At first glance, one might assume that a peacekeeping soldier from Pakistan, a diplomat from the United States, and a human rights advocate from Senegal would approach their jobs quite differently. Yet, while in Congo for a previous research project, I observed striking similarities in the ways that international interveners understand the situations they face and in the strategies they adopt, despite their otherwise extremely different national, professional, social, and economic backgrounds. This observation prompted a new research project that confirmed my original insight, highlighted the importance of the interveners’ everyday life and work in accounting for these commonalities, and eventually resulted in this book.

In this chapter, I present the theoretical and methodological framework that I use to analyze the everyday dimension of international interventions. The first two sections describe my overall approach: In the first, I discuss the contested notions of intervention success and failure, and in the second, I demonstrate that considering the specific dynamics of on-the-ground peacebuilding is essential. The next section of the chapter presents the three most helpful concepts for analyzing everyday peacebuilding, namely practices, habits, and narratives. In the fourth section, I outline my explanation of the dynamics of intervention in the field and of the processes of change. The fifth and final section elucidates how my analysis complements the existing literature on peacebuilding effectiveness, drawing attention to gaps in those explanations that emphasize constraints, vested interests, liberal values, or the marked differences among interveners.