Debating the East Asian Peace ─ What It Is. How It Came About. Will It Last?

East Asia (including Southeast Asia) used to be the world’s deadliest battleground but since the 1980s there has been a marked reduction in battle deaths. This ‘East Asian Peace’ has spurred much debate, the major strands of which are reflected in the volume. Debating the East Asian Peace focuses on presenting and evaluating a variety of interconnected themes rather than offering simplistic answers to a complex question. As well as discussing processes and events in East Asia, its contributors offer insights to a number of core general questions for understanding peace and conflict. What is peace and how can it be studied? How can we characterize the East Asian Peace? What limits and conditions are associated with this peace? Can insights from East Asia explain overall regional trends of political violence? Does the way in which peace came about impact on the quality of peace? Is the East Asian peace under threat? If so, why is this and where is the threat coming from? A wide-ranging study that is also carefully knitted together, this volume is a must-read not only for scholars and students of Asian politics and peace studies but also policy-makers, NGOs, businesses, journalists and many others concerned with the peace, stability and prosperity of a vitally important region in today’s world.

Elin Bjarnegard (Editor)
Elin Bjarnegard is Senior Lecturer and
Associate Professor at the Department of
Government, Uppsala University. Her research
interests are within the field of comparative
politics with a particular focus on gender,
masculinities, conflict, political parties, and
informal institutions.

Joakim Kreutz (Editor)
Joakim Kreutz is Assistant Professor at the
Department of Political Science at Stockholm
University. His research is on international
relations with a particular focus on
cross-national studies of civil war dynamics and
resolution.