Abstract

156 BOOK REVIEWS Nikos Papanastasiou Assistant Professor, Department of Communication and Media Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece papanast@media.uoa.gr http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2966-9480 © 2022 Nikos Papanastasiou https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2022.2129326 The rise and fall of peacebuilding in the Balkans, by Roberto Belloni, Cham: Springer International Publishing (Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan), 2020, 250 pp., €72.79 (hardback), ISBN: 978-3-030-14423-4 Roberto Belloni described The Rise and Fall of Peacebuilding in the Balkans as the book he did not intend to write. An expert on international intervention and peacebuilding in the Balkans, he had already written several contributions to the topic, including his 2007 book State Building and International Intervention in Bosnia. However, as the focus of international intervention shifted away from ‘intervention’ and towards ‘cooperation’, a gap emerged in the academic literature. The expectation that local peace builders would continue where inter- national efforts left off, fulfiling the internationally defined agenda of local ownership, did not happen as expected. The book comes at a time when the global international order is increasingly being questioned. This is very noticeable on the European semi-periphery where the international and highly liberal peacebuilding agenda in the Balkans is failing. What academics and practitioners alike notice is pervasive international disengagement, a