Isak Svensson - International Mediation Bias and Peacemaking: Taking Sides in Civil Wars

International Mediation Bias and
Peacemaking

This book examines the effect of biased and neutral mediators in civil wars.

Based on analysis of both global data and case studies of contemporary peace processes, including India and Norway in Sri Lanka, China in Cambodia, the US in Israel/Palestine, and Russia in Georgia, the book makes two main contributions. First, it explores the role of biased mediators in contemporary peace processes. The author develops a theory explaining why biased mediators are more effective than their neutral counterparts and the book identifies four different mechanisms through which biased mediators can be effective peace-brokers. By developing a comprehensive set of mechanisms to explain bias mediation, the work deepens understanding of biased mediators in general, and their role in resolving civil conflict in particular.

The second contribution offered is a novel way of measuring mediation success. Previous research has concentrated on settlement, behavior, or implementation. While these conceptualizations of mediation success all have merit, they fail to address how the basic incompatible positions are regulated. This book focuses on mediators ability to regulate core compatibilities by crafting institutional peace arrangements that are generally considered to enhance the prospect for durable peace. This approach has wider implications for peace and conflict research by bringing together research on durability of peace and studies on international mediation, two fields of research which have hitherto been kept apart.

This book will be of much interest to students of international mediation, conflict management, civil wars, security studies and IR in general.

Isak Svensson is Associate Professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Sweden, and former Director of Research at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand. He is the author of The Go-Between: Ambassador Jan Eliasson and the Styles of International Mediation (co-authored with Peter Wallensteen, 2010), and Ending Holy Wars: Religion and Conflict Resolution in Civil Wars (2012).

Series: Security and Conflict Management

Series Editors:

Fen Osler Hampson

Chester Crocker

Pamela Aall

This series will publish the best work in the field of security studies and conflict management. In particular, it will promote leading-edge work that straddles the divides between conflict management and security studies, between academics and practitioners, and between disciplines.

Conflict Management and African Politics
Negotiation, mediation, and politics
Edited by Terrence Lyons and Gilbert M. Khadiagala

International Conflict Mediation
New approaches and findings
Edited by Jacob Bercovitch and Scott Sigmund Gartner

International Mediation in Civil Wars
Bargaining with bullets
Timothy D. Sisk

Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding
Moving from violence to sustainable peace
Edited by Bruce Dayton and Louis Kriesberg

Theory and Practice of International Mediation
Selected essays
Jacob Bercovitch

UN Sanctions and Conflict
Responding to peace and security threats
Andrea Charron

Territorial Disputes and Conflict Management
The art of avoiding war
Rongxing Guo

Aid, Insurgencies and Conflict Transformation
When greed is good
Rob Kevlihan

Human Security in Turkey
Challenges for the 21st century
Edited by Alpaslan zerdem and Fsun zerdem

Understanding Complex Military Operations
A case study approach
Edited by Volker Franke, Karen Guttieri and Melanne A. Civic

Regional Organisations and Peacemaking
Challengers to the UN
Edited by Peter Wallensteen and Anders Bjurner

International Mediation Bias and Peacemaking
Taking sides in civil wars
Isak Svensson

International Mediation Bias
and Peacemaking

Taking sides in civil wars

Isak Svensson

First published 2015
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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2015 Isak Svensson

The right of Isak Svensson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-0-415-66074-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-07384-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents

PART I
Theory

PART II
Empirics

PART III
Conclusions

I come from a part of the globe where peace diplomacy and third-party mediation has been a central part of the foreign policy of our Nordic countries. Unbiased peace efforts in order to bring about the peaceful settlement of armed conflicts have characterized many efforts by the Nordic countries, and have in some sense defined our contribution to the world of peacemaking. Sweden has a proud legacy of important peace-mediators, the Secretary General Dag Hammarskjld in the Congo, Middle East, and contentious China-US relationships, the former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in Iran-Iraq, and the present United Nations Under Secretary General Jan Eliasson in the Darfur conflict in Sudan and other engagements. Norway was active through Terje Rd Larsen (and others) in Israel/Palestine through the so-called Oslo-channel and through Hilde F. Johnson in Sudan, and Norway has also had on-going engagements in the Philippines, Colombia and Afghanistan. The Finnish former President, and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Martti Ahtisaari, has acted as a mediator in Namibia, Kosovo and Aceh (Indonesia). I recognize that these are important peacemaking initiatives, and I have described these mediation processes in some detail elsewhere (Svensson and Wallensteen 2010; Wallensteen and Svensson 2014a).

Yet, it is also natural for me to have an interest in examining the impact, as well as the limitations, of unbiased mediation. There is a need for critical analysis of what can be achieved and which types of actors are most effective in bringing about the change from war to peace. In order to do that, we need to compare different types of mediators, and we need some way of capturing what we mean by success in international mediation. We need to think, hard and honestly, and look at the general trajectories as well as the evidence from particular cases in contemporary peacemaking. In this book I therefore grapple with one of the most central, but still (and surprisingly so) unanswered, themes of international mediation namely, the role of