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Part I
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What constitutes mediation success? This is one the most crucial questions when studying mediation. Indeed, international mediation is generally examined in the context of what could, and should, be achieved by mediators. To evaluate the achievements of different types of mediators, tactics, or processes, we need strict criteria to determine which outcomes can be classified as successes. Without an unambiguous notion of what constitutes mediation success, we are not able to design effective peacemaking strategies, and we will lack a sound basis for judging the relative effect of different types of mediators. Hence, before we can examine the effect of biased versus unbiased mediators (something we will discuss in the next chapters), we need a clear understanding of the concept of mediation success. Yet, to date, the meaning of success is much disputed among scholars of international mediation (Kleiboer 1996). They have suggested and used very different ways of conceptualizing success and have not even agreed upon basic criteria on how to classify mediators’ achievements in peace processes.
In the first part of this chapter, I will develop a critique of the previous conceptualizations of mediation success. Previous concepts, I contend, generally suffer from three problems. First, the expectations are unfit for measuring mediation success because they either demand too much or alternatively too little of the international mediators. In particular, the criteria utilized are either unrealistically high-demanding, rendering the expected outcomes highly unlikely, or alternatively, too inclusive and so cannot even distinguish between profoundly different types of outcomes. This suggests that the measures of success are generally not grounded in a clear understanding of what mediators can change in a conflict situation. Second, previous concepts generally fail to anchor the notion of success in the causal process through which sustainable peace is achieved. In particular, previous mediation research is detached from the significant body of literature that examines the conditions for durable peace, which means that mediation outcomes are unrelated to whether or not the ensuing peace is sustainable. Third, previous ways of capturing mediation success tend to measure only the nominal dimension of the outcomes without taking into account their quality. Utilizing indicators of success which do not disaggregate outcomes is, I suggest, too simplistic to capture the complex reality of armed conflicts.
In the second part of the chapter, I suggest a novel, alternative way of conceptualizing mediation success that addresses the problems bedeviling previous conceptualizations. I introduce the idea of peace institutions, which refers to a set of institutional arrangements, crafted through the mediation process and addressing three key dimensions in internal armed conflicts: power, security, and justice. As such, they are concrete stipulations, which are agreed between the parties, and which regulate the core incompatibilities in the conflicts. Peace institutions represent a realistic yet demanding criterion of what mediators can change; they specify the causal mechanisms through which mediation outcomes can eventually translate into sustainable peace; and they are sufficiently flexible to take the quality of outcomes into account.
Problems with previous conceptualizations of mediation success
Unfit expectations. As mentioned, previous concepts of mediation success are based on unfit expectations of what could, or should, be achieved by mediators. In particular, there are some indicators that are not sufficiently ambitious to serve as adequate measures of mediation success. For instance, Frei (1976) proposes that the occurrence of mediation can be used as a threshold of success. He defines mediation success “as a situation in which both parties to the conflict formally or informally accept a mediator and a mediative attempt within five days after the first attempt” (Frei 1976: 69). It is, indeed, an achievement to get the parties to the table. Given the obstacles that may stand in the way of getting mediation started, it is a sign of progress that the mediation process is initiated (Svensson and Wallensteen 2010). Yet, it is not an appropriate measure of success since we do not know whether the occurrence of mediation is positive or negative. It may be that mediation is insignificant, epiphenomenal, or, even worse, has a negative effect on the chance of obtaining the desired change. The involvement of mediators may give the parties opportunity to buy time to recruit and rearm, complicate, create moral hazards and decrease the costs for non-agreements. Hence, there is no good reason to assume that the mere occurrence of mediation is sufficient for mediation success.1
Another indicator of mediation success that reflects unfit expectations is conflict termination. Applying this indicator means that mediation is considered successful when it entails terminating the conflict in the sense of ending the violent behavior (Gelpi 1999; Regan and Aydin 2006; Regan and Stam 2000). However, termination is not an appropriate measure of success, since it basically conflates different types of outcomes. The most problematic aspects of this concept are that agreements and victories – two very different sorts of outcomes – are lumped together in the same outcome category and utilized for evaluating the effectiveness of mediation. In fact, if mediation is an activity to find a solution to a conflict – which most definitions of mediation state – then victory for one side should be seen as a failure of mediation rather than a success. Similarly, Regan and Stam examine the length of the dispute as a dependent variable without distinguishing between different types of outcomes (Regan and Stam 2000: 245), and thereby suffer from the same basic problem. For instance, why should a longer conflict that ends in a peace agreement be deemed as less successful than a shorter one that ends in clear victory?
On the other hand, there are ways of conceptualizing mediation success that are too ambitious. An example is Nathan (1999: 3), who defines mediation as successful “when it leads to the termination of hostilities and the advent of democratic governance.” This is problematic since the development of democracy in a country is a very large-scale societal process in which the mediators might at most play a minor role. Here the expectations of what the mediators can achieve are too demanding as even a highly effective and positive mediation involvement in a country suffering the consequences of civil war may not result in the development of democracy.2 Why would we believe mediators to be the most influential force behind such long-term, complex processes as democratization after civil war? More realistically, mediators in civil wars would likely have some, albeit limited, room for maneuver to act and influence not only the conflict parties but also post-war developments.
The mediation outcome is unrelated to sustainable peace. A second basic problem with previous conceptualizations of mediation success is that they are detached from the discussion concerning how sustainable peace can be achieved. The research on mediation outcome and the research on sustainable peace have not been integrated. The former deals with specific mediation processes and how they lead to positive outcomes while the latter is concerned with the conditions under which peace can be sustainable, after agreements (Fortna 2004; Hampson 1996; Hartzell and Hoddie 2003; Walter 2002) or following conflict terminations (Licklider 1995; Toft 2010).
This research practice is unfortunate since inquires about mediation outcomes and durable peace can be pursued sequentially. Mediation research is focused on the process of how armed conflicts end peacefully, whereas the research on durable peace generally takes as its starting point where mediation research ends. Yet, the implications of the fact that these two fields of research are sequentially related to each other have not been sufficiently taken into account. Research on durable peace rarely addresses issues such as types of mediators as explanatory factors. Likewise, mediation research has not integrated insights from the other field of what makes peace durable. A new research agenda is therefore called for which could specify the causal mechanisms behind mediation success and link these mechanisms to our understanding of what it is that makes peace durable.
Overlooking quality of outcomes. The most common measure of mediation success is the signing of agreements. Several important studies have utilized the reaching of agreements as the basis for evaluating the effectiveness of third-party mediation (Beardsley et al. 2006; Bercovitch et al. 1991; Savun 2008). Indeed, statistical analyses, based on success-as-agreements, have made substantial progress during the last decades.3 However, although bringing about an agreement is an achievement for which mediators can be given credit, this way of conceptualizing mediation success suffers from a basic flaw in that it does not take the considerable variation in quality of settlements into account. In general, agreements differ remarkably in terms of the stipulations that they entail, reflecting a wide variety of achievements that can be crafted at the negotiating table. But the common focus on the signing of agreements as indicating mediation success only focuses on the nominal forms of conflict resolution and so overlooks the quality of its substance.
What constitutes a high-quality agreement? The terms of the peace need to be scrutinized as well as the stipulations that are crafted and agreed upon through the agreement. Focusing on a single dimension would hardly be sufficient in order to assess the quality of an agreement; for that purpose we would likely need a set of different elements. In particular, we need to shift our focus from the agreements as such to their contents. In turn, this suggests that a more disaggregated analysis is required, which does not deal with agreement as a “black box,” but which actually explores the substance of the agreements. Peace agreements thus need to be examined in terms of clusters of variables that represent the most central stipulations. In this way, we can identify a wider range of indicators that capture the meaning of mediation success.
To sum up the critique, there are three basic problems with previous conceptualizations of success. They are based on unfit expectations of what the mediators actually can influence; they do not pay sufficient attention to how mediation outcome can be related to the attainment of sustainable peace; and they focus on the form of the agreements at the expense of the quality of their contents. We will now turn to an attempt to provide an alternative and novel conceptualization of mediation success that aims to address these problems.
Introducing “peace institutions” as mediation success
I suggest a new way of conceptualizing mediation success, which is based on realistic yet demanding expectations of what mediators can influence, relates mediation outcome to the prospect of sustainable peace, and takes the variation in the quality of peace agreements into account. I argue that mediation should be deemed as successful if mediators are associated with agreements that create “peace institutions.” By peace institutions I mean stipulations of institutional arrangements that address a dimension of the incompatibilities in conflicts. Let us look at the different elements of this definition of peace institutions.
Stipulations. As argued above, we cannot judge mediation performance on the basis of what happens after the deals have been signed: international mediators generally have little direct influence over the implementation phase, let alone the consolidation phase, of a peace process. Mediators do not possess the leverage to influence large-scale societal changes. What a mediator can do, however, it so create the best possible conditions for these changes to come about. We can judge the mediators according to whether they were able to put in place arrangements that make the implementation of agreements more likely. A mediator can create stipulations, i.e., jointly agreed decisions on how the postconflict society should be organized. The crafting of stipulations is the essential function of mediators, it is the essence of what mediators do in peace processes – through suggestions on compromises, horse-trading, procedures, and integrative solutions they can create explicitly formulated and jointly supported expectations on how power, security, and justice can be managed. Since incompatibility is at the core of the conflict resolution process, the stipulations that should be used for classifying mediation success are those that resolve the incompatible positions of the parties.
Institutions that address the incompatibilities. One problem with the perspective on mediation success that has dominated previous research is that it has not paid sufficient attention to the core of the conflict resolution – the regulation of incompatible positions. An armed conflict consists of (at least two) parties with an incompatibility and with violent behavior towards each other (Wallensteen 2012). Conflict management is about regulating the violent behavior, whereas conflict resolution is about the regulation of the incompatibilities. Hence, incompatibility is absolutely central in the conflict resolution process. Surprisingly, the bulk of peace mediation literature does not deal explicitly with how the positions of the parties can be made compatible. In particular, there is a group of researchers who focus on conflict management without taking the resolution of conflict into account. For instance, Goertz and Regan (1997) explore deviations from a baseline of hostilities as a way of measuring conflict management. This research is about the behavioral aspect of mediation, neglecting its issue dimension. Likewise, cease-fires also focus on the behavioral aspect of conflict. Touval (1982: 4–5) states that “[a] successful mediator is one who is believed to have contributed to the abatement or resolution of a conflict, by helping to bring about an agreement between the adversaries to reduce or eliminate hostile behavior in their mutual relations” [my italics]. This way of conceptualizing success hence fails to consider the incompatibility dimension of conflict.
In contrast, the concept of peace institutions brings incompatibility to the core of what mediation success is all about. The peace institutions that regulate the incompatibility are the defining yardsticks for measuring whether or not the mediators are successful. Institutions are here seen as societal, long-term arrangements that regulate the post-agreement society and address the basic incompatible issues at stake in the conflicts. Utilizing peace institutions as a way of measuring mediation success is paying attention to exactly how the basic incompatibilities of conflicts are regulated and what types of agreements can accomplish this. The mediators are the main (outside) actors who deal most directly and explicitly with the incompatible positions of the parties, whereas other types of third parties – peacekeepers, sanction-implementing actors, aid suppliers -are generally concerned with other dimensions of the conflict. Focusing on the institutions that are crafted is a way of laying out the micro-foundations of mediation success.
Arrangements. The last component of the definition of peace institutions is arrangements. The plural is important here. If we accept that peace agreements need to be disaggregated into their parts, this opens up the possibility that some mediators may be more equipped to bring about some specific arrangements than others. Thus, there is not one single indicator of success. The notion of success needs to be more sophisticated and nuanced. Instead, we need to view success in terms of a range of arrangements that can be considered conducive to peace. We need to move beyond simplistic notions such as agreements or terminations, and instead focus on peace institutions. More precisely, the core of these peace institutions are institutional arrangements related to power-sharing, security, and justice.
Political and territorial power-sharing arrangements are essential peace institutions, and stipulations of such arrangements in peace agreements constitute an important indicator of mediation success. In line with previous research, this study categorizes power-sharing into three dimensions: political, military and territorial (Hoddie and Hartzell 2003b). Military power-sharing can also be treated as an institutional arrangement belonging to the issue of security, which will be discussed below. Although the effect of political power-sharing on peace and democracy is disputed (Mukherjee 2006; Toft 2010), the established thinking in the field is that political power-sharing (by itself or in combinations with other factors) is an important institution for peace to prevail in the aftermath of civil wars (Hartzell and Hoddie 2007; Mattes and Savun 2009). For instance, the distribution of political power has been considered “the most important issue in any civil war settlement” (Licklider 2001: 706), and control over the state's government has been thought of as involving a basic incompatibility of internal armed conflict (Wallensteen 2012). Pacts that guarantee warring parties a share of power can be important institutions in themselves but can also be signs of credible commitments to peaceful interaction in the postsettlement future (Hoddie and Hartzell 2003b; Walter 2002). Similarly, previous research has found that territorial power-sharing increases the likelihood of peace (Jarstad and Nilsson 2008; Walter 2002). Such power-sharing is also commonly implemented to a high degree (Jarstad and Sundberg 2007) and increases the likelihood of holding timely elections, which can be perceived as an indication of their positive effect on the likelihood of democratic development (Hoddie and Hartzell 2005). Finally, regional autonomy settlement has often been effective in terms of resolving communal and ethnic conflicts (Gurr 1993: 298–305).
Security arrangements are also essential peace institutions. There are two main ways of creating peace institutions for security: by sharing and dividing military power, or by third-party security guarantees. These are not mutually exclusive – various combinations are common – but they do stand for different ways of regulating security concerns and are therefore different building blocks of peace institutions. These two approaches represent efforts by the parties themselves, or by bringing someone from outside into the security arrangements. The first approach is thus that security can be regulated by the parties themselves, in particular by giving both sides regulated access to, and control over, military or police forces. Military power-sharing is therefore an important peace institutional arrangement as it provides a guarantee for security. Previous research...
