Intra-group Political Struggles and Spoiler Impacts on Peace Negotiations: The Case of Sri Lanka

This paper will focus on spoiler impacts of the government side on peace negotiations. Previous studies on spoiler problems and peace negotiations tend to focus on the government-military relationships (e.g. Yamamoto, 2007) or intra-group struggles of non-state actors such as rebel groups (e.g. Kydd and Walter, 2002; Hampson, 1996; Stedman, 1997). It is important to focus on these actors to analyze and understand dynamics of conflict and peace negotiations. Nevertheless, it is not enough. The end of the conflict through peaceful means can affect actors of both the government and the rebel side. Therefore, it is also crucial to take into the account intra-group struggles on the government side, and how they create spoilers. Based on this assumption, this paper will examine how the attitude of competing groups on the government side influence the processes and outcomes of the government-led peace negotiations. Sri Lanka would be one of the most interesting cases to look into this research interest. It had experienced the nearly 30-year long ethnic conflict. It includes various groups with noticeable heterogeneity on the both government and rebel sides. Peace negotiations were held several times throughout the conflict. This paper will focus on the 2002 peace negotiations. The 2002 ones received unprecedented size of diplomatic efforts from the international society. Nevertheless, it broke down. Taking this background into account, this paper will examine how competing groups on the government side turn into spoilers, and how their attitude influence the processes and outcomes of the 2002 peace negotiations.