A New Local Turn for Track One Peace Process Research: Anthropological Approaches

We have a saying: Men of the hotels, men of the trenches [in Arabic: thawāʾir al‐fanādiq, thawāʾir al‐khanādiq]. Those in the trenches felt they were closer to the people, that they had more legitimacy. They did not listen to the political [i.e., civic] opposition. They almost view them as a necessary evil …. There was a very serious disconnect between the SOC [National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, also known as the Syrian Opposition Coalition] and leaders on the inside. (Interview 1)

In the vignette above, a Syrian opposition figure describes a disconnect that many believe existed between Syria’s internal opposition and the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces (the SOC)—the “official,” internationally recognized umbrella of several dozen opposition groups that operated between 2012 and 2015, when it was integrated into its successor organization, the High Negotiations Committee. Based in Doha, Qatar, the SOC represented the main body from which the opposition delegation to the U.N. peace process for Syria (begun in 2012 and continuing today) was drawn. The fraught relationship between the SOC, here perceived as a distant body, and the armed—as well as civic—opposition inside Syria mirrors widespread frustration among the broader Syrian opposition and its supporters. Equally, it posed severe challenges for the members of the SOC.

This article explores how we may understand the internal dynamics underpinning these observations, and why emic—that is, inside perspectives on peace processes—represent a critical gap in scholarship on international high‐level mediated negotiations (Track One) and their connectedness to “the local.” Drawing on the case of the U.N.‐mediated peace process for Syria, this article focuses on the opposition as an example of Track One peace process engagement in intrastate war. Unlike government delegations, which usually consist of diplomats, opposition delegations in Track One are often composed of leaders of armed or civic‐political groups, tribal or religious leaders, businessmen, or academics. As this research shows, the externally imposed binary of categories—which assumes that the in‐country grassroots level is “local” and the Track One peace processes are not—often does not reflect the inside perspective or lived reality of Track One participants. By peace process participants, or negotiating parties, I refer here to those individuals who are engaged in the Track One process as disputants. These include negotiators, advisors, and the supporting groups from which these are drawn—such as the SOC—that is, persons who come from the country at war. In contrast, mediation teams—for example, from the United Nations—are, by custom, comprised of staff from other countries. Mediation may be defined as “a process of conflict management where the disputants seek the assistance of, or accept an offer of help from, an individual, group, state or organization to settle their conflict or resolve their differences without resorting to physical force or invoking the authority of the law” (Bercovitch, Anagnoson, and Wille 1991: 8). This article emphasizes the need to pay much greater attention—within mediated processes—to participants’ intragroup relationships and negotiations within delegations and their supporting groups as well as with their affiliated networks.

Researchers and practitioners often regard the reaching of a peace agreement as the pivotal goal of a peace process. Since the 1990s peacemakers have added coercive measures to the toolbox they use to coax disputants into such agreements (Fisher and Keashly 1991). Today, the explicit purpose of most peace process research is to improve the strategies that mediators use to broker peace agreements. Such analysis draws mainly upon qualitative research into the experiences of mediating teams and upon game theory. This article critiques the current research for its lack of scholarly attention to the role and agency of peace process participants and highlights the need for a new “local turn” in peace process research. It argues that analysis of, and theory on, Track One talks—those at the highest diplomatic level involving representatives of armed and civic‐political groups—are enriched by considering how peace process participants are connected to, and embedded in, the local dynamics of war and far‐reaching networks, such as kinship, tribal, and economic networks; and how participants’ agency and embeddedness shape their perception and engagement in peace processes. These kinship, tribal, and economic networks continuously evolve whether or not official, mediated summits are underway.

The fact that most peace processes fail underscores the need for more comprehensive research, especially regarding the shortcomings of Track One diplomacy, which is oftentimes decisive in conflict transformation and in achieving an end to violence. Only about a quarter of peace negotiations yield any agreement at all and most agreements that are successfully negotiated collapse within five years. In exploring the reasons for this dismal record, researchers usually focus on outcomes and implementation (peacebuilding and peacekeeping) rather than on a failure to consider the perspectives of participants in peace processes (peacemaking). Research on peacebuilding has looked at challenges in demobilizing fighters, security sector reform, civil society initiatives to strengthen grassroots support, and justice and reconciliation (Sharp 2013; Chandler 2017). Prominent themes in research on peacekeeping are the relationship between mission type and the success or failure of peace, and the ways that peacekeeping troops interact with armed groups and the wider population (Beardsley 2013; Autesserre 2014). Both strands of scholarship are rich in (self‐) critical reflection, especially in debates on whether and how the ideals of liberal peace—democracy, free markets, and human rights—sought by international actors are practically attainable and normatively legitimate post‐conflict at the local level (Mac Ginty 2008; Sabaratnam 2011).

In contrast, research on peace processes—that is, peacemaking—still fails to consider local perspectives from within Track One diplomacy. There has been no significant attention to how negotiators and their teams perceive the peace process and its organizers (such as the United Nations) or to their embeddedness in their own local networks. On the one hand, additional negotiating tracks (e.g., Tracks Two and Three) have been introduced to ensure greater inclusion of local civil society actors in peace processes (see Federer et al. 2019). Yet paradoxically, the voices of Track One participants and their own relations with “the local” as well as with international politics remain virtually absent in peace process research. Similarly, little scholarly attention has been paid to participants’ assessment of how peace processes are designed and conducted by the United Nations and other actors. Scholarship on the local turn in Tracks Two and Three has offered a succinct critique of the liberal peace paradigm, highlighting the need to foreground factors such as the peacebuilding engagement, visions, and practices of grassroots actors (Mac Ginty 2008, 2014; Richmond 2013; Leonardsson and Rudd 2015). Nonetheless, this perspective has rarely been applied to high‐level negotiations (Track One); the voices, experiences, and linkages with “the local” of those who actually negotiate over the future of millions in countries at war have gone largely unnoticed. To be clear, this article does not propose that participant engagement in Track One peace processes or their local connectedness are at fault for failing peace processes, but that the neglect of Track One participants’ perspective is possibly critical for understanding the shortcomings of peace processes and finding alternative ways forward.

This article traces how peacemaking practice and research have evolved, and how as another step forward, anthropological approaches can help unfold a deeper understanding of how Track One participants experience peace processes and relate to the sphere of “the local.” Beyond the idea that the local is a physical place, I argue that for peace process research—as Roger Mac Ginty has shown for peacebuilding¹ research—it is more fruitful to understand the local as a space of networks, relationships, and activities (Mac Ginty 2015) in a realm that is inherently social. In this sense, this article suggests that we need to widen our theoretical and analytical understanding of peace processes by adding a local dimension to the present focus on the level of international diplomacy. Certainly, qualitative research in sociology, political science, regional studies, or international relations would be equally well‐positioned to speak to this debate. Since peace processes represent a form of politics, this article builds onto the observation that political anthropology in particular seeks to untangle how “‘politics’ takes place via informal networks and informal institutions, underpinning or overlapping with the more objectifiable ones that political scientists concentrate on” (Thomassen 2008: 264). It thus analyzes what we may call the underlying dynamics of peace processes—here with a focus on intersecting networks that link participants at the process level to the ground, such as networks of kinship or tribal ties.

This article is organized into seven sections. After introducing the methodology, the next three sections identify a gap in scholarship on mediated Track One peace processes—that is to say, existing scholarship focuses on the perspectives of practitioners and researchers from the Global North, largely eclipsing the knowledge and experiences of peace process participants, most of whom come from countries at war in the Global South. The second section illustrates the need for new approaches to peace process research by juxtaposing the emphasis on creating “successful” peace processes with an overview of statistical data showing that most peace processes fail. The third section seeks an explanation for such failures, tracing major phases in the evolution of peacemaking practice and research. The fourth section identifies the main thematic fields in peace process research, highlighting the strong emphasis on peace mediation and the leverage of predominantly external actors from the Global North—such as the United Nations or international states—vis‐à‐vis peace process participants. It thus uncovers what I call a strong epistemological bias, whereby the voices of peacemaking interveners (e.g., U.N. staff) have been privileged over the voices of peace process participants.

Rather than focus on the types of peace that is sought (goal‐orientated analysis) or comparative analyses of agreement texts and their subsequent implementation (retrospective analysis), this article proposes a stronger focus on analyzing the “how” of peace process negotiations. Opening up a new strand of research and countering existing biases, the fifth section explains how anthropological research could yield insights into peace processes by adopting an emic perspective that goes from the inside out, and by contextualizing the wider political, social, cultural, and economic spheres in which peace process participants are locally embedded. I propose a new model of intersecting and often informal networks and to illustrate this concept, I introduce empirical findings from the U.N. peace process for Syria. In the conclusion, I tie all the sections together to argue that anthropological approaches are needed to revise our understanding of how peacemaking could facilitate longer‐term peace, and begin to theorize about how peace processes function for Track One. As a guiding question, I ask: How does the evolution of peace research and practice help explain the lack of process participants’ voices, and how could an anthropology of peace processes open new critical perspectives into how peace process participants are connected to “the local?”

The shape of peace processes has changed over the past decades. Nonetheless, they share one commonality: the struggle to achieve longer‐term peace. Until today, peace processes often appear in the media only when there is activity, for example, when summits are taking place. This coverage gives the impression that peace processes consist of rare encounters between representatives of warring parties, who appear in suits or military uniforms in front of the media to issue press statements. As in famous historical cases such as the Palestine–Israel talks in Oslo, it seems as if a few heads of state or leaders of large armed groups strike statesman‐like deals. Meanwhile, the actual talks often take place in secrecy behind closed doors (Wanis‐St. John 2006, 2008; Nylander, Sandberg, and Tvedt 2018). Especially since the rise in intrastate wars and the increasing prominence of more diverse nonstate armed groups, however, peace processes have often become much more complex than commonly perceived. Delegations, that is, groups of persons, rather than individuals, represent opposing parties at the highest diplomatic level (Track One). Civil society initiatives (at times called Track Two) have often been added to peace processes to increase traction and the chances of winning broader support for peace agreements that are more likely to last. Overall, peace processes encompass not only official talks, but also all those processes that largely occur informally and without public attention. These include, for example, decision making about who becomes a delegation member and who is excluded; discussions of how persons interact with other members of their delegation, constituencies in their countries of origin, members of opposing delegations, and official bodies such as the United Nations; and background meetings with donors and foreign ministries. Often, these processes take place in many different locations around the world and over a stretch of several years, if not decades.

We can distinguish between two major types of peace processes. Peace negotiation usually refers to direct diplomatic or political interaction between two or more opposing parties, which tend to be representatives or heads of major armed groups. In peace mediation, external parties such as the United Nations, foreign backers, or NGOs liaise between opposing parties. Mediation thus complements negotiation, and it can play a very influential role in the peace process. Other forms of peacemaking intervention include arbitration and adjudication but these are rare (Greenberg, Barton, and McGuinness 2000; Bercovitch and Fretter 2004).

Peace processes are often the first in three overlapping steps toward the goal of achieving lasting peace. They usually precede peacebuilding as a second phase, which includes implementing trust‐building measures on the ground in communities within regions of conflict and war. As a third phase, peace processes may signal—but are also separate from—peacekeeping, which refers to the deployment of local or international troops, such as the U.N. blue helmets. Peacekeeping usually begins only after an agreement has been reached in order to prevent a renewed outbreak of violent conflict. These phases are not neatly sequenced in practice, and one does not require another.²

A first indication of the serious challenges of peacemaking practice and research can be gleaned from various datasets that have sought to systematize peacemaking attempts, mostly since the Second World War.³ Reading such data leads one to ask: How often do peace processes occur in regions experiencing war and violent conflict, and how successful are they?

The wealth of scholarship, especially on best‐practice mediation, ignores the lack of substantial evidence that mediation is helpful, or at least not harmful, to achieving lasting peace. In the remainder of this section, I outline the evidence of this problem. I then ask how such failures are linked to an overemphasis on the role of mediation and a failure to consider the perspective of peace process participants for Track One in general (epistemological bias), and particularly in the local networks in which they are embedded.

I begin by noting that quantitative datasets use different baselines to define “crisis,” “conflict,” and “war.” Therefore, it needs to be noted that there is neither agreement on the overall number of events that could require peace‐process interventions, nor are the datasets directly comparable. Furthermore, not all peacemaking attempts become publicly known (such as secret backchannel negotiations) (Wanis‐St. John 2011), and indigenous or otherwise informal peace processes are largely excluded from quantitative databases or are not assessed separately.⁴ The following table illustrates the percentage of known attempted peace processes; it shows significant variation in what are identified as baselines. On average, it suggests that only between one and two thirds of “events” trigger peace processes (peacemaking interventions), and the evidence shows significantly fewer direct negotiations than mediation (Table One).

Peace mediation is widely seen as a positive intervention (Destradi and Vüllers 2012). Yet, there are no standardized criteria for assessing mediation practice independently for a given process—on an ongoing basis or retrospectively—or for measuring the “success” of outcomes (Hellmüller, Palmiano Federer, and Pring 2017). Predominantly, success is understood as the conclusion of a peace agreement between the conflict parties—a standpoint that is questionable because reaching an agreement in itself is not positive or negative and does not indicate the disputants’ view of its legitimacy. Also, there are times that renewed violence does not indicate a breach of an agreement—for example, in political power‐sharing deals—and instances of agreements being made but not implemented (Jarstad and Nilsson 2018). Bearing these caveats in mind, and acknowledging again that the data are hardly comparable, a common trend that can be noted is this: only about one in four peacemaking processes end in an agreement.

 As shown in Table Two, even where agreements are reached, they do not necessarily last. As Convergne noted, “In spite of a sharp increase in the number of mediation attempts, now deployed in more than 65 percent of conflicts, today’s wars last longer than before and their resolution is fragile, with a near 50 percent risk of relapse into conflict within five years” (Convergne 2016: 144).

The balance of peacemaking is factually disastrous. Less than half of violent “events” have involved negotiation or mediation attempts; only a quarter of those that did reached an agreement; and half of those agreements appear to have failed. More than a mere failure of peace implementation, these findings raise the question of whether the ways in which peace processes are designed, conducted, and understood are highly unconducive to achieving lasting peace. While extensive research has been carried out on the question of how mediation can be improved, there has been hardly any research into the experiences of Track One peace process participants. I argue that this failure to consider participants’ experiences is a key reason that peace processes so often fail and that this has largely gone unrecognized in the scholarly literature. Why have researchers neglected to account for participants’ perspectives and experiences?

An analysis of peacemaking research to date shows a near‐complete lack of in‐depth, empirical, and real‐life studies of negotiation processes from the perspectives of the participants, their constituencies at home, and those who fled abroad (see also Bercovitch and Fretter 2007). As early as the 1960s, Johan Galtung was among the first scholars to develop a systematized qualitative approach to peace processes. Yet subsequently, this strand of research has been relatively neglected—although Galtung himself advocated for its revival in the 1970s. Instead, quantitative research, specifically on mediation, strongly dominates the field (Gartner 2013).

Joakim Kreutz found that between 1946 and 1989, 82 percent of intrastate wars ended with neither mediation nor negotiation, but with military defeat (Kreutz 2010). Since the 1990s—after the end of the Cold War and while intrastate wars surged—mediated peace processes have been used much more frequently than direct negotiation. The United Nations emerged as by far the most frequently used mediation body, mediating half of all cases between 1945 and 2003 (Bercovitch and Fretter 2004). However, we can also observe that since the 1990s, there has been much diversification among peacemaking bodies, which have included a variety of alternative or co‐intervening entities such as external states (e.g., Norway and Switzerland); international governmental organizations; nongovernmental, regional, and religious organizations (e.g., Swisspeace, the African Union, and the Catholic Church); and influential individuals (Lederach 2003; Wallensteen and Svensson 2014; Fixdal 2015). Mediation has thus become a “crowded field” (Lanz and Gasser 2013; Crocker, Hampson, and Aall 2015). However, especially at the Track One level, mediation practice remains dominated by European and North American organizations and their staff (Faget 2008).

Peacemaking practice and research are closely intertwined. The “founding fathers” of peacemaking research, such as Galtung, Jacob Bercovitch, and John Paul Lederach, acted as mediators themselves. Peace mediation evolved into a growing professional field of specialists. This is true especially for the United Nations, which established the UN Mediation Support Unit (MSU) as part of the UN Department for Political Affairs (UNDPA) in 2006, possibly in response to growing difficulties for mediators in assessing and navigating increasingly complex intrastate wars (Convergne 2016). The MSU includes a standby team of mediators, as well as toolkits and handbooks, in order to provide mediation on demand (Lanz et al. 2017). Although attempts at creating more standardized forms of intervention are highly commendable considering that when peace processes are undertaken, the futures of whole populations are at stake, the peacemaking community—including practitioners and scholars—by no means agrees on how to achieve peace or on what kind of peace they seek (Faget 2008; Convergne 2016).

The major fault lines as to how to achieve a nonmilitary end to violent conflict and war lie between conflict management, conflict transformation, and conflict resolution. Initially, peacemaking practice and research treated conflict as manageable. Practitioners and scholars thus sought to retain the Westphalian nation‐state order and focus on providing security. Based on an alleged primary of Western notions of peace and diplomacy, this approach aimed at control (Richmond 2001). Based on his personal mediation interventions in South America, Lederach introduced the term “conflict transformation” in the 1980s, which is similar to Galtung’s “conflict resolution” introduced in the 1990s. The goal of both conflict resolution and conflict transformation is first to transform conflict, and then resolve it rather than “freeze” and only manage it. To this end, it was hoped that mediation could address the underlying causes of conflict and enable long‐term change based on a new technique: mediators changing the ways in which conflict parties perceive each other, the conflict, and associated risks and opportunities, in order to open up a field of dialogue (Galtung 1996).

Equally, researchers and professional practitioners changed their view of what kind of peace was to be achieved. In 1969, Galtung introduced the distinction between negative and positive peace. The former refers to the absence of violent conflict, while the latter comprises social justice and development, thus overcoming underlying structural violence (Galtung 1969). Accordingly, peace agreements were to enshrine such visions—ideally. Apparently an attempt to implement the goals of positive peace in peacebuilding practice, the 1992 Agenda for Peace by then UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros‐Ghali not only represented a turning point in post‐conflict intervention, but also opened up dialogue between peace studies and security studies (Sabaratnam 2011). The aim was to combine the measures for introducing and strengthening democracy, free markets, and adherence to human rights—the “liberal peace paradigm.” This approach, however, faced strong criticism as a form of neocolonialism that failed to take into account indigenous understandings of reconciliation, justice, social order, and indeed peace (Mac Ginty 2008). Moving away from normative understandings of peace, hybrid peace occurs when international interventions coexist with local alternative visions for how societies can function post‐conflict (Mac Ginty 2010; Richmond 2015). Other conceptualizations consider factors such as the type of issue on which the spectrum of peace is centered (unresolved, restored, or contested peace); behavior (partial, regional, or insecure peace); and attitudes (fearful, unjust, or polarized peace) (Höglund and Kovacs 2010). More recently, scholarship has begun to expand on the notion of peace as seen from an emic perspective among those concerned. Beyond typologies, peace thereby also emerges as an aspiration and as a relation between actors (Klem 2018; Söderström et al. 2020). Crucially, relational peace implies that representatives in peace processes do not occupy static positions but are embedded in constantly evolving networks of actors (Hirblinger and Landau 2020).⁵ This attempt to conceptually capture relationships in international high‐level negotiations is still exceptionally rare. Instead, as the following section shows, the focus of peace process scholarship and practice that rely on knowledge primarily produced in and by individuals from the Global North has created a self‐perpetuating loop.

Peacemaking research and practice, I argue, carry strong epistemological biases that systematically prioritize the voices of external peacemaking interveners such as diplomatic, United Nations, and NGO staff who mediate, advise on, and fund peace processes. The power to decide what a peace process should achieve, who should be at the negotiating table, and how the agenda is organized, is vested in external forces without any transparency or accountability for such decisions or how they are made. This is not to say that delegations always act in the best interest of their constituencies—if they have any—or that external interveners are never sincerely committed to considering inside perspectives rather than their own self‐interest. However, the following overview of the major research themes that have emerged over the past decades shows an increasing focus on research aimed at understanding and improving the leverage of external actors at the expense of understanding participants’ perspectives. In particular, it highlights a strong emphasis by scholars on the role of the mediator and the practice of mediation more broadly. In contrast, the overview shows a near‐complete neglect of research seeking to understand the “other side”—the perspectives of peace process participants and the ways in which they must negotiate not only with the mediating teams and their adversaries, but also with those local networks of which they are a part. To borrow from Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, I argue that peace process participants have been largely treated as objects to be acted upon, as opposed to subjects whose knowledge, experiences, and perspectives on these processes require equal attention (Freire 1970).

Overall, there is much more scholarship on mediation than on negotiation. Yet, mediation research should include a focus on intra‐negotiation processes, as these occur during mediated processes within delegations and their supporting groups as well. In this sense, also for mediated peace processes, brokering and negotiations within delegations are crucial to understand how peace processes can fail or succeed. A greater focus on intra‐negotiation might strengthen scholars’ awareness of the importance of the relationships of negotiators and their teams in peace processes. Moreover, understanding the importance of how negotiators relate to each other, and their embeddedness in local networks, would increase mediators’ awareness of the importance of relationships and embeddedness in mediation. However, the prominence of negotiations in peacemaking has declined and they are relatively rare today. In 2017, only eight out of forty‐three peace processes worldwide (around 19 percent) were conducted through negotiations (Aspa et al. 2018). In negotiations, participating parties decide upon the timing, location, modalities, and sequencing of talks among themselves. Neither negotiation research nor mediation research has focused on these critical processes and relationships from an emic perspective.

Instead, research on peace processes has focused primarily on optimizing mediation. As I show below, peace process research has covered many dimensions of mediation, which I organize into the five categories that are most prominent in the literature: modalities (mediation styles); decisions about who will be party to the process and who will be excluded (inclusivity); third‐party influence on mediators; empirical studies; and normative questions about “legitimate” (and “illegitimate”) means of influencing belligerents (mediator bias). Although the following overview of research on peacemaking cannot be fully comprehensive, it does reflect the priorities set in the overwhelming body of scholarship. In the rest of this section, I outline the state of research on mediated peace processes to illustrate the lack of scholarly attention to process participants’ perspectives and embeddedness in local networks. The next section will explore ways of addressing this gap.

Research has sought to distinguish different types of mediation, all of which focus on the role of the mediators themselves (or their teams). Mediation types are based primarily on the mediator’s personality, skills, choices, resources, and understanding of theories of change (Crocker, Hampson, and Aall 2015). For a long time, mediators were expected to be impartial (Jackson 1952; UN 2012) and to rely on pure persuasion. Notably, this changed in the 1990s with the growing recognition of “mediation with muscle,” whereby mediators use “leverage or coercion […] in the form of promised rewards or threatened punishment” (Fisher and Keashly 1991: 33).

Within these two major variants, scholars have identified a wide range of mediation strategies, with little agreement on the terminology used and no comprehensive framework setting forth which strategies work best for which actors and in what circumstances (Wallensteen and Svensson 2014). In general, these strategies range from very low‐intensity to very high‐intensity intervention (Galtung 1996). For example, Beardsley et al. distinguished between facilitation, whereby mediators provide Track One negotiating delegations with information or meeting space or communicate messages between them; formulation, whereby mediators make their own suggestions for resolving the conflict (which the parties then discuss), set the agenda, and decide on procedural questions (e.g., in which order and at what time sensitive issues are tabled); and manipulation, which includes coercive measures such as promising economic benefits or threatening diplomatic isolation and sanctions (Beardsley et al. 2006). Mediation with muscle is commonly associated with manipulation and is advised for situations where conflict parties prove uncompromising. Since manipulation requires significant political, economic, and/or military resources to achieve leverage, it is usually external states that act as power mediators (Svensson 2007; Sisk 2009). States can use mediation as a foreign policy tool to manipulate their relations with other state parties and gain leverage for their own ends (Aggestam 2015; Beriker 2017; Favretto 2017). Sinisa Vuković argued that in the case of Montenegro, the European Union used its legitimacy and the threat/incentive of the country’s accession to the union to exercise a “soft power” variant of manipulation (Vuković 2015). More commonly, international organizations such as the United Nations, as well as smaller states, tend to resort to facilitation and formulation as the “softer” measures (Svensson 2007). Often, different mediation styles are combined. While some scholars conclude that power mediators are overall most “successful” (Svensson 2007), others stress that mediator intervention should be kept to a minimum because mediators will eventually withdraw from the process, whereas the conflict parties remain in place and their personal investment in the process is seen as critical to ensuring that agreements are durable (Werner and Yuen 2005; Beardsley et al. 2006). Such reasoning is a rare instance of scholars paying attention to the role of peace process participants rather than focusing solely on the mediator’s influence over them.

The question of who from among the conflict parties is, or ought to be, included in peace processes—discussed under the rubric of “inclusion” (as the practice) or “inclusivity” (as the norm)—has attracted strikingly little attention, especially for Track One diplomacy. In direct negotiations, this decision is made by the negotiating parties themselves; in mediated processes, the process design—including the choice of participants—is often determined by mediators.

The debate that has triggered the greatest controversy is the question of whether to include so‐called terrorist armed groups in peace processes. On the one hand, there is a risk that by including them, one is acknowledging that they are legitimate actors. On the other hand, their exclusion renders it more likely that they will spoil an eventual agreement because they lack any incentive to follow it (Kaminski, Beres, and Hayes 2003; Toros 2008; Browne and Dickson 2010). Less controversial, albeit not free of debate, is the U.N.’s endorsement of “inclusivity” as a norm and guiding principle for peace processes, which was announced in 2012 and mandates that women be included among process participants to increase the likelihood of grassroots support for an agreement and an enduring peace (UN 2012, 2017; Paffenholz 2014; Bramble and Paffenholz 2020). Although some researchers support the inclusion of a diverse group of individuals (Nilsson 2012), as more individuals and groups participate, the harder it is to reach an agreement.

Mediators are connected to different actors who influence their base of knowledge and decision making in peace processes. For state mediators, their governments yield primary leverage over the process. While disputes often include multiple conflict parties, this is especially true of intrastate wars, and multiple mediation has become increasingly common (Vuković 2015). On the one hand, the involvement of mediators with distinct skills, preferences, and resources can significantly enhance their overall leverage (Crocker, Hampson, and Aall 2015). Where multiple mediators are well coordinated, there is “the capacity to foster a unified ‘external’ context that surrounds the conflict parties and which they cannot break apart or split” (Crocker, Hampson, and Aall 2015: 372). However, it is just as likely that rather than coordinate efforts, mediators will pursue conflicting agendas, compete for influence, and cause disruption and polarization that can effectively prolong the conflict. But statistical analysis finds that whether or not mediation is multiparty has no significant negative impact on the probability of reaching agreement (Böhmelt 2012). In contrast, the impact of having multiparties in a mediation on the quality of agreements is yet to be understood, as is the effect on the conflict parties’ assessment of agreements. While the growing diversity of actors involved from different parts of the world continues to pose new challenges, there are no fixed structures or binding rules for multiparty negotiations (Wallensteen and Svensson 2014; Crocker, Hampson, and Aall 2015).

Empirical studies have analyzed selected peace processes, including those conducted to resolve conflicts in Palestine–Israel (Cofman Wittes 2005; Aggestam 2015), Sri Lanka (Bouffard and Carment 2006), Cambodia (Lee 2016), and Sudan (Schiff 2017). These studies have focused largely on key events and milestones, such as the signing of agreements. In one such study comparing the Palestine–Israel talks of the 1970s (Camp David) with the Balkan negotiations of the 1990s (Dayton), Karčić offers rare insights not into how Jimmy Carter and Richard Holbrooke conducted their mediations, but into what they were thinking during the process and how they strategized (Karčić 2017). According to Karčić, Carter acted as a facilitator, Holbrook as a strongman. Karčić’s account is unusual in its careful consideration of the personal relationships of the conflict parties, that is, their relationships with the outside world, as well as its consideration of psychological factors.

Lastly, indigenous approaches to peacemaking, such as alternative conflict resolution, are rarely considered (Merry 1984; Avruch 2006; Ateng, Abazaami, and Musah 2018) and are mostly only seen as complementary to Track Two and Track Three talks; furthermore, these suffer from nonadherence to human rights standards (Mac Ginty 2008; Buchholz 2014). Reminiscent of Galtung’s earlier work, the recent cultural turn in peace process research has called for greater attention to bottom‐up peace processes, especially in anthropology, although this call remains to be answered (Bräuchler 2016).

From this review of major themes in research on peacemaking, we see that such research has an epistemological bias at its core. It has focused on individuals (primarily chief mediators) and institutions that hold privileged and powerful positions in the peace process and in the arena of international diplomacy. There has been an overemphasis on external actors, and little attention paid to the perspectives and experiences of participants and the local and displaced populations they claim to represent. Other fields, such as development studies and post‐colonial studies, have moved from the perspective of those “from above” to that of those “from below”—or rather, as some may put it, from views “from without” to views “from within.” Peace process research has yet to recognize that “the debate about knowledge is characterized by a… polarized tension between knowledge that is more grounded in local and regional traditions and knowledge cultures, and knowledge that rather marches to the tune of universally validated standards and prescriptions” (Weiler 2009: 8).

Historically, as discussed in the previous section, key figures in peacemaking research have also been practitioners. Instead of assuming a distanced, critical standpoint, peacemaking research has often reproduced structures, practices, and logics that are biased heavily toward those entities that create them. It has sought to “optimize” peacemaking strategies but without analyzing actual indicators for “success.” In addition, it has failed to question whether those who serve as mediators or hold other positions of privilege should make decisions for the parties while holding no personal stakes in the process themselves. Moreover, U.N. staff and other mediators are paid for their work. Representatives of the conflict parties usually do not receive salaries for their peace process work, and assume such responsibilities in addition to their regular jobs and the daily demands of their lives. At best, they are able to find external sponsors who agree to cover their travel expenses. Overall, the identified emphasis on external actors means that we find mediator‐centered models of mediation but no theoretical approaches to peace processes that are grounded in qualitative research and consider all actors from their own perspectives—especially peace process participants on Track One.

This article seeks to shed light on this gap in research. It is based on fifteen months of fieldwork with participants in the U.N. process for Syria as well as with groups excluded from the process. While Geneva was the site of most fieldwork, ethnographies are grounded in multi‐sited fieldwork (see Marcus 1995) in France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. Fieldwork took place over a five‐year period and involved fifty‐two participants, with a core of eight persons from whom I learned most about their experiences of the process and with whom I interacted continuously throughout this period. My ethnographic approach entailed repeated semi‐structured and unstructured interviews, life history interviews, and actor mappings created jointly with research participants (see Bernard 2006). I also drew on observation—for example, by attending the opposition’s internal background meetings—although this was limited by the fact that peace process events usually take place in secret (Bräuchler 2016). While peace processes are a sensitive research field, participants from previous research projects on Syria that I carried out over the past twelve years referred me to further research participants. Furthermore, I could establish additional contacts through these networks (snowballing) and by contacting persons whose engagement I became aware of through interviews, U.N. documents, and media reports. Interviews were voluntary and guidelines on ethics and informed consent were developed specifically for this research. All participants have been guaranteed anonymity and the nondisclosure of identifying information.

Keeping in mind political anthropology’s focus on informal networks and processes, an anthropological approach to researching peace processes opens up new perspectives. Political anthropology asks: How do human societies function in the political field? In what ways do we find different forms of orders below the level of the nation state, and also outside of official political institutions? And how can we grasp and understand political change from the perspectives of individuals and groups who are embedded in their specific political, social, cultural, and economic contexts? (Lewellen 2003).

With few exceptions, political anthropologists have not yet studied high‐level negotiations in peace processes, although they are perhaps uniquely positioned to do so. The field of anthropology has evolved from the study of human behavior in early twentieth‐century informal, nonstate systems of political order to the study of the modern “state” and its blurred boundaries and its failures or complete absence closer to the present (Fortes and Evans‐Pritchard [1940] 1955; Leach [1954] 1964; Mitchell 1991; Obeid 2015). More recently, anthropology has included the study of the United Nations and other institutions (Hindman and Fechter 2010). While the fields of international relations and political science can discern worlds of foreign policy relations, system typologies, and institutional analysis, political anthropology seeks to understand how political systems and interactions manifest themselves in everyday life. Consequently, it focuses on the micro‐ and meso‐level as seen through the eyes of research participants. Methodologically, researchers might take an ethnographic approach by immersing themselves in their research environment, learning local languages, and understanding local cultures and political orders through their long‐term presence.

There are at least two reasons why anthropologists have shown little interest in peace process research. First, high‐level negotiations in peace processes are largely conducted clandestinely so access for researchers is difficult. Participants in peace processes seek to keep their strategies, knowledge, and contacts secret in order to improve their leverage and to prevent the opposing side(s) from using such information against them. Peace processes are politically sensitive and the risks of trusting the wrong person are exceptionally great. Second, peace processes represent an unusual “field” of anthropological research in that they are not bound in time or place. Although anthropology has moved from the study of specific peoples and communities toward multi‐sited research, the fact that peace processes are often held over several decades in manifold locations makes access difficult (Marcus 1995; Wanis‐St. John 2006; O’Dochartaigh 2011). Peace processes are highly complex and the formal and informal spheres are intertwined closely. Through anthropological research, only a few pieces of a much larger puzzle may be analyzed. Nonetheless, I propose that such a perspective is indispensable to understanding the shortcomings of peace processes as seen from the perspective of participants, increasing the prospects of achieving longer‐term peace, and theorizing about peace processes more comprehensively.

An anthropological approach to peace processes seeks to understand their context, including the history of alliances and enmities between individuals and competing groups participating on the local level. However, as argued by Mac Ginty, “the local” represents no place, although it has been long understood as such with significant shifts in meaning from colonial times (denoting a distant, “empty,” allegedly “savage” area) to the Cold War era (referring to nation states). International policy today oftentimes portrays “the local” as a site with populations to be “empowered” and instructed by the Global North (Mac Ginty 2015). Similarly problematic, the local turn has led at times to a romanticization of the local, leading researchers and policy makers alike to side with a few select “good” over “bad” civil society organizations chosen yet again by international peacebuilding implementers—rather than seek to grasp where grassroots support or representativeness lie (Paffenholz 2015). While the local thus emerges as a construct whose meaning differs between time periods and actors, Bräuchler rightly has warned against an idealized (or demonized) understanding of the local as a homogenous construct. Instead, the local reflects a constant negotiation of inherent contradictions and contestations that are influenced by culture and, importantly, highly political (Bräuchler 2017; Bräuchler and Naucke 2017). Combining such criticisms with Mac Ginty’s understanding of the local, I argue that for peace process research, the local can be understood as both a site of networks, relationships, and activities, and as connected to such negotiations in a given geographical territory. The local is, in fact, situated (Appadurai 1995); what constitutes the local will differ from one peace process participant to another and depend on their personal networks at specific points in time and their place of origin and/or residence. Among Track One participants, this will usually apply to those who still live inside the country while the war is ongoing, as well as to those who live abroad, who will oftentimes continue to maintain such contacts. The model below illustrates how peace processes may be understood to comprise different forms of intersecting networks (Figure (One).

On the left‐hand side, the diagram shows the “official” parts of Track One processes, such as high‐level events, on which most research and diplomacy have focused. The middle of the diagram depicts the intersecting networks, which continue to exist and evolve at times when no official process events take place, and which are at the center of this piece. On the right‐hand side, the model points to knowledge systems, by which I refer to local concepts such as “authority” or “leadership” that peace process participants grew up with and carry with them. The diagram serves to illustrate how Track One peace process participants oftentimes physically “move” between international diplomacy and the local level on a regular basis throughout the duration of a peace process, or move emotionally and mentally by remaining connected to the local through their respective networks and knowledge systems when living abroad.

Attention to the local allows us to consider process participants' embeddedment in networks that tie them to each other—or cause friction—as well as the ways in which they are connected to populations in the country at war or abroad. For example, a person who is part of a peace process delegation as a representative of an armed group may also be embedded in wider networks in the form of kinship ties, tribal relations, or business relationships. A participant’s stand on cease‐fires, property rights, prisoner releases, and other matters is influenced not only by his or her personal convictions, but also by the expectations of people in a participant’s networks. These networks are intersectional not only in the sense that they overlap in various ways, but also because they are differentiated further according to factors such as educational background, class, gender, and religion. In this regard, I argue that we must avoid developing an essentializing understanding of how, for example, adhering to “Islam” or being “Arab” impacts “negotiating cultures” (Ḥamdān and Pearson 2017). There is also a need to understand the history of the specific country—and even locality—and the everyday lives of negotiating participants. All this information is crucial to learning how participants become involved in peace processes, acknowledging their goals and needs, and understanding their wider relations in the country at war.

I further propose that how “opponents” or “proponents” of regimes—and members of armed groups and civic groups—constitute themselves in peace processes, how “representatives” emerge and how they relate to their “constituencies,” are highly complex long‐term processes of social and political ordering. I use quotation marks to emphasize that these categories are fluid, that whether the representatives in fact represent those whom they claim to represent is open to question, and that grassroots support is very difficult to gauge amid ongoing war. An anthropological perspective leads us to fundamentally question to what extent peace processes—especially those in Track One—are limited to high‐level encounters and suggests that ignoring underlying long‐term processes and networks contributes to peace processes that are highly vulnerable to distortion and external interventions and thus unstable and prone to collapse.

Researchers’ focus on mediation and maximizing external impact might be well‐intended but it has led to a perception that the design, logic, and rules of peace processes should be taken as a given (see also Meininghaus and Mielke 2019, 2021). Any alternative logic is regarded as embodying “forms or threats of violence, radical dissent or ‘action’ intended to found worlds that are different from or compete with those imposed by peace processes” (Mitchell 2010: 657). Yet, by adhering strictly to an invisible hand of a Western‐centric understanding of Track One negotiations without recognizing this bias, these presumptions oppress, interrupt, and sideline other knowledge systems that are tied to whole sets of competing orders and relevant concepts among participants.

An anthropological approach aims to heighten our awareness of the fact that peace processes are not merely “created” by the United Nations and other entities, but that through peace process participants, such processes are embedded within the political system of a country at war and the logic and concepts that participants internalized when growing up in and living there (including those who have left to live abroad). Consequently, participants will often have to move between different epistemologies—those that govern peace process design and come largely from the Global North, and their own, which are most often rooted in countries in the Global South. Understandings of what constitutes “political authority,” “leadership,” and “political parties” and of whether it is legitimate to voice criticism of leaders and peers and if so, which ones; and approaches to negotiating or avoiding/crushing conflict, strongly differ between political systems and (often local) cultures with which participants interact (Spencer 1997; Hansen and Stepputat 2001). These factors all play a role in how individuals and groups view, and behave in, peace processes—within their delegations as well as with mediators and external parties.

I suggest that peace process research would critically benefit from a deeper understanding of how informal networks within the local are relevant in Track One negotiations. In parallel, participants’ experiences of politics—and their conceptual understandings—are critical for comprehending how peace processes can help discern alternative knowledge systems and logic. We may find similar underlying factors across different peace processes that can be discerned and theorized (e.g., types of informal networks). At the same time, peace processes will also show characteristics that are specific to the history, social relations, and cultural and economic ties in the countries and localities under study. For participants, there is always a first day of joining a peace process and learning to navigate a new diplomatic environment while staying connected to home—which many have lost and are rebuilding elsewhere—and of finding their place in the process while remaining part of their local networks. In the following section, I draw on the U.N. peace process for Syria to discuss how the model outlined here can contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamics within international high‐level peace processes and their connectedness to the local.

As reflected in the vignette set forth at the beginning of this article, the balance of forces in the U.N. peace process between the Syria‐based opposition—both armed and civic—vis‐à‐vis the externally located SOC—an opposition umbrella group—has been a point of severe contention. This section will focus on the period just before and after the establishment of the SOC in November 2012. It will draw out the example of how the opposition grappled with questions of how to reform local governance structures on the ground, while at the same time, individuals within the SOC tried to link these structures to the SOC, which was to represent the opposition on Track One. In particular, it will highlight differing understandings of the local and the role of local networks on Track One.

As background to the emergence of the SOC, it is important to note that it is primarily Western states, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey that have pushed for the creation of an “inclusive” umbrella for Syrian opposition groups (Meininghaus and Mielke 2019, 2021). Such an umbrella group became manifest in the subsequent Syrian National Council (from 2011 to 2012), the Syrian National Coalition (from 2012 to 2015), and the Higher Negotiation Committee (from 2015 to the present). These umbrella organizations bring together a wide spectrum of civic and armed opposition groups, ranging from technocratic to liberal (secular and religious) and Islamist groups. However, forming these umbrella groups entails not only inclusion but exclusion as well, processes that take place within a highly volatile opposition.⁶ Amid ongoing war, the start of the U.N. peace process in 2012 put additional pressure on opposition groups to organize internally (Interviews 2 and 3). After more than four decades of autocratic oppression, opposition group members who were globally dispersed had to form an internationally recognized body to select or elect persons to represent them in a delegation of about fifteen members charged with participating in the U.N. process. The mechanics of forming a delegation created a climate of competition, while the inclusion of groups still based in Syria also presented a severe logistical challenge. Within days of its establishment, the SOC was endorsed by a range of nations as the “sole representative” body of the Syrian opposition (Talmon 2013), which exposed the SOC to significant pressure from the United Nations as well as those countries with a stake in the process, while raising the expectations that Syrians identifying with the opposition held toward the SOC.

In drawing on the history of the U.N. process for Syria, I illustrate how the proposed conceptualization of intersecting networks and local connections of high‐level participants can be applied empirically by shedding light on the question of how local coordination committees (LCCs) and local councils (LCs) were integrated into the SOC. Since the beginning of the war, several hundreds of such self‐organized bodies emerged throughout the country. While LCCs have considerable diversity in their responsibilities and internal procedures, they usually have represented smaller (e.g., neighborhood) networks and have charged members with a range of tasks, such as documenting and organizing protests and distributing humanitarian aid. Some of the LCCs grew into LCs, which often have assumed coordinating, administrative, and governance tasks for wider areas; in time, one provincial council emerged per governorate.⁷ When in Istanbul on October 2, 2011, opposition groups formed the SNC as the first major umbrella group, individuals considered to be members of the internal opposition—rather than the external opposition—were still strongly represented. Although frictions over the geographical distance and credibility of the SNC emerged from the beginning, calls for its relocation to opposition‐controlled areas inside Syria were not heeded (Sayigh 2013). Without transparent criteria for who would be included in the SNC and why, there were concerns that persons who had long lived abroad and had acquired personal contacts with foreign offices, rather than internal opposition members, stood a good chance of obtaining SNC seats (Interviews 2 and 3). Dissatisfaction and frustration mounted because “[t]hey were in a better position [to be included in the SNC] than those who had actually risked their lives and protested” (Interview 2).

Meanwhile, opposition figures and international states supporting them (primarily the United States, European states, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia) demanded that SNC membership be broadened to ensure greater inclusiveness, which led to the founding of the SOC on November 11, 2012. Yet problematically, this development led to a relative decrease in persons from the opposition based inside Syria, and an increase of those based abroad. At this time, the SOC included three blocs, including several dozen subgroups organized around Mustafa Sabbagh, leader of the Syrian Business Forum based in Doha; the Muslim Brotherhood (also including seculars); and Michel Kilo (seculars, intellectuals) (Baczko, Dorronsoro, and Quesnay 2018). Against the backdrop of growing dissatisfaction among the wider opposition, Sabbagh and Riyad al‐Hassan, a leading SOC member, advocated that fourteen seats be included in the SOC, one seat for each of the provincial councils (Interview 4).

From the start, this move has been criticized because it resulted in the internal opposition holding only fourteen out of forty‐one seats in the General Secretariat and only 20 percent of seats in the General Assembly as the SOC's crucial decision‐making body (Sayigh 2013). Furthermore, Syrians and the LCCs and LCs on the ground could not elect these “representatives” (Interview 5). Instead, they were appointed through Sabbagh’s personal networks (Narbone et al. 2016; Baczko, Dorronsoro, and Quesnay 2018). As the figurehead of the Syrian Business Forum, Sabbagh held a position of significant economic leverage through which he controlled the distribution to provincial local councils of international funds that reportedly amounted to an estimated eight million U.S. dollars (Khalaf and Fielding‐Smith 2013). Furthermore, this approach has been heavily criticized for the fact that twelve of the fourteen provincial council representatives were regarded as part of the external opposition because they lived abroad (Narbone et al. 2016; Baczko, Dorronsoro, and Quesnay 2018). Sabbagh himself had lived in Saudi Arabia for more than a decade before moving to Qatar; he was thus not well known inside Syria.

Yet, the perceived binary of how individuals are categorized as belonging to either “internal” or “external” oppositions also disguises differences. For example, Moaz al‐Khatib, who was among these fourteen, has long been credited with significant support not only in Damascus, but also beyond (Interviews 2 and 6)—although he lived abroad by this time. As the former imam of the grand Ummayyad’s mosque in Damascus, al‐Khatib repeatedly had spoken out for democratic reform since the beginning of the protests and was arrested several times before leaving Syria in the summer of 2012, five months before his SOC appointment. By this point, he had been active as a member of the Damascus Declaration, an internal, diverse, and pro‐democracy opposition coalition whose members have faced frequent intimidation and arrest by the Syrian regime since the coalition’s inception in 2005 (Interview 7). He also has been well connected through his religious engagement, despite his open advocacy for religious tolerance among different denominations and a pluralist, democratic Syrian state (Interview 2). In late 2012, al‐Khatib became president of the SOC, resigning in protest of the interference of external states in SOC half a year later. Unlike Sabbagh, al‐Khatib thus emerged as a leading SOC figure who participated in the U.N. peace process and whose engagement inside Syria was still very recent, although he lived abroad. Based on his place of residence, he would thus have been seen as “external,” while his ties and prominence would suggest that he may be regarded as “internal.”

The appointments of the fourteen provincial council representatives to the SOC further tied into a wider debate over how the opposition could organize itself on the ground. Al‐Hassan had been a leading figure in internal attempts to organize a governance system among opposition‐affiliated LCCs, LCs, and the provincial councils. One of the possibilities considered was Legislative Decree no.107 (commonly known as the Local Administration Law, specifying local governance, and passed in 2011) (Araabi 2017), which became a focus of internal debate. Of the approximately 1,000 LCCs at the time, about a third refused to be integrated into a centralized structure, which the legislative decree had mandated for local governance structures in regime‐held areas. These LCCs feared the loss of their autonomy and the creation of records that would leave their members vulnerable to exposure and torture if the regime recaptured the area. About another third preferred the decree as the basis for centralized coordination but rejected the provision empowering the provincial councils to interfere in their internal affairs. The remaining third of LCCs accepted Legislative Decree no. 107 in its entirety (Interviews 4 and 8).

While internal debates raged over these possible ways of self‐organizing, the appointments of the fourteen representatives to the SOC, which were based on Sabbagh’s personal networks, thus touched on a highly sensitive and contentious question that required a solution: What was the shape of local governance structures on the ground to which these fourteen individuals in the SOC on the Track One level were linked, and to what extent would or should this imply any authority over them or over any representation? These debates occurred amid the first reports of chemical attacks, which drew no military support for the opposition from the United States despite President Obama’s warning that such attacks would cross a “red line.” Reflecting the aforementioned frustration, on September 24, 2013, a major alliance of thirteen Islamist‐leaning armed groups announced their break with the SOC, which they saw as preoccupied with questions of internal organization rather than acting on behalf of the situation on the ground (ICG 2013: ii). In their press statement, they stated: “These forces feel that all groups formed abroad without returning to the country do not represent them, so the forces will not recognize them” (Solomon 2013). At the same time, the United Nations tried to pressure the SOC into attending the next round of negotiations and forming a delegation. In an attempt to gain time to organize internally and achieve a stronger military footing, the SOC—as well as General Idriss, head of the Supreme Military Council at the time—sought to postpone negotiations (Ballout 2013).

As this example of the broadening of seats in the SOC illustrates, political, armed actor, business, and religious networks of participants can be closely interrelated, while also differing significantly between individuals. The SOC represents a network in itself, but its members belong to networks that extend far beyond it. For Sabbagh, who left Syria long before the war and has kept a low profile, “the local” has been constituted not least in his relationships with provincial council representatives outside the country and a wide network of businessmen. In contrast, al‐Khatib has been widely known for having supported protests at his personal risk when still in Damascus, and he was accordingly well‐known and connected among Syrians on the ground even before his SOC presidency. At the same time, the engagement of both men in the SOC on the Track One level, which was tasked with composing an opposition delegation for the U.N. peace process only a few months later, was closely tied to opposition internal debates of self‐organization while warfare continued to escalate. In this light, the conceptual intertwining of the network side and the territorial aspect of the local—to be understood differently for different actors—allows us to develop a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics that underpin high‐level peace process negotiations.

As an alternative answer to the question of why so many peace processes fail to achieve lasting peace, I have argued that historically, peacemaking research and practice have placed great emphasis on the goal of reaching an agreement, while—especially in international high‐level negotiations (Track One)—neglecting the perspective of peace process participants. Consequently, peace process research is missing a valuable source for critical self‐reflection on the quality and modalities of peace processes. Scholars must address this fragmentary understanding of how peace processes function with qualitative research analyzing the experiences of peace process participants in depth while also taking their embeddedness through intersecting, local networks into account. This research also is critical to understanding the harm that current peacemaking practices may cause. This applies, for example, if the gap between “the local” and Track One peace processes becomes too wide, or when international policy makers and researchers ignore or underestimate the difficulties and impact of conflictual negotiations within a certain Track One group such as the SOC, the umbrella organization officially representing the opposition in the U.N. peace process for Syria discussed here.

For peacebuilding and statebuilding, the local turn has prompted new questions and alternative visions of how post‐conflict societies can experience long‐term peace. I argue that consideration of informal networks and notions of authority, leadership, and other concepts relevant to peace processes must begin earlier—in researching the peace process itself. Eventually, the findings of this—and hopefully more—anthropological research can also feed into peace process practice through renewed peace process design. Whether this knowledge will lead to a reform of international, United Nations‐convened peace processes or a greater emphasis on alternative forms of self‐determined peacemaking is a question that remains to be answered. In either case, we need to better understand—from their own perspective—how Track One peace process participants move between the international spheres of external policy when attending high‐level summits and the local level in which they are embedded, and the challenges that arise from these intersections. The empirical case of the SOC has illustrated how the contentious distribution of seats in its council was closely tied to an ongoing debate over how to organize the opposition on the ground. In this case, the organizational structure of what constituted the local was actually in flux and highly contentious among Syrians themselves. At the same time, the examples of Mustafa Sabbagh and Moaz al‐Khatib as prominent Track One actors have demonstrated how their connectedness to the local uncovers how the local has different meanings, and how personal and political networks of Track One participants intersect with armed group, business, and religious networks. These internal Track One dynamics also occur while no high‐profile, official Track One events take place and encompass the grassroots level as well as global networks—including, for example, Track One participants based in Qatar and Geneva. In this sense, the model introduced here captures peace processes as occurring in a spatial‐temporal continuum that continuously evolves.

Anthropology, like other qualitative disciplines, is well placed to contribute to an emic understanding of peace processes as introduced here in ways that are country—and oftentimes locality—specific.⁸ If other disciplines provide crucial insights by focusing on optimizing and understanding the role of external actors in peace mediation, anthropologists can draw on their specific political experience of having lived within the countries they research, taking into consideration participants’ mental maps of political systems; intersectional, often informal networks; and cultures that shape how they engage with the peace process itself—and how participants shape the process. Only on a secondary level would peace process research then ask how participants interact with the international system. Crucially, this approach will also allow us to advance critical peace process theory.

Understanding why peace agreements fail and how to resolve this problem depends not only on understanding peacebuilding and peacekeeping efforts, but also on understanding the ways in which peace processes fail, particularly in Track One diplomacy. Put radically, reaching an agreement—oftentimes a marker of “success”—can actually reflect no less than the complete failure of a process in which one side became entirely sidelined. Instead, the internal dynamics of peace processes deserve greater attention. The ways in which peace processes are set up and understood are currently the product of significant power imbalances, which prioritize viewpoints from the Global North. In contrast, present epistemological biases require new critical insights into the perspectives of peace process participants—which oftentimes means perspectives from the Global South. Deepening our understanding of the role of the local through intersectional networks of which participants form a part could contribute significantly to developing critical peace process theory and future avenues of reforming peace processes in the hope of achieving longer‐term peace. As the example of the SOC has shown, this requires us also to recognize that Track One participants need to negotiate not only with their respective adversaries or the United Nations, but also within their own groups and various networks. The emic perspective adopted here has allowed us to see that what constitutes “the local” differs between actors, but also, that Track One peace processes are by no means separate from “the local.” Finally, what the “peace” that is sought means remains to be understood from the perspective of those with the greatest stake in achieving it.

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