The Ecuador Peru Peace Process: A Study of Discursive Exclusion and Ideological Interference in Assessment Material and Academic Literature

Abstract

The EPPP is an example of a contemporary international conflict transformation where mediators successfully de-escalated interstate violence. This paper examines functions and structures of the assessment discourse during the 1995-1998 multiparty mediator interventions. Several sources attribute the outcome of the EPPP to impacts of mediator leveraging yet these assessments lack crucial data. The research explores mediator bridging and questions why this form of intervention is not addressed in Realist discourse. This work considers how bridging presents challenges for Realist assessment criteria. Tracing the patterned exclusion of data this research investigates power asymmetries and bias and the influence of ideology. Mediator Intra-group conflict is examined through critical discourse analysis. This framework informs an inquiry into discursive structures and functions while exploring hegemony. The project considers subaltern data sets, obscured by Realists. The project examines positionality and questions Realist assumptions. Worldview challenges and threats are considered and EPPP texts are interpreted as collective representations of prejudice and avoidance. This approach examines structures of domination and the subordination of groups and data. The research considers systems and structures of language “in terms of binary oppositions that establish relationships of power through the privileging of one element in the binary.” Discourse is examined as competition and power is traced through the circulation process. A genealogical approach to discourse analysis investigates “ruptures and breaks” interrogating the silent “marginalized voices and subjugated knowledge.” The research aims to map, and layer discourses within the EPPP multiparty mediator discourse sample.