Oliver Walton

• PhD
• Reader at University of Bath

This article examines how and why multi-mandate INGOs represent contemporary armed conflicts in particular ways. Based on empirical analysis of NGO communications and interviews with staff, it finds that these organisations typically adopt a two-track approach to representing conflicts. They use mainstream media to present consequence-oriented acco...

In post-war transitions, how do centre-periphery relations change, and what is the role of actors at the margins of the state in negotiating these changes? This article explores these questions by examining Nepal’s post-war transition following the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement focusing on three borderland districts (Saptari, Bardiya and Dolpa...

Conflict prevention has been a long-standing and high-profile international policy goal, and yet in practice international agencies have found it difficult to operationalise, with the structural dimension of conflict prevention proving especially challenging. Drawing on a review of policy documents, parliamentary debates, and key informant intervie...

Existing research on the relationship between alcohol and conflict has focused on displaced populations and viewed alcohol largely as a driver of post-war social problems such as trauma and violence. We draw on qualitative research in Sri Lanka and Nepal to build a more complex picture of alcohol’s role in post-war societies that is attuned to its...

There has been growing awareness of the wide-ranging negative impacts that counter-terrorism measures and sanctions impose on humanitarian action. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with INGO staff, this article examines these impacts for INGOs based in the UK, a context where a particularly complex array of laws, policies and regulatory regimes...

This article examines post-war politics in Nepal and Sri Lanka through the prism of centre-periphery relations, drawing upon and expanding political settlements analysis. We highlight two key features neglected in existing research on political settlements: first, the spatial dimensions of these settlements – particularly the salience of frontier r...

This article examines the dynamics of brokerage surrounding two moments of rupture (the tsunami and the end of the war) in Hambantota, a district in southern Sri Lanka and a key site of frontier development. We contrast the two development assemblages that emerged from these moments, examining how structural transformations shape the dynamics of br...

This paper addresses the question of how service delivery (SD) affects state legitimacy (SL) and conflict (C) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, drawing particularly on frameworks that move beyond a state-centric approach. Focusing on the majority-Arab countries of MENA, the paper aims to: (1) offer a preliminary explanation of the...

Sri Lanka’s long-running separatist war, which began in 1983 and lasted for 26 years, ended with a military victory for the government armed forces in 2009. Although the likelihood of a return to organized armed conflict remains slim and the country has seen its economy expand significantly, grievances from minority groups remain, and new societal...

http://www.currenthistory.com/Article.php?ID=1401

This article explores the political dynamics surrounding the Eastern Provincial Council during Sri Lanka’s post-war transition. We show that decentralisation constituted an intervention in conflict, rather than a solution to it. It creates new institutional arenas to re-negotiate centre-periphery relations, resulting in new forms of political mobil...

These published guidelines are based on findings from a University of Bath Teaching Development Fund (TDF) project conducted in 2016 on 'Learning from Blogs-Evaluating the learning and teaching benefits of using blogs in higher education'. This project sought to evaluate the use of blogs across 3 modules in the Social and Policy (SPS) Department wi...

In recent years, INGO legitimacy has been subject to growing scrutiny from analysts and practitioners alike. Critics have highlighted a backlash against INGOs in the Global South, a growing mismatch between INGO capacities and contemporary global challenges, and diminishing support for norms such as democracy and human rights that underpin INGOs’ w...

The ending of the war in Sri Lanka in 2009 led to significant changes in the political strategies pursued by Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora groups in the UK. One contentious feature of these groups' campaigns has been their use of the ‘genocide’ frame to describe the actions of the Sri Lankan state, which has been predominantly viewed either as a signal...

This article assesses the potential for evidence-informed policymaking in the field of mediation. It argues that one of the key barriers to evidence-informed policymaking in this area is the disjointed character of the existing literature and finds that methodological and theoretical tensions lie at the heart of policy debates around mediation. Whi...

This paper examines how national NGOs operating in conflict-affected or transitional regions generate and maintain legitimacy. It considers the experience of NGOs in three such contexts – Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The paper argues that existing accounts of NGO legitimacy are unhelpful for understanding the dyn...

This article examines the reputational management strategies of national nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in peace-building work in Sri Lanka between 2006 and 2007, a transitional period when the cease-fire was unraveling and the NGO sector was facing a “crisis of legitimacy.” It traces the structural and proximate causes of the crisis...

This article explores the interface between international and local approaches to peacebuilding by analysing the experience of two national NGOs involved in peacebuilding work in Sri Lanka between 2006 and 2008. During this transitional period, Sri Lanka's fragile peace process began to unravel. This analysis uses the lens of NGO legitimacy to refl...

This essay explores international engagement in the Sri Lankan peace process between 2002 and 2008. The internationalization of peacebuilding in Sri Lanka is analysed as part of a broader international shift towards a model of ‘liberal peacebuilding’, which involves the simultaneous pursuit of conflict resolution, liberal democracy and market sover...

This paper explores the growing role of national NGOs in the interventions of western governments in conflict-affected regions. Using three case studies of national NGOs working in Sri Lanka, it focuses on the complex relationships between national NGOs, donors and a range of domestic stakeholders. These relationships involved competing demands, in...