While negotiation and mediation are central to resolving conflicts, one question often gets overlooked: Does it matter who pays for peace?
In a new paper, titled ‘Financing Peace Negotiations’, Neil Ferguson, Lea Ellmanns, Corinne von Burg, Philipp Lustenberger, and Tilman Brück examine how peace negotiations are funded, and how this shapes processes and outcomes.
Drawing on 48 interviews, they identify a set of interlinked financing challenges—informational asymmetries, misaligned incentives, and collective action problems—that can reduce efficiency during negotiations. These dynamics do not appear to materially affect outcomes once negotiations are underway but they might prevent negotiations from starting in the first place, even when peace is within reach. Identifying these challenges and their impacts constitutes an important contribution to understanding the political economy of peace processes.
Their results are available in International Negotiation.
This research was part of a project that was made possible thanks to funding from the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs FDFA.
