Marko Lehti

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Tampere University

This article analyzes the role that Ukrainian peacebuilders play in contributing to strengthening social cohesion in war-time Ukraine. It studies an initiative to facilitate dialogue between two jurisdictions of the Orthodox church to develop new insights into the role that dialogue facilitation and peace mediation can play as a form of internal pe...

Kuluneen kuukauden aikana olen itse miettinyt pitkään ja hartaasti, ja minulta ovat monet kysyneet, mitä annettavaa rauhantutkimuksella on keskusteluun Venäjän invaasiosta Ukrai-naan ja totaalisen sodan kauhujen paluusta Euroopan sydämeen. Kuuluko sodan tulkinta vain sotatieteilijöille ja ulkopolitiikan tutkijoille, jotka ovat miehittäneet mediavir...

Protracted conflicts like those in the South Caucasus and Moldova stand as examples of the limits of international peace-building practices in addressing conflict transformation in various ethnic-marked conflicts, and in promoting reconciliation across the deep divides that these long-standing conflicts have generated within and among societies. A...

This article aims to understand how local communities affected by protracted conflicts could maintain a capacity for agonistic interactions in their everyday encounters on the margins of the hegemonic control of conflict-inducing narratives. The article analyses the Sadakhlo bazaar on the border between Georgia and Armenia as a possible example of...

The dominant ideal and practice of liberal peace has come to an end. This peace was upheld by a liberal interventionary order, which was composed of four main elements: 1) the hegemony of the United States / the West; 2) an international society with a nearly universal membership; 3) consensual hegemony of the liberal conceptions of a right and dut...

This article undertakes a critical assessment of theoretical calls for transforming antagonistic relationship to achieve sustainable peace and conceptualizes 'transforming' as a complex and fluid process of embodied interactions and relationships in time and space. This conceptualization addresses the possibility of agonistic peace in the context o...

Artikkelissa kysymme, voiko kriisin julistamisen ja poikkeuspolitiikan ymmärtää liberaalien demokra-tioiden kontekstissa mahdollisuutena sopeutua ylirajaisiin eksistentiaalisiin uhkiin. Vielä laajemmin ajateltuna pohdimme, voiko kriisinjulistusta tulkita myös epätavanomaisena (demokraattisena) po-litiikkana, joka mahdollistaa muutoksen ja uusiutumi...

Although asymmetric warfare has dominated for more than two decades, the (official) peace mediation practice is still limited in terms of its adaptation to the realities of violent conflicts. As a consequence, it has been widely agreed upon that the track-one level requires supporting and complementing processes and actors that could compensate for...

The normative principles of local ownership and inclusivity of peace processes have been part of peacebuilding rhetoric from the very beginning, but it has only been after the harsh criticism towards intrusive and elite-based forms of liberal peacebuilding that these principles have been revisited and taken as a true normative basis of peace proces...

The dialogic approach describes the new fresh, revolutionary informal peace diplomacy executed by certain private peacemakers. The dialogic approach is not a uniform and coherent tool, but it is possible to detect certain main characteristics, although their particular application varies among various private peace actors. Indeed, perhaps at a cert...

As long as the outcome of mediation is seen solely to achieve a ceasefire or a peace agreement that brings end to fighting and violence, the questions of inclusivity in regard to participation and issues on the table have not been seen as crucial to track-one mediation. Classical mediation that takes place during open violent conflict is still pred...

There have already been different kinds nongovernmental actors in peace processes in the Cold War era (discussed in details in Chapter 4), but the field of private peacemakers has changed enormously during recent decades. First, the established and widely recognized field of private peacemaking organizations at the surface of official and nonoffici...

The scope of understanding in peace mediations depends on how ‘peace’ and ‘conflict’ is understood and, furthermore, how it is seen to be possible to manage, solve or transform conflicts. Peace mediation in its classical terms is firmly based on the conflict management approach and it aims to look for a win–win situation among the conflict parties....

The dominating peace mediation literature has positioned itself more on positivist theories and focused on mediation as phenomena of rational management. From the positivist research angle, a normative basis of mediation, a definition of mediation success and unintended (negative) impacts of mediation were not regarded to be interesting targets of...

Peace diplomacy (as well as diplomacy in general) is fundamentally based on regulated, resilient and stubborn practices and presuppositions that all resist drastic change. Official diplomacy is very much a world based on traditional procedures and learning through experience (knowing how) and that is why changes in that field often take place slowl...

The role and position of private peacemakers in relation to official diplomacy are usually examined within the frame of particular peace operations. The focus has been on how the contribution of private actors complements official peace diplomacy, and to what extent their actions are integrated. The interaction among official and private actors, ho...

Private peacemakers are not newcomers in the peacemaking field and it is possible to recognize nongovernmental actors adopting an intermediary role and becoming involved in peace processes dating back to 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. From these Cold War experiences of private peacemaking, three different kinds of actors emerge: the Quakers, the Catholic...

Peace (or conflict) mediation has developed as a specific and regulated practical tool of international diplomacy in the post-Second World War decades, but it was just the period from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s that can be regarded as the true golden age of peace mediation. At this time, the great majority of wars ended through negotiation su...

Whereas mediation in its more traditional configuration tends to rest on the assumption that settling wars and violent conflicts calls for fair solutions in terms of the interests or material gains at stake, new dialogic approaches do not necessarily share these assumptions. Instead of regarding conflict as a static condition that must be removed,...

Transformation is an apt concept that from increasingly describes private peacemakers’ view of the whole peace process; various interesting efforts to adjust the transformative approach to new practices of peace intervention are recognizable. The transformative approach to (peace) mediation practice contests the conventional frame of conflict manag...

The era of private peacemakers is evident; peace diplomacy has necessarily changed or, more precisely, change is under way. Dialogic mediation appears then to be a particularly transformative alternative to the rationalistic ideals of peace mediation. It is far away from a uniform and coherent approach and it could receive different emphasis by dif...

This volume explores the Western-led liberal order that is claimed to be in crisis. Currently, the West appears less as a modernizing or civilizing entity leading the way and more as being engulfed in a deep crisis. Simultaneously, the West still appears to be needed in order to imagine the global order by promoters of liberal peace as well as its...

The field of peacemaking is in turbulent change. There are more peacemaking actors than before but fewer success stories, and an increasing number of violent conflicts tend to resist negotiated agreements. Tools and practices created for traditional inter- and intra-state conflicts have become ineffective and revision of old mediation practices is...

The western-led global order has been for a long time legitimized with narratives attached to liberal internationalism and the idea of liberal peace. At the beginning of the Trump era, it seems that the most serious contest for liberal order is now coming from within-propagated by parts of the conservative movement, by populists and the radical rig...

Main points: In violent conflicts, the right to determine history is usually also part of the struggle, and is used as a means of justifying specific actions and for reinforcing loyalty to a group, but also for creating conceptions of the enemy. Peacemakers should give more attention to how conflict creates mutually antagonistic identities and hatr...

This chapter argues that identity related questions have so far been ignored in conflict resolution practices, but, because antagonistic identities constitute the main obstacle for achieving sustainable peace, finding a way to facilitate identities is essential. This would require rethinking the whole conflict resolution process, with an emphasis o...

This paper argues that identity related questions have been so far ignored in conflict resolution practices but because antagonist identities constitute main obstacle for achieving sustainable peace it would be essential for finding a way to facilitate identities. This would require rethinking the whole conflict resolution process and switch emphas...

In the Balkans case it is far too often argued that peace and stability can only be achieved by escaping from the Balkans to Europe, that is, by adopting European norms of “tamed nationalism.” This article searches for the indigenous roots of the Balkan peace. The idea of a Balkan federation or union represents an often‐ignored model presented from...

Arvosteltu teos: Coming to terms with a dark past: How post-conflict societies deal with history / Sirkka Ahonen. Frankfurt am Main : Peter Lang, 2012.

The notion of the Baltic region has a double meaning. On the one hand, it refers to the three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), which gained their membership in the European Union in 2004. On the other hand, it refers to the whole Baltic Sea Area (BSA), including also Finland, Sweden, Denmark and parts of Germany, Poland and Russia. Th...

Since the end of the Cold War it has become common for Finnish academics and politicians alike to frame debates about Finnish national identity in terms of locating Finland somewhere along a continuum between East and West (e.g., Harle and Moisio 2000). Indeed, for politicians properly locating oneself (and therefore Finland) along this continuum h...

Since 9/11, Washington has viewed the new Europe as a protégé of the United States, whose role is to repair the political bridge across the Atlantic. Whereas the lure of the United States has started to weaken in Central European countries, the Baltic states have remained the most trustful new Europeans from Washington's point of view. Nonetheless,...

Die Ostseeregion ist das Produkt einer Übergangszeit, das dazu diente, die Unsicherheiten während dieser Periode zu lösen. Diese Übergangszeit nähert sich langsam ihrem Ende, und eine neue internationale Ordnung zeichnet sich ab. Hat die Ostseeregion ein hinreichend starkes Image etabliert, um das Ende dieser Periode zu überstehen? Es steht in jede...

No abstract available.

During the past decade northern Europe has started to assume an identity of its own. Categories of East and West have become blurred, challenging as well the idea of what it means to be Nordic. Post-Cold War Identity Politics maps this process in Scandinavia. Looking at projects designed to help regional development in the Nordic countires, it asse...

In this article alternative ways of using the Baltic Sea area, North East Europe and Northern Europe among historians are examined. The Baltic Sea area and Northern Europe have been depicted as historical regions, but what does that mean? The older tradition has concentrated on looking for unifying structures, while the latest discussion has underl...

The end of the First World War and of the Cold War can be seen as two ruptures of history that were accompanied by a redefinition of old practices and by the vision of a new Europe. The emergence of the three independent Baltic States and the idea of a Baltic Sea area were unifying factors between these two periods. In both cases, the emergence of...

In den neunziger Jahren ist der Ostseeraum zu einem wachsenden Schauplatz politischen, kulturellen, sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Lebens geworden. Nach dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion war die Ostsee keine Trennungslinie mehr durch Europa, und es entstanden Konzepte für den Ostseeraum als einheitlicher Region. Deren Grenzen sind jedoch nicht genau...

Words are powerful. They organise the world we observe. They signify objects and make them meaningful. This applies also in regards to the sphere of international relations in which the meaning of geopolitical labels like 'Baltic' or 'Balkans', 'East' or 'West' extends far beyond geographical coordinates. The Balkans, for example, is far more than...