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Can private citizens serve as self-appointed peacemakers and influence diplomatic relations between parties to a conflict? The book analyzes the international phenomenon of private peace entrepreneurs (PPEs) – private citizens with no official authority who initiate channels of communication with official representatives from the other side of a conflict in order to promote a conflict resolution process. It combines theoretical discussion with historical analysis, examining four cases from different conflicts: Norman Cousins and Suzanne Massie in the Cold War, Brendan Duddy in the Northern Ireland conflict, and Uri Avnery in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The book defines the phenomenon, examines the resources and activities of private peace entrepreneurs and their impact on the official diplomacy, and explores the conditions under which they can play an effective role in peacemaking processes.
The book highlights the ability of private individual citizens – who are not politicians, diplomats, or military leaders – to operate as influential actors in international politics in general, and in peace processes in particular. Although the history of internal and international conflicts reveals many cases of private peace entrepreneurs, some of whom played a critical role in conflict resolution efforts, the literature has yet to give this important phenomenon the attention it deserves. The book aims to fill this gap, contributing to the scholarship on conflict and peace, diplomacy, and civil society. It also makes a historiographical contribution by shedding light on figures excluded from the history textbooks, and it offers an alternative perspective to traditional narratives concerning the diplomatic history of the conflicts.
inclusion in the proposed analytical framework. Towards that end, the framework combines elements from the literature on international relations, diplomacy, and negotiations with elements from the literature on social movements and activism in general, and in the field of world politics and peace in particular. Three important diplomatic practices, well known in the scholarship on negotiations, deserve special attention for their relevance to the discussion on PPEs: mediation, backchannel diplomacy, and use of a special envoy. Many PPEs strive to
’s ambassador to Washington (1962−86). However, the British also engaged in backchannel diplomacy with Rowley Cromer (UK ambassador to Washington, 1971–74) first acting as the main liaison, and Trend gradually assuming the role from 1971/2 onwards.41 Other key individuals for the management of US–UK relations included Rowley Cromer, Denis Greenhill, Thomas Brimelow, Richard Sykes and Charles Powell.42 Cromer was the former governor of the Bank of England, and had acted as an unofficial adviser to the Conservative Party during the Labour governments of Harold Wilson (1964