Daring to differ? Strategies of inclusion in peacemaking

Inclusion to build legitimacy

The first rationale for inclusion is based on the assumption that broadening participation in a peace process will make resulting peace agreements more legitimate, by ensuring the process is representative of a broader set of identities and interests. A version of this rationale is already evident in the literature on power-sharing, focusing on ending violence by including major conflict parties and distributing power among them (Binningsbø, 2013). Power-sharing research initially focused narrowly on the role of armed actors and political elites, seeing elite cooperation and elite bargains as an important precondition for peace (Lindemann, 2008, 2011; Mehler, 2009; Norris, 2008). The question of inclusion further focused on so-called ‘spoilers’: actors that can derail agreements if excluded (Blaydes and De Maio, 2010; Nilsson, 2008; Nilsson and Söderberg Kovacs, 2011; Reiter, 2016). From this perspective, horizontal inclusion of all – usually armed – actors ensures that incentives are not created for those left out to destabilize an agreement (Raffoul, 2019). Beyond ending violence, power-sharing agreements also aim to build more legitimate political arrangements by distributing power among and between conflict parties and their constituencies (Hartzell and Hoddie, 2003, 2015; Hoddie, 2014; Spears, 2000). However, the scope of inclusion is now usually extended beyond armed elite actors, based on the argument that broadened participation makes peace processes more legitimate and agreements more likely to be implemented (Bell and O’Rourke, 2007; Nilsson, 2012; Paffenholz, 2010; Wanis-St. John, 2008). From this vantage point, civil society plays an especially important role in making peace processes more transparent and holding conflict parties accountable (Nilsson, 2012; Zanker, 2014), and has been found to increase the durability of peace, particularly in non-democratic societies (Nilsson 2012).

Inclusion as a means to build legitimacy also features in debates about the importance of national or local ownership in political transitions to peace (Chesterman, 2007). The principle of ownership builds on the assumption that the ‘success of any reform process depends on the extent to which it is perceived as legitimate by those who have to live with the outcomes’ (Donais, 2009: 121), and seeks to reconcile international peacebuilding agendas with the participation of local actors in order to build legitimate, ‘popular peace’ (Roberts, 2011). For mediators, this raises the question of which actors need to be included in order to reach legitimate peace agreements (MSN, 2013a: 4). However, more critical scholars argue that the discourse of local ownership is largely used as a tool to legitimize international activities in conflict-affected contexts, pointing to the symbolic and discursive value of calls for broader inclusion and participation (von Billerbeck, 2016; Kappler and Lemay-Hérbert, 2015). As we demonstrate below, calls for inclusion that aim to build legitimacy through broad participation generally use open and vague framings of the included, leaving their translation into tangible policy options open. Legitimacy-seeking inclusion is thus unable to identify the antagonistic differences at the core of the armed conflict. However, given the fact that seats at the negotiation table are limited, any efforts to make peace processes more broadly inclusive will face the challenge of reconciling the positions of more narrowly defined actor groups.

Inclusion to empower and protect

Inclusion is also advanced in order to empower and protect particular groups, based on the assumption that building peace requires strengthening the position of specific actors that have suffered in conflict, or who can be champions of peace. Their inclusion aims at protecting their rights, enhancing their political voice, or addressing previous harm. This rationale frames the included in closed terms, as specific groups with a common identity trait, such as gender, language or ethnicity and thus accentuates and fixes these. In relation to ethnic, linguistic or religious groups, scholars have argued for their inclusion in peace processes and in favour of provisions for group rights in peace agreements as crucial for conflict resolution (Reuter, 2012; Wise, 2018), building on broader debates about the politics of recognition (Taylor, 1994) and minority rights (Kymlicka, 1996). Critics have argued that these approaches overlook the nature of groups as mutable social formations, noting that measures aimed at empowerment can entrench identities and conflict cleavages (Bose, 2002).

Empowerment and protection have also been particularly prominent rationales in the context of the inclusion of women in peacemaking, as outlined in the UN’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. Here, too, scholars have highlighted the agenda’s implicit essentialization of women as both vulnerable and peaceful (Davies and True, 2019). However, essentialized framings can also be used to advance changes in the distribution of power in post-conflict contexts (Porter, 2007, 2013). As such, the case for pushing for the inclusion of groups with specific identity traits can be made by drawing on Spivak’s concept of ‘strategic essentialism’, whereby differences within a group are strategically downplayed for the sake of an emancipatory political project (Spivak, 1988). In fact, much of the women’s empowerment discourse has focused on vulnerabilities to sexual and gender-based violence. Women have been portrayed as victims of war in need of protection. The rationale for inclusion then is to counteract women’s vulnerability through increasing their role in peace processes (Väyrynen, 2010: 147). While the view of women as peaceful victims, often reproduced in arguments for their inclusion in peacemaking, has empowered women to mobilize politically, it also reaffirms traditional gender roles that marginalize women in political life (Aharoni, 2017: 311–312; see also Väyrynen, 2010), with possible disempowering effects (Porter, 2007: 74). Efforts to use inclusion as a vehicle to empower and protect have thus marked specific differences through closed terms, in support of the particular struggles of essentialized groups.

Inclusion to transform relationships

Inclusion can be advanced to transform and rebuild relations between groups, as has been discussed in the conflict transformation literature (Lederach, 1997, 2005). The latter views conflict as a consequence of contradictions in the structure of society that can be transcended through a change in relationships. Inclusive processes thus aim to build a community ‘in which the past division of winners versus losers, victims versus perpetrators, “us” and “them” are overcome’; however, without ‘erasing or evading differences between people’ (Mani, 2005: 512) – highlighting that peace ultimately must make space for agonistic relationships. As captured in Galtung’s ‘triangle of violence’, this approach is interested in the interaction between direct, cultural and structural forms of violence (Chetail, 2009: 1). It also builds on development research and ‘dependency-thinking’, which advanced concepts of positive peace that focus on the material and social relationships between conflict stakeholders (Götschel, 2009: 92–93) and rejects fixed understandings of conflict party identities and interests. Instead, scholars highlight how interests depend on social relationships, arguing for peacebuilding to be ‘responsive to the experiential and subjective realities shaping people’s perspectives and needs’ (Lederach, 1997: 24). Lederach’s integrated framework for peacebuilding considers the visible issue in the context of the wider relationship among conflict parties, as well as the systems and sub-systems in which these relationships are located. For instance, conflicts underpinned by a relationship of prejudice or bias should be analysed and tackled as part of a broader system of social structures that create and perpetuate racism (Lederach, 1997). This approach requires peacemakers to make sense of the web of relationships in which conflict occurs, before aiming at social change through rebuilding the social spaces that give people a sense of identity (Lederach, 2005). While not radically deconstructing actor categories, inclusion can nonetheless address cultures of domination and oppressive power structures, by working on ‘culturally sanctioned forms of oppression, whether related to caste, ethnic identity, sexuality or ability’ (Francis, 2004: 7). The emphasis on relationality is chosen in order to facilitate a change of the social and cultural structures that underpin conflict. From this point of view, inclusion can only play a meaningful role in peace processes if practised in a way that accounts for the relational constructedness of identity, and aims at the transformation of antagonistic into agonistic relationships.

Open framings: Voices, stakeholders, and civil society

The UN Guidance for Effective Mediation (2012), the UN’s cornerstone document on mediation, defines ‘inclusivity’ as referring to ‘the extent and manner in which the views and needs of conflict parties and other stakeholders are represented and integrated into the process and outcome of a mediation effort’ (MSU, 2012: 11). The emphasis is on inclusion beyond the conflict parties, and the argument grounded in inclusion as a path to a broad-based buy-in to peace. The guidance stresses that ‘it cannot be assumed that conflict parties have legitimacy with, or represent, the wider public’; mediation efforts limited to the main conflict parties may thus create perverse incentives for violence, while civil society actors can increase the legitimacy of a peace process (MSU, 2012: 11).

References to inclusion with the aim of increasing the legitimacy of peace processes predominantly employ open framings, for instance when reference is made to the participation of ‘stakeholders’, ‘voices’ or ‘perspectives’. References to civil society inclusion are often grounded in arguments about strengthening a peace process’s legitimacy (UNSG, 2012: 25–26), or local ownership (UNSG, 2012: 50), as a means of including a variety of perspectives (UNSG, 2012: 48), ensuring that grievances are addressed (UNSG, 2012: 101), or exerting influence on conflict parties (UNSC, 2014: 6). Alongside ‘civil society’, the term ‘stakeholders’ is also dominant. The UNSG report on Strengthening the Role of Mediation, for instance, makes several references to stakeholder inclusion, arguing that it ‘creates mechanisms to include all perspectives in the process’ (UNSG, 2012: 20), and for ‘cultivating and exercising ownership’ (UNSG, 2012: 50). Interestingly, references to ‘stakeholders’ are largely absent from UNSC and UNGA resolutions. References to stakeholders are much more pronounced in mediation guidance documents, which establish a link between stakeholder inclusion and more sustainable and legitimate processes based on national or local ownership (MSN, 2013b; MSU, 2012: 12; UNDPA and UNEP, 2015: 10), establishing broader buy-in (UNDPA and UNEP, 2015: 11), creating room for a diversity of ideas (MSN, 2013b: 77), including all or different perspectives (MSU, 2012: 4, 10), and ensuring a greater likelihood of conflict causes being addressed (UNDPA and UNEP, 2015: 6). Open terminology that refers to the need for broad-based inclusion of stakeholders, voices and perspectives is thus mainly based on instrumental arguments, which claim that broad-based inclusion will increase the legitimacy of the process and will lead to more sustainable results. However, because open framings brush over difference, they do not help to answer the question of who, in particular, needs to be included in order to achieve a peaceful settlement of conflict.

Closed framings: Women, youth and religious actors

The dominant framing across all document types, however, are closed framings, and, within this, specifically references to women. This is unsurprising given the number of UNSC resolutions that have been adopted in the past two decades as part of the UN’s WPS agenda, which has been accompanied by significant international advocacy efforts to promote women’s inclusion in peacemaking (de Almagro, 2018; True and Wiener, 2019). Our interviews with practitioners similarly suggest a widespread equation of ‘inclusion’ with ‘the inclusion of women’ among mediation professionals. The most well-known resolution on women’s inclusion, UNSC resolution 1325, establishes a relationship between the ‘maintenance and promotion of international peace security’ and the ‘protection and full participation’ of women and girls (UNSC, 2000). Based on the claim that ‘civilians, particularly women and children, account for the vast majority of those adversely affected by armed conflict’, the resolution suggests a range of measures aimed at the increased participation of women in conflict prevention, management and resolution. Women are thus conceived as victims, defined in opposition to those parties in conflict that commit gender-based violence. The resolution also explicitly stresses the ‘special needs’ of women and calls on all parties to armed conflict to protect women and girls from gender-based violence. Rather than having an empowering effect, the essentializing WPS discourse places women in a passive position: they remain victims, not adversaries. A strong emphasis on women’s participation is also visible in reports by the UNSG. The Strengthening the Role of Mediation (2012) report discusses UN-led mediation activities, and documents how mediators have aimed to include women therein, for example through the employment of gender advisors (UNSG, 2012: 33), the provision of funds to support women’s participation in peace panels and consultations with women (UNSG, 2012: 122). These efforts are built on the assumption that women are required in order to address the gendered dimensions of conflict, as ‘women’ and ‘gender expertise’ are almost always mentioned jointly without differentiation. Importantly, this essentialism is not strategic in its effort to empower women as a social group, but seems to associate gender expertise with women as a fixed category, while offering technical fixes to women’s struggle for access to political power.

In addition to women, other closed terms, such as ‘youth’ or ‘religious groups’ also feature in the policy documents, albeit far less prominently. These are more strongly represented in the mediation guidance documents than in the international normative framework. In contrast to women, the participation of these groups is not justified by protection or empowerment rationales. While ‘youth’ and ‘religious groups’ are often subsumed under civil society (UNSG, 2017: 28), in some cases they are singled out as actors with a distinct role, for instance when ‘youth’ are identified as possible spoilers to an agreement (MSN, 2013b: 47) – which speaks to their potential role as antagonists in the conflict. As the interviews discussed below illustrate, references to different closed categories in policy documents can lead to competing claims for inclusion in light of the ultimately limited seats available at a negotiation table.

Relational framings: Marginalized and vulnerable versus powerful actors

Finally, relational framings feature relatively weakly in the policy documents. Their use is largely confined to mediation guidance and a few sections of UNSG reports. One plausible explanation for this pattern is that relational thinking stems mainly from the practice of mediation, and enters the policy discourse via reporting on best practices and lessons learned. The most striking examples of the use of a relational term are references to ‘marginalized’ groups or actors, sometimes in relation to the more open term ‘stakeholder’ (UNDPA and UNEP, 2015: 34; UNSG, 2012: 9). Other relational terms, such as ‘minorities’, ‘powerful actors’ or ‘vulnerable groups’ are largely absent from UNSC and UNGA resolutions, while featuring strongly in mediation guidance. The latter discuss marginalization, for example in relation to decisionmaking in negotiation processes, which should safeguard marginalized interests vis-à-vis ‘the most powerful stakeholders’ (MSN, 2013b: 76; UNDPA and UNEP, 2015: 34). While sometimes reference is broadly made to ‘social, demographic, religious and regional minority identities’ (UNDPA, 2017: 10), some statements limit the focus to specific groups such as women (UNDPA, 2017: 10; UNITAR and UNDPA, 2010: 14), indigenous people (UNDPA and UNEP, 2015: 8, 36) or youth (UNDPA, 2017: 10; UNDPA and UNEP, 2015: 8, 36), thus merging relational and closed terms.

Relational framings thus situate the objects of inclusion within their social and political relationships, and often hint at structural inequalities and power imbalances as underlying causes of armed conflict. Importantly, they require either the identification of binary pairs, such as the marginalized and the powerful (or marginalizing), or the location of the included in a web of relationships characterized by difference. They thus ask to identify the antagonisms in need of transformation, resulting in the combination of closed and relational terminology employed with a view to transforming conflict. The focus on the relationship between conflict parties is complemented by an open conception of the community in which conflict transformation has to take place. This reasoning can also take instrumental forms: inclusive mediation is portrayed as a prerequisite to prevent ‘marginalized groups [. . .] end[ing] up with the desire to undermine any agreements reached’ (MSN, 2013b: 75). This is particularly visible in statements about the necessity of including marginalized regions in which armed conflict has occurred, such as Darfur (MSN, 2013b: 50).

Complementary or conflicting framings of inclusion?

The review of international peacemaking policy demonstrates a tension between efforts to empower and protect specific groups, which requires naming and defining them, and the urge to stress their sociopolitical construction, and thus malleability. The latter would allow for a context-sensitive and dynamic practice of inclusion that avoids the pitfalls of essentialization, while the former may be necessary to combat the longstanding exclusion of certain actors from peacemaking and politics more broadly. The policy documents at times acknowledge this tension. For instance, the UN Guidance on Gender and Inclusive Mediation Strategies recognizes that ‘it may be difficult to engage interest groups that are not easily defined or lack clear leadership, such as social movements, youth, and women’s groups’ while at the same time asking mediators to ‘put a premium on stakeholder mapping, planning and management of the process’ (UNDPA, 2017: 21). Interviews with mediation practitioners indicate that such stakeholder mapping is often beyond their capacities, leading them to fall back on inclusion strategies that rely on closed terms and a ‘box-ticking’ mentality. Efforts to avoid essentializing understandings of the included are also evident in the guidance, which stresses that the ‘call for inclusion [. . .] is not limited to women, but applies to social, demographic, religious and regional minority identities as well as to youth and to organized civil society and professional organizations’ (UNDPA, 2017: 6). However, the document justifies the focus on the ‘gender dimension’ by reference to the fact that ‘women and girls tend to be identified first and foremost as victims of violence’, which is why ‘rights-based attention to their needs is of paramount importance’ (UNDPA, 2017: 6–7). It also argues that while ‘women are frequently part of movements demanding change’, they ‘tend to be excluded from peace and transition processes’, and further makes the case that women’s inclusion can have broader positive effects as it is ‘more likely to generate broad national ownership and support’, by expanding ‘the range of domestic constituencies engaged in a peace process’ (UNDPA, 2017: 8).

This and other policy documents are thus characterized by an intermingling of two functional arguments. On the one hand, specific groups such as women merit particular protection, which their inclusion in peacemaking is posited to enhance. On the other hand, these groups are included for their substantive contributions to peacemaking and in order to contribute to broader participation. However, it often remains unclear how exactly inclusion, practised in open or closed framings, relates to the antagonisms that fuel violence. In practice, promoting broad-based inclusion through closed categories can highlight specific struggles, but will likely fall short of accounting for the most important fault lines that run through society. In contrast, relational framings that focus on the material, social and cultural relations between groups may transcend this tension and offer an avenue for context-sensitive and transformative inclusion practices.

Operationalizing an inclusive peace for all?

While most conflict parties tend to understand inclusion as confined to those who bear arms, for mediators, inclusion beyond armed actors holds the possibility of securing a more lasting peace by avoiding elite deals that create incentives for future violence. Some mediators also consider the purpose of broadening inclusion to be about fostering public support for a peace process, in which case they concede that often a merely symbolic form of inclusion is practised, culminating in the ‘photo opportunity’, for instance with members of religious groups, civil society or women. This is because the political realities of peace processes make broad-based inclusion an ideal, rather than a realistic objective. Some mediators bemoan the fact that the UN normative framework and guidance documents ignore these realities, making inclusion appear like a largely rhetorical aspiration by the UN, rather than a method employed strategically to achieve a political settlement.

While mediators’ long-term goal may be to build legitimate peace and inclusive political arrangements, this matters less in the short-term politics of peacemaking, and might even impede the mediators’ priority to end violence, requiring first and foremost that armed actors are brought to the negotiation table. Importantly, broad-based inclusion suffers additionally from the weakening of liberal approaches, and the shrinking of space for civil society across the world. Recent attempts at broadening inclusion to women and civil society in UN-mediated peace processes for Syria and Yemen have demonstrated that little room exists for ambitious normative projects (Kapur, 2017). Nonetheless, a common mediator strategy to foster inclusion is to present pragmatic arguments to conflict parties, focusing on how enlarging representation at the table beyond the conflict parties, or diversifying their own delegations, can enhance their legitimacy and strengthen ties to their constituents, increase public support for the talks and strengthen the legacy of the process.

However, the inherently context-specific nature of peacemaking is in tension with generic formulations in policy documents that frame the included in open terms, such as ‘stakeholders’ or ‘civil society’, leaving mediators with difficult choices in operationalizing inclusion. In practice, stakeholders need to be mapped out – a task that requires time, resources and deep context knowledge, none of which are guaranteed features in mediation. And while the term ‘civil society’ continues to convey a sense of impartiality, in practice included civil society actors have political opinions that more often than not lie on one side of an antagonistic divide. In the end, political and operational pressures on mediation teams often lead to inclusion efforts following a ‘standard formula’ of consultations, giving voice predominantly to representatives of urban-based, professionalized civil society organizations. Thus, calls for broad-based inclusion remain largely rhetorical and difficult to operationalize, and bear little potential for conflict transformation.

Box-ticking exercises: An inclusive peace for few?

Mediation professionals commonly speak about the included in closed terms, most prominently in relation to a prioritization of women’s inclusion, and to a lesser extent to that of youth. This reflects the significant emphasis on women’s participation in peace processes since the passing of UNSC resolution 1325. The ready association of ‘inclusion’ with ‘women’ among practitioners is also facilitated by institutionalized UN mechanisms, such as the MSU’s Standby Team of Senior Mediation Advisers, which includes an expert on ‘gender and inclusion’, or the direct support provided by UN Women to women’s inclusion in various ongoing peace processes. However, the use of closed terms also appears to be a fallback option in light of the difficulties of operationalizing an open framing of the included. This is because without in-depth knowledge of a given context, as one interviewee put it, ‘it is impossible to see who is missing from the table’ (Interview 1). Pre-defined actor groups based on gender or age simplify this intricate task. Women are an identifiable group: outsiders can easily count the number of women in a process, which then serves as a proxy for its inclusiveness. Several interviewees noted the danger of developing a ‘box-ticking’ mentality around inclusion, which reduces sensitivity to the conflict context, potentially obscures important fault lines and can turn inclusion into a tokenistic exercise.

Inclusion strategies that apply closed framings also presume an essentialized group interest. For mediation practitioners, the rationale for women’s inclusion corresponds with arguments presented in UN policy: to enhance women’s voices and foster more diverse participation in order to advance women’s rights and combat sexual and gender-based violence. Concrete UN mediation support activities in the realm of women’s inclusion have empowerment at their core, typically involving capacity building and networking to prepare women for upcoming negotiations. However, respondents noted that the empowerment rhetoric often falls short: the mere presence of a small number of traditionally excluded individuals at the negotiation table can backfire, if they are unable or unwilling to make their voices heard.

Mediators’ experiences also demonstrate that concerns about essentializing women’s (and other) identities are warranted. The above-mentioned interventions in support of women’s inclusion obscure women’s heterogeneous identities and create erroneous assumptions about their apolitical and ‘independent’ nature. Conflict parties may strategically exploit the inclusion discourse to place loyal women representatives at the table, a problem mentioned by several interviewees who spoke of ‘regime women’ or ‘proxy women’ included in negotiations (Interview 2; Interview 3). This suggests that inclusion strategies that rely on closed framings risk overlooking some of the most important cleavages in a conflict, if they are the result of empowerment agendas that focus on a single identity trait. Moreover, inclusion by fixed actor category tends to deny the included the choice to speak on matters unrelated to their group membership. The resulting dynamic was described in interviews as one where, for example, included women ‘fail to perform’ the role expected of them by inclusion advocates, since they sometimes even take ‘regressive’ positions on women’s rights (Interview 2). The same can be said for those included by ethnicity or region: identity traits can be co-opted in order to occupy seats on a minority ticket, while advancing other agendas. This suggests that a strategic essentialism ‘from the top’ is likely to fail, as it typically overlooks the complex interplay of the identities and interests of those included or excluded from a given process.

Finally, highlighting the ways in which inclusion as currently practised in UN peacemaking struggles to overcome existing power relations that shape peace and security more broadly, the use of closed framings can lead to a competition for inclusion between fragmented interest groups that complicates peacemaking efforts. For instance, the latest trend to highlight the inclusion of youth has raised fears that representatives of ‘quota’ civil society groups may no longer engage in joint agendas, but rather compete in a struggle for seats at the table. Similarly, in contexts such as the UN-mediated Syria talks, calls for a separate women’s delegation were met with fears that this could undermine the negotiation position of the political opposition. In sum, peacemaking strategies that frame the included in closed terms may fulfil international demands for inclusion and support the interests of the respective essentialized group. However, in practice they often fail to reach the intended empowering effects, risking instead to become tokenistic or instrumentalized forms of inclusion. While resulting from global struggles fought in the international policy arena, they often correspond with local fault lines, as is the case in the struggle for women’s empowerment. However, when practitioners aim to implement international guidelines through the inclusion of selected groups, they are ill-equipped to ensure that the multiple other differences in need of accommodation in a political settlement are acknowledged at the negotiation table.

Towards relational inclusion

A relational approach aims to account for the complexity and intersectionality of actors’ multiple identities, while paying attention to their potential strategic essentialization in peace processes. Importantly, relationality requires not thinking about the included as homogeneous actor groups, but moving the focus to the space between actors, asking how their multiple relationships can be transformed through peacemaking. Such an approach considers not only gender relations, for example, but includes a woman’s position in existing power relations related to class, race and ethnicity. Many mediators acknowledge the tensions arising from open and closed framings of inclusion, and aspire to more tailored, context-sensitive inclusion strategies built on thorough conflict analyses that can account for the cleavages and exclusionary fault lines of a particular conflict, be they regional, linguistic, ethnic, age or gender related. Rather than engaging in strategic essentialism ‘from the top’, or advocating for a de-politicized notion of broad inclusion, a relational inclusion strategy can sharpen mediators’ awareness of the power struggles that characterize peace processes, and of how identities are re-formed and re-shaped at the negotiation table.

Relational inclusion means asking less about who should be included, than what antagonistic relations need to be transformed. It sheds light on the multiple sociopolitical contestations that underpin peace processes, by building on the vision of an agonistic peace. As Shinko put it, the ‘concept of agonism encompasses a range of contestational political strategies through which exclusions, marginalisations, and states of domination can be problematised, resisted and possibly altered’ (Shinko, 2008: 476). Relational inclusion can thus be understood as a platform that enables antagonistic contestation at the negotiation table (Strömbom, 2019: 9). This may require moving away from a notion of formal inclusion at the table that puts emphasis on the physical presence of a group representative voicing the seemingly homogeneous interests of a bounded constituency, towards a notion of inclusion that focuses on the themes and narratives underpinning the antagonistic relationships. Relational inclusion is less concerned with who has a voice at the table, than with what this voice expresses, which relationships it invokes and what resources it offers to move these relationships from enemy to adversary. Relationality thus invites us to think beyond the ideal-typical peace table composed of actors with bounded identities that define their interests, rights and needs, and move towards complex, dynamic mechanisms of negotiation that put on the table those antagonistic differences that need to be accommodated in the political settlement.

To support an agonistic peace, mediators thus need to embrace the ontological complexity of social relationships that underpin both conflict and peace, while maintaining an epistemological reflexivity that helps them to clearly observe their own role in bringing specific identity traits to the fore. The approach taken in this article – shedding light on the relationship between inclusion strategies and framings of the included – can provide a starting point, as it helps to understand how specific differences have become more prominent than others, due the existing policy and practice of inclusion. In practice, however, relational inclusion means to grapple with the multiple framings that bring differences at the negotiation table to the fore, and through which conflict parties and stakeholders dare to differ in the political struggles that characterize peace processes.