Isak Svensson

Who Brings Which Peace

This study examines the effect of biased versus neutral mediation on the content of peace agreements. The author argues that neutral mediators, who are engaged primarily because of their interest to end the war, will have incentives to hasten the reaching of an agreement to the expense of its quality. By contrast, biased mediators, seeking to protect their protégés, will take care to ensure that there are stipulations in an agreement guaranteeing the interest of “their” side or use their particular access and leverage to make their side agree to costly concessions. Biased mediation processes are therefore more likely than neutral mediation processes to lead to elaborated institutional arrangements that are generally considered conducive to democracy and durable peace, such as power sharing, third-party security guarantees, and justice provisions. Empirical analysis, covering the 1989—2004 period and building on data from 124 peace agreements, supports these claims.

Talking Peace : International Mediation in Armed Conflicts

Mediation, as a means to end armed conflicts, has gained prominence particularly in the past 25 years. This article reviews peace mediation research to date, with a particular focus on quantitative studies as well as on significant theoretical and conceptual works. The growing literature on international mediation has made considerable progress towards understanding the conditions under which mediation processes help bring armed conflicts to peaceful ends. Still, the field of international mediation faces a number of problems. In this article, we aim to identify findings on mediation frequency, strategies, bias, and coordination as well as on trends in defining success. Although previous research has generated important insights, there are still unresolved issues and discrepancies which future mediation research needs to explore. Many of the challenges that the field faces could be managed by giving greater attention to accumulative knowledge production, more disaggregated analysis, and a closer dialogue between policy and research.

Community and consent: Unarmed insurrections in non-democracies

This study explores popular challenges against the state through nonviolent means. Although previous research has started to examine the effect of these ‘unarmed insurrections’, the relationship between challenging the state apparatus (vertical legitimacy) and the state identity (horizontal legitimacy) has not been adequately addressed. We argue that unarmed insurrections are most likely to be successful when challenging the vertical, rather than the horizontal, legitimacy of the state. Studying data for 287 years of protests in 57 non-democratic countries during the period of 1946–2006, we find support for three implications of this proposition: 1) campaigns that demand governmental regime change are more successful than campaigns for territorial changes; 2) success is less likely when the identity of the insurgents and the government is split along ethnic lines; and 3) success is less likely when society is highly polarized along ethnic lines rather than being ethnically homogeneous. Thus, when the community is divided, the efforts to withdraw consent will be less effective. The study discusses the implications of these findings for policymakers and scholars interested in nonviolent strategic action.

Mediating between tigers and lions: Norwegian peace diplomacy in Sri Lanka's civil war

Sri Lanka has suffered from one of Asias most intractable civil wars, and is remarkably resistant to resolution. The peace process was initiated with a ceasefire between the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lankan Government in 2002. This article explores the implications of the Norwegian mediation on this process. We argue that Norways aspiration to promote an image of being a global peacemaker and the consent from regional and global powers are important in explaining why Norway became involved. Moreover, the Norwegian mediation approach – based on impartiality, ownership by the two main parties, and internationalization – has had consequences for how the process has unfolded. For instance, it influenced the potential leverage of Norway and conceptions about bias. This article contributes to an understanding of how regional and global processes, as well as mediator characteristics and approaches, influence the dynamics of civil war termination.

Manufacturing Dissent: Modernization and the Onset of Major Nonviolent Resistance Campaigns

A growing research field examines the conditions under which major nonviolent resistance campaigns—that is, popular nonviolent uprisings for regime or territorial change—are successful. Why these campaigns emerge in the first place is less well understood. We argue that extensive social networks that are economically interdependent with the state make strategic nonviolence more feasible. These networks are larger and more powerful in states whose economies rely upon organized labor. Global quantitative analysis of the onset of violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1960 to 2006 (NAVCO), and major protest events in Africa from 1990 to 2009 (SCAD) shows that the likelihood of nonviolent conflict onset increases with the proportion of manufacturing to gross domestic product. This study points to a link between modernization and social conflict, a link that has been often hypothesized, but, hitherto, unsupported by empirical studies.

From bombs to banners? The decline of wars and the rise of unarmed uprisings in East Asia

One of the most important debates in the field of peace and conflict research concerns whether wars and armed conflicts are declining over time. The region where this plays out most markedly is East Asia: having suffered some of the world’s most brutal wars in the period prior to 1979, the region has since witnessed an era of relative peacefulness. This article asks whether the decline in the level of war in the region reflects a change in the means used to pursue conflicts: are conflicts that previously were fought with arms increasingly manifested through unarmed uprisings based on strategic nonviolent actions? Examining the empirical patterns of armed conflicts and unarmed uprisings in the region, the article shows that there has been a substantial increase in the number of unarmed uprisings in East Asia that runs parallel with a decrease in the intensity and frequency of warfare. Yet, the article also shows that these nonviolent uprisings do not follow on from previous armed campaigns, and that armed and unarmed campaigns differ in terms of aims, nature and outcome. Thus, the article concludes that there is little support for the hypothesis that those who formerly used violence have shifted to new nonviolent, unarmed tactics, and that we are rather witnessing two parallel, unrelated processes. These insights call for an enlargement of the research agenda of the ‘East Asian peace’.

How Holy Wars End: Exploring the Termination Patterns of Conflicts With Religious Dimensions in Asia

Conventional wisdom suggests that armed conflicts with religious dimensions are inherently difficult to end. Religious appeals seem to make conflict issues indivisible. Yet, religious conflicts do end. In order to understand this puzzle, there is a need to examine the empirical records of the termination process of these types of armed conflicts. In this study, we argue that there is a potential for conflict resolution of religious conflicts without necessarily requiring concessions on the core beliefs and aspirations. We explore this proposition by examining the empirical pattern of Asian armed conflicts with explicit religious dimensions as stated incompatible positions and scrutinize how they are ended. Our empirical analysis reveals that none of the parties raising religious demands has made concessions on those demands. Yet, in about half of the cases, there are accommodations that do not imply concessions on the religious goals. Based on these findings, the study draws out the potential implications for the debate about the role of religion, armed conflicts, and peaceful resolution.

The peace process in Sri Lanka

This article sets out to analyse the current peace process in Sri Lanka. It is argued that the prospects for peace are better than at any other time since the inception of the armed conflict in 1983, because the parties’ concerns about the consequences of continued conflict, as well as the consequences of settlement, have changed. In the first section of the article we demonstrate how the costs — militarily, financially and politically ‐for continuing the war have drastically increased for the parties. Furthermore, with the involvement of the international community and the special approach to the peace process by the Wickremasinghe government, the perceived risks involved in a peaceful settlement have decreased. These parallel developments in the incentives structures of war and peace, explain the readiness of both primary parties to engage in serious efforts to solve the protracted conflict. From this perspective, the roles of Norway as a mediator, and the Nordic countries as ceasefire monitors, are analysed. The second section analyses the prospects for a solution, by looking at the reconciliation of positions that have taken place between the parties. The major obstacles, such as the LTTEs intentions, the Muslim minority and divisions within the Singhalese community, are also discussed. We end the analysis with the observation that even though the prospects for a stable, negotiated settlement between the adversaries appear promising, several problems related to post‐conflict reconstruction and democratic development, are likely to remain obstacles in the future.

Dialogue and interethnic trust: A randomized field trial of 'sustained dialogue' in Ethiopia

The growing field of peacebuilding has tried to mitigate interethnic conflicts by creating various sorts of dialogue programs, aiming to build social bonds and bridges between individuals from groups with a history of violent interaction. Yet, little is known of the effect of dialogue initiatives on interethnic relations and peacebuilding. Previous research on dialogue programs has suffered from the serious problem of selection bias: in other words, by not having comparable control groups it has not been possible to separate selection effects (that a program attracts certain types of people) from process effects (that programs have an effect on people). The present study is the first to examine the effects of a dialogue process in a context of political tension and ethnic violence through a randomized field experiment, thereby eliminating this problem. Using a stratified randomization process, participants were selected to a two-term Sustained Dialogue program at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, in 2009–10. Immediately following the dialogue intervention, an attitudinal survey and a behavioral trust game were conducted with a group of 716 participants and non-participants. We found that the program had a positive effect on participants’ attitudes: it worked for decreasing mistrust and increasing the level of trust between people of different ethnic origins. Concurrently, however, participation in the dialogue program increased the sense of importance of ethnic identities as well as the perception of being ethnically discriminated – a somewhat counter-intuitive finding. Participation in dialogue processes had no significant effect on game behavior: participants in Sustained Dialogue were neither more trusting nor trustworthy than non-participants. This study shows the fruitfulness of randomized field-experiments in the area of peace and conflict research and finishes by identifying some important paths for future research.

'Damned if You Do, and Damned if You Don't': Nordic Involvement and Images of Third-Party Neutrality in Sri Lanka

Third-party actors who mediate or monitor peace often strive to uphold an image of neutrality. Yet, they commonly face accusations of partiality. The Nordic engagement in the Sri Lankan peace process is an illustration of this puzzle: despite the efforts to uphold an image of being neutral mediators and monitors, they have been seen as favoring one side or the other. This article suggests that part of the explanation for their failure to be seen as neutral lies in the fact that armed conflicts are characterized by certain asymmetries between the main antagonists – in capabilities, status and behavior. These imbalances pose particular challenges to the third party aspiring to act in a neutral manner. We suggest that third parties have two strategies available to deal with imbalances in the relationship between the contenders: 1) they can choose to disregard the asymmetrical relationship and act in an even-handed manner or 2) they can seek to counterbalance the lopsidedness. This article explores the dynamics of these strategies by analyzing the Nordic involvement in Sri Lankas peace process that began in 2002.