Through a grounded analysis of localized peacebuilding dynamics in two Bosnian cities, Adam Moore generates a powerful argument concerning the need to rethink how peacebuilding is done.

Adam Moore is Assistant Professor of Geography at UCLA.

Methodologically, Peacebuilding in Practice is an exemplary study of postwar Bosnia. Moore engaged in eighteen months of fieldwork between 2004 and 2012, gaining competence in Bosnian and combining three methodological approaches: formal interviews (more than 120), archival research, and ethnography. The interviews were with local political and administrative personnel in the two towns who had been active during the war or afterward and with international officials working in the towns and in Sarajevo. Thus, the study is based on rich data compiled by a researcher very well-grounded in the localities studied.

R.P. Peters:

By comparing two cases in Bosnia—Mostarwhere ethnic conflict still flares intermittentlyand Brckowhere public institutions are models of effective multiethnic functioning—Moore (geographyUniv. of CaliforniaLos Angeles) identifies an interrelated set of four factors that explain the success and failure of peace building.... The book is strongly recommended for those interested in peace building in the wake of international interventionas well as those interested in applicable research methodology.

Timothy D. Sisk, University of Denver, author of International Mediation in Civil War: Bargaining with Bullets and editor of Global Governance:

In Peacebuilding in Practice, Adam Moore provides a powerful narrative of the complex interactions between outsiders and insiders as countries emerge from the violence and separation of ethnic civil war. The comparison of Mostar and Brcko is engaging, and the story of international missteps in one circumstance while other outsiders made progress in another, comparable, setting yields deep insights into the goals and means of peacebuilding in the wake of civil war.

Paula Pickering, College of William and Mary, author of Peacebuilding in the Balkans: The View from the Ground Floor:

Adam Moore argues that the outcome of any given international peacebuilding effort is affected not only by its own organization and implementation but also by the design of local political institutions, sequencing of political and economic reforms, and the local and regional legacies of the war in question. Peacebuilding in Practice is a valuable contribution to our understanding of how peacebuilding is done and why it is often done poorly and only sometimes done well.

Asim Mujkic, University of Sarajevo:

Peacebuilding in Practice is an original contribution to understanding the complexity of ethnic conflict in the Western Balkans. It reveals the local mechanisms of ethnopolitical spacing and territorial appropriation as a substantial part of ethnonationalist projects in postwar Bosnia.