About the BOOK
Deliberative Peacemaking (Oxford University Press, forthcoming February 2027) Edited by Professors Ron Levy, Allison McCulloch and Ian O'Flynn.
Deliberative Peacemaking is an emerging approach to peace that uniquely combines democratic inclusion with rigorous deliberation. Inclusion matters because it brings affected voices into peace processes, broadens the knowledge base of negotiations, and strengthens the legitimacy and durability of agreements. But deliberation is equally crucial: it focuses on how deeply divided groups can actually reach workable agreements in practice – even under conditions of mistrust, polarisation, and violence.
An expanding body of scholarship and practice suggests that deliberative peacemaking models hold particular promise, and it is clear why. Deliberative democracy’s reliance on channelling disagreement between groups into reasoned forms of decision-making, and the practical institutional tools that it elaborates toward this end, reflect both appealing and empirically promising approaches to peacemaking
This volume brings deliberative peacemaking to the forefront of peace and conflict studies. Its contributors show why peace initiatives frequently falter when deliberation is absent, and how tools for deliberation can help make inclusive dialogue productive rather than polarising. Drawing on cases from international negotiations to national dialogues and local peacebuilding, they demonstrate that deliberation is far from a naïve ideal: under the right conditions, it is a practical resource for achieving just, inclusive, and durable peace.
As the first comprehensive account of deliberative peacemaking, this book maps a growing field at the intersection of democratic theory and peace research, offering empirically grounded designs and practices for making deliberation work even amid deep and violent conflict.
Online meeting information to come.
About the AUTHOR
Ron Levy is a Professor at the Australian National University’s College of Law, Governance and Policy. His work adapts the political theory of deliberative democracy to understand how contentious constitutional problems can be better managed. He researches deliberative democratic approaches to polarizing human rights cases, constitutional design in divided societies, and armed conflict. His past books include Deliberative Peace Referendums (Oxford University Press, 2021, with Ian O'Flynn and Hoi Kong );The Law of Deliberative Democracy (Routledge, 2016, with Graeme Orr) and The Cambridge Handbook of Deliberative Constitutionalism (Cambridge University Press, 2018, with Hoi Kong, Graeme Orr and Jeff King eds).