This book addresses the theme of peace- and state-building through a comparative study of the intervention of the European Union (EU) in Somalia and Mali between 2006 and 2022, as well as an analysis of the reorientation of the EU’s external action post 2022. The main objective was to understand and analyse the EU's intervention under the stabilisation banner and focus on state-building and support to the security sector in countries marked by polycentric governance. It analyses the normative and regulatory role of the EU as an agent of the liberal interventionary order (as per O. Richmond's concept). The research contributes to the emergent post-liberal approach in peace and conflict studies by putting forward context-based knowledge. The theoretical framework is framed around the critique of peace as governance and the broader focus of state-building associated with stabilisation. The author further analysed the EU’s attempts at growing actorness, particularly in the post-Lisbon Treaty. The research  contributes to the fundamental critique of peacebuilding (critical turn), including through societal perspectives on EU's intervention and informing the local turn. By also encompassing the global turn in International Relations, the research confirmed the growing challenge of maintaining a global order based on multilateral rules and exposed how polycentricity outwitted the EU's normative aspirations.

Ana Carina S. Franco is a research analyst with international professional experience as an external expert on peace and conflict, security, governance and forced migration with international organisations. She is also a former humanitarian worker (with international NGOs) and a crisis management professional (with EU’s CSDP). Ana Carina holds a PhD in International Relations (Political Area Studies) by NOVA University of Lisbon. She has been an invited lecturer at academic institutions, speaker at scientific events and author of peer-reviewed publications on topics related to peace and conflict studies, post-liberalism, salafi-jihadism, security assistance and external interventions.