RESEARCH

PROJECT ON LEVANTINE CUSTOMARY DISPUTE RESOLUTION 

THE POLITICS OF PEACEMAKING: Wasata, tahkim and the negotiation of justice in Jordan and Palestine

Article in the Journal of the Swedish Bar Association – Advokaten

Project announcement and introduction by the Swedish Bar Association

Press release by the Swedish Defence University – New research project

Project summary:

Peacemaking politics is a social scientific phenomenon that is situated at the intersection of religion, customs and domestic politics. The phenomenon has arisen in societies which have experienced varying levels of state authority and during these periods have fostered strong traditions of customary dispute resolution as means to handle social conflicts – in the absence of a working (state) judicial system. In the Levant, particularly, these advanced customary mechanisms for handling disputes between members of the community, redressing wrongs and restoring the social balance between individuals and families have lingered and remained in use by the people living there.

Gradually, as several Levantine states have grown stronger and attempted to reclaim their authority and administration over society, they have particularly experienced difficulties in restoring their monopoly within the judicial field. An initial reaction from these states has then often been to illegalise all forms and streams of informal justice-making, considering them as a threat to their authority. Eventually, though, the states have experienced that the popular reliance on and deeply entrenched trust in the informal institutions have been difficult to compete with. Struggling to increase the reach of and to consolidate their power, several states have rethought their strategies for how to wield their authority more efficiently. A common shift of strategy that has been observed among several of them has been to re-allow informal justice-making to be practised in parallel with the formal system. These states have then instead opted for increased control and influence over the informal judicial institutions.

Peacemaking politics refers to how these informal institutions of justice-making appear to gradually be coming under the influence and regulation of the state, primarily to serve its own interests. The popular traditions-bound informal judicial system is transformed from earlier having constituted relatively apolitical ways and methods of peacemaking and reconciliation between private disputants into becoming venues of domestic politics, used by the state to wield its power and authority over its citizens and political opponents. As the power-related interests of the state naturally do not go hand in hand with the individual interests of its citizens, for instance in terms strengthening human rights and the rule of law, a fierce clash of both values and interests arise here.

This research project takes a critical approach to informal justice-making and how to consider its role in the processes of democratisation and state-building. This critical approach is captured in the concept of ‘peacemaking politics’, implying that the process is intertwined with politics. Theoretically, the study will be grounded in political scientific theory about governance, anthropological theory about customary dispute resolution, as well as legal scientific theory about sharia and customary law. However, as opposed to other studies, the present project will take a local point of view and consider the cases under study on their own terms and in their own cultural context (to seek to avoid any exotism or Western bias).

Although a brilliant way of social organisation as such, the project will ask questions about the actual fairness and ‘justness’ of the rulings/settlements that come out of the informal system. The project will also critically reflect on the involvement of the state in informal justice-making and the intentions that may lay behind such an involvement. The project will further scrutinise in detail the nature of the relations between the formal and informal institutions of justice-making, including the way they interact, cooperate, compete and cross-fertilise each other. The project will yet further investigate how this affects the citizens’ access to third-party settlements of legal disputes, to justice and to the rule of law.