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Abstract
The power of narrative and norm entrepreneurship in shaping policy and practice is increasingly appreciated in the study of international relations but rarely investigated in the context of international peacemaking and mediation. Applying constructivist analyses and drawing on empirical evidence from US diplomacy in Afghanistan between 2018 and 2021, this article demonstrates how emergent western policy discourses, knowledge production, and the mediator's ideas and practices interacted in a dynamic context to induce a significant shift in US policy, legitimate it, and fundamentally reshape the conflict and peacemaking landscape. Approaching the reality of conflict and peacemaking as socially constructed and drawing on documentary analysis, in-depth interviews and insights from first-hand participation in the Afghan 'peace' process, I argue that these new narratives influenced and sanctioned a coercive US peacemaking approach that reshaped the interests and behaviors of Afghan stakeholders, with violent material consequences on the ground. In doing so, the article highlights the potential of constructivist analyses of peacemaking to provide a more holistic, multi-dimensional understanding of these processes and their outcomes in ways that purely rationalist or structurally-based accounts can not.

AbstractThis article introduces civic ecosystems as a concept and set of practical approaches to social innovation. It draws on several examples of civic ecosystems in action to highlight their main characteristics and to provide insights and lessons for applying ecosystem approaches to social innovation in practice. The discussion of civic ecosystems is placed in the broader context of the rise of ecosystem thinking among social change practitioners, researchers, technologists and funders. The article argues for a paradigm shift in social innovation from networks as vehicles for collaboration to ecosystems as catalysts for complementarity.

A better understanding of 'local' agreements vis-a-vis national reconciliation processes is a strong current in policy and academic circles, with Somalia acknowledged as a relevant context with a rich history of such processes. This article examines a local agreement reached in Galkaio, a divided city where renewed violence had national implications around the formation of a new Federal system. It explores the role of external mediators, and strategies used to create buy-in at different levels in the process in order to forge ann agreement that could end violence and address some underlying conflict drivers. It argues how experimentation with sequencing, linking and moving between levels helped ensure the viability and sustainability of the process. It contributes to the literature on mediating multi-level conflicts by focusing analysis on the role played by external mediators, demonstrating the importance of who mediates and how while providing insight into dynamic conflict mediation environments.

This article explores the evolution, role and impact of the Civil Society Support Room (CSSR), the first formal mechanism to involve civil society in the UN-led political talks for Syria. Through surveys, focus groups and interviews, it examines how and whether the CSSR influenced the peace process. Importantly, it also illustrates how the CSSR transformed the participants and third-party mediators themselves, suggesting that it shapes the conflict and peace-making landscape beyond the high-level political process. It argues that the CSSR had a transformative impact on both the attitudes and behavioural patterns of the participants themselves, while also challenging the dominant representations of the conflict that strengthen the power of conflict actors and shape international action. Even if the UN failed to successfully mediate a political agreement, the paper demonstrates how an inclusive and more independent mechanism can inject the logic of civicness. This can be seen in the design of the Constitutional Committee, in actions taken to broaden inclusivity, and in the changing discourse of political actors.

This paper applies the three logics of public authority – the political marketplace, moral populism and civicness – to the case of Afghanistan in 2001–2013. It shows how the logic of the political marketplace offers an apt interpretation of the Karzai regime, while the logic of moral populism is more relevant as a way of categorizing the Taliban. Based on a civil society dialogue project, the paper discusses the way that civil society actors characterize the situation and envisage a logic of civicness. The paper argues that the mutually reinforcing nature of the two dominant logics explains pervasive and rising insecurity that has been exacerbated by external interventions. The implication of the argument is that security requires a different logic of authority that could underpin legitimate and inclusive institutions.

This paper applies the three logics of public authority – the political marketplace, moral populism and civicness – to the case of Afghanistan in 2001–2013. It shows how the logic of the political marketplace offers an apt interpretation of the Karzai regime, while the logic of moral populism is more relevant as a way of categorizing the Taliban. Based on a civil society dialogue project, the paper discusses the way that civil society actors characterize the situation and envisage a logic of civicness. The paper argues that the mutually reinforcing nature of the two dominant logics explains pervasive and rising insecurity that has been exacerbated by external interventions. The implication of the argument is that security requires a different logic of authority that could underpin legitimate and inclusive institutions.

This memo summarises research on local agreements and community level mediation undertaken by the Conflict Research Programme (CRP) in five sites – DRC, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria in collaboration with the Political Settlements Research Programme (PSRP) and the Center for Security Studies in Zurich, Switzerland. By 'local', we refer to any type of agreement other than a top-down centralised national agreement, which has been the main focus of the international community until recently.