International Negotiation and Mediation in Violent Conflicts
This collection of essays situates the study and practice of international mediation and peaceful settlement of disputes within a changing global context.
The book is organized around issues of concern to practitioners, including the broader regional, global, and institutional context of mediation and how this broader environment shapes the opportunities and prospects for successful mediation. A major theme is complexity, and how the complex contemporary context presents serious challenges to mediation. This environment describes a world where great-power rivalries and politics are coming back into play, and international and regional organizations are playing different roles and facing different kinds of constraints in the peaceful settlement of disputes. The first section discusses the changing international environment for conflict management and reflects on some of the challenges that this changing environment raises for addressing conflict. focuses on the consequences of bringing new actors into third-party engagement and examines what may be harbingers for how we will attempt to resolve conflict in the future. The third section turns to the world of practice, and discusses mediation statecraft and how to employ it in this current international environment. The volume aims to situate the practice and study of mediation within this wider social and political context to better understand the opportunities and constraints of mediation in todays world. The value of the book lies in its focus on complex and serious issues that challenge both mediators and scholars.
This volume will be of much interest to students, practitioners, and policymakers in the area of international negotiation, mediation, conflict resolution and international relations.
Chester A. Crocker is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown University, USA and a distinguished fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
Fen Osler Hampson is Chancellors Professor at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, and a distinguished fellow and director of the Centre for International Governance Innovations Global Security & Politics Program, Canada.
Pamela Aall is a Senior Advisor for conflict prevention and management at the US Institute of Peace (USIP), USA and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
Security and Conflict Management
Series Editors: Fen Osler Hampson
Carleton University, Canada,
Chester Crocker,
Georgetown University, Washington DC
and Pamela Aall
United States Institute of Peace, Washington DC
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.
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
Conflict Management in International Missions
A field guide
Olav Ofstad
International Multiparty Mediation and Conflict Management
Challenges of cooperation and coordination
Sinia Vukovi
Mediation of International Conflicts
A rational model
Lesley G. Terris
Understanding Quality Peace
Peacebuilding After Civil War
Edited by Madhav Joshi and Peter Wallensteen
International Negotiation and Mediation in Violent Conflicts
The Changing Context of Peacemaking
Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall
First published 2018
by Routledge
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2018 Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall The right of Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN: 978-1-138-70495-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-20242-6 (ebk)
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Foreword
Violent conflict has been with us forever. But the study of how to manage and resolve violent conflict is a relatively recent development in the Western scholarly tradition. A vital part of that tradition is enabling an understanding of the continuously evolving trends in contemporary conflict and how that informs an effective practice of managing and resolving violent conflict, which is at the heart of this new volume.
In the late 1980s, the contours of conflict and its resolution took an abrupt turn when the stability and comprehensible terror of the Cold War gave way to an arguably less terrifying but more deeply combustible mix of intrastate conflicts and nonstate actors.
Today we face another evolution in violent conflict as the fragility of states and regions has led to an increase in civil wars, an historic outpouring of refugees and migrants, new and more virulent forms of violent extremism and a new rise in global and regional power competition. The role of nonstate actors has dramatically increased, both in provoking and resolving conflict. Nongovernmental organizations play an integral role in conflict management and resolution in areas as diverse as negotiations between warring parties and the resettlement of displaced persons. Accelerating environmental degradation is likely to play an increasing role in creating conflict as scarce resources become more so and ruralurban migration increases. And an astonishing level of global connectivity has created new avenues for peace and prosperity, even as it has also spawned new types of conflict such as cyber warfare and the use of new forms of media and propaganda to stoke resentment and conflicts. New technologies such as such as artificial intelligence, blockchain coding and a growing sub-culture of hacking are giving birth to brand new venues for conflict as well as potential tools for conflict resolution.
Every conflict is different, and yet when commonalities can be derived, root causes understood and the specific complexities of various conflicts analyzed, we increase our ability to manage and resolve violent conflict more effectively. We are only as good in preventing and resolving conflict as the data and knowledge base we possess. Works like the Greed versus grievance literature for example, have enabled a clearer understanding of the role that socio-economic inequity, weak institutions, and resource scarcity play in generating conflict, and the steps we might take to contribute to its decline.
