Talking the Walk : peace, inclusivity and depolarisation

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. Using a novel combination of three datasets, this thesis uses quantitative data on inclusivity in peace negotiations and peace agreements, and combines it with data on political polarisation to build a bridge between the fields by exploring the question: how does the inclusivity of a peace process affect post-conflict (de)polarisation? Based an extensive and iterative process of testing over 300 models with various combinations of variables, variable operationalisations, and subsets of the data, it seems that inclusivity in general – under certain circumstances – contributes to creating the initial conditions which allow decreases in polarisation. When disaggregated to a group-level, the impact of inclusion varies considerably depending on the group being included.