ABSTRACT
How do conflicting parties go from war to peace? Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall (2016: 15-16) have used the model of an hourglass in order to illustrate conflicts in a temporal perspective and the transition to be made from war to peace. The model helps us visualize how ‘the space for manoeuvre’ changes over time as a conflict escalates and de-escalates. It illustrates the transition to be made away from overt war, which is represented by the narrowest parts of the hourglass and characterized by limited space for manoeuvre, toward its wider parts. In relation to the changing space for manoeuvre, the authors also propose possible and suitable responses to be used during different conflict phases. Ideally, the space would widen with a ceasefire, which would then enable a process of movement toward agreement, normalization and reconciliation. In reality, however, as the authors note, the course of events is usually far less linear and unidirectional. In a broad sense, it is this transition that I explore theoretically and empirically in this book by focusing specifically on ceasefire agreements in relation to the broader dynamics of peace processes. The book can be described as a theoretically informed empirical study. This is rooted in a view that theoretical abstractions derived inductively from empirical observations can increase our general understanding of social phenomena, while theories can, at the same time, ‘serve as the mental lenses through which we view and interpret the world’ (Hauss, 2010: 23). As Höglund and Öberg (2011: 4) put it, ‘theory and empirical inquiry go hand-in-hand’, and benefit from engaging in a continuous dialogue. With this as my point of departure, my goal in this chapter is to develop a framework that facilitates the collection and analysis of data. I do so by exploring useful concepts and identifying and formulating theoretical reasoning that can be used to guide and structure the analysis. The chapter has five main objectives. First, I discuss key concepts in order to clarify how they are understood and how they will be used in the study. Second, I put the research into context by addressing notions of the state, territory and identity in a changing global context, and, more specifically, by discussing the state of the state in Asia. Here, I argue that the particular history, norms and relationships in this region has particular implications for intrastate conflicts and for efforts at conflict resolution. Third, I aim to situate the research within a broader framework of war-to-peace transitions by outlining the theoretical perspectives
that underpin the project. I also explore factors that might influence changes in violent conflicts and discuss the management of peace processes. Fourth, I outline an analytical framework for studying ceasefire agreements in relation to peace processes by presenting tools that will be used to structure the empirical analysis presented in later chapters. Fifth and finally, I discuss how I go about to conduct the empirical inquiry by using a comparative case study approach.
