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This paper examines how the research on, and the practice of, peace mediation has evolved in the past 25 years, with a particular focus on the hypothesised factors that explain mediation 'success' and argues for an explicit re-centring of the political in peacemaking. The analysis highlights how research on peacemaking has seen a growth of quantitative studies, while at the same time the practice field of peace mediation has been characterised by a process of professionalisation. We argue that in parallel to these two trends, there has been a shift away from focusing on exogeneous factors, such as those pertaining to the conflict context, to explain 'success' or 'failure' towards those endogenous to the peace process. A rapidly growing literature on elements of peace process design ranging from inclusivity, mediator characteristics, mediation styles, as well as the substance of negotiated agreements has both informed and been informed by developments in the practitioner community of mediation. These mutually reinforcing trends, while enriching the field, risk portraying mediation as a technical and de-politicised exercise and create inflated expectations of the role and capacity of mediators. We illustrate these trends with a discussion of the case of UN peacemaking in Yemen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of populist leaders around the world, populism's impact on foreign policy and international affairs has come into focus. Adding to this literature, we propose the concept of 'populist peacemaking', in which key tenets of populism, in style and substance, are projected onto the sphere of international mediation. We offer an analytical framework for understanding populist peacemaking consisting of three features. Firstly, populist peacemaking is characterized by a rejection of the 'peacemaking elites' and their established rules and practices, including international norms, a refutation of context-specific knowledge, and a clean-slate approach that disregards past peacemaking attempts and alienates other international mediators. Secondly, populist peacemaking employs aggrandized rhetoric and symbolism that puts the mediator—rather than the conflict parties—in the spotlight, thus integrating domestic politics into peacemaking. Finally, populist peacemaking frames the process as representing the volonté générale , i.e. serving the interests of the 'pure people' in the conflict-affected context. We illustrate this phenomenon empirically with a case-study of United States' peacemaking efforts during the Trump era, tracing initiatives pursued by US envoys in the Israeli–Palestinian and Kosovo–Serbia conflicts. From this analysis, populist peacemaking emerges as a distinct phenomenon, not to be subsumed under the heading of 'illiberal peacemaking'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamics of peace and conflict are fundamentally shaped by a politics of scaling difference. Based on the insight that difference is widely associated with both the causes of and cures for violent conflict, this article explores how practices of scaling mediate this duality. Drawing on South Sudan and Kosovo, it is argued that the governance of conflict is characterized by efforts to skilfully accommodate diversity, straddling the line between recognizing, reinforcing, and reconfiguring difference and investing it with political power at the ‘right’ scale. This is read as a conflictual process involving the unravelling, rescaling, and counter-scaling of difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, it did so not as a nation-state, but as a “state of communities,” self-defining as multiethnic, diverse, and committed to extensive rights for minorities. In this paper, this choice is understood as a response to a dual legitimation problem. Kosovo experienced both an external legitimation challenge, regarding its contested statehood internationally, and an internal one, vis-à-vis its Serb minority. The focus on diversity and minority rights was expected to confer legitimacy on the state both externally and internally. International state-builders and the domestic political elite in post-conflict Kosovo both pursued this strategy. However, it inadvertently created an additional internal legitimation challenge, this time from within Kosovo’s majority Albanian population. This dynamic is illustrated by the opposition movement “Lëvizja Vetëvendosje” (Self-Determination Movement), which rejects the framing of Kosovo as first and foremost a multiethnic state. The movement’s counter-narrative represents an additional internal legitimation challenge to the new state. This paper thus finds that internationally endorsed “diversity management” through minority rights did not deliver as a panacea for the legitimacy dilemmas of the post-conflict polity. On the contrary, the “state of communities” continues to be contested by both majority and minority groups in Kosovo. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]