Peace talks, the series of formal negotiations between belligerents in a conflict that aims to resolve the dispute, are a staple in international affairs. But despite the many meetings that take place during any war, few of them produce an actual peace agreement (Kaplow 2016). Variation in the success of peace processes has been explained by structural conditions, such as belligerents’ preferences for peace over violence and low expectations for quick military victory, or contextual factors such as the timing of negotiations and the availability of preconditions that impede peace agreements.
Nonetheless, scholars have paid little attention to the negotiation frameworks that underlie these different trajectories, despite their important ramifications. Codifying the legal framework for peace negotiations, publicizing their outcome and disagreements, allowing nonbinding civil society participation, and including neutral third-party mediators all increase a government’s short-term costs by signalling an irreversible investment in conducting peace talks with its adversary, and can embolden spoilers who seek to capitalize on setbacks, failures, or disagreements (Heger and Jung 2017).
Yet these costs may be necessary if the objective is to achieve a lasting peace agreement. In her 2019 book, Stanford political scientist Oriana Skylar Mastro considers how the choice of how to conduct high-level peace talks impacts their success, arguing that a framework centered on multi-actor discussions can generate incentives for all actors in the conflict to participate more fully. By contrast, a narrow focus on engaging primarily with elites that are more accustomed to fighting and winning wars can lead them to resist peace talks, prolong the conflict, and result in extreme suffering for civilians (Darby 2001). The framework in which these conversations take place therefore matters as much as the outcome of the talks themselves.
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