. © 2019 King’s College London. Provided for individual scholarly use. Version of record: https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2019.1561612

Key Messages

  • Across six qualitative cases, local context determines success; no universal formula for a business agenda for peace works everywhere.
  • Business-peace projects that fail to identify who they empower can unwittingly make the conflict worse.
  • Projects that simply improve business access in fragile areas typically deepen inequalities favouring elite actors.

Research Topics

business and peace research agenda peacebuilding

Citation

Jason Miklian, Peer Schouten. "Broadening 'Business', Widening 'Peace': A New Research Agenda on Business and Peace-Building." Conflict, Security & Development 19(1), 2019, pp. 1–13.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2019.1561612

Related Research Areas

BibTeX Citation 
@article{miklian2019_broadening__business___widenin,
  title = {Broadening 'Business', Widening 'Peace': A New Research Agenda on Business and Peace-Building},
  author = {Miklian, Jason and Schouten, Peer},
  journal = {Conflict, Security & Development},
  year = {2019}
}