7.1 The Outcome of the Norm Diffusion Process in Myanmar (2013–2015)

This section discusses the outcome of the promotion of the inclusivity norm in the Myanmar NCA negotiations. NGO mediators framed the norm as an important vehicle for a sustainable, effective and legitimate peace process and promoted it through a range of practices, while local agents on both sides of the peace table accepted the norm but grafted it onto their own respective cognitive priors around the notion of “unity” (see Chap. 5). Throughout the process, inclusivity was pruned of its participatory component and localized as a security-oriented positioning tool. Inter- and intra-ethnic divides related to the inclusion of three armed groups (the AA, TNLA and MNDAA)Footnote 1 in the NCA contributed a sub-par outcome for the negotiating parties. On 15 October 2015, the NCA was signed by just eight of 16 EAGs in the NCCT. This outcome was extremely disappointing to the government, and heartbreaking to the EAGs. As one ethnic representative recounted of the NCA signing ceremony:

A lot of people think that we should have been happy on that day. But we were not all included. Half of our friends are no longer there. So how would you be happy? I published a book, but I did not include a single photo of that day. It was the most heart-breaking day for me. A lot of people might think that on the 15th of October we were happy. No, we were not. (swisspeace 2016)

The inclusivity norm’s localization as all-inclusiveness is illustrated by its salience (Cortell and Davis 2000) in a given context. Its salience in domestic political discourse, proposed changes in national institutions (e.g. inclusive political dialogues) and state policies (federalism and proposed changes to the Myanmar constitution) all provide evidence for its salience as a norm more broadly. However, the temporal aspect is critical. Local agents in EAGs and the government localized the inclusivity norm in the NCA process as a negotiating position based on military and political arrangements. This happened because the NCA process was designed as a largely technical ceasefire process but was overloaded and eventually morphed into a hybrid agreement that occupied space between a technical ceasefire agreement and a broad political accord.Footnote 2

The grafting of the inclusivity norm onto the parties’ existing cognitive priors surrounding unity by local agents occurred around late 2013. On the EAG side, inclusivity was grafted onto the cognitive prior of unified identity through ethnonationalism at the Laiza Conference, where EAGs decided to negotiate as a single bloc for the first time in Myanmar’s modern history. On the government side, inclusivity was grafted onto the cognitive prior of national identity and the promise of one Myanmar. This was complicated by the Tatmadaw’s own cognitive prior of unified identity through militarized state formation. Despite the resistance of strongly entrenched historical and political forces and power dynamics between key decision-makers in the quasi-civilian government (hardliners vs reformists), Thein Sein still accepted the EAG’s request to be recognized as a single negotiating bloc and base the forthcoming negotiations on their proposed text.

By 2013, negotiations picked up momentum based on a draft single-text agreement originating from the EAG-developed Comprehensive Ceasefire and Framework for Political Dialogue that was designed with the technical support of individual international experts on ceasefires and national dialogues.Footnote 3 With a basis for discussion more or less in place, the negotiating parties launched into an ambitious phase of whittling down more than 100 outstanding issues over 20 months of negotiations and numerous rounds of formal talks. The salience of the all-inclusiveness policy after the summit of EAGs in Law Khee Lar, Karen State, in June 2015 (known thereafter as the Law Khee Lar Conference) is an important turning point for the process and cogently illustrates the spread of all-inclusiveness as a central point of contention in negotiations. The Myanmar case displayed just how salient the discourse had become by 2015, especially after the outbreak of violence in the northern border of Myanmar.

The August 2014 deadline for signing was missed as the tide of negotiations started to turn. Clashes with the KIA in April 2014 ended a 17-year ceasefire, quashing the initial optimism of the talks. The process faced the real threat of breaking down when, in November 2014, a KIA-training center was attacked by the Tatmadaw. To keep the fraught process afloat, President Thein Sein invited EAGs to a special “coordination meeting” in early 2015 to recover damaged trust. At the same time however, a new front of armed clashes in the Kokang region and northern Shan State broke out with the AA, TNLA and the MNDAA. Despite these developments, an ad referendum agreement was signed to much national and international fanfare on 31 March 2015.

While the ad referendum agreement was endorsed by all main stakeholders on the government side, NCCT member groups had to gain the buy-in of their respective constituencies at the Law Khee Lar Conference. Based on this EAG summit and on a follow-up meeting hosted by the United Wa State Party (UWSA), EAGs issued statements stipulatingFootnote 4 that no credible signing of the NCA could take place while ongoing clashes were occurring in Kokang and Northern Shan State. They also demanded that the three groups involved in the clashes (the MNDAA, the TNLA and the AA), as well as other excluded UNFC members, the Lahu Democratic Union (LDU), Arakan National Congress (ANC) and the Wa National Organization (WNO) must be included in the signing of the NCA.Footnote 5 None of the sixteen groups in the NCCT would sign the agreement unless all of them could sign. This was the turning point for inclusivity, as UNFC members, NCCT members and non-NCCT members decided to amend the “final” draft agreement of 31 March to include a clause referring to an all-inclusive signing (BNI 2016). During the Law Khee Lar Conference, EAGs replaced the NCCT with a new negotiating body named the “Senior Delegation” (SD). The SD would renegotiate the four remaining contentious issues with the government, all-inclusiveness being the primary issue: (1) the situation regarding the AA, MNDAA and the TNLA (2) security arrangements (3) which other EAGs would sign the NCA and (4) who would act as international witnesses. While the presence of China and the UN as observers was agreed upon by both sides, there was a dispute between the government and EAG negotiating teams over the presence of EU and Japanese witnesses.

Therefore, by 2015, the notion of inclusivity referred to a single question: “Which groups will sign the NCA?” (Keenan 2015). The impasse arose because of two different “formulas” of inclusion. The government’s position was known as the “14+1 formula,” which meant inviting only the fourteen EAGs that had signed bilateral ceasefires plus the KIA because of its political and military significance. This configuration did not include six armed groups: the AA, MNDAA, TNLA, ANC, LDU and WNO. The first three EAGs—the AA, MNDAA and TNLA—were not invited to sign because, according to the government, these groups emerged only after the 2011 Call to Peace. The government wanted to prevent splintering and the proliferation of more armed groups. Recognizing these groups would, in their view, facilitate the creation of more EAGs. Furthermore, the government claimed that the TNLA and AA were “KIO creations” (Keenan 2015) and thus be encompassed by a bilateral ceasefire with the KIO. The TNLA, AA and MNDAA were considered militarily significant to the government and Tatmadaw. The ANC, LDU and WNO were not invited to sign the NCA because the government viewed them to be politically and militarily insignificant. These three EAGs did not have large armies in comparison to the other EAGs. Therefore, the government line was that these groups could participate in the political dialogue without either a bilateral ceasefire or the NCA (ibidem).

The second formula was the EAG’s call for all-inclusiveness meaning that all 16 members of the NCCT (which included the six aforementioned groups excluded by the government) should thus be invited to sign the NCA. There were four more groups that held bilateral ceasefires with the government and were therefore invited to sign the NCA, but are not part of the UNFC (NDAA, NSCN-K, RCSS and UWSA). With these four groups, it did not matter to the UNFC whether they signed the NCA or not. What mattered was upholding the unity of the UNFC alliance: “[The UNFC] is more concerned for the unity of its members, rather than the unity of all the ethnic groups as a whole” (Keenan 2015, 2).

This central position held by the EAGs—that unless the government invited all groups to sign, none of them would—found entry in public discourse in the phrase all-inclusiveness. Media coverage and political analysis quickly picked up on the phrase, and soon discussions around the NCA process centered on all-inclusiveness as the reason for the impasse in the talks (ICG 2015; Aung Naing Oo, 2016). However, the government was not moving on its own definition of inclusiveness. The government drew a line in the sandFootnote 6 and the notion of all-inclusiveness became a chief reason for the deadlock between the negotiating parties in mid-2015. The discourse around all-inclusiveness suggests the norm’s salience as a key factor in the outcome of the NCA negotiations in 2015—namely a mere partial signing, what I hereafter refer to as an “exclusive outcome.”Footnote 7 Numerous sources analyzing the end of the negotiations point to inclusivity as not just one of many factors, but the chief reason for the exclusive outcome, for instance one analyst writing that the “issue of inclusivity has proven to be the main stumbling block to the comprehensive signing of the NCA by all EAGs.”Footnote 8 One peace process participant offered that “the key issue that precluded full support was the question of “inclusivity.” The inclusion of the other three groups (the ones actively involved in conflict), […] became the straw that broke the camel’s back […].”Footnote 9 All-inclusiveness contributed to division among the NCCT and UNFC, as one EAG representative complained of the inter-ethnic dynamics with a play on the popular literary passage, “All for three, and three for three.”Footnote 10 The issue of inclusion among the country’s many ethnic groups has a complex history and has, since independence, played a key role in the state of peace and conflict of the country.”Footnote 11 This is echoed in a large number of op-eds, speeches and statements by analysts, peace process actors and researchers. Ethnic representatives generally did not want to sign an agreement until a firm political commitment on political legitimacy and historic grievances stemming back from the Panglong Agreement were offered. The government, on the other hand, did not want to move forward with a political dialogue without ceasefires being signed and, importantly for them, the EAGs disarming.

The Law Khee Lar Conference was a turning point in inclusivity’s shift to all-inclusiveness as a negotiating position. A respondent who attended three of the five EAG summits and was thus privy to the discussions, traced this shift. Explaining that inclusivity in Myanmar is misunderstood, especially by members of the international community, they said that all-inclusiveness only crystallized as a stalemate in 2015, but had already been established at the Laiza Conference. The widespread excitement around the draft agreement signed three months earlier obviated the fact that three major issues were not agreed upon: which EAGs could sign the agreement, who the “legitimate” representatives of each group were, and which international actors would act as witnesses to the signing ceremony of the peace agreement. For the EAGs, their “fraternal” commitments to each other as ethnic minorities resisting a dominant-ethnicity power structure strengthened their position on all-inclusiveness. To the government, political issues would be dealt with in a political dialogue only after the NCA was signed. Many ethnic politicians preferred the exact inverse sequence and saw the government’s agenda as a trap. They wanted more international observers to play a closer role in monitoring and witnessing the agreement.Footnote 12

The deadline of signing the NCA also became a race against time in the broader context of Myanmar politics. Myanmar’s general elections were approaching, and Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD was widely expected to win a substantial majority. This meant Thein Sein’s government (USDP) would have limited time to have the NCA signed during their term. The government desperately wanted to get the NCA signed before its term was up to preserve their legacy, control the process, or perhaps to prove that peace would be more durable if it was agreed to by the USDP. However, due to hardliners in the government and Tatmadaw, the government was unable to cede their position excluding the AA, TNLA and MNDAA from the NCA. Before long, the tensions between the EAGs began to show, especially between larger or more politically and military relevant armed groups such as the KNU, KIO and NMSP, whose decision to sign or not sign would have large implications for the other groups and the agreements as a whole.Footnote 13 Larger groups influenced the decision-making processes of the smaller groups. In the end, the NCCT devolved into factions of individual EAGs that made decisions on their own terms on whether to sign or not. Within larger, influential groups such as the KIO and the KNU,Footnote 14 contentions over whether EAGs should expect guarantees before signing the NCA caused fragmentation and factional division. Among these large groups, the main contention was whether they should demand guarantees before signing the NCA or instead view the ceasefire as a gateway to political dialogue. As one respondent noted, should EAGs “[enter] into a process of trying to secure a necessary outcome?”Footnote 15 One respondent commented on these complicated dynamics:

So the KIO were the ones who were leading the abstention from signing. So, the military on the other hand, were demanding inclusion. But interestingly, at the same time [they] were guaranteeing that inclusivity could not be achieved by the attitude to the three in the early Northern Alliance. So it always seemed to me to be very funny. We have gone through the lengths of the NCA, we don’t have a satisfactory outcome, we say that we are committed to going onto the next stage, but we cannot go on to the next stage until we include those who were not included, but we are determining that those who were not included cannot be included. So that was the military stance. On the armed ethnic organization side, on those who had abstained from the NCA, they were the ones who were then demanding seizing on those excluded groups, if they’re not included, then we can’t be included. So they would then in turn, push for inclusivity. […] So we got these peculiar, in a sense, this is not negotiation, this is the theatre of the peace process. Who are the good guys?Footnote 16

The split ultimately occurred between those EAGs that felt ready to sign and those that did not. The NCCT had brought together a diverse group of EAGs, and the divisions were not only linked to questions of all-inclusiveness, but also to the diverse political and strategic considerations respective to their own groups. Against a backdrop of complex political dynamics that included national and international pressure, the signing ceremony of the NCA was pushed through, comprehensive or not, and took place on 15 October 2015. To the dismay of many negotiators and peace process supporters, only eight groups out of the 16 represented groups in the UNFC/NCCT signed the agreement.

7.1.1 Inclusivity of Non-armed Actors

The interaction between the two “working definitions”Footnote 17 of inclusivity and how all-inclusiveness applies to the ceasefire and political dialogue is central to understanding the outcome of the norm diffusion process as localization and not displacement. The participatory aspect of the inclusivity norm was pruned further during the Law Khee Lar Conference. To keep the process from falling apart, the inclusion of contentious armed groups over the participation of civil society and the wider Myanmar public was prioritized. While on paper and to members of the peacebuilding and donor communities, inclusivity still meant broadening participation to non-armed actors, it became clear from the language used by negotiation actors, peace process analysts and the media writ large, that all-inclusiveness referred to the question of which EAGs would be included.

It is at this point of the norm diffusion process that the constitutive elements of inclusivity started to complicate the picture and clash with each other. The multiple interpretations promoted by different NGO mediators to a wide range of Myanmar actors resulted in contradiction and confusion for the peace process actors. One Myanmar respondent working closely with the stakeholders reflected that the term all-inclusiveness was not that popular until the peace process started. He lamented that there were so many contradictions in that phrase which never got resolved. He also shared that when something becomes popular in the country’s discourse, like inclusivity or federalism, it becomes sort of a delusion: “We follow and chase inclusivity, but anything that becomes this popular can become a blockage in our thinking. We are also concerned about inclusivity […] we insist on the inclusion of these three armed groups on the basis of inclusivity, but actually, how practical is it? Is it blocking the process?”Footnote 18 He also lamented being trapped in the discourse of inclusivity: “if you are critical or against it, you cannot say it publicly or cannot air it out.”Footnote 19 These constitutive changes to the norm from a cosmopolitan norm to a positioning tool began at the Law Khee Lar Conference and continued in this direction in the tense and fraught period of negotiations between June 2015 and the deadline for signing the NCA in October.

These sentiments were echoed in civil society organizations’ calls for greater inclusion and better consultative mechanisms linking the formal process to the wider public:

Those are the benefits of inclusivity, as I see it. Fighting at the table is more difficult than fighting with guns. You need more human resources and expertise, you need the people’s support and you need to manage their expectations. We need a forum to facilitate transparent and good public debate so that different actors can be heard, including academics, civil society and ordinary people. The way the process runs now, everything is high-jacked by the political elites.Footnote 20

These two “working definitions”Footnote 21 of all-inclusiveness and inclusivity continued to complicate matters at the outcome of the norm diffusion process. One international advisor to the EAGs reflected: “this may be self-evident, but I think the interaction between these concepts is really important in this context.”Footnote 22 The draft text of the NCA included specific elements for civil society participation in the next phase of political dialogue that would happen once the NCA was signed. However, many civil society organizations felt that the NCA process itself remained exclusive and EAG-centered. One civil society representative called the process “elite-led” as, despite calls for greater space for civil society to engage, “both sides in the negotiations—the government and ethnic armed groups—have left civil society out of the process” (Sakhong and Twa 2015, 126). They lament that it was “a big pity they did that, and it’s one of the reasons that the NCA text is so weak, in the sense that it does not provide clear and equal footing in the political dialogue platform for the ethnic armed groups. In other words, the government and its army have the upper hand in all matters” (ibidem).

The all-inclusiveness discourse described above centered on an inclusive process and was less concerned with inclusive mechanisms stipulated in the content of the NCA itself. The focus on the process was the intent of the early drafters of the NCA agreement from the beginning (see Chap. 6). However, it is important to mention the presence of the word “inclusive” in the English text of the final NCA agreement, which would become a cornerstone of the Myanmar peace process after 2015. The imperative to have an inclusive mechanism or institutionFootnote 23 is mentioned four times in a 12-page text, in contrast with zero mentions in the 2008 Constitution.

7.2 The Role of NGO Mediators in the Outcome of Norm Diffusion in Myanmar (2015)

While the previous section outlined how the inclusivity norm constitutively changed into a positioning tool underpinned by previous cognitive priors around unity in Myanmar’s history, this section discusses the role NGO mediators played (or did not play) in the localization of the inclusivity norm as all-inclusiveness. The Myanmar case illustrates the limits of the normative agency of NGO mediators due to their lack of power vis-à-vis the negotiating parties. While NGO mediators can exercise their normative agency in framing and promoting a norm through different types of “NGO legitimacy,” these forms of soft power do not allow maintaining control over the outcome of the process. This confirms the claim in mediation academic literature that mediators may influence the process, but not accompany the diffusion of their interpretation of the norm into the outcome of mediation processes. The lack of control of the outcome of norm diffusion challenges the normative framework in mediation, which hopes to use mediation processes as sites for the diffusion of the inclusivity norm (see Chap. 2).

7.2.1 The Limits to Normative Agency of NGO Mediators

As negotiations get closer and closer to an agreement, hardliners or those opposed to the prospect of agreement conduct greater attempts to block the process. In these instances, mediation literature has suggested that mediators with “muscle” (Svensson 2007) are needed to use more coercive measures and leverage to bring the parties to an agreement (Beardsley 2009). In the Myanmar case, with no formal, external third-party intervention, more coercive forms of mediation were not possible. This section analyses the third part of the proposed causal mechanism: NGO mediators use their normative agency conceptualized as power (legitimated authority) to influence the outcome of norm diffusion as displacement. This hypothesis alludes to NGO mediators using their NGO legitimacy to influence the parties’ behavior—not necessarily by coercion or pressure, but by persuasion and socialization (see Chap. 2). However, this was not the outcome in the Myanmar case. Between the Law Khee Lar Conference in June 2015 and the final deadline to sign the NCA in October 2015, pressure between and among the groups was at an all-time high, and national actors became increasingly resistant to international actors exerting any kind of pressure to sign.

First, while accepting the inclusivity norm as a term of discourse, local agents resisted attempts to promote interpretations of inclusivity outside of their localized version. NGO mediators’ normative agency is limited by the parties’ ownership of the outcome of the process. The “homegrown” nature of the process was integrated into the discourse around “national ownership,” another normative imperative that both national and international actors adhered to. As Aung Naing Oo wrote in his memoir, the homegrown nature of the process was critical and “meant that any outside intervention” needed to be “effectively managed:”

“The support the MPC sought could not be called mediation or intervention. The support requested was often in the form of friendly requests to international NGOs, diplomats and friends from overseas. They were mostly simple requests, such as to pass messages (mostly the government thinking) to the EAOs. The government would not let outside assistance interfere with the process so it was done strategically and in the spirit of flexibility” (Aung Naing Oo 2018, 85).

However, Aung Naing Oo criticized the nature of international support for the process during the height of the negotiations, when it became time to decide whether or not to sign the NCA.Footnote 24 He described EAGs holding a number of meetings with international advisors who advised them not to sign. Another respondent from the government negotiating team recounted the same story, in which an international advisor convinced several EAG representatives that the head of the Tatmadaw would not sign the NCA in the end because it was beyond the mandate of the 2008 Constitution and would require constitutional change, which the army would “never” agree to.Footnote 25 As history showed, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing signed the agreement despite key armed groups refusing to do so. A key national actor in the peace process had this to say about the influence of international support during the lead up to the NCA signing:

Because, if you look at the international community, many of them, [the] majority of them are ideologically driven. […] But sometimes their support can go too far. And of course you know, ethnic minorities, expertise, advice, money, training, workshops, technical support, I don’t have any problem with anything. But advice can be dangerous. This is the issue. I know the UNFC had a, I don’t know, they had a foreign advisor, I was told a lawyer—he came up with the analysis that wasn’t wrong, but they were only looking at certain aspects of signing the nationwide ceasefire agreement. So ethnic minorities already have this distrust of the government and the army, so they accepted his advice as one of the key points not to sign the NCA. The argument was basically the NCA is already beyond the 2008 Constitution because it supports federalism and a few of things […] And of course they were always suspicious that the army chief wouldn’t sign. That he personally would not sign so we told them, look it’s not time yet, they are committed, we know, if the president signs, the commander and chief will sign. No trust. We tried and tried. That’s why ethnic minorities admitted to us, we made a mistake. They openly admitted to us.Footnote 26

Another Myanmar respondent, who also played a central role in the process, argued that some NGO mediators were the reason for the exclusive outcome. He argued that groups such as the KNPP and NMSP (non-signatories to the NCA in Oct 2015) were told by international advisors that the military would never sign the draft because it would entail Constitutional change.Footnote 27 But, he said, this view was totally wrong: “So the UNFC leaders met with the State counsellor, and admitted that they made a mistake, that they didn’t believe the Commander in Chief would sign, and he did!”Footnote 28 Actors on the government side lamented that sometimes “advice from foreign advisors delayed the process” and while NGOs were temporarily beneficial to some on the EAG side, “on the whole they were impediments to the peace process” (Aung Naing Oo 2018, 86).

Second, NGO mediators’ modular technique and technical expertise on peace process design as a source of legitimacy was limited in the Myanmar case. International supporters to the peace process were criticized for not fully understanding the nature of the Myanmar conflict context. Therefore, NGO mediators’ normative agency was limited because they struggled to marry their generalized knowledge (Convergne 2016) with contextually embedded expertise. This topic was salient among respondents, who criticized the modular technique of NGO mediators working in Myanmar. An international advisor to the EAGs echoed the idea that the international community’s role in pushing for all-inclusiveness prevented real inclusivity in the process. They said that international advisors and donor actors lobbied hard for EAGs to sign the NCA through both public speeches and private meetings. The respondent also complained that these actors did not look at the substance of the agreement and ignored the historical context of the peace process.Footnote 29 Another advisor reflected on the challenge of NGO mediators acting as norm entrepreneurs. According to them, the efforts to promote norms are undermined by misunderstanding the complexity of the ethnic conflict and Myanmar politics in general.Footnote 30 NGO mediators that used “niche norms” such as inclusivity, gender and rule of law were not explicit (or perhaps even cognizant) about what they were doing:

I think that being a norm entrepreneur…being an entrepreneur entails taking risks and pushing back, in terms of mediation and SSR—these are loaded terms that have to do with power structures changing. NGOs will answer, they will never use the language…but will use the language of the funder, of the norm “umpire” and not the language that the epistemic community uses […] they are so frightened of being associated with it […] it’s this idea that dialogue is newer, nicer, comes from new non-state space and slowly trying to creep into a state space. Now the actors have changed, the context has changed, and one word is being used for the other. E.g. Mediation is being called dialogue, and dialogue is being called mediation. So when you talk to someone, and they tell you what they are doing “oh so you’re doing mediation” and they say, no we are doing dialogue,” and you answer, “oh, of course you are doing dialogue…Footnote 31

This clandestine use of the term “mediation,” undermines NGO mediators’ accountability and legitimacy in the Myanmar context. A longtime analyst of Myanmar politics commented on NGO mediators as norm promotors. Rather than challenging the “so-called” principle of inclusivity and being explicit about different interpretations of the norm:

what we find is international actors attempting to find to strategize how to pull in all this way, individual stakeholders. Oh you should sign, why don’t you just sign? Sometimes it’s very crass! Up to the level of ambassadors! Remember that the negotiation of NCA took place over a long time, and [name redacted] people were very actively involved in promoting that negotiation…Footnote 32

Save for a few exceptionsFootnote 33 of NGO mediators self-reporting their contributions in the final stages of the NCA, the direct pressure put on EAGs by diplomats and government representatives to sign the NCA was widely discussed in interviews and other sources. The pressure that international actors put on the EAGs to sign the agreement illustrates the unintended constitutive changes to the norm being made: international actors pushed negotiating parties to sign the NCA for cosmopolitan reasons of equality and the promise of a (liberal) and lasting peace, yet ignored or obfuscated real grievances and the nature of the Myanmar process. This is how the cosmopolitan nature of the inclusivity norm was pruned, rendering all-inclusiveness as “simply” a tool for political positioning. The EAGs felt strong-armed into signing the NCA, and felt that not only were some political actors siding with the government in pressuring them to sign, but were also providing material disincentives to signing by channeling most of their funding through government-led peace structures such as the MPC:

By channelling funding for peacebuilding through the government, international donors have significantly weakened the negotiating power of the ethnic groups. This funding should come to both sides. Also the support to civil society is imbalanced. Only privileged and registered national and international NGOs that follow the money get funding. It’s difficult for groups based on the border, as well as non-registered groups inside Burma, to access most of the funding due to issues of legal status. For example, EU funding often requires the recipient to be legally registered. (Sakhong and Sein Twa 2015)

At this high pressure point before the signing of the NCA, NGO mediators’ normative agency to promote their versions of inclusivity were challenged by other political forces at play, most notably the hardliner stances of the Tatmadaw and EAGs drawing from their localized versions of inclusivity. Based on the variations between NGO mediators illustrated in Chap. 5 (EBO, CPCS, HD Centre) by the end of the process, they all had varying levels of impact in promoting inclusivity throughout the process. While all three actors played important roles working closely with a few or several EAGs, EBO was instrumental in facilitating the earliest pre-talks at moments of intense distrust between the government and the EAGs and arguably had the widest reach among the three NGO mediators. At that point in the process, the practices harnessed by EBO as an insider mediator (see Chap. 5) created the most tangible impact in promoting inclusivity. Towards the end of the process, however, when both negotiating parties believed that international actors being present at and supporting the signing of the NCA, actors like the HD Centre and their connections to the international peace support community in Myanmar and abroad were rendered particularly useful to the parties. Whether these advantages were utilized to the extent they could be, however, is not apparent from the interview respondents, as many of the critiques stated above were applied to NGO mediators in general. In sum, the above critiques from national and international actors illustrate the limits to NGO mediators’ normative agency, especially when analyzed from a temporal perspective. The same sources of NGO legitimacy that facilitate introducing or promoting a norm at earlier phases of a peace process are undermined when NGO mediators attempt to displace a norm at a critical juncture in a mediation process.

7.3 Effects of Norm Localization on the Myanmar Peace Process

This section looks at the effects of the localization of inclusivity as all-inclusiveness on the outcome of the NCA process itself (2015–2016). Because they lacked the power (vis-à-vis the parties and other international actors like donors) to control the outcome of the process, NGO mediators did not possess the normative agency to control the outcomes of the norm localization, namely the pruning of the normative aspect of inclusivity, and the pruning of the participatory interpretation of inclusivity. These two outcomes directly affected the outcome of the NCA process and the post-NCA political arrangements in the Myanmar context. The localization of the inclusivity norm as all-inclusiveness led to intended effects (e.g. the setting up of an inclusive political dialogue and inclusive ceasefire mechanism) and unintended effects. Some of these unintended consequences were the conflation of a ceasefire and peace agreement and the conflation of both armed and non-armed actors as the target audience for norm diffusion. In the end, the promotion of inclusivity actually ended up in a more exclusive peace process outcome. The following table illustrates this argument visually (Fig. 7.1):

Fig. 7.1
A flowchart depicts the effects of the norm localization process. It includes the inclusivity norm of civil society, E A O, government, and Tatmadaw of all-inclusive inc C S O, all-inclusive inc al E A O, and all-inclusive inc of call to peace E A O.

Effects of norm localization on the NCA process

Full size image

The green arrows depict the direction of norm diffusion. As previously mentioned, the majority of NGO mediators engaged directly with the government, armed groups and civil society actors, but very few engaged with the Tatmadaw, especially in the early days of the peace process. The Tatmadaw had its own specific cognitive prior that was more “hardline” than that of the government negotiators. In the same way, EAGs are not monolithic entities nor necessarily representative of the communities that they claim to represent. Nonetheless, “hardliners” were vocal parts of the constituencies of both the Tatmadaw and EAGs that the negotiators (NCCT and government) had to manage. Thus, by only actively promoting inclusivity to the government and the EAG representatives in the NCCT, the NGO mediators neglected to engage with the Tatmadaw (key decision-makers in Myanmar politics). The third row of the diagram depicts the political positioning of all-inclusiveness held by each of these actors. The all-inclusiveness impasse is depicted by the red arrow between the government/Tatmadaw and the EAGs. Civil society actors had their own interpretation of the norm. This process resulted in both intended and unintended consequences on the NCA process.

The first unintended consequence of inclusivity was conceptual confusion among the negotiating parties due to the different interpretations of the inclusivity norm, which created a stalemate between the parties. The inclusivity norm was framed by NGO mediators in multiple ways, including the vague notion of having “relevant” stakeholders at the peace table. However, which actors were deemed “relevant” was contested but never resolved in the negotiations. Over the course of the negotiations, the government, the Tatmadaw and the EAGs each had different working interpretations of which groups were “relevant” to the process, a fact that was not realized until well into the process. The EAGs’ strategic interpretation of inclusivity was the notion of all-inclusiveness in which all groups must be able to sign, or none of them would. The government’s view was that only the groups physically present at the start of the NCA negotiations, from the first day of the talks, would be able to sign the NCA. According to one of the few international analysts allowed access to the government negotiating team, the government “drew a line in the sand, because if they did not, then any group could pop up at any time, and they are included in the process as an equal partner. And is that just essentially providing an incentive for breakaway groups, for splintering groups to then renegotiate their own terms and get an equal seat at the table.”Footnote 34 According to the government, groups that joined or were formed later in the process, such as the AA, should not be able to sign as it would encourage other groups to splinter.Footnote 35 On the other hand, the Tatmadaw’s view was that groups that they were actively fighting, namely the AA, the TNLA and the MNDAA, should not sign the NCA until first signing a bilateral ceasefire and ending hostilities. Another interpretation among observers was that the Thein Sein government and the Tatmadaw apparently already considered their efforts to be all-inclusive by including different ethnic groups within their armed forces. However, these troops were kept in lower ranks.Footnote 36 Many of the EAGs viewed this as more of the same “divide and conquer” tactics that the Tatmadaw and government had used against them for years.

The reality was that until several years into the peace process, the government and the EAGs agreed that 16 groups should be included in negotiations. But according to one government negotiating team member, the negotiating parties were speaking about different armed groups without realizing it!Footnote 37 This extraordinary misunderstanding led to a delay in the NCA negotiations and caused confusion among the parties. As one negotiator of the NCA process observed, “Even the NCA parties struggled with this. You would have seen how the composition and the structure of the negotiating parties changed as the negotiating parties went on. What they thought was a good way to start changed meeting by meeting, as both sides realized they didn’t have it quite right.”Footnote 38 On the government side, this meant that towards the end of the negotiations, “[the government] had run out of time. They had literally run out of time. So there was just no, once it might have been an appetite—there was no scope for further changes to the composition to the negotiating groups.”Footnote 39 The government was racing against the clock to claim a legacy of brokering peace out of a protracted conflict before the upcoming elections. The lack of resolution on the multiple working definitions of inclusivity and the confusion it created in the negotiations further cemented all-inclusiveness as a strategic “positioning tool.”Footnote 40 All-inclusiveness became a negotiating impasse around which armed groups were to be included and excluded from signing.

Put simply, inclusivity actually became a vehicle for exclusion. For the government and the Tatmadaw, only inviting groups that had signed-on at the start of the NCA process was a way to prevent more groups, especially those without bilateral ceasefires and those engaged in active conflict, from entering into the process. For some EAGs, it was seen as the government reneging on its “open book policy,” in that not all groups were actually allowed to sign when they were ready to sign.Footnote 41 This created a dynamic of “conditional inclusivity”, meaning that inclusion was only possible by certain rules created by one party, thereby contradicting the norm of inclusion.Footnote 42 There was a fear among EAGs that the Tatmadaw would pursue the non-signatories militarily, creating even more division in the already fraught ethnic bloc. Given the fragility of the NCCT’s status as a representative of the ethnic cause, and the large-scale outbreak of conflict in the northeast of the country, all-inclusiveness became non-negotiable for the EAGs. The inclusion of the TNLA, AA and MNDAA (as well as the LDU, ANC and WNO) in the NCA negotiations was simply not an option for the Tatmadaw, unless bilateral ceasefires were signed first. Therefore, the Tatmadaw’s resistance to all-inclusiveness became a non-negotiable as well. These positions robbed the NCA negotiations of all nuance and complexity and transformed all-inclusiveness from a conversation about the politics of inclusion and exclusion into an impasse over “the number of groups there were to be.”Footnote 43 The zero-sum nature of the talks created unattractive terms of engagement between the parties and provoked the negotiating parties to dig themselves further into their own positions rather than communicating their needs and interests. This “digging” into positions eroded trust between negotiating parties and shrank the space for concession and compromise at the end of the process.

The second unintended consequence was the loading of a peace agreement/political accord onto the framework of a ceasefire agreement. The result was a hybrid agreement that under- and overpromised at the same time. Consequently, the insistence for all-inclusiveness in negotiations was the harbinger of impossible standards for implementation. The amplification and universalization of all-inclusiveness in the media and public discourse set the Myanmar public up for disappointment. In the lead-up to the NCA signing, analysis and discourse by both national and international analysts and journalists portrayed all-inclusiveness in multiple ways: which armed groups would sign the NCA, and which non-armed actors would be included in the ceasefire negotiations (rather than waiting for a future political dialogue). Because of this, the NCA process failed to capture public support as non-armed actors that had fought to be included in the peace process increasingly viewed the NCA negotiations as the exclusive domain of armed actors. Although public consultations and civil society forums for peace took place regularly and throughout many parts of the country, only the Tatmadaw, government and EAGs played decision making roles and held seats at the table. NGO mediators—through trainings, handbooks, outreach and other activities that fell under the umbrella of “strengthening civil society” and promoting civil society inclusion in the peace process—had unintended consequences on the process. One respondent who worked closely with the EAGs and ethnic civil society groups explained, “the participatory view of inclusivity and the right actors view interact to create much larger problems”Footnote 44 in the trajectory of the peace process. One of the discussions in an IPSG meeting centered on this “huge inclusivity issue! [The peace process] is not inclusive nationally […] This is not simply about EAOs, but citizens/people—e.g. when do Ta’ang people get to participate in the [national dialogue], just because the TNLA is not included? Issue also for Bamar population—their voice is not in this process at all; the Tatmadaw does not represent them” (IPSG meeting minutes, 2018). The peace process was designed so that armed actors would broker a nationwide ceasefire agreement that would jumpstart the mechanisms for a future political dialogue, in which non-armed actors such as civil society groups and parliamentarians could participate, which departed from the NCA process that focused on the parties’ militarized view and pursuit of stability. However, the promotion of the inclusivity norm by international actors was also taken up by non-armed actors advocating for greater participation in the NCA process, and not a future political dialogue process. Civil society groups therefore pressured the negotiating parties to include clauses and statements in the NCA that resembled political peace agreements rather than technical ceasefire agreements. This resulted in an NCA figuring somewhere between a ceasefire agreement and a peace agreement. As one analyst reported, the NCA was consequently “fundamentally flawed because it’s not a ceasefire agreement. It’s a ceasefire agreement and a political settlement they expect to take place.”Footnote 45 The mixing of the two was one of the reasons “why it took so long for a ceasefire being recognized because there were too many political issues.”Footnote 46 The conflation also created impossible standards for implementation, despite painstaking efforts to create a roadmap that would lead the way to a future political dialogue.

The third unintended consequence was the parallel use of the two interpretations of inclusivity competing against each other. Given that the EAG expectation of inclusiveness centered on both the ceasefire and political dialogue “there have been negative effects for the participatory interaction of inclusivity for the dialogue process following the NCA signing”Footnote 47 especially around the design of post-NCA political dialogue structures and mechanisms. This dynamic could be observed in Kachin and Mon communities for example:

More broadly, during and after the NCA negotiations this was part of the discussion by ethnic civil society, especially women’s organizations—e.g., if the PSLF/TNLA are excluded from the NCA, then Ta’ang women’s interests will be excluded from the process. The failings of the dialogue over the past year also relate to this—the ethnic political parties and EAOs could not agree to a principle about "non-secession" if the Shan public (excluded by not being able to hold a national-level dialogue) and the Karennis (excluded by not yet being in the NCA and their CSOs even boycotting the civil society dialogue), who had a historical right to secession in the first independence constitution even if they no longer invoke it, were not part of that decision making process. It’s still unclear whether the government and Tatmadaw see this problem or view it as a problem. So the participatory view of inclusivity and the right actors view interact to create much larger problems here.Footnote 48

This discussion illustrates that the external norm of inclusivity was initially framed as a norm that forwarded meaningful participation in the peace process. It was framed in an ambiguous manner that allowed for multiple interpretations. The inclusivity norm was consequently interpreted by the negotiating parties and Myanmar civil society as both a rights-based norm encouraging broader participation of non-armed actors in the NCA process and as a pragmatic, procedural norm of including relevant armed actors to avoid spoiling the process. Through processes of contestation and adaptation, the norm was grafted onto the cognitive prior of ethnic and national unity among the negotiating parties. The inclusivity norm was pruned of the cosmopolitan component of the norm through local agents. This was amplified by the negotiating parties, their constituencies, and popular media and analysis covering the NCA process, until in the end, all-inclusiveness was synonymous with the number of groups that were included or excluded from signing the NCA:

So exactly how did the inclusivity agenda arise? And once it entered into the public discussion, automatically it was given legitimacy by those international norms of inclusivity. Pretty mindless, then we see, what I see as the NCA, was it a gateway or entry to political dialogue, or was it an obstacle to political dialogue? Who had the will? The Tatmadaw show in the negotiations of the NCA that it had the will for political dialogue.Footnote 49

This discussion shows that norm diffusion outcomes can have tangible effects on political processes, and that using mediation processes as a site for norm diffusion can have both intended and unintended consequences, especially because NGO mediators did not possess the power to control the outcome of the norm diffusion process, thereby undermining or limiting their normative agency.

7.4 Chapter Conclusions

This chapter discussed how NGO mediators’ legitimacy at high pressure points of mediation processes limits their agency to influence the outcome of norm diffusion process. While NGO mediators’ normative agency facilitates the introduction and promotion of a norm (through discursive framing and social practices) underpinned by alternative sources of legitimacy and forms of soft power, the Myanmar case illustrates the limits of normative agency when trying to displace a norm in the context of a mediation process. As the parties have control over the outcome of the process, they also have greater control over the outcome of norm diffusion because of the power dynamic between them and NGO mediators. This chapter also discussed how the localization of the inclusivity norm had both intended and unintended effects on the NCA process, illustrating how using mediation processes as a site for norm diffusion can have positive and negative consequences for national peace process armed and non-armed actors.