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Multi-Storey Library

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Decoding Negotiation Systems in the Middle East and North Africa: A Framework for Analysis

How do you navigate a conflict system with shifting alliances and hidden opportunities? Discover a new negotiation framework tailored to the complexities of the Middle East and North Africa.

Regional conflicts are becoming increasingly complex due to the  involvement of an ever more numerous and interconnected set of actors. Previous research has focused on regional conflict systems and has generated theoretical approaches such as the regional security complex paradigm. However, when complex, multifaceted, seemingly contradictory webs of relationships are spun in a region, new tools are needed to analyze and evaluate them.


Drawing on previous regional conflict models, we propose a negotiation-oriented framework of regional conflict analysis that explores the type and intensity of relationships between state and nonstate actors in a conflict system. We offer a seven-step scale of relationships (ranging from ally to active armed opponent) that  represents a novel contribution to the methodological efforts to  analyze relationships in conflict systems. This framework brings to light the relational imbalance of the MENA region and has the potential to contextualize for negotiators and mediators the complex system of conflicts within, and possibly outside, the region.


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