Spoiling Inside and Out: Internal Political Contestation and the Middle East Peace Process

Abstract

Actors turn to negotiating or spoiling as a means of contesting not only what a proposed peace settlement entails but also who has the power to decide the terms. Conflicts are more likely to witness negotiating and spoiling for purposes of internal contestation to the degree that one or both of the warring parties lack an institutionalized system of legitimate representation. Whether internal contestation leads a group to act as a peace maker or as a peace breaker is conditioned by its position in the internal balance of power. Two eras in the Palestinian national movement—the Palestine Liberation Organization's bid to join the Geneva peace conference in 1973–74 and its engagement in the Oslo peace process from 1993 to 2000—illustrate these propositions. Leaders of national movements and rebel groups, no less than leaders of states, are systematically influenced by domestic politics. As such, sponsors of peace processes should expect spoiler problems unless a movement heals rifts within its ranks.

The place of spoilers in peace processes in Sudan

“…The establishment of SSRA, then RASS and FRRA exist to explain the motive of splinter groups as resource driven in south Sudan during the second civil war. This motive is in line with an observation by Pearlman (2008) that within non-state groups, leaders of dominant factions are likely to have the most gain from a peace process because they expect to be the ones invited to participate in the negotiations. In line with the evidences, the dominant faction leader was the Garang led SPLA and he expected to maintain his grip as a southern leader.…”

Rethinking Ripeness Theory: Explaining Progress and Failure in Civil War Negotiations in the Philippines and Colombia

“…It adds to an existing literature that has revisited ripeness theory (Kloeiber 1994;Aggestam 2004;Pruitt 2005;O'Kane 2006, Amer 2007, Kreutz 2012Urlacher 2013). It also ties in with a growing literature on rebel group fragmentation and its effects on conflict processes (Kenny 2010;Asalm et al 2012;Cunningham 2006;Pearlman & Cunningham 2012;Bakke et al 2012;Cunningham 2013). Finally, the article provides qualitative evidence of internal dynamics inside rebel groups in a scholarship that is Walch International Negotiation 21 (2016) 75-103 mostly quantitatively orientated, responding to a call from previous research to explore these complicated dynamics and concepts through case studies (c.f.…”

New Rebels in Postconflict Settings: The Principal–Agent Dilemma of Peacebuilding

“…Such disciplinary structures include institutional arrangements like de facto "courts" or the less formalized systems of discipline and control, which are expected to be discontinued as legitimate authority is transferred toward state institutions as part of the conflict termination process (Mampilly 2011;Sanín and Wood 2014). Consequently, internecine struggles are more likely at the end of a conflict as disagreements with the peace terms can give rise to the emergence of spoilers (Stedman 1997;Pearlman 2009;Olson Lounsbery and Cook 2011). Further, the dismantling of control structures opens opportunities for individual agents to defect from their groups (Gates 2002;Vinci 2006).…”

“…Absent the unifying mission of political rebellion and faced with uncertain prospects in the postconflict society to come, former fighters may opt to defect from the peace process and join, or form, another armed group (Kydd and Walter 2002;Pearlman 2009). It is also worth remembering that excombatants, even after demobilization, retain the knowledge and experience in organizing for conflict, making the formation of another armed rebel organization less risk filled than what would be the case for a citizen who had never participated in armed political rebellion (Nussio and Oppenheim 2014).…”

“…Maintaining these types of organizational structures, however, undermines necessary efforts to reestablish state legitimacy over the use of force (Mason et al 2011). If rebel forces are instead disbanded, then leaders cannot guarantee that their exfollowers will behave in accordance with the terms of the agreement (Pearlman 2009;Reiter 2016), hence the principal-agent dilemma; the risk of conflict recurrence exists in both settings, but the pathways to violence differ.…”