Introduction: Unsettled Reflections From Golden Valley, Myanmar

Abstract

This book is about the role of nongovernmental (NGO) mediators in promoting “inclusive peace” to negotiating parties in Myanmar’s Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) negotiations from 2011 to 2015. I analyze how the norm of inclusivity was effectively localized as “all-inclusiveness” (hereafter used without quotation marks) in the NCA negotiations, albeit with unintended consequences. While NGO mediators may have been able to exercise “normative agency” in introducing and promoting the inclusivity norm, they did not have the normative agency to control the outcome of the norm diffusion process. Importantly, the localization of the inclusivity norm as all-inclusiveness centered the discourse on inclusion and exclusion and reified existing identity (ethnic and religious) politics in the country. This had both intended and unintended consequences on the outcome of the NCA process itself. In sum, NGO mediators’ promotion of a more inclusive process counterintuitively contributed to an exclusive outcome of the NCA process. The Myanmar case illustrates the limits of normative agency and the use of mediation processes as a site for norm diffusion, and serves as a cautionary tale for the consequences of promoting international norms without understanding the particular processes of norm diffusion. In this chapter, I lay out a narrative that introduces the main questions this book seeks to address, my main argumentation and approach, ending with a roadmap of the book’s chapters.