The Grand Design: The Evolution of the International Peace Architecture.

• Author: Aytekin, Cavit Emre

By Oliver P. Richmond

Oxford University Press, 2022, 307 pages, [pounds sterling]47.99, ISBN: 9780190850449

Interestingly, peace is one of the few concepts in the discipline of International Relations (IR) that has not been conceptualized within a grand theoretical context. Manchester University Professor Oliver P. Richmond's most recent book, The Grand Design: The Evolution of the International Peace Architecture, introduces the International Peace Architecture (IPA) concept to scholarship, which needs a structural and composite basis for peace-related concepts, theories, and policy analyses. IPA is an epistemological framework proposal that captures the evolving nature of peace over the history of the international system. This 'architecture' includes various forms of diplomacy, conflict resolution, and mediation with specific moral/philosophical backgrounds that develop organically and evolutionarily. It refers to an intricate structure of addressing challenges and making peace to preserve the very nature of the international order. The concept of IPA mapped out throughout the book is key for elucidating the conditions for mitigating and averting major systemic, regional wars, less frequently local wars, and other conflict dynamics.

Richmond's substantial contribution is the product of his constant critical assessments of the peace concept within the major IR theories. Richmond contends that IR struggles in the context of peace studies to comprehend long-term processes and transformations (p. 46). He proposes IPA as a historical concept to explain the evolution of international peace practice from the 17th century to the present. Incorporating insights from archaeology, ethnography, and sociology, the author has identified six consecutive layers and stages. The sixth stage is a dynamic process that architecture is currently going through, which has not yet materialized and faces various challenges. In its most basic form, the first stage includes the 19th-century geopolitics, conference diplomacy, and balance of power system; the second stage includes the early 20th-century attempt to establish multilateral institutions and conventions; the third stage includes the welfare state and economic/social rights response to the socialist/subaltern challenge; the fourth stage reflects liberal peace focusing on human rights, democracy, and global civil society, the fifth stage reflects the neoliberal state-building efforts of the 2000s, and the...