Paper short abstract:

This paper describes formalized patterns of political settlement bargaining identified from sub-state peace agreements pertaining to the conflicts in Nepal, the Philippines, Sudan and Yemen, thus, providing a contrast to the common research focus on national level political settlement bargaining.

Paper long abstract:

Following in the footsteps of international peace mediation, research commonly focuses on how peace is brokered at the level of the national political settlement. This contrasts with a growing empirical richness of peace agreements brokered at a sub-national level that aim at settling conflicts often at the margins of the respective nation state. However, what are the ingredients for peace in sub-state conflicts? While we may assume that these ingredients, along with the negotiation process and the involved stakeholders follow different patterns compared to the national level, we know little about what the particulars in sub-national agreements actually look like. Against the background of the new PA-X Peace Agreement Database, which encompasses approximately 1500 written peace agreements from 1990 to the present day, this paper engages with four conflicts that have a particularly strong record of sub-state agreements: Nepal, the Philippines, Sudan and Yemen. Based on a content analysis of available sub-national peace agreements from these four contexts, the paper will identify and describe the formalised patterns of political settlement bargaining at the margins.