Description
In recent years, peace process observers have begun to question the efficacy, durability, and centrality of internationally-mediated Track I peace processes to resolve ‘national’ conflicts - sometimes phrased as confronting ‘the end of the big peace?’ (Buchhold et. al, 2018). This has coincided with a renewed focus on deal-making fora below the national, with policymakers turning to local peace agreements as potential avenues for bypassing failed or stalled transitions mediated by international processes (Bell et. al, 2021), including through implementation of discreet deals brokered between multiple local actors. However, literature on peace agreement implementation often focuses on the successes and failures of Comprehensive Peace Agreements between a national government and a predominant non-state armed actor, and it is yet unclear how existing approaches to understanding and measuring implementation can apply to complex, fragmented conflicts with multiple and (at times) competing peace processes.
In this paper we explore the multiplicity of peace processes in Yemen, where local peace processes are constantly in flux, using the PA-X Peace Agreement Database to compare implementation mechanisms in peace agreements across multiple levels in fragmented conflicts. We examine the ways that local, national, and inter-national actors conceptualise implementation and notions of progress, how they understand different processes to relate to each other. We suggest that considering ‘big peace’ agreement implementation in isolation overlooks the ways that local deal making can undermine internationally-supported transitions. We also contend that this underestimates the potential for national agreements to inadvertently foster political opportunism and expediency among Track I actors, the implementation of which can create openings for local peace to be disrupted by national agendas, destabilizing carefully brokered and fragile local pockets of peace.
