Introduction

Recent decades have seen the growth of the term ‘peace process’ to describe the often protracted period of ceasefires, negotiations, settlement and implementation of deals designed to achieve peace. The proliferation of peace processes does not herald a more peaceful geopolitical environment. Many peace processes end in failure, some catastrophically, but their expansion does highlight the capacity and desire for peace-building. The persistence of wars has been accompanied by burgeoning attempts to ameliorate conflict via processes embracing mitigation, conciliation and reconciliation, increasingly via third-party intervention. Realist perspectives will continue to point to the anarchic nature of the world system, shaped by nations having permanent interests rather than enduring allies, maintaining the inevitability of war. They point to the mediocre record of peace processes as hopes against history or actuality. Longitudinal examination of conflicts demonstrates that peace processes offer only a modest record in solving conflict. Nonetheless, there is tentative evidence that this record is improving and that peacemaking and peacekeeping capacities are becoming more adept. Successful peace processes have now been developed in every region of the world (Wallensteen 2011). It is necessary to explain how and why this progression is evident.

This book undertakes a number of tasks, adopting a distinctive analytical approach. It marries analysis of the growth of peace processes, assessment of the tools of conflict management and analysis of the increasing importance of post-conflict restorative justice with a series of case studies. Whilst comprehensive coverage of all peace processes is obviously impossible, this book chooses a particular selection of the most successful processes in terms of reductions in violence, such as those in Bosnia and Northern Ireland and the most unsuccessful, such as in Sri Lanka, which had a catastrophic end, and that in Palestine, bereft of any obvious chance of political success. The book thus avoids the possible trap of choosing winners and readily acknowledges the limitations of even the most successful processes. Thus alongside the major political progress in the Bosnian and Northern Irish cases there has been only modest societal reintegration. A key feature of the book is its detailed exploration of consociational power-sharing as a means of conflict management. Given the shift in conflict away from inter-state to intra-state forms and the predominance of inter-ethnic rivalries, power-sharing between antagonists has become a key tool of diverting conflict into politics. The focus on consociation does not make great claims for its success and acknowledges its limitations, but stresses its importance as a model now regularly deployed, one which can be re-defined according to circumstance to at least have some utility.

In undertaking this combination of universal and local conflict analysis, this book assesses the growth of peace processes and considers their sequencing, analysing what might be considered the essential and probable components of successful processes. The book explores which types of process succeed and why, discussing key variables such as the nature of conflict – inter- or intra-state; the length of war and the ability to utilize external brokers. The volume also examines the rise of a wide range of measures designed to offer a fair political settlement to antagonists. It considers vexed problems of implementing peace and achieving restorative and retributive justice for different groups, ranging from families of victims to war criminals. The focus of the work is upon the political tools available to broker, implement and maintain peace. The book is deliberately aimed at the politics of peace processes, not upon the military aspects of conflict which pre-date (and often accompany) peace processes.

In attempting these tasks, the book is divided into two sections. The first outlines the development of peace processes. Chapter 1 begins with an assessment of the growth of the term ‘peace process’ and explores its usefulness weighed against realist assumptions of the ubiquity of violence, empirical evidence of the persistence of conflict and the failure of a majority of peace processes. The chapter highlights the rise of peace processes amid the partial displacement of inter-state wars by intra-state conflict and discusses which type of conflict may be easier to settle. The chapter examines the common sequencing of peace processes, from secret talks to ceasefires, implementation and future prevention. The essential and useful features of peace processes are identified and the relative importance of endogenous and exogenous factors considered.

Chapter 2 begins with a critical assessment of ideas of ripeness for peace, contending that asymmetry may be as liable to yield peace as a supposedly mutual hurting stalemate. The chapter then examines the utility of various political prescriptions applied to conflict arenas, including consociation, partition, secession and devolution. Amid a growth in ethno-national conflicts around issues of identity, the chapter assesses the extent to which power-sharing deals based upon proportionality for ethnic pillars can endure, amid sectarian retrenchment and polarization.

Chapter 3 looks at the difficulties of implementing peace processes. The chapter examines the capabilities of United Nations peacekeeping forces in physically preventing re-ignition of conflict and assesses how reconstruction can take place after war. It then turns to an exploration of the psychological healing attempted as the denouement of peace processes, via such mechanisms as truth and reconciliation commissions. It contrasts the ‘soft’ approach of truth commissions with the ‘hard’ retributive ending of war crimes trials.

The second section of the book offers empirical scrutiny of a selection of peace processes of recent decades. There is little point in merely selecting the most recent or the most dated such processes, but much greater value in analysing how the modus operandi of peace processes have varied across different types of conflict and across time. Moreover, to select peace processes which appear to have worked would offer scant value. As such, the case studies include some deemed broadly successful; others far less able to resolve underlying problems and an example of one which collapsed amid slaughter precipitated by the successful pursuit of victory by one side.

Chapter 4 analyses the peace process in Palestine. It assesses the scope for dilution of the territorial claims (infused to different degrees by religious perspectives) of Eretz Israel or a full Palestinian state based on pre-1948 borders. The chapter focuses upon fundamentalist Israeli and Palestinian (Hamas) political-religious narratives. It examines the failure of previous attempts at conflict management, assessing whether blame was attributable primarily to the structure of the deals or the flaws of the agents. The chapter concentrates particularly upon the false hope of the Oslo Agreement of the 1990s and explores whether territorial boundaries can ever be agreed for the much-vaunted two-state solution.

Chapter 5 assesses the Lebanese peace process which produced the 1989 Ta’if Agreement and discusses the extent to which loyalty to the state of Lebanon has been secured in subsequent decades. The attempts at establishing internal fidelity to ‘project Lebanon’ and to engage in state-building are discussed in the context of persistent external interference within the Lebanese polity and the development of Hezbollah as a governing force across much of the south of the country.

Chapter 6 examines the Northern Ireland peace process. It explores the extent to which the 1998 Good Friday Agreement secured a definitive peace in establishing consociational power-sharing political structures. The chapter measures the extent to which it has been possible to diminish sectarianism amid institutional recognition of ostensibly competitive Protestant-British-Unionist and Catholic-Irish-Nationalist identities. The persistence of low-level violence via spoiler groups, in the form of ‘dissident’ IRAs, is also assessed.

Chapter 7 dissects the peace process in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It explores the consociational and confederal aspects of the 1995 Dayton Agreement and assesses the contribution of each to freezing ethno-national hostilities between Croats, Serbs and Bosnians. The chapter examines the degree to which reintegration has been evident since the end of hostilities. It discusses the importance of external intervention in forcing and implementing peace, and evaluates how the avoidance of blame inherent in the Dayton deal gradually shifted towards the determined pursuit of war criminals.

The final two chapters examine what happens when peace processes collapse entirely, amid very different levels of violence, but with the state determined in both cases to ensure the absolute defeat of insurgents without offering any tangible rewards for their rebellion. Chapter 8’s exploration of the Basque peace process stretches the label of ‘peace process’, as what has mainly occurred is a gradual petering out of ETA’s violent campaign to achieve an independent Basque homeland. The chapter discusses the Spanish government’s pressure upon ETA and also discusses how the government has responded politically to demands for greater Basque autonomy or independence. The various ETA ceasefires are explored in the context of the organization’s difficulty in sustaining a credible...