Working Paper: International Peacemaking in Venezuela’s Intractable Conflict

The Fundación Carolina has published in Spanish a working paper version of the analysis we have been developing over the past year.

This is a paper that began as a Powerpoint and has been developed and filled out through presentations in the U.S., Europe and South America. It is still very much a work in progress and our hope is that making public a working paper version of it will generate discussion and feedback that we can incorporate into the final article to be published in an academic journal.

In the paper we work through some of the literature on peacemaking processes, develop a sociological understanding of how mediation can successfully reframe and reorganize a conflict and use it to review the four attempts at dialogue and negotiation that have happened since 2014. Running through our analysis is the assumption that it is normal for a serious conflict to see multiple initiatives that arise and fail, eventually being replaced by new efforts. The key is that they build upon each other rather than starting anew each time. We see this progress occurring over the course of the four processes.

We suggest that 2019 effort facilitated by Norwegian diplomats eventually stagnated in large part because each side had international sponsors that provided them with plausible alternatives to a negotiated agreement.

Special thanks to Fundación Carolina director José Antonio Sanahuja and his crack staff for translating and publishing this version.