On Track to Inclusion? Unpacking Multitrack Approaches to Peace Processes and its Challenges

Abstract

Multitrack approaches to peace negotiations and dialogue support have recently become particularly popular and influential across the scholarly, practice, policy and donor communities. Building on norms such as inclusivity, local ownership, and legitimacy, as well as insights from the broader field of international relations with respect to good governance, civil society participation and indigenized approaches to peace, peacebuilding actors have incorporated the understanding that peace processes need to implement both a top-down and a bottom-up approach in parallel ‘tracks’ or societal levels, that reinforce, inform and complement each other. Hence, multitrack peace-making engages on and links multiple societal levels that have a stake in the outcome of peace processes: Track I (top leadership and official state actors), Track II (middle-range influential non-state actors such as civil society elite or academia) and Track III (grassroots leadership of community-based organizations). However, despite being at the forefront of the international agenda, the multitrack approach still lacks empirical evidence and conceptual clarity regarding its operationalisation, implementation and coordination. Furthermore, it has not been systematically studied and theorized neither in peace studies literature nor in the broader IR literature regarding its implications, effectiveness and impact, power and agency dynamics as well as possible side-effects. By using concepts from the political science and international relations literature and from critical approaches to multitrack mediation, this panel aims to examine and further elaborate on the debates and challenges pertaining to multitrack peacemaking and includes papers on the following questions and topics: How do multitrack peace process design foster normative imperatives such as inclusion and local ownership? How are multitrack initiatives linked, coordinated and evaluated? How can actors within multitrack peace processes negotiate their agency and what is their impact on the outcomes of peace processes? Thereby, this panels constitutes a novel interdisciplinary and critical review of the multitrack concept and invites reflections across the (sub)fields of international relations like policy making, democratic governance and multilateralism.

Title	Details
The forgotten track: Role and impact of protest movements during peace processes	View Paper Details
When All Tracks Are Exclusive: Inclusion Dilemmas in Peacebuilding and Dialogues in Ukraine	View Paper Details
Track Two Overloaded? Using Track Two Dialogues as a Vehicle for Inclusion in Peacemaking Discourse and Practice	View Paper Details
Toward a More Inclusive Europe? Comparing European Progress in Decolonializing Peacebuilding in European and Middle Eastern Conflicts	View Paper Details