Talking the Walk

Peace, Inclusivity and Depolarisation

Abstract

Warning calls about increasing polarisation have been a mainstay of political science and political reporting in the past decade. At pernicious levels, polarisation has the capacity to erode democratic institutions or escalate into violence. However, depolarisation – the reversal of pernicious polarisation – is possible, but research on the phenomenon is in its infancy. Meanwhile, peace research in the last two decades has found a robust link between inclusivity during a peace process, and the durability of the resulting peace. To bridge these two fields, this paper combines quantitative data on inclusivity in peace agreements with data on political polarisation. A combination of logistic regressions and fixed effects models are used to explore the question: How does the inclusivity of a peace process affect post-conflict (de)polarisation? Some preliminary conclusions are reached based on the strongest results. The inclusion of women and disabled people in the text of a peace agreement consistently and statistically significantly correlates with a net decrease in polarisation. Less consistently statistically significant, the inclusion of families correlates with a net decrease in polarisation, and the inclusion of racial groups with a net increase in polarisation. The inclusion of refugees correlates with a statistically significant increase to the odds of depolarisation, yet simultaneously correlates with a statistically significant increase to short-term polarisation levels. Also looked at are inclusion in aggregate, and the inclusion of religious groups, civil society, social class, political parties, children, men, the elderly, and traditional leadership, but these results show no clear, consistent patterns.