Editorial: Peace and democracy, views from the Global South

Roberta Holanda Maschietto^1*Natália Bueno²Sarah Njeri³

• ¹Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies (CCP/NUPRI), University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
• ²Universidade de Coimbra Centro de Estudos Sociais, Coimbra, Portugal
• ³SOAS University of London Department of Development Studies, London, United Kingdom

The latest Global Peace Index Report (IEP, 2025) shows that global peace has declined for the sixth consecutive year, with 59 active state-based conflicts—the highest since World War II. Successful conflict resolution is at its lowest in fifty years, as wars grow more internationalised and harder to contain. While homicides have fallen, political instability, protests, and displacement continue to rise. Mirroring this trend, the Democracy Index Report (EIU, 2025), tellingly titled What's wrong with representative democracy?, shows democracy under pressure. Currently only 25 countries qualify as full democracies, while 60 are authoritarian regimes. Declining trust, inequality, corruption, populism, and civic disengagement fuel democratic erosion, as populist leaders exploit frustration, weaken institutions, and promote divisive agendas. Notably, most peaceful countries, such as Iceland, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, and New Zealand, are also the strongest democracies. Yet the once-promised world "democratic peace" appears fragile. Rising wars, repression, and authoritarianism remind us that peace and democracy are neither universal nor guaranteed. The relationship between peace and democracy has long been a central concern in political and peace research. Perhaps the most widely discussed framework is the democratic peace theory, which links democratic governance to a greater likelihood of peace (Doyle, 1983; Russett, 1993; Reiter, 2017). Explanations generally focus on political institutions that enable peaceful conflict resolution or on democratic norms that foster compromise and shared identity among democratic states. While democracies rarely go to war with one another, debate continues over whether democracies are generally more peaceful or whether a democratic international system fosters peace (Maoz & Russett, 1993; Gartzke, 2007). Moreover, there is no consensus regarding the direction of causality between peace and democracy (Mansfield & Snyder, 2002; Oneal et al., 2003; Reiter, 2017). Within states, this relationship is even less consensual. Democracies can reduce political grievances and provide conflict-resolution mechanisms, but autocracies may maintain order through coercion and thus prevent armed conflict (Bartusevičius & Skaaning, 2018; Mross, 2019). Moreover, established democracies with strong institutions can experience high levels of lethal violence, as countries like Brazil and Mexico illustrate. Notwithstanding these nuances, after the Cold War, international policy embraced the assumption that democracy fosters peace. UN documents such as An Agenda for Democratisation framed democracy as essential to peace, justice, and development. Yet experiences from the Global South, including countries at the receiving end on international peacebuilding, reveal the limits of this assumption. Several studies problematised this nexus, discussing, for instance, timing and sequencing of reforms (Paris, 2004; Sisk, 2013), the role of the elites (Zürcher et al., 2013), critical junctures (Mross, 2019) and dynamics of governance (Maschietto, 2016; Menocal, 2017), as well as the trade-offs involved in post-war democratisation (Jarstad and Sisk, 2008; Watts, 2023). These debates highlight not only the complexity of linking peace and democracy, but also the need to question what kind of democracy and peace is pursued. While elections are important, they are often overemphasized at the expense of social inclusion and minority rights. Focusing on procedural democracy and stability can obscure other forms of violence that coexist with seemingly functional institutions. Thus, it is crucial to examine which violences these debates make visible or invisible, particularly in the Global South, where histories of colonialism, postcolonial struggles, and structural violence shape unique configurations of democracy and violence (Rodrigues and Rodríguez, 2020; Ferreira and Maschietto, 2024). This special collection features six articles exploring peace and democracy in the Global South. Two contributions focus on Brazil, a democracy with high levels of violence but no "armed conflict." In Milícias in Rio de Janeiro: deconstructing the myth of a violent everyday peace through a feminist perspective, Luis Gouveia Junior shows how militias, often defended as guarantors of community security, fabricate "peace" through coercion, extortion, and strict territorial control. Using feminist approaches, he argues that while militias may reduce armed clashes, they consolidate a violent social order where public calm masks hidden private violence, including gender-based abuse. Complementing this, Ingri Bøer Buer and Sabrina Villenave in Interrogating peace in a violent democracy: a global south critique examine how colonial legacies racialised and criminalised favelas, legitimising violent state interventions. They identify various kinds of peace in Rio, including a "tourist peace" (enforced by police-military operations before the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics), a "peace as order" imposed by criminal groups and a community-led "favela peace formation", showing how residents seek alternatives despite constraints. In Peace ontologies, narratives, and epistemes among indigenous communities of Nigeria and Bolivia, Damilola Adegoke and Gloriana Rodriguez Alvarez critique universalist assumptions of peace and call for a pluralistic understanding. Through cross-cultural research, they highlight the Yoruba view of 3 peace as equilibrium mediated by spiritual forces, and the Aymara concept of suma qamaña—living well in harmony with Pachamama. Both emphasise collective well-being, ecology, and resilience, underscoring that peace is culturally relative. Two other articles focus on democracy in post-conflict contexts. In Rigging by the state apparatus: Systemic electoral fraud in Mozambique jeopardises the credibility of democracy and creates room for political violence, Borges Joaquim Faduco Nhamirre examines how systemic electoral fraud has undermined Mozambique's democracy since the 1992 peace agreement. Although multiparty elections began in 1994, manipulation by the ruling FRELIMO party has persisted, evolving from ballot stuffing to sophisticated control of state institutions such as the judiciary, police, and electoral commissions. These practices foster authoritarian tendencies and show that elections alone cannot consolidate democracy, but risk becoming mechanisms of regime continuity threatening peace. In contrast, in The path to peace and democracy: the case of Timor-Leste Jose Cornelio Guterres and Roberta Holanda Maschietto present Timor-Leste as a rare positive example of democratisation in peacebuilding. Revisiting the country's history, and the extensive international intervention that shaped statebuilding, they highlight important milestones such as free elections, constitutional safeguards, and an active civil society. They also note that further progress is pending on a better integration between formal and informal governance structures, overcoming political patronage, and mechanisms of social and economic inclusion. The final contribution, The concept of most responsible in international criminal law and its problematic reception in the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia, by José Manuel Díaz Souto and Diego Borbón, examines Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace. It shows how vague legal categories like "most responsible" risk undermining transitional justice by blurring culpability distinctions, overextending prosecutions, and weakening legitimacy. Together, these studies reveal that peace and democracy are not universal templates but contested, context-dependent processes. Only by embracing this complexity and plurality can we hope to develop more effective and equitable approaches to building peaceful and democratic societies in our increasingly interconnected yet fractured world.