Mathijs Van Leeuwen
Biographic Data
| ID | 97230 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mathijs Van Leeuwen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mathijs |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Leeuwen |
| SIGNATURE | VAN LEEUWEN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Radboud University Nijmegen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1994-2626 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 154 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Reflection
In the field of peace and conflict studies (PCS), a primary focus on the causes of outbreaks of large-scale violent conflict is increasingly shifting to what causes wars to continue, and how they change or come to an end. Therein, the emphasis is often on structural factors and conditions of conflict, and whether and how interventions can break the cycle of violence, or “conflict trap” (Collier et al. 2003). In contrast, the contributions to this…
The Legitimation Effects of Peacebuilding and Development Interventions—Strengthening Land Registration in Northern Uganda
Fostering legitimate authority has become a priority of the international peacebuilding and development community, notably in fragile states and conflict-affected settings. Yet, how peacebuilding and development interventions feed into legitimation practices of public authorities remains underexplored, let alone how interveners can strategize on this. Analysis of programs to support land registration in Northern Uganda brings out how intervention…
Localized land tenure registration in Burundi and eastern DR Congo
The last two decades, a variety of –mostly donor-led– initiatives have aimed at ‘localizing’ land tenure registration, specifically in conflict-affected settings, making the registration of land rights more accessible to rural smallholders. In such settings, land registration is seen not just as instrumental to tenure security and economic development; but also to prevent land-related violence and promote sustainable peace. However, to reach such…
From resolving land disputes to agrarian justice - dealing with the structural crisis of plantation agriculture in eastern DR Congo
n Contains fulltext :\n 247725.pdf (Publisher's version ) (Open Access)\n \n Contains fulltext :\n 247726.pdf (Publisher's version ) (Open Access)\n
Promoting land tenure security for sustainable peace — lessons on the politics of transformation
Literature on transformations to sustainability increasingly recognizes transformation as inherently political, but the field still struggles to study these politics. Our research project ‘Securing Tenure, Sustainable Peace?’ on efforts to localize land registration in conflict-affected settings, both illustrates and contributes to understanding the politics of transformation. Building on insights from political ecology/economy, legal and politic…
Defusing Land Disputes? The Politics of Land Certification and Dispute Resolution in Burundi
There is a growing interest in localized land registration, in which user rights are acknowledged and recorded through a community-based procedure, as an alternative to centralized titling to promote secure tenure in sub-Saharan Africa. Localized land registration is expected to reduce land disputes, yet it remains unclear how it impacts disputes in practice. This is an urgent question for war-affected settings that experience sensitive land disp…
Imagining the Peoples of Europe
The political landscape in Europe is currently going through a phase of rapid change. New actors and movements that claim to represent 'the will of the people' are attracting considerable public attention, with dramatic consequences for election outcomes. This volume explores the new political order with a particular focus on discursive constructions of 'the people' and the category of populism across the spectrum. It shows how a unitary represen…
The ‘local turn’ and notions of conflict and peacebuilding – Reflections on local peace committees in Burundi and eastern DR Congo
Both political scientists and development practitioners express renewed interest in the ‘local’ in peacebuilding, and a need to better engage with local communities’ concerns, perspectives and capacities. Developing scholarship highlights how such discourses essentialise the ‘local’, and obscure the role of interveners in its construction. This paper argues that thinking in terms of ‘local’ peacebuilding configures particular understandings of wh…
Claim-making as social practice – Land, politics and conflict in Africa
Intricate links
Transforming land governance and strengthening the state in South Sudan
This article analyzes how transformations of land governance in the new Republic of South Sudan play into processes of everyday state formation. National land tenure reforms and decentralization policies have increased polarization between local public authorities in and around Yei Town, who vie for legitimacy amongst returning refugees, internally displaced people and migrants arriving in the wake of the civil war. Ambiguously worded national po…
The multifaceted relationship between land and violent conflict
This paper argues that violent conflict prominently impacts on land governance and so contributes to land conflicts in post-conflict settings. In the natural resources literature, the relationship between land and conflict is often explained in terms of environmental security or political ecology, and many have pointed out that the way land is governed in itself may be a source of conflict. However, less attention has been given to the effects of…
Localizing Land Governance, Strengthening the State
Decentralization of land governance is expected to significantly improve land tenure security of small-scale farmers in Africa, through ensuring better protection of their assets and reducing land-related conflicts. This paper, however, cautions not to have too high expectations of transferring responsibilities for land administration and dispute resolution to local government bodies. Field research in Mbarara District in south-western Uganda bri…
Where do I report my land dispute? The impact of institutional proliferation on land governance in post-conflict Northern Uganda
In Sub-Saharan Africa, Uganda has been hailed for embarking on an intensive decentralization programme. Whereas a lot of literature assumes that decentralization leads to improved service delivery, it is unclear to what extent this is the case in practice, especially when it comes down to decentralized land governance. This paper, which is based on ethnographic research carried out between 2011 and 2013, argues that decentralization of land gover…
The politics of displacement-related land conflict in Yei River County, South Sudan
Drawing on empirical evidence from Yei River County in South Sudan, this paper argues that, rather than a temporary phenomenon, displacement may lead to a drastic reorganisation of land occupation and governance. Such reorganisation may become strongly connected to broader political contention. In the case of Yei, existing legal frameworks and institutions are inadequate to deal with land conflicts resulting from massive displacement and return. …
Theorizing the Land–Violent Conflict Nexus
Reconciling reintegration
The extent to which disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes initiated by state or multilateral agencies can realise the reintegration of ex-combatants remains debated. While some consider that DDR should have the ambition to result in long-term reintegration, others argue that DDR should focus on short-term goals. This paper explores experiences with the reintegration of ex-combatants in Burundi. It shows the interconnected…
Renegotiating customary tenure reform – Land governance reform and tenure security in Uganda
Civil Society in Peacebuilding
This article analyses frictions in strengthening civil society (CS) for peacebuilding. It argues that frictions are caused by the fact that policies for CS support in post-conflict settings are rooted in a Western discourse on the role of civic actors in politics and society. Consequently, intervention practices do not match local practices of civil society in non-Western, conflict-affected countries. In trying to locate suitable local counterpar…
Complexities and Challenges for Civil Society Building in Post-Conflict Settings
Strengthening or even ‘building’ civil society has become a preoccupation of international development actors working in post-conflict settings. However, how to do so effectively remains a difficult and theoretically underexplored question. This article identifies two core challenges. The first is how to overcome the discrepancy between what international development actors aim to achieve in building civil society – namely the strengthening of th…
Thinking beyond the liberal peace
Crisis or continuity
To Conform or to Confront? CSOs and Agrarian Conflict in Post-Conflict Guatemala
This article is about the role of civil society after violent conflict. It argues that the transformations that civil society organisations (CSOs) make are more ambiguous than supporting donors and NGOs presume. The article analyses how, ten years after the 1996 peace agreements, Guatemalan CSOs deal with agrarian conflict. It discusses in detail the case of a church-related organisation assisting peasants with agrarian conflicts and the challeng…
Imagining the Great Lakes Region
The idea has gained ground in recent years that, as conflicts in the countries of the Great Lakes Region are strongly interlinked, regional approaches are necessary to resolve them. This interest in regional dimensions of conflict and peacebuilding also gains currency in other parts of the world. Attention to regional approaches is reflected in the efforts of international organisations and donors to promote civil society peacebuilding. They assu…
Grounding local peace organisations
Since the early 1990s, building peace during and after conflict has been moving away from the conference tables of diplomats to informal settings created by local NGOs. The vast majority, if not all, of the peacebuilding policy and literature argues for strengthening local organisations as vehicles for peace. This paper starts from the observation that there is a dire lack of organisational perspective to the processes set into motion. Current lo…
Theorizing the Land–Violent Conflict Nexus
Renegotiating customary tenure reform – Land governance reform and tenure security in Uganda
Thinking beyond the liberal peace
The ‘local turn’ and notions of conflict and peacebuilding – Reflections on local peace committees in Burundi and eastern DR Congo
Both political scientists and development practitioners express renewed interest in the ‘local’ in peacebuilding, and a need to better engage with local communities’ concerns, perspectives and capacities. Developing scholarship highlights how such discourses essentialise the ‘local’, and obscure the role of interveners in its construction. This paper argues that thinking in terms of ‘local’ peacebuilding configures particular understandings of wh…
Intricate links
Reconciling reintegration
The extent to which disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes initiated by state or multilateral agencies can realise the reintegration of ex-combatants remains debated. While some consider that DDR should have the ambition to result in long-term reintegration, others argue that DDR should focus on short-term goals. This paper explores experiences with the reintegration of ex-combatants in Burundi. It shows the interconnected…
Civil Society in Peacebuilding
This article analyses frictions in strengthening civil society (CS) for peacebuilding. It argues that frictions are caused by the fact that policies for CS support in post-conflict settings are rooted in a Western discourse on the role of civic actors in politics and society. Consequently, intervention practices do not match local practices of civil society in non-Western, conflict-affected countries. In trying to locate suitable local counterpar…
Rwanda's Imidugudu programme and earlier experiences with villagisation and resettlement in East Africa
Despite earlier, negative experiences in East Africa, in early 1997 the government of Rwanda embarked on an ambitious programme for villagisation and resettlement. While the Rwanda authorities present the programme as entirely different from its predecessors, a review of those and of the implementation of villagisation and resettlement in Rwanda shows that this statement cannot hold. Nevertheless, the programme gets considerable support from inte…
Claim-making as social practice – Land, politics and conflict in Africa
Localizing Land Governance, Strengthening the State
Decentralization of land governance is expected to significantly improve land tenure security of small-scale farmers in Africa, through ensuring better protection of their assets and reducing land-related conflicts. This paper, however, cautions not to have too high expectations of transferring responsibilities for land administration and dispute resolution to local government bodies. Field research in Mbarara District in south-western Uganda bri…
The politics of displacement-related land conflict in Yei River County, South Sudan
Drawing on empirical evidence from Yei River County in South Sudan, this paper argues that, rather than a temporary phenomenon, displacement may lead to a drastic reorganisation of land occupation and governance. Such reorganisation may become strongly connected to broader political contention. In the case of Yei, existing legal frameworks and institutions are inadequate to deal with land conflicts resulting from massive displacement and return. …
Crisis or continuity
From resolving land disputes to agrarian justice - dealing with the structural crisis of plantation agriculture in eastern DR Congo
n Contains fulltext :\n 247725.pdf (Publisher's version ) (Open Access)\n \n Contains fulltext :\n 247726.pdf (Publisher's version ) (Open Access)\n
To Conform or to Confront? CSOs and Agrarian Conflict in Post-Conflict Guatemala
This article is about the role of civil society after violent conflict. It argues that the transformations that civil society organisations (CSOs) make are more ambiguous than supporting donors and NGOs presume. The article analyses how, ten years after the 1996 peace agreements, Guatemalan CSOs deal with agrarian conflict. It discusses in detail the case of a church-related organisation assisting peasants with agrarian conflicts and the challeng…
Grounding local peace organisations
Since the early 1990s, building peace during and after conflict has been moving away from the conference tables of diplomats to informal settings created by local NGOs. The vast majority, if not all, of the peacebuilding policy and literature argues for strengthening local organisations as vehicles for peace. This paper starts from the observation that there is a dire lack of organisational perspective to the processes set into motion. Current lo…
Localized land tenure registration in Burundi and eastern DR Congo
The last two decades, a variety of –mostly donor-led– initiatives have aimed at ‘localizing’ land tenure registration, specifically in conflict-affected settings, making the registration of land rights more accessible to rural smallholders. In such settings, land registration is seen not just as instrumental to tenure security and economic development; but also to prevent land-related violence and promote sustainable peace. However, to reach such…
Transforming land governance and strengthening the state in South Sudan
This article analyzes how transformations of land governance in the new Republic of South Sudan play into processes of everyday state formation. National land tenure reforms and decentralization policies have increased polarization between local public authorities in and around Yei Town, who vie for legitimacy amongst returning refugees, internally displaced people and migrants arriving in the wake of the civil war. Ambiguously worded national po…
The multifaceted relationship between land and violent conflict
This paper argues that violent conflict prominently impacts on land governance and so contributes to land conflicts in post-conflict settings. In the natural resources literature, the relationship between land and conflict is often explained in terms of environmental security or political ecology, and many have pointed out that the way land is governed in itself may be a source of conflict. However, less attention has been given to the effects of…
Complexities and Challenges for Civil Society Building in Post-Conflict Settings
Strengthening or even ‘building’ civil society has become a preoccupation of international development actors working in post-conflict settings. However, how to do so effectively remains a difficult and theoretically underexplored question. This article identifies two core challenges. The first is how to overcome the discrepancy between what international development actors aim to achieve in building civil society – namely the strengthening of th…
Promoting land tenure security for sustainable peace — lessons on the politics of transformation
Literature on transformations to sustainability increasingly recognizes transformation as inherently political, but the field still struggles to study these politics. Our research project ‘Securing Tenure, Sustainable Peace?’ on efforts to localize land registration in conflict-affected settings, both illustrates and contributes to understanding the politics of transformation. Building on insights from political ecology/economy, legal and politic…
Defusing Land Disputes? The Politics of Land Certification and Dispute Resolution in Burundi
There is a growing interest in localized land registration, in which user rights are acknowledged and recorded through a community-based procedure, as an alternative to centralized titling to promote secure tenure in sub-Saharan Africa. Localized land registration is expected to reduce land disputes, yet it remains unclear how it impacts disputes in practice. This is an urgent question for war-affected settings that experience sensitive land disp…
Imagining the Great Lakes Region
The idea has gained ground in recent years that, as conflicts in the countries of the Great Lakes Region are strongly interlinked, regional approaches are necessary to resolve them. This interest in regional dimensions of conflict and peacebuilding also gains currency in other parts of the world. Attention to regional approaches is reflected in the efforts of international organisations and donors to promote civil society peacebuilding. They assu…
Rwanda's Imidugudu programme and earlier experiences with villagisation and resettlement in East Africa
Despite earlier, negative experiences in East Africa, in early 1997 the government of Rwanda embarked on an ambitious programme for villagisation and resettlement. While the Rwanda authorities present the programme as entirely different from its predecessors, a review of those and of the implementation of villagisation and resettlement in Rwanda shows that this statement cannot hold. Nevertheless, the programme gets considerable support from inte…
Refugees and the transformation of societies
The refusal or reception of refugees has had serious implications for the social policies and social realities of numerous countries in east and west. Exploring experiences, interpretations and practices of 'refugees,' 'the internally displaced' and 'returnees' in or emerging from societies in violent conflict, this volume challenges prevailing orthodoxies and encourages new developments in refugee studies. It also addresses the ethics and politi…
Grounding local peace organisations
Since the early 1990s, building peace during and after conflict has been moving away from the conference tables of diplomats to informal settings created by local NGOs. The vast majority, if not all, of the peacebuilding policy and literature argues for strengthening local organisations as vehicles for peace. This paper starts from the observation that there is a dire lack of organisational perspective to the processes set into motion. Current lo…
Imagining the Great Lakes Region
The idea has gained ground in recent years that, as conflicts in the countries of the Great Lakes Region are strongly interlinked, regional approaches are necessary to resolve them. This interest in regional dimensions of conflict and peacebuilding also gains currency in other parts of the world. Attention to regional approaches is reflected in the efforts of international organisations and donors to promote civil society peacebuilding. They assu…
Crisis or continuity
To Conform or to Confront? CSOs and Agrarian Conflict in Post-Conflict Guatemala
This article is about the role of civil society after violent conflict. It argues that the transformations that civil society organisations (CSOs) make are more ambiguous than supporting donors and NGOs presume. The article analyses how, ten years after the 1996 peace agreements, Guatemalan CSOs deal with agrarian conflict. It discusses in detail the case of a church-related organisation assisting peasants with agrarian conflicts and the challeng…
Complexities and Challenges for Civil Society Building in Post-Conflict Settings
Strengthening or even ‘building’ civil society has become a preoccupation of international development actors working in post-conflict settings. However, how to do so effectively remains a difficult and theoretically underexplored question. This article identifies two core challenges. The first is how to overcome the discrepancy between what international development actors aim to achieve in building civil society – namely the strengthening of th…
Thinking beyond the liberal peace
Civil Society in Peacebuilding
This article analyses frictions in strengthening civil society (CS) for peacebuilding. It argues that frictions are caused by the fact that policies for CS support in post-conflict settings are rooted in a Western discourse on the role of civic actors in politics and society. Consequently, intervention practices do not match local practices of civil society in non-Western, conflict-affected countries. In trying to locate suitable local counterpar…
Renegotiating customary tenure reform – Land governance reform and tenure security in Uganda
Theorizing the Land–Violent Conflict Nexus
Reconciling reintegration
The extent to which disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes initiated by state or multilateral agencies can realise the reintegration of ex-combatants remains debated. While some consider that DDR should have the ambition to result in long-term reintegration, others argue that DDR should focus on short-term goals. This paper explores experiences with the reintegration of ex-combatants in Burundi. It shows the interconnected…
Where do I report my land dispute? The impact of institutional proliferation on land governance in post-conflict Northern Uganda
In Sub-Saharan Africa, Uganda has been hailed for embarking on an intensive decentralization programme. Whereas a lot of literature assumes that decentralization leads to improved service delivery, it is unclear to what extent this is the case in practice, especially when it comes down to decentralized land governance. This paper, which is based on ethnographic research carried out between 2011 and 2013, argues that decentralization of land gover…
The politics of displacement-related land conflict in Yei River County, South Sudan
Drawing on empirical evidence from Yei River County in South Sudan, this paper argues that, rather than a temporary phenomenon, displacement may lead to a drastic reorganisation of land occupation and governance. Such reorganisation may become strongly connected to broader political contention. In the case of Yei, existing legal frameworks and institutions are inadequate to deal with land conflicts resulting from massive displacement and return. …
The multifaceted relationship between land and violent conflict
This paper argues that violent conflict prominently impacts on land governance and so contributes to land conflicts in post-conflict settings. In the natural resources literature, the relationship between land and conflict is often explained in terms of environmental security or political ecology, and many have pointed out that the way land is governed in itself may be a source of conflict. However, less attention has been given to the effects of…
Localizing Land Governance, Strengthening the State
Decentralization of land governance is expected to significantly improve land tenure security of small-scale farmers in Africa, through ensuring better protection of their assets and reducing land-related conflicts. This paper, however, cautions not to have too high expectations of transferring responsibilities for land administration and dispute resolution to local government bodies. Field research in Mbarara District in south-western Uganda bri…
Intricate links
Transforming land governance and strengthening the state in South Sudan
This article analyzes how transformations of land governance in the new Republic of South Sudan play into processes of everyday state formation. National land tenure reforms and decentralization policies have increased polarization between local public authorities in and around Yei Town, who vie for legitimacy amongst returning refugees, internally displaced people and migrants arriving in the wake of the civil war. Ambiguously worded national po…
Imagining the Peoples of Europe
The political landscape in Europe is currently going through a phase of rapid change. New actors and movements that claim to represent 'the will of the people' are attracting considerable public attention, with dramatic consequences for election outcomes. This volume explores the new political order with a particular focus on discursive constructions of 'the people' and the category of populism across the spectrum. It shows how a unitary represen…
The ‘local turn’ and notions of conflict and peacebuilding – Reflections on local peace committees in Burundi and eastern DR Congo
Both political scientists and development practitioners express renewed interest in the ‘local’ in peacebuilding, and a need to better engage with local communities’ concerns, perspectives and capacities. Developing scholarship highlights how such discourses essentialise the ‘local’, and obscure the role of interveners in its construction. This paper argues that thinking in terms of ‘local’ peacebuilding configures particular understandings of wh…
Claim-making as social practice – Land, politics and conflict in Africa
Defusing Land Disputes? The Politics of Land Certification and Dispute Resolution in Burundi
There is a growing interest in localized land registration, in which user rights are acknowledged and recorded through a community-based procedure, as an alternative to centralized titling to promote secure tenure in sub-Saharan Africa. Localized land registration is expected to reduce land disputes, yet it remains unclear how it impacts disputes in practice. This is an urgent question for war-affected settings that experience sensitive land disp…
Promoting land tenure security for sustainable peace — lessons on the politics of transformation
Literature on transformations to sustainability increasingly recognizes transformation as inherently political, but the field still struggles to study these politics. Our research project ‘Securing Tenure, Sustainable Peace?’ on efforts to localize land registration in conflict-affected settings, both illustrates and contributes to understanding the politics of transformation. Building on insights from political ecology/economy, legal and politic…
From resolving land disputes to agrarian justice - dealing with the structural crisis of plantation agriculture in eastern DR Congo
n Contains fulltext :\n 247725.pdf (Publisher's version ) (Open Access)\n \n Contains fulltext :\n 247726.pdf (Publisher's version ) (Open Access)\n
The Legitimation Effects of Peacebuilding and Development Interventions—Strengthening Land Registration in Northern Uganda
Fostering legitimate authority has become a priority of the international peacebuilding and development community, notably in fragile states and conflict-affected settings. Yet, how peacebuilding and development interventions feed into legitimation practices of public authorities remains underexplored, let alone how interveners can strategize on this. Analysis of programs to support land registration in Northern Uganda brings out how intervention…
Political science (25 works) · Law (23 works) · Politics (22 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Political economy (16 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (14 works) · Land Rights and Reforms (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Economics (13 works) · Public Administration (13 works)