External versus internal incentives in peace processes: the Bougainville experience
Anthony Regan (2008)
The peace process for Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, offers an unusual example of an intervention supporting a locally initiated peace process, largely in accordance with agendas set by local actors. International intervention has combined a lightness of touch with some sensitivity and creativity on the part of those involved in coordinating the intervention. Anthony Regan focuses on two aspects of international support to the peace process. Firstly, the major external actors' use of funding (especially development funds) to create incentives for parties to support the peace process or particular aspects of it. Secondly, the way parties found creative ways of sequencing and linking stages of implementation of difficult aspects of the peace agreement (disarming combatants and implementing agreed constitutional changes) to provide incentives to each side to implement what they had agreed.