Beyond the Deal? Rethinking Statebuilding Amid Conflict Fragmentation and Transactional...

Edinburgh Dialogue 2025 | Policy Brief Series

Author: Teresa Whitfield

The changing dynamics of peace processes, geo-politics and multilateralism are affecting many conflicts around the world, their prevention or their resolution. While the mediation community has focused on the need for adaptation, there has been less of a focus on the consequences for statebuilding projects, in part because the rise of transactional deal-making focuses on security objectives such as ceasefires. Yet, behind the scenes, constitutional reform processes and statebuilding continue apace, often with the agenda of addressing intrastate conflict.

In December 2025, International IDEA and the University of Edinburgh, as part of the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep) organised the Twelfth Edinburgh Dialogue on Constitution Building in Fragile Settings on ‘the changing nature of mediation when negotiating political settlements in fragile settings’, bringing together  key actors from the fields of peace mediation and constitution building support.

Discussion of statebuilding in contemporary peacemaking is mired in a paradox. Problems with states persist as core drivers of armed conflict. They can be weak, fragmented, corrupt or repressive, and unable or unwilling to provide for the needs of populations through legitimate and accountable institutions. Yet in a new era of conflict fragmentation and geopolitical upheaval, the nature of the state is rarely the subject of negotiation or at the centre of ensuing agreements.

This brief reflects on the role of statebuilding in conflict-affected settings, addressing the reasons for which it is largely absent from current international peace negotiations. It concludes with consideration of other avenues by which security and a sustainable peace may be pursued incrementally or at a subnational level.

Read the other policy briefs in this series: 

Enhancing Prospects of Stabilization in South Sudan: Targeted Constitutional Reforms to Reduce Winner-Takes-All Politics (Adem Kassie Abebe)

Myanmar’s Fragmented Future: Evolving Governance and Conflict Dynamics Five Years after the 2021 Coup (Gun Mai Sumlut and Kimana Zulueta-Fülscher)