The book provides critical perspectives that reach beyond the technical approaches of international financial institutions and proponents of the liberal peace formula. It investigates political economies characterized by the legacies of disruption to production and exchange, by population displacement, poverty, and by 'criminality'.

Examines the much-neglected question of what constitutes a political economy of peace after civil conflicts and who controls it

Introduction; M.Pugh, N.Cooper  and M.Turner PART I: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LIBERAL WAR AND PEACE The Political Economy of Peace Processes; J.Selby The Gendered Impact of Peace; D.Pankhurst Nationalism Versus Peacebuilding in Iraq; E.Herring PART II: TRADE Trading with Security: Trade Liberalization and Conflict; S.Willett Corporate Social Responsibility; S.Tripathi As Good as it Gets: Securing Diamonds in Sierra Leone; N.Cooper PART III: EMPLOYMENT From Waging War to Peace Work: Labour and Labour Markets; C.Cramer Employment, Labour Rights and Social Resistance; M.Pugh Securitizing the Economy of Reintegration in Liberia; K.Jennings PART IV: DIASPORAS Three Discourses on Diasporas and Peacebuilding; M.Turner Diaspora Engagement in Peacebuilding: Empirical and Theoretical Challenges; K.Bush Rwandese Diasporas and the Reconstruction of a Fragile Peace; R.Davies PART V: BORDERLANDS AND THE CARTOGRAPHY OF VIOLENT ECONOMIES War, Peace and the Places In Between: Why Borderlands are Central; J.Goodhand Microfinance and Borderlands: Impacts of Local Neoliberalism; M.Bateman Potential Difference: Internal Borderlands in Africa; S.Jackson PART VI: CIVIL SOCIETY Welfare and the Civil Peace: Poverty with Rights?; O.P.Richmond Peace Constituencies in Peacebuilding: The mesas de concertación in Guatemala; C.Mouly El Salvador: The Limits of a Violent Peace; M.Hume PART VII: GLOBAL GOVERNANCE Post-Conflict State-Building: Governance Without Government; D.Chandler The UN Peacebuilding Commission: The Rise and Fall of a Good Idea; M.Berdal Material Reproduction and Stateness in Bosnia and Herzegovina; B.Bliesemann de Guevara Conclusion: The Political Economy of Peacebuilding: Whose Peace? Where Next?; M.Pugh, N.Cooper  and M.Turner