Negotiated Settlement Research Articles

Elite theory and politicization of negotiated settlement: challenges to peace durability in Colombia

ABSTRACT Ending civil conflict is difficult, particularly through negotiated settlements. The research finds that the durability of peace guaranteed through a negotiated settlement can be affected when the opposing elites politicize the concessions made with rebels. Through politicization, the space in societal acceptance of rebels in post-war negotiations can be used by the opposing elites to gain a political support base, thereby challenging the delicate power-sharing agreement. Further, the politicization of the deal remains a hindrance to the sequencing of Transitional Justice (TJ) goals making the society more polarized and pushing it to violence, as the transition from the civil war to peace needs compromise and calculated sequencing of goals of TJ.

Post-War Reconciliation Process in Sri Lanka: A Unique Path to Peace Building

This study examines the unique aspects of Sri Lanka’s peacebuilding and ethnic reconciliation process following the end of its civil war in 2009. Unlike many post-conflict societies that rely on formal peace agreements, Sri Lanka's reconciliation efforts were driven by a military victory without a negotiated settlement between conflicting parties. This study discusses key milestones in Sri Lanka’s reconciliation journey, including institutional reforms such as the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and the Office of Missing Persons (OMP). It examines the unique challenges, including political dominance in the process, limited engagement of minority communities, and inconsistencies in policy frameworks. The study provides a comprehensive understanding of the factors that have shaped Sri Lanka's reconciliation approach by drawing on qualitative data from key informant interviews (KII) and through a comparative analysis with global post-conflict practices. Ultimately, this study offers valuable insights for policymakers and scholars on the complexities of peacebuilding in unique post-conflict settings, highlighting the need for more inclusive and sustainable efforts to achieve lasting peace.

Electoral Incentives and Negotiated Settlements: Legislative Deliberation on the Mindanao Conflict in the Philippines

Some conflict‐experiencing countries undergo both violent and electoral competitions. In other words, electoral competition evolves while nonstate actors struggle to realize their political and cultural demands by arms. Although increasing attention has been paid to the interplay between domestic political dynamics and violent conflict, we still know little about how the electoral calculations of legislators shape their response to negotiated settlement, possibly influencing conflict processes. By examining the congressional records of the House of Representatives in the Philippines, this study conducts quantitative text analyses to assess the impacts of electoral incentives—shaped by executive popularity, district ethnic composition, and the occurrence of conflict‐related violence—on legislators' response to negotiated settlement. The results demonstrate that legislators are sensitive to constituents' views on conflict settlement by showing support or opposition to negotiated settlement, anticipating their electoral fortunes in the next election.

Corporate moral insolvency: lessons from Purdue Pharma

ABSTRACT This article argues that Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, is a morally insolvent corporation – its wrongdoing pervasive or central to the corporation’s operations, its actions causing grave harm, and yet accountability still seems out of reach. It further argues that Purdue helps demonstrate how criminal legal systems are not capable of holding corporations accountable for wrongdoing. For humans, being convicted of a crime often means being sent to jail, and states pay little attention to the plight of children of prisoners. For corporations, criminal legal systems focus on deterrence as a goal, largely because corporations are not capable of suffering from retributive punishments in the way that humans are. But corporate insolvency processes demonstrate that corporations can be restructured, reorganised, and liquidated. This article posits that a system of corporate moral insolvency could better respond to corporate wrongdoing – combining an inquiry-style process of fact finding with a negotiated settlement process providing those with most at stake a means to assert their interests, all while deterring future wrongdoing.

Oklahoma leaders reject settlement on jail MH services

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and other state leaders have rejected a legal settlement of a federal lawsuit over long delays in providing mental health treatment to jail detainees found not competent to stand trial, the Oklahoma Voice policy news service reported Oct. 8. State Attorney General Gentner Drummond had pushed for the negotiated settlement, which included a remediation plan that would revamp the state's current system for restoring offender competency and increase the state's number of forensic beds devoted to competency restoration (see “Legal settlement would expedite MH treatment for Oklahoma detainees,” MHW, July 1, 2024; https://doi.org/10.1002/mhw.34099). But Stitt and the commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, Allie Friesen, have characterized the settlement as overly costly and burdensome. Shortly before an Oct. 8 meeting of a review board chaired by Stitt, Friesen announced that she was terminating Drummond as the state's counsel in the case. Friesen indicated with regard to the proposed settlement that she would “resign before signing an agreement like this,” Oklahoma Voice reported. The lawsuit was originally filed in March 2023 in U.S. District Court on behalf of three incarcerated inmates. It alleges that detainees' long waits for needed mental health treatment have caused their conditions to deteriorate, and this violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The hunger strike as a biopolitical technology: re-reading the 1981 Irish republican prison protest

ABSTRACT This article uses the case of the 1981 Irish republican prison protest to show that indefinite hunger strikes can force Euromodern states to the negotiating table by undercutting their commitment to good government. Drawing on a Foucauldian analysis of biopower and political reason, I argue that these acts of willed self-starvation exert pressure on state officials by exploiting a tension between the modern state’s juridical claim to sovereignty and its biopolitical investment in fostering life. In the case of the famed IRA hunger strike on the H-Blocks, the archive shows that the Thatcher government experienced more pressure to reach a negotiated settlement than the prime minister or her top advisers publicly acknowledged. Such pressure, however, stemmed not from a moral or humanitarian investment in saving the individual hunger strikers’ lives, but instead from officials’ biopolitical concern that the protest was undermining British attempts to restore ‘life as usual’ in the conflicted region. Ultimately, Thatcher was willing to let ten of the Irish republican strikers die rather than grant them any concessions that might indicate they were political prisoners. The article closes by showing how an indefinite hunger strike’s efficacy is often foreclosed in securitized and postcolonial contexts like that of Northern Ireland, where the protesters can be framed as a ‘biopolitical remainder’ that is allowed to die so that the broader society might thrive.

Pirate Terrors: Rome’s Ancient War on Piracy as an Analogue for Contemporary Wars on Terror

Abstract This article offers an analogy between the Roman wars against Mediterranean piracy in the 70s and 60s BCE, especially on Crete and in Cilicia, and the United States’ long wars against terror, which now span more than two decades (2002–), especially in Afghanistan, until recently, and Iraq. The article hopes to show that there are fruitful points of convergence, especially useful for drawing ethical and political lessons from history. Wars against piracy are waged against non-state actors and nearly impossible to prosecute to a negotiated settlement. Such wars quite naturally result in “mission creep,” particularly when situated in a region with broader strategic interests.

Exclusionary Inclusion: The Unforeseen Consequences of Norm Promotion in Myanmar’s Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement Process

ABSTRACT What happens when the promotion of ‘inclusive peace’ creates an exclusionary negotiated settlement? Through analysing the promotion of inclusion in Myanmar's Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) negotiations that took place from 2011–15, I challenge claims in peace research that the more inclusive a peace process is, the more effective the outcome. Through discussing how the promotion of the inclusivity norm to the negotiating parties had unintended negative effects on the outcome of the process, namely excluding certain armed groups and crowding out civil society actors, I argue against assuming that integrating salient peacemaking norms always result in effective outcomes.

Settling Softly: Ending War and Making Peace in Divided Societies

This paper investigates possible sociopolitical reconciliatory mechanisms to garner support for peacemaking in conflict-torn societies. Building on the Kurdish question in Turkey, associated with a four-decade-long armed conflict that has spilled over into neighboring Syria and Iraq, we identify policies and framing that can attract support for a political solution to the conflict. We highlight the need for a sociopolitical reconciliatory approach that addresses both the hopes of the warring minority and the fears of the majority. The results from an original nationwide survey indicate that minority demands can initially be addressed through a ‘soft settlement,’ lying between individual and collective rights. Our results point to the need to relax the concept of negotiated settlement, which has become the most frequent approach to ending internal armed conflicts in the post-Cold War era.

Stabilizing Civil Wars without Peacekeeping: Evidence from South Asia

Abstract Peacekeeping is helpful in resolving civil wars, but there is little chance of peacekeeping operations or other international peace-building interventions for many conflicts. How do internal wars stabilize in the absence of meaningful international involvement? Two key factors, the government's political space for bargaining and the relative power of armed groups, help to explain when it is possible to reach either stable cooperation between states and armed groups or negotiated settlements. We analyze three conflict trajectories—“long-term limited cooperation” arrangements, state incorporation or disarmament, and ongoing conflict—to show that the paths to stabilization are often ethically fraught and empirically complicated but exist even when international involvement is off the table. We use quantitative and qualitative data to study the relationships between armed groups and governments in much of post-colonial South Asia, including during periods of little or no violence. Understanding these trajectories provides policymakers, analysts, and scholars with useful tools for identifying policy options and political trade-offs as they seek to reduce the human costs of war.

Leader-contingent sanctions as a cause of violent political conflict

Abstract Economic sanctions are a policy tool that great powers frequently use to interfere with domestic politics of another state. Regime change has been a primary goal of economic sanctions over the past decades. This article studies the relationship between leader-contingent sanctions—sanctions that are designed to impede the flow of revenue to a specific leader—and violent political conflict in target countries. I build a theoretical model to illuminate two mechanisms by which leader-contingent sanctions destabilize a regime—the Depletion Mechanism and the Instigation Mechanism. The Depletion Mechanism works when sanctions mechanically deplete the government's resources so that it becomes unable to buy off domestic opposition even by making the largest possible offer. The Instigation Mechanism implies that as sanctions decrease the benefit of negotiated settlement relative to war, the government may strategically choose to repress rather than buy off the opposition even when it is able to do so. Leader-contingent sanctions lead to bargaining failure by rewarding the opposition for revolt while reducing the government's ability and willingness to appease the opposition.

Russo–Ukrainian war: Limits of Western economic sanctions

AbstractThe potency of economic sanctions imposed on nations depends on demand and supply adjustment possibilities. Adverse GDP impacts will be maximal when import, export, production, distribution and finance are inflexible (universal non-substitution). This paper elaborates these conditions, and quantifies the maximum GDP loss that Western sanctions could have inflicted on Russia in 2022–2023. It reports the World Bank's predictions, contrasts them with results and draws inferences about the efficiency of Russia's workably competitive markets. The paper shows that Russia's economic system exhibits moderate universal substitutability and is less vulnerable to punitive discipline than Western policymakers suppose. The likelihood that the Kremlin will restore Ukraine's territorial integrity, ceteris paribus, is correspondingly low. The authors also observe that unintended adverse side effects from sanctions and counter-sanctions were excessive because policymakers chose to maximize GDP-damage to Russia instead of optimizing Western and third-party net benefits. Given moderate substitutability, Western policymakers can switch to smart net benefit maximizing sanctions that enhance Western and third-party welfare without significantly bolstering Russia's military industrial productivity and war-waging capabilities by retaining embargoes on weapons, technology and critical components, while selectively softening other restrictions. Smart sanctions might facilitate a negotiated settlement of the Russo–Ukrainian war.

THE 1968 PUEBLO INCIDENT AND ITS IMPACT ON NORTH KOREAN-UNITED STATES RELATIONS

On 23 January 1968, USS Pueblo, a U.S. Navy troop spy intelligence vessel, and its crew were seized (83) Persons by North Korean gunboats off its coast, captured and transported to Pyongyang by the ship's crew, confirmed by the United States of America that the Pueblo was in international waters, started a military build-up in the region, while undercover negotiations began that resulted in an agreement securing the release of (82) surviving crew members after (one died from injuries sustained during captivity) On December 23, the crew was released after a negotiated settlement in which the US administration apologized and vowed to stop spying on North Korea

UK merger control post Microsoft/Activision: Phase 3, behavioural remedies, and the beginning of the end of the panel?

This article critically examines the procedure adopted by the Competition and Markets Authority in its review of Microsoft’s anticipation acquisition of Activision, which concluded on 13 October 2023, and what it might tell us about the next decade of CMA merger enforcement. It explores how the notion of ‘material change of circumstances’ was successfully deployed by the parties to overturn the CMA’s initial prohibition decision and how this ‘second bite of the cherry’, or ‘Phase 3’ might be utilized in future cases. It explains how, unlike the cases that came before it, Microsoft/Activision forced the CMA to overturn its Final Report and accept a negotiated settlement in place of defending the prohibition decision in the CAT, sidelining the Panel. It considers whether the case has set a precedent (however exceptional) for the CMA to accept re-notification of substantially the same merger after an initial prohibition decision, and whether fix-it-first (or ‘fix it last’) behavioural remedies may now find even more favour, including once the CMA’s Digital Markets Unit joins the show. It concludes with an examination of how the CMA’s approach in this case, coupled with its proposed reforms to the Phase 2 process, may presage the beginning of the end of the CMA’s panel system in UK merger review.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the Repatriation of East Prussian Deportees from Simbirsk during World War I

This article assesses whether the repatriation of civilian prisoners of war, most of whom were East Prussian deportees, from Simbirsk to Germany between April and June of 1918, was carried out according to the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Simbirsk, which was home to more East Prussian deportees than any other internment site in Russia, is particularly well-suited for a case study of the repatriation of civilian prisoners from Russia during World War I because the correspondence and memoirs of those who were involved in the repatriation still exist and are accessible outside Russia. The article concludes that the repatriation of civilian prisoners of war interned in Simbirsk was not carried out according to the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk—at least not according to how the treaty was interpreted by the German and Russian governments—and identifies several reasons why this was the case. This case study may have policy implications for the current war in Ukraine, which has also been characterized by the deportation of civilians from Russian-occupied territory to Russia, although on a much larger scale. If the war in Ukraine ends in a negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia, the repatriation of Ukrainian deportees will be an important part of that settlement. The article offers several recommendations for the Ukrainian officials who would be responsible for negotiating such a settlement to avoid chaotic evacuations similar to what happened in Simbirsk during World War I.

Upaya Penyelesaian Kredit Macet Dana Bergulir di Unit Pengelola Kegiatan (Upk) Kecamatan Jeumpa Kabupaten Aceh Barat Daya

Savings and loans revolving fund PNPM Mandiri Rural in the UPK Jeumpa District, Aceh Barat Daya Regency has been running since 2009 until now, but in its implementation many loans are experiencing bottlenecks because the borrower group does not use the loan in accordance with the agreement letter.The purpose of this study was to determine the efforts to resolve bad loans and the obstacles in the settlement of non-performing loans in revolving funds at the UPK Jeumpa District, Southwest Aceh Regency. This research is an empirical juridical research using descriptive analysis method that describes efforts to resolve bad loans.The results of this study indicate that the settlement of bad debts is carried out by the following mechanism, arrears in the first month are given a verbal warning to the group leader, if the first method does not work then a warning letter will be given three times in a row and if the debtor still does not have good intentions To pay off the credit, the UPK will make efforts to save the credit, namely the confiscation of the collateral. Furthermore, a negotiated settlement is carried out for debtors who have good intentions, namely by providing credit relief by extending the loan period. As for the obstacles in resolving bad loans, there are debtors who have bad intentions who intentionally do not complete their credit payments, the spread of the Corona Virus which has an impact on the community's economy, business failures that result in debtors having difficulty completing their loans, and the UPK's lack of firmness in imposing sanctions on debtors. or groups of borrowers who are in arrears, so that the debtor ignores the sanctions.Suggestions for the Activity Management Unit (UPK), to be more thorough, careful and careful in choosing groups to be given loans, and to collect regularly, in an effort to settle bad loans, the UPK should be more strict with debtors who violate the agreement by providing heavier sanctions so that the debtor feels deterred. And for the Women's Savings and Loans group (SPP) it is expected that they fulfill the agreements that have been made and mutually agreed upon so as not to cause problems in the future.

Do United States Tax Court judge attributes influence the resolution of corporate tax disputes?

Corporate taxpayers can have economically meaningful disputes with the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that ultimately involve the federal judiciary. In an attempt to reduce the number of corporate tax disputes going to trial and reduce the amount of time between when corporate taxpayers file a petition with the United States Tax Court (USTC) and resolution of the case, politicians and judges have placed greater emphasis on negotiated settlements as opposed to Tax Court trials. In this paper, we investigate whether the personal attributes of the Tax Court judge assigned to the case (political ideology, tenure on the bench and professional experience) influence corporate taxpayers and the IRS to reach a negotiated settlement or proceed to trial. Overall, our results show that Tax Court judges who are conservative, have private practice experience, have governmental legislative experience, and have longer tenure on the Tax Court bench are more likely to preside over disputes resolved through a negotiated settlement as opposed to going to a trial.

Managing Disputes for a Sustainable Construction: A Perspective of Settlement Facilitating Elements in Negotiations

Construction 4.0 presents a multitude of opportunities; however, it also increases the chance of disputes. Efficient dispute management contributes to the sustainable production of construction works. Enhancing negotiation management and negotiators’ settlement ability is valuable, given that negotiation is recognized as the most effective dispute resolution method. This study explores negotiation settlement by identifying negotiators’ settlement facilitating elements in construction dispute negotiation (CDN). A purposive literature review identified six key elements, naming preparation, integration, goodwill, continuity, commitment, and self-efficacy. With data collected from experienced construction dispute negotiators, the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) results confirmed the significance of these elements. Accordingly, recommendations for negotiators include (i) technique (i.e., good preparation and applying integrative tactics); (ii) interaction (i.e., showing goodwill and relationship maintenance); and (iii) attitude (i.e., commitment to negotiate and being confident) if the negotiation settlement is desired. Management can implement these recommendations in their training manual to cultivate negotiators’ problem solving and settlement-oriented mindset. Negotiators can also review their behaviors throughout the negotiations and make timely adjustments as deemed necessary. Reaching an amicable negotiated settlement would not only save resources, preserving business relationships is of equal importance for a sustainable construction industry.

Wartime legislative political inclusivity and the likelihood of negotiated ends to civil wars

ABSTRACT Many scholars have argued that political inclusivity helps pre-empt civil war incidence and helps build peace and democracy after a civil war ends. However very little work has been done on assessing the effects of the inclusivity of war time legislatures on how civil wars end. This paper addresses this lacuna using the ‘diversity in leadership’ approach to explain the likelihood of negotiations initiated to end civil wars. This approach holds that the inclusion of different political viewpoints leads to innovative solutions to intractable political challenges (such as efforts to end civil wars). Using data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) and the Database on Political Institutions (DPI) from 1975–2020, I find that relatively more political fractionalised war time legislatures are significantly more likely to lead to attempts at negotiated ends to conflicts, when compared to less fractionalised legislatures. However, the size of the opposition in the wartime legislature, and the presence of legalised political wings of rebel groups, are unrelated to whether a negotiated settlement occurs (a finding that questions the idea that representation of anti-government views help bring about efforts at peace).

Political inclusion without social justice: South Africa and the pitfalls of partial decolonisation

The increasing social and political instability in South Africa and an emergent view that links it to the negotiated political settlement invite for a critical review of the ‘South African political miracle’. A central question such a review should attempt to address is whether the political settlement dealt fundamentally with the legacy of colonialism and apartheid, which came to define so much of social, economic and political life in South Africa. This article attempts such a review. Unlike critics of the negotiated settlement who tend to dismiss it totally, I contend, following on Mamdani's Neither Settler nor Native ( 2021 ), that its major achievement was establishing an inclusive political order in which civil and political rights were extended to all South Africans. The article begins by providing a broad outline of the colonial and apartheid orders in South Africa. While Mamdani (2021) details the political dimensions of these two exclusionary political orders, especially the divisive political identities they fostered and enforced, this article summarises the social and economic dimensions, focusing in particular on land and cattle dispossession. By highlighting these two dimensions, the article seeks to demonstrate the limitations of the negotiated settlement and the risk these limitations pose to the sustainability of inclusive democracy in South Africa. The article then examines what Mamdani calls the ‘South African moment’, which was marked by a challenge to the logic of apartheid and colonialism and the transformation of the political identities those orders had imposed. The third section of the article discusses the promise and limitations of the negotiated settlement. Overall, the article questions the desirability of the ‘South African model’ where social justice is compromised to achieve political inclusion.