Going Forward by Looking Back : How returning to traditional peace-making can increase legitimacy through the peace-making process

Abstract: Liberal peace-making may not always be the best way to ensure peace in conflicting societies. Academia have always tended to only look to Western peace-making processes which have made policy limited in the cultural understanding of societies way of functioning, trying to implement what may work in "Western" but not necessarily the host countries' context. In addition, fewer have looked how these two contrasting ways of conducting peace-making affects legitimacy. In this thesis, I examine how Mac Ginty's (2008) "liberal peace versus traditional peace-making" affects level of legitimacy as conceptualized by Levi et al. (2009), within the case of Somalia. The hypothesis was confirmed; the use of traditional peace-making processes has a positive effect on legitimacy. To conclude, the recommendation for further research was to explore the grey-zones between liberal peace and traditional peace-making to further explore its possibilities.