ABSTRACT
Political economies of conflict and peace cannot be divorced from transformations in the global economy, its capital movements and development ideologies. These affect forms of civil war economy, resource exploitation by conflict entrepreneurs and local conditions for coping and survival. Wars have developmental dimensions as well, but regime change operations involve costs to external participants that can also entail global effects. The terms of economic engagement by post-conflict peacemakers and externally funded reconstruction have been moulded by a liberal ideology of capital accumulation. Peace missions and the legacies of conflict skew development towards neoliberal globalization, producing further social stress and promoting undemocratic politics. Contradictions in the dominant liberal analysis of civil wars and of post-conflict peace warrant interrogation by scholars and policy-makers, in addition to the attention they pay to the motivations and modes of combat operations in conflict-prone states.
