Peace processes, violence, and de facto states: introduction

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Only a quarter of outcomes of armed conflicts that ended during the first two decades of the 21st century resulted from negotiated peace or ceasefire agreements. While comprehensive, final, and conclusive peace agreements are in relative decline, ceasefires, limited, or partial, accords, and local agreements proliferate. The dynamics of peacemaking and the critical interplay of talks and violence during peace processes become increasingly nonlinear, complex, and unpredictable. In this special issue, a mix of actors, dynamics and factors at the interface of peace processes and violence is narrowed down to contexts that involve de facto states, most of whom experience both an ongoing or stalemated peace process and recurring violence of different types and varying degree of intensity. The article provides the analytical context for the special issue and discusses basic terminology and concepts, such as “peace processes” and “de facto states”, and some of the global data-based trends and research literature on the volume‟s subject. The first part of this article focuses on peace processes and the interplay of peacemaking and violence, the second one looks into the “state of the art” on de facto states, while the third one presents a summary of, including the main take-off from, the authors‟ contributions to this special issue.