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This paper provides a behind-the-scenes perspective on the role played by the three branches of intelligence services that resorted under the then apartheid government, during the negotiation process that led to South Africa’s transition to a democratic state. It provides a comparative insight into how, while some people employed in the Military Intelligence and the Security Branch continued to undermine efforts towards a negotiated settlement and political reform, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) worked within a strategic vision that grasped the imperative for change and was able to guide its political principals accordingly.

• Year 2014
• Author(s) Nel Marais, Jo Davies

This paper provides insight into the role played by a part of the private sector which came to constitute a fairly unique elite in supporting the negotiation of a new political settlement in post-apartheid South Africa. To support this process, and to help engineer a political settlement that supported state-building in the interests of a peaceful political and smooth economic transformation, business steadily became both a conduit and part of negotiations, the political settlement that ensued, and the state-building efforts that followed the first democratic elections in 1994 and continue to this day. In the process, its role and position has evolved and a myriad of positive contributions have been made en route. However, persistent socio-economic deficits belie the full-bodied success of the transformation that both enabled the inclusivity of the process itself and promised prosperity and development as tangible outputs.

• Year 2015
• Author(s) Nel Marais, Jo Davies

This paper analyses the ways in which the peace process, which put an end to the armed conflict in Nepal in 2006, has sought to address popular demands for inclusive democracy. It does so by reviewing the various cycles of negotiation, codification and materialisation of political reforms since the People’s Movement of 2006, the Comprehensive Peace Accord and the (first and second) Constituent Assemblies. It focuses in particular on one area of reform that has been widely debated among political and civil society sectors, namely, state restructuring through power decentralisation. Overall, the paper develops the arguments that although there is a widespread consensus that state institutions should be made more inclusive and representative of the makeup of society, the voices of power contenders, such as the Madhesi and Janajati communities, have failed to be adequately represented in constitutional debates.

• Year 2015
• Author(s) Padma Prasad Khatiwada

This paper highlights both the historical and the present condition of power contending forces, with a particular focus on marginalised societal groups and their mobilisation (or instrumentalisation) through the Maoist Insurgency. In addition, this paper seeks to portray the inclusive measures adopted since 2006 to make the State move representative of, and responsive to, the makeup of society. The study relies on secondary information as well as data collected through key informant interviews in three regions of Nepal.

• Year 2015
• Author(s) Balkrishna Mabuhang

One of the key features of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed in 2006 by the Maoists and seven other major political parties, was the integration and rehabilitation of the Maoist combatants. After years of discussion on the written agreements and their interpretations, which were designed to facilitate the decision-making process regarding the fate of Maoist combatants, the situation of having two armies in one country finally came to an end in 2013.

• Year 2015
• Author(s) Subindra Bogati

This paper reviews the historical dynamics of the conflict and the peace process between the FMLN and the Salvadoran state, before analysing the main phases and actors of the informal and formal negotiations. The paper further seeks to determine what the Salvadoran population can possibly expect from the scope of the 1992 Accords more than two decades after they were signed by examining to what extent the needs of the marginalised groups most affected by the political, economic and social situation prior to the war have been taken into account in the accords and their implementation.

• Year 2015
• Author(s) Roberto Oswaldo López, Aída Carolina Quinteros, Carlos Guillermo Ramos

Twenty-two years after the signature of the Peace Accords, the Front has the greatest share of power in the country: first, as a legal and legitimate party that can aspire to each and every one of the popularly elected positions from which it is possible to carry out the expected changes; and secondly, as the governing party – after winning the presidential elections for a second time and having obtained several mayorships, as well as ample and at times majority presence in the Legislative Assembly.

• Year 2015
• Author(s) Carlos Guillermo Ramos, Roberto Oswaldo López, Aída Carolina Quinteros

This paper emphasises the contradiction that has emerged in Sudan and South Sudan since the two regions signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, ending their two decade long civil war. The CPA was a compromise between the risk of violent state disintegration on the one hand –should the war continue any longer, and allowing for a peaceful split on the other, should the two sides fail to agree on equitable terms for continued unity. In either case, the hope was for an end to violence through a mediated political settlement. Unfortunately, the settlement neither saved the unity of the country nor produced peace. Instead, the country broke into two and violence continued both between the two Sudans and within them.

• Year 2015
• Author(s) Jok Madut Jok

This paper is a review of the Addis Ababa-based, IGAD-led peace process. It focuses on highlighting risks which may stand in the way of an inclusive settlement, including the competition for power, the question of ethnic divides that have fueled violence, the multiplicity of armed non-state actors; how to include them in a settlement without creating a gargantuan military that could bankrupt the country and remilitarise the situation. The paper concludes that careful security arrangements, power-sharing in a government of national unity, a commitment to a national constitution, institutional reforms and a programme of national cohesion, reconciliation and justice for all, are the central pillars of a settlement, without which any peace agreement would be a mere postponement of conflict.

• Year 2015
• Author(s) Jok Madut Jok

This report looks at one of the most important yet contested political processes in South Sudan: the process of drafting a permanent constitution. It takes a social science perspective and focuses, in particular, on the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the constitution-making process. The report argues that temporary constitutions negotiated in closed settings can increase conflict levels within a country.

• Year 2015
• Author(s) Guri Storaas