Mediation is now the most popular form of conflict management, and it has proven to be an
effective means of resolving inter- and intrastate disputes. This article offers an overview of
mediation in foreign policy. We first highlight which actors tend to perform mediatory roles,
emphasizing the relative strengths and weaknesses of individual, state, and international
organization mediators. Next we discuss the supply and demand of mediation, identifying the key
conditions that promote third parties’ efforts to offer mediatory assistance and belligerents to
accept the help of an intermediary. We then discuss the process and varying methods used by
mediators, highlighting the range of actions from relatively soft facilitative mediation, up to more
manipulative approaches. Finally we discuss the outcomes that mediation tends to produce and the
conditions that influence the effectiveness of this preeminent foreign policy tool.
Article
Soli Vered and Daniel Bar-Tal
Intractable conflicts are demanding, stressful, painful, exhausting, and costly in both human and material terms. To adapt to these conditions, societies that are engaged in protracted, violent conflict develop an appropriate socio-psychological infrastructure that eventually becomes the foundation for the development of culture of conflict. The infrastructure fulfills important functions for the societies involved but can be a major socio-psychological barrier to peaceful resolution of the conflict. Transforming the nature of the relations between two societies that were in hostile and violent rivalry requires a dramatic societal change, replacing the socio-psychological repertoire among society members and establishing a new culture of peace. Peacemaking is a slow, arduous process; however, if successful, the previous rivals may establish stable and lasting peaceful relations.
Article
Lesley Terris
Mediation has become a dominant method of peaceful conflict resolution in the international system. Since the end of the Cold War in particular, an increasing number of belligerents have relied on mediators to help end their disputes. Yet, while mediators offer many advantages in the process of making peace, at times serving as the only way for rivals to move forward, mediation may also entail negative, unintended, consequences. Escalation of the conflict upon the mediator’s entrance is one such unintended consequence. Strategic considerations on the one hand, and psychological mechanisms on the other, frequently prompt rivals to escalate rather than cease hostilities upon the onset of mediation. Another possible unintended consequence is prolongation of the conflict due to the presence of the mediator. With a mediator involved in the negotiations, rivals may be tempted to put off an agreement in the hope of gaining a better deal while evading the cost of all-out conflict, or the disputing parties may conclude that they stand to gain more from the mediation process itself than from reaching a settlement. Mediation may also lead to fragile settlements that are prone to be short-lived as compared to settlements arrived at by the disputing parties on their own. This process is driven by factors such as the tendency of mediators to push for settlement terms that are easily attainable but that do not resolve the underlying causes of the conflict and are not necessarily sustainable. Whereas the contribution of mediation to conflict resolution is widely researched and discussed by scholars, to fully appreciate the significance of mediation as a method of conflict resolution, it is crucial to understand its possible negative consequences as well. A clear understanding of the full picture is essential for scholars and practitioners alike.
Article
Nukhet Sandal
Religion was a relatively overlooked factor in the study of political science until the 21st century. Even when the focus on religion increased in the aftermath of 9/11, a majority of the scholarship still dealt with religion and violence. “Religion and peace” has arguably been a less popular topic, yet there is still a vibrant literature that has contributed to our understanding of religion and social dynamics, especially given the significant number of religiously inspired organizations that are active in postconflict processes, such as Network of Engaged Buddhists, Sant’Egidio, and American Jewish World Service. Religion can play a critical role in conflict resolution and negotiation, especially in settings where secular approaches fall short of resolving the tensions, and where religious actors are seen as more neutral than the political actors. Peacebuilding literature has also recognized the importance of religion. Every religious tradition has its own sources of nonviolence within itself, and under the right conditions, these sources can help with reconciliation, peacebuilding, and transitional justice. At the same time, involvement of religious actors in postconflict processes poses its own challenges. Religious actors are rarely fully neutral, their assistance usually comes with conditions attached, and their involvement in political processes can undermine their moral authority. In addition, there are religious leaders who work against reconciliation to protect their own status in conflict settings. Recognizing that it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of faith-inspired initiatives, more scholarship is needed to explore the dynamics of religious initiatives in postconflict processes. There are gaps especially when it comes to non-Christian actors’ involvement in peace processes, and how the faith-inspired initiatives of individuals differ from those of religious institutions and organizations.
Article
Isak Svensson
The relationship between civil war and religion is a complex one. Civil wars are influenced in many different ways by religiously based factors. Different religiously based factors influence the onset, dynamics, and termination of civil wars. Religious factors have been examined both as causes of war and their dynamics and as factors behind how violence is prevented, conflict is managed, and peace is built. Whereas research on peace and conflict has often tended to neglect religiously focused explanations in favor of explanations based on strategic, economic, or other factors, research on religion and conflict has seen a resurgence in recent years. Research can be organized based on three different levels of analysis: (a) explanations relating to the religious group level, (b) explanations relating to the level of interrelationships between different religious groups, and (c) explanations relating to the level of the group’s relationship to the state. On the group level, religious beliefs, religious practices, religious constituency, and religious institutions play a role. On the intergroup level, two main debates center around the “clash of civilization” and religious demography. On the state-religion level, religious grievances and state favoritism can be seen as explanations for civil wars. As religiously defined conflicts are becoming more common, understanding more about the conditions under which religious factors influence civil wars’ onset, dynamics, and termination is vital.
Article
Krista E. Wiegand
Despite the decline in interstate wars, there remain dozens of interstate disputes that could erupt into diplomatic crises and evolve into military escalation. By far the most difficult interstate dispute that exists are territorial disputes, followed by maritime and river boundary disputes. These disputes are not only costly for the states involved, but also potentially dangerous for states in the region and allies of disputant states who could become entrapped in armed conflicts. Fortunately, though many disputes remain unresolved and some disputes endure for decades or more than a century, many other disputes are peacefully resolved through conflict management tools.
Understanding the factors that influence conflict management—the means by which governments decide their foreign policy strategies relating to interstate disputes and civil conflicts—is critical to policy makers and scholars interested in the peaceful resolution of such disputes. Though conflict management of territorial and maritime disputes can include a spectrum of management tools, including use of force, most conflict management tools are peaceful, involving direct bilateral negotiations between the disputant states, non-binding third party mediation, or binding legal dispute resolution. Governments most often attempt the most direct dispute resolution method, which is bilateral negotiations, but often, such negotiations break down due to uncompromising positions of the disputing states, leading governments to turn to other resolution methods. There are pros and cons of each of the dispute resolution methods and certain factors will influence the decisions that governments make about the management of their territorial and maritime disputes. Overall, the peaceful resolution of territorial and maritime disputes is an important but complicated issue for states both directly involved and indirectly affected by the persistence of such disputes.
Article
Michael Mousseau and Xiongwei Cao
The democratic peace—the absence of war between democratic nations—shook the field of International Relations when it emerged as a widely accepted true fact roughly a quarter-century ago. In the context of the rapid spread of democracy that coincided with the end of the Cold War, the promise was vast: A world of democracies would be a world in peace. The democratic peace had a crucial weakness, however: a convincing explanation. While many potential explanations were developed, only a few produced supportive evidence, and not one yielded evidence supportive enough to render it widely convincing.
Into this void emerged the contractualist peace—the dearth of militarized conflict between nations with advanced market-oriented economies. Unlike the democratic peace, the contractualist peace was not discovered after the fact but predicted ex ante. Economic norms theory predicts societies that are market oriented to embrace democracy as the best means to ensure their state’s impartiality in the enforcement of contracts. These societies also seek global markets, and any nation interested in global markets can have no economic incentive of attacking another nation that abides by market rules. On the contrary, contractualist nations are friends, for among nations seeking global markets each is always better off when the other is better off, as wealthier nations make better customers than poorer ones.
Economic norms theory thus explains the democratic peace as spurious, with contractualist economy causing both democracy within nations and the peace among them. Early examinations of the economic norms explanation tested for an interaction of democracy and development as a proxy measure for contractualist economy and yielded supportive but not widely convincing results. Then a direct measure of contract-intensive economy was discovered, and the result was striking: Whereas prior studies showed that no two democracies ever fought each other in war defined as one thousand or more battlefield-connected deaths, it now appears that no two contractualist nations have ever experienced even a single battlefield-connected death. About half of all democracies lack contractualist economies, and these nations fight each other about as often as everybody else: There is no democratic peace.
Defenders of the democratic peace have made multiple attempts to rescue their observation, but the evidence against them remains overwhelming. Instead it appears that it is market-oriented development that causes both democracy and peace. The implications are more substantial than the democratic peace, since the contractualist peace is far deeper than the democratic one, rooted in common interests and perfect peace rather than mere constraints that only diminish the probability of militarized conflict. It is also more practical, suggesting that global peace can be achieved without a war-inducing crusade to democratize the world: It can be achieved by a peace-inducing campaign for global economic development.
Article
Gregory M. Vecchi
Law enforcement negotiation is one of the only times when a law enforcement officer interacts with an offender during the commission of a crime and, as such, can influence the outcome of the situation in favor of law enforcement. All other interactions between offenders take place after the commission of the crime or during undercover operations when the law enforcement officer is hiding their identity. Law enforcement crisis and tactical negotiation (LECTN) provides techniques, tactics, and procedures for seamlessly dealing with difficult, dangerous, and disordered persons to obtain voluntary compliance through the application of verbal influence-based skill sets. LECTN is a method by which to deal with perceived threats to a subject’s emotional, psychological, or physical well-being during intense conflict or crisis situations. Understanding critical incidents and the mindset of a subject is critical to determining the proper communication strategies and tactics. At the heart of the process is understanding and assessing instrumental and expressive behavior in order to apply tactical negotiation or crisis intervention. A key skill set to being effective in negotiating with difficult, dangerous, and disordered persons is to build credibility through the application of the Behavioral Influence Stairway Model in the effective application of active listening skills, empathy, rapport–trust, and influence to persuade behavioral change on the part of the subject.
Article
Jason Klocek and Ron E. Hassner
Although largely ignored by international relations scholars until the 21st century, religion has been and remains a pervasive social force both on and off the battlefield. It affects how combatants mobilize and prepare for war. It regulates how they fight, including unit organization and strategic decision making. In addition, religious identities, beliefs, practices, and symbols shape how and when combatants pursue peace. The study of religion and war seeks to discover and understand these varied influences, even when religion is not the pretext for fighting.
Article
Jessica Di Salvatore and Andrea Ruggeri
Peacekeeping has been one of the main conflict management tools used by the international community to restore or safeguard peace and security. Since 1948, the United Nations has established 70 peace operations and has substantially evolved, adopting approaches to peace that extend beyond purely military concerns. Indeed, the promises of peacekeeping as effective instrument of conflict reduction may, to some extent, explain the evolution toward multidimensional missions and the unprecedented number of peacekeepers deployed in the last decade. As consequence, the growing importance of peacekeeping effectiveness has sparked a new wave of research that empirically investigates whether and under which conditions UN peacekeeping works.
Peacekeepers are mostly deployed in conflict or postconflict environments where violence is either ongoing or lingering. Thus, violence remains a priority for peace missions. Consequently, peacekeeping is deemed successful or effective according to whether it curbs conflict in several dimensions. Effective missions are those responsible for decreasing the intensity of battle violence, protecting civilians, and containing conflict diffusion and recurrence in the postwar phase. Each mission, however, is deployed in different contexts and operates under variable conditions that affect the operation’s capacity to influence conflict. Concerning mission features, peacekeeping success is more likely when large contingents are deployed under robust mandates. Mission type, size, and composition signal credible commitment from the international community and empower peacekeepers to halt violence while guaranteeing the implementation of peace agreements. These nuanced understandings of peacekeeping stem from the availability of new data on both conflict and peace operations at the national and subnational levels of analysis. Moreover, the empirical study of the effectiveness of peace operations has recently been flanked by simulation-based forecasting, field experiments, and surveys investigating local-level outcomes of peace missions.
Unsurprisingly, the focus on violence and conflict outcomes as indicators of success is debatable. First, in dealing with violence, peacekeeping operations produce spillover effects that are largely neglected, such as refugee flows and terrorist violence. Second, given the wide range of functions performed by UN peacekeepers, including electoral assistance, economic reconstruction, and state building, it is reasonable to include these aspects when defining effectiveness. Third, and relatedly, no assessment of short- versus long-term implications of peacekeeping for political, social, and economic development in the host country has been forthcoming. While reducing infant mortality, inequality, and crime are not necessarily tasks for peacekeepers, it is vital to study whether and how UN missions may have shaped the quality of peace in host countries.
