Call for Papers | Beyond Intractability

There are a great many areas in which Beyond Intractability's currently available materials are more limited than we would like. In order to help fill these gaps, we are encouraging the submission of materials (particularly by practitioners and students) for potential publication on Beyond Intractability.

Practitioners: Conflict and peace practitioners commonly have much to contribute to the field's overall knowledge base but lack an easy opportunity to publish their ideas. We welcome practitioners to send us their thoughtful reflections on their practice.

Students: Every year, countless hours of creative energy are wasted by students who could do truly useful research but instead wind up channeling those talents toward "write, grade, and throw away" papers. We encourage students to write -- and instructors to assign -- papers and projects that help advance the field and not just meet the student's immediate learning objectives. We have published many essays, case studies, peacebuilder profiles, and reflections from graduate students and exceptionally advanced undergraduates.

Topics

While we are interested in any material that strengthens the knowledge base, we are especially interested in the following broad topic areas:

Ways of dealing with demographic pressures (i.e., immigration, emigration, refugees, IDPs)
Ways of addressing minority group grievances
Intersections of economic/development policies, political policies, and conflict/peace
Internal human rights policy
External human rights policy (i.e., R2P vs. sovereignty)
Security dilemmas; security strategy; and non-military, "soft power" approaches to insurgency and terrorism
Role of elite, midlevel, and grassroots leadership in governance and peacebuilding
Environmental pressures, conflict, and governance
Global partnerships for peacebuilding and/or development
Peacebuilding activities of civil society
War crimes tribunals (while we have an essay on this topic, it is very old and needs to be updated to discuss the ICC; we would also welcome a case study of the ICC in particular)
Non-state (civil society and/or commercial society) governance processes for peace
Alternative approaches to the right to self-determination
Case studies of transboundary, non-sovereign, non-state actors (i.e. NGOs, civil society orgs, and commercial orgs whose policies help transform conflicts or work for peace)

Since the Call for Papers is presently unfunded (though we are actively seeking financial support), we have organized it around a cooperative, mutually supportive structure that keeps costs affordable.

If you are interested in submitting a paper or other material, please contact us with your topic idea(s) to find out how likely it is that we will be able to use your work.

If you are a student, please review your work carefully prior to submitting it; ensure that it is well-written, understandable, and carefully proofed. We strongly urge you to find someone else to check your work as well. This is especially important for those for whom English is not their primary language. (If you want to write in a language other than English, let us know and we may be able to accomodate you.) are exploring options for supporting other languages We do not have resources for outside editing, so what you send us will be published (or not published) "as is". In cases where papers are also being submitted for a class grade, we ask that your instructor send his or her assessment of the paper as well.

Please submit all materials in a Microsoft Word-compatible (.doc, .docx, .txt, or .rtf) file format, using very simple text formatting (simple paragraphs, headings, boldface, italics, underlining, and notes, and images that can be easily "screen-captured" for online presentation).

We ask (but do not necessarily require) that all bibliographic citations be submitted in the .ris file format, which can be exported from either Zotero or Endnote. If you are not using one these two systems, you really should. Zotero is free and makes the process of writing research papers vastly easier.

All materials that meet the basic standards of the project will be published on a provisional basis. Rather than a conventional peer review process, we allow system users to review the materials. Based upon user comments, we will decide whether 1) the author should be asked to make changes, 2) the provisional status should be removed and the material formally published, or 3) the material should be withdrawn.

We ask everyone who submits material to carefully review and comment on at least two works submitted by other students or practitioners as part of this "Call for Papers" program.

Once posted online, materials will be included in Beyond Intractability the searching and browsing systems and may be included in our New and Featured blog and pages.