Peace talks are a key component of addressing conflict. They are a form of negotiation that seeks to resolve a conflict between warring dyads, such as states or armed non-state actors. They may involve all or a subset of the warring parties. Peace talks can also involve additional stakeholders such as mediators, neighboring countries, political parties, NGOs, and guarantors.
The success or failure of peace processes often depends on a range of factors, including how the conflict is understood and what the process is designed to accomplish. Peace negotiations can be complicated and time consuming, and it can be difficult to bring the parties together in the first place. They can fail due to a lack of willingness to compromise or an inability to identify common ground.
One way to improve the chances of achieving an agreement is by improving the way that negotiations are structured. Although a peace agreement can be reached with any framework, some types of frameworks are more effective than others at promoting the negotiated outcome. A legalized, transparent, inclusive negotiation framework is more likely to lead to the conclusion of a peace agreement than a nonlegalized, opaque, exclusionary one. This article uses the case studies of Colombia and Turkey to demonstrate that a government’s choice of a negotiation framework influences its chances of success in bringing about an agreement in peace talks. It also identifies some of the ways that different negotiation frameworks can lead to divergent processes and outcomes.
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