Dilemmas and Trade-Offs in Peacemaking: A Framework for Navigating Difficult Decisions

Author(s): Anne Isabel Kraus, Owen Frazer, Lars Kirchhoff, Tatiana Kyselova, Simon Mason, Julia Palmiano Federer
Journal Title: Politics and Governance
Volume: 7
Issue: 4
Pages: 331–342
Publisher(s): Cogitatio
Publication Year: 2019

The activity of peacemaking is inherently characterized by competing priorities that do not seem to be attainable at the same time. This article focuses on the question of how third parties can deal with these dilemmas and trade-offs when mediating violent political conflicts. Based on their own experiences in Myanmar, Thailand, and Ukraine as well as a survey of the literature of various disciplines, the authors propose several strategies that mediators can employ to mitigate these situations. More specifically, they argue that such third parties should 1) respect normative, political and practical limits where they have a truly constitutive function; 2) deconstruct them where they do not and 3) uncover and utilize the space of unusual but acceptable possibilities that have either been overlooked or never explored.

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