Introduction

A dominant view within the field of international mediation is that the most effective type of third party to resolve civil wars is a high-leverage, manipulative power broker that can provide sticks and carrots in order to persuade the conflict parties to make peace. This dominant view, which is based on a materialist logic, overlooks the role of ideational factors. In this chapter, I argue against the dominant materialist view of mediation success by illustrating that ideational factors matter in peace processes. More specifically, I show how a preference among the Government of Sudan (GoS) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM/A) for ‘African solutions to African conflicts’ provided the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) with a high degree of legitimacy. This high degree of legitimacy allowed the IGAD mediation team to remain involved in mediation from 1994 onwards, eventually pulling the conflict parties towards peace in 2005.

Like other chapters in this volume, this chapter thus contributes to the literature on legitimacy and peace processes. Yet, rather than considering how legitimacy is the product of perceptions of local-level actors as several other chapters in this volume, this chapter is concerned with how the legitimacy of an international third party was the product of the perceptions of national-level elites. This approach also entails a departure from the Weberian understanding of legitimacy as a justification for rule, but on an international level rather than a local level. Since mediation efforts in civil wars are based on the consent of the conflict parties, the legitimacy of third parties mediating civil wars does not rest on international law or the capacity of the third party to deliver its objectives. Instead, third parties with legitimacy in these contexts can have social influence because the change in behaviour they ask of the conflict parties is congruent with the value system of both the influencing third party and the conflict parties being influenced. In civil wars in Africa, the African solutions to African conflict is a major part of this collective value system.

This chapter proceeds as follows. The next section provides a brief overview of the materialist-dominated literature on international mediation, after which I put forward a legitimacy-based perspective on mediation success. Next, I assess the merit of this legitimacy-based perspective of mediation success on the basis of the IGAD-led peace process to end the north–south Sudan civil war.