Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword: The Riddle of Legitimacy
- Introduction: Legitimacy and Peace in the Age of Intervention
- One The Hybridization of Legitimacy in Processes of Peace Formation: the Bougainville Case
- Two International Intervention and Relational Legitimacy
- Three From a Divisive Peace Agreement to a Legitimate Peace in Colombia
- Four Banners, Billy Clubs and Boomerangs: Leveraging and Counter-Leveraging Legitimacy in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
- Five Peacebuilding as a Self-Legitimising System: The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Six ‘We Are There at Their Invitation’: Struggles for Legitimacy during the US Coalition Invasion–Occupation of Iraq
- Seven Inclusion and Performance as Sources of Legitimacy – the UN Mediation on Syria
- Eight Agonisation to Re-Legitimise the Postcolonial, Post-Conflict Somaliland
- Nine Third Party Legitimacy and International Mediation: Peacemaking through Pan-Africanism in Sudan
- Ten Post-War Legitimacy: A Framework on Relational Agency in Peacebuilding
- Eleven Legitimacy in Lebanon
- Conclusion: Peacebuilding and Legitimacy: Some Concluding Thoughts
- Index
Nine - Third Party Legitimacy and International Mediation: Peacemaking through Pan-Africanism in Sudan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword: The Riddle of Legitimacy
- Introduction: Legitimacy and Peace in the Age of Intervention
- One The Hybridization of Legitimacy in Processes of Peace Formation: the Bougainville Case
- Two International Intervention and Relational Legitimacy
- Three From a Divisive Peace Agreement to a Legitimate Peace in Colombia
- Four Banners, Billy Clubs and Boomerangs: Leveraging and Counter-Leveraging Legitimacy in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
- Five Peacebuilding as a Self-Legitimising System: The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Six ‘We Are There at Their Invitation’: Struggles for Legitimacy during the US Coalition Invasion–Occupation of Iraq
- Seven Inclusion and Performance as Sources of Legitimacy – the UN Mediation on Syria
- Eight Agonisation to Re-Legitimise the Postcolonial, Post-Conflict Somaliland
- Nine Third Party Legitimacy and International Mediation: Peacemaking through Pan-Africanism in Sudan
- Ten Post-War Legitimacy: A Framework on Relational Agency in Peacebuilding
- Eleven Legitimacy in Lebanon
- Conclusion: Peacebuilding and Legitimacy: Some Concluding Thoughts
- Index
Summary
Introduction
A dominant view within the field of international mediation is that the most effective type of third party to resolve civil wars is a high-leverage, manipulative power broker that can provide sticks and carrots in order to persuade the conflict parties to make peace. This dominant view, which is based on a materialist logic, overlooks the role of ideational factors. In this chapter, I argue against the dominant materialist view of mediation success by illustrating that ideational factors matter in peace processes. More specifically, I show how a preference among the Government of Sudan (GoS) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM/A) for ‘African solutions to African conflicts’ provided the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) with a high degree of legitimacy. This high degree of legitimacy allowed the IGAD mediation team to remain involved in mediation from 1994 onwards, eventually pulling the conflict parties towards peace in 2005.
Like other chapters in this volume, this chapter thus contributes to the literature on legitimacy and peace processes. Yet, rather than considering how legitimacy is the product of perceptions of local-level actors as several other chapters in this volume, this chapter is concerned with how the legitimacy of an international third party was the product of the perceptions of national-level elites. This approach also entails a departure from the Weberian understanding of legitimacy as a justification for rule, but on an international level rather than a local level. Since mediation efforts in civil wars are based on the consent of the conflict parties, the legitimacy of third parties mediating civil wars does not rest on international law or the capacity of the third party to deliver its objectives. Instead, third parties with legitimacy in these contexts can have social influence because the change in behaviour they ask of the conflict parties is congruent with the value system of both the influencing third party and the conflict parties being influenced. In civil wars in Africa, the African solutions to African conflict is a major part of this collective value system.
This chapter proceeds as follows. The next section provides a brief overview of the materialist-dominated literature on international mediation, after which I put forward a legitimacy-based perspective on mediation success. Next, I assess the merit of this legitimacy-based perspective of mediation success on the basis of the IGAD-led peace process to end the north–south Sudan civil war.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Local Legitimacy and International Peace Intervention , pp. 199 - 214Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020