International Negotiation: Call for Papers

Call for Papers

for a Future Special Issue of International Negotiation: A Journal of Theory and Practice --

“A Victor’s Peace for Ukraine? Possibilities for Mediation, Negotiation, and Peacebuilding”

 

International Negotiation: A Journal of Theory and Practice is pleased to announce a call for papers for a special issue that seeks to explore and re-assess the concept of a victor’s peace in the context of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. We seek contributions from different methodological angles, including conceptual, empirical, and historical papers about the war in Ukraine or other pertinent examples, which explore ideas of victory and peace and can contribute to debates about what a sustainable and legitimate peace might look like in Ukraine.

In the past three decades, research on peace negotiations and peacebuilding processes has focused predominantly on civil wars and intrastate conflicts, including much work on negotiated settlements embodying the values of compromise and entailing power-sharing and transitional justice measures. Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine brought both interstate wars and wars of aggression back to scholarly and public attention. The war also provoked deep fault lines in the peacebuilding and peace research community about appropriate responses to Russian aggression, engendering differing calls for peace (for Ukrainian responses to these debates, see e.g. Ukraine Peace Appeal or the Feminist Manifesto on the right to resist.) For many scholars, observers, and peacebuilding practitioners, this has necessarily led to a questioning of the established paradigms and a call for rethinking ideas of peacebuilding, mediation, and negotiation.

In this special issue, we seek contributions that explore the urgent question of what a victor’s peace, in the form of a Ukrainian victory against Russian aggression, might entail. We invite scholars and practitioners of mediation, negotiation, dialogue, peacebuilding, transitional justice, and related fields to contribute original, high-quality papers that will broaden our understanding of these questions.

Potential topics for this special issue include, but are not limited to:

·       Public perceptions of possible endings to this war in Ukraine, Russia, and internationally

·       The role of narratives in this war and in potential peace, in particular in the context of discussions about concessions and narratives of victory

·       Security guarantees and commitment problems in the search for peace between Ukraine and Russia

·       Feminist approaches to, and understandings of, peace and victory in Ukraine

·       Accountability for war crimes and their connection to healing and conflict transformation, as well as the balancing of accountability with the negotiability of a potential agreement

·       Public policies towards minorities, IDPs, Russian-speakers, and Ukrainians with pro-Russian political views in a post-war Ukraine

·       Lessons learned from, and legacies of, past peace processes, including the Minsk process

·       Analyses of ongoing mediation and negotiations efforts and their potential

·       Determinants of domestic and international support for continued fighting vs. settlement

·       Inclusive or people-centred Transitional Justice policies for Ukraine, including the tensions between legalistic approaches and non-judicial ones such as truth-telling and memorialisation

·       Punitive or restorative measures, including reparations or trials, and their impact on the chances for sustainable peace and/or conflict transformation

·       Other historical or theoretical explorations of the concept of a ‘victor’s peace’ and its legacy

 

We encourage submissions that explore these themes with applicability to the case of Ukraine, and we especially welcome contributions from Ukrainian scholars and practitioners based in or outside Ukraine.

Submission Process and Guidelines:

Authors interested in contributing to this special issue should submit a tentative title and abstract by 31 August 2023 to the Special Issue Editors at dana.landau@swisspeace.ch. Abstracts should be 300-400 words and include the purpose of the study, the methodology used, the relevance and implications of the study in relation to the theme of the special issue.

Following an initial review, authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit full manuscripts. Please note that all full manuscripts will undergo a peer review process, and acceptance for publication is not guaranteed. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the special issue guest editors or the editorial team.

·       Special Issue Guest Editors: Prof. Tetiana Kyselova (National University "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy", Ukraine and swisspeace/University of Basel) and Dr. Dana Landau (swisspeace/University of Basel). Correspondence: dana.landau@swisspeace.ch

·       Tentative title and abstract submission deadline: 31 August 2023

We look forward to receiving your valuable contributions to this special issue on possibilities for mediation, negotiation, and peacebuilding in Ukraine.