This article analyzes the increasingly prominent role of regional organizations (ROs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in promoting norms in mediation processes. In particular, we seek to understand the processes by which RO and NGO mediators promote the inclusivity norm to negotiating parties and the outcomes that result. We employ the concepts of local agency and social practices in examining the normative agency of ROs and NGOs in promoting and redefining the inclusivity norm. Through illustrative case studies of peace processes in South Sudan and Myanmar, we argue that ROs' and NGOs' mediation practices reflect their claims to alternative resources of power, such as long-standing expertise and insider status in the context, and build congruence with strong local norms. We provide nuanced theoretical insights on RO and NGO mediators' claims to agency and provide empirical illustrations on how these claims contribute to constitutive changes to norms.

International mediators are often tasked to promote liberal norms. However, dilemmas created in diffusing these norms, influenced by the mediators' interaction with the conflict parties and a decline of the liberal international order, have fueled debates about how norms are diffused through mediation, whether mediators should and can promote norms, and what norms they promote. The IR literature provides rich theoretical frameworks on norms, which could help navigate these questions. Yet, mediation scholars have not systematically integrated ideational aspects in their analyses. This Special Issue fills this gap by providing the first comprehensive analysis of how norms matter in mediation. It thereby not only shares novel analytical insights on norms in mediation, but also enriches the conceptualizations of three central notions in the norms literature: the norm diffusion process, the agency of actors, and the nature of the diffused norms.

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Research on resistance to the inclusion of civil society in peace mediation focuses on armed parties and elites as sites of resistance. Such focus grounds policies that prescribe various strategies and process designs that mediators could employ. The mediation of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in South Sudan from 2012 to 2015 featured such strategies and attempts at various formats, including strong leverage from South Sudan’s neighbors and top development partners. However, civil society’s inclusion did not fully materialize, and armed clashes continued. Examining this mediation process, this article examines two structural challenges to civil society inclusion under-examined in mediation research. First, divisions within civil society can perpetuate divisions among warring parties and hinder the expected benefits of civil society inclusion. Second, the norms of consent and protecting lives considered definitional in peace mediation prioritize armed parties over civil society, limiting mediators’ ability to promote the latter’s inclusion and potentially encouraging further violence.