Peace Processes: Design for Inclusion

Peace and transition processes are structured attempts to rework the political settlement in an attempt to bridge radical disagreement on the inclusion project at the heart of the state.  We examine how peace proesses are designed, and how design aims to achieve a ‘deal’ between conflict parties, and with what connection to the re-creation of a social contract. How is inclusion ‘navigated’ in the changing landscape of a peace process, and how do inclusion challenges and projects of political accommodation change over time?

PSRP understands both conflict and peace processes to often be ‘multilevel’ across local, national and international forms of conflict which are nested in each other.  In this theme we examine how political/military elites, and other social forces press claims of inclusion during peace processes.  PSRP also examines how international actors interact with both intra-state conflict and peace process, and to what end.  How are initiatives addressed at different levels of conflict coordinated, and what happens when they are not coordinated?

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  • What new forms of inclusion and exclusion do peace processes establish?
  • What are the trade-offs as regards inclusion of people and agendas for change, that occur in peace process, above and below the negotiation table?
  • In particular, what trade-offs do these agreements include, with reference to the relationship between stability and inclusion?
  • How do these change through stages of negotiating, drafting and implementing peace agreements?
  • In what ways are international actors involved in the negotiation processes: how and when do their agendas get incorporated into agreements?
  • What are the post-agreement entry points for strategies of change by marginalised groups in the space of the ‘formalised political unsettlement’?