Principle 4: Enhancing legitimacy.

Enhancing the long-term legitimacy of peace processes - and of the actors involved in peacemaking - is a primary the objective for successful, sustainable and effective peace. Legitimacy is not static or given but emerges and is shaped simultaneously by how political settlements are arrived at, who was involved in designing the peace, what agenda for change it articulates, what it delivers to conflictaffected societies and communities, and what kinds of relationships it embodies. Peacemaking builds institutional legitimacy by transforming coercive capacity and personalised influence into formal and informal acceptance of transparent and agreed-upon laws, institutions and power holders. Peace processes and outcomes that support the effective participation of all social groups in public life, and in particular of women and other marginalised groups, are more legitimate. Ultimately, the goal is to generate sustainable political relationships and respect for the rule of law through transparent, equally and fairly enforced laws that are consistent with international norms and standards. The Peacemaking Covenant - and the three principles of its partnership compact - promoting pluralism, adopting subsidiarity, and embracing integrated and hybrid solutions - promote efforts to build institutions and create stable and secure state-society-economy-environment relationships that produce and embody legitimacy in the eyes of the population, including vulnerable groups. Legitimacy requires concrete outcomes, relations of fairness, respect and justice, and genuine inclusion in political, social and economic life. It is difficult to achieve in conflictual and post-conflict contexts where power dynamics marginalise certain groups, social goods are not delivered, laws and formal authorities are contested and institutions have been weakened or challenged. Legitimacy needs to be built, earned and accepted. Legitimacy encompasses the instrumental fulfilment of needs and objectives as well as the shared values of a community regarding proper conduct, fair processes, and relations between authorities and the population. It is not a static property of a political, legal or economic system but is produced and reproduced through practical action and relationships that respect human rights, equality and dignity. Legitimacy can be built and reinforced, or eroded and lost, especially in a contested political environment. The legitimacy of elements ofa peace process can be gauged by identifying, tracing and evaluating the degree to which they have been integrated into local social norms and institutions and the extent to which individuals and groups invest in sustaining peace. 

- Implications and recommendations - 

• Peacemaking recognises the primacy of politics in all efforts to build sustainable peace. Beyond initial peace agreements, successful peacemaking requires ongoing mediation and facilitation to reinforce and legitimise decisions, institutions and governance arrangements.
•  Ongoing international engagement and mediation are required to support full implementation of peace agreements and to deal with actors who are not committed to sustainable peace and its core principles, or whose commitment is conditional and limited. Engagement should support implementation and mediation to facilitate the evolution of governance arrangements in changing sociopolitical contexts, to recognise the interests and identities of spoilers, and to prevent the development of public cynicism towards, distrust in and alienation from the peace process.

Inclusive power and responsibility sharing settlements that satisfy the immediate need for an agreement and a framework for administering power are an important mechanism to build legitimacy. They must ensure representation for a broad range of interests in shared political institutions. Greater attention must be paid to: Designing political settlements that are dynamic enough to allow space for new and pluralistic political configurations to emerge over time. This promotes an evolution in how key political and economic actors define their interests and can ensure that existing societal cleavages are not further entrenched. Legitimising political settlements through broadbased, inclusive consultations designed to ensure the participation of all, including women and other marginalised groups and to promote the legitimacy of inputs to political arrangements. Building the principle and practice of subsidiarity into political settlements and power-sharing agreements from the outset. Paying equal attention to building legitimacy through mechanisms for responsive and transparent governance, including the fair delivery of basic services and locally appropriate forms of political accountability.

• Power-sharing agreements are often complex, multilayered and based on economic as well as political interests. They should include groups beyond those directly involved in the violent conflict (such as women and other marginalised groups, or political-economic actors) and can even incorporate international actors into domestic institutional arrangements. They should also be a bridge towards more inclusive political processes. Power-sharing arrangements are often crucial to create a pluralistic mechanism of government that engages key stakeholders, including those who have used violence, as a transitional arrangement to more inclusive governance. However, in practice the result is often the splitting of power between groups who control different issue areas and reinforce entrenched economic, sectarian or group interests. Peace settlements that only restore order and reduce violence, while perpetuating unjust and unequal social, political or economic structures, downplaying conflictual relationships between social groups, or ignoring the importance of licit and illicit economic activities, are neither legitimate nor sustainable. In these circumstances, the fracture lines built into institutions remain under pressure for renegotiation or subversion, and statesociety and intergroup relationships remain ripe for conflict recurrence. 
• Bargains between parties to the violent conflict should specifically integrate long-term output legitimacy elements (what peace delivers) into powersharing agreements and develop legitimacygenerating policies and arrangement that provide incentives (and sanctions) to shift the interests of armed actors towards broader responsibility for the population through political institutions and away from the use of force to achieve their ends. 
• Powersharing institutions should be embedded within strong and effective human rights frameworks that ensure the basic institutions of society are fair for everyone and that protect the rights of minorities and marginalised groups and of those who are not members of any group, who risk being excluded by new powersharing alliances.

External support should focus on "responsibility sharing" for the common good, through support to accountability mechanisms and delivering public goods to the population in an inclusive and dignified way to make powersharing agreements sustainable and supported.

• Legitimacy does not reduce to "what is legal"; it is tied to ideas of social justice and fairness, including protection of historically or emerging vulnerable groups in society, and access to justice and redress through formal and informal mechanisms. This involves attention to hybrid solutions that bring together international norms and local norms and traditions in a locally relevant way, especially where formal institutions are fragile, but informal social, communal and economic institutions and practices remain relatively strong and respected.
• Output legitimacy can be strengthened through subsidiarity, bringing institutions closer to the people they serve, improving access for excluded groups, and supporting the primacy of local leadership to serve the common good and deliver basic services to the population in a transparent and accountable way.
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• Legitimacy can be reinforced through practical commitments and actions to promote pluralism, as well as by enabling continuous participation and inclusion in institutions and governance arrangements that are understood to be fair and just, as an alternative to the politics of coercion and violence. Efforts to build the legitimacy of peacemaking efforts must be continuously cultivated, to ensure that actors who will inevitably seek to undermine or overturn the terms of agreements to promote or protect more narrow interests do not control the process, and to allow the adaptive evolution of political and constitutional arrangements.
• Continued, predictable and changing forms of assistance are required to reinforce the social and economic foundations of sustainable peace and facilitate the emergence of new and shared forms of legitimacy to sustain non-coercive relationships between state and society and among different socio-economic and social groups.

Rationale

The Principles for Peace global participatory process highlighted the legitimacy deficit that affects the efforts of actors outside a conflict to build institutions or enact policies for peaceful, just and inclusive societies. This legitimacy deficit affects who speaks or acts on behalf of a community, who provides peace and security to whom, and the foundations for peaceful rule. The legitimacy deficit affects the perceived fairness of peace processes - who participates in decisions, how, when and at what level (input legitimacy through transparent, representative and participatory processes) - as well as the effectiveness and expectations of what peace should concretely deliver (output legitimacy).

In conflict-affected states, the legitimacy or accountability of institutions and power holders is often fragmented, non-existent or based on coercive relations. Non-state and civil-society actors, armed groups, political movements, as well as international agencies and business actors, often operate in parallel to national authorities and institutions. They can be providers of services, protection and voice, with some legitimacy in the eyes of the local population. They are, however, often legitimate only for a subset of the population and are seldom accountable beyond the groups whose interests they serve. The presence of multiple "legitimacies" means that international, regional, national and local actors thus need to address a shifting set of audiences with conflicting expectations. The consolidation of peace processes and political transformations takes time and is subject to regional and international powerpolitical considerations. Despite this, international actors should strive to make a genuine commitment to longer-term political, security and economic stability and advancement. Short-term planning horizons and time frames for international engagements, and geopolitical considerations, often affect peace operations or stabilisation missions, resulting in insufficient attention to longer-term processes of transformation and reconciliation that can leave communities more vulnerable than before the conflict. Generating legitimacy requires support for longterm, dynamic and adaptive engagement, and changing forms of assistance, to reinforce the social and economic foundations of sustainable peace, facilitate the emergence of shared perceptions of legitimacy and sustain non-coercive relationships between state and society, and among different social groups.

High-level political decisions and peace agreements between violent or armed actors too often do not translate into tangible changes at the community level. Peace settlements are needed to end violence, but long-term violence reduction and stability require wider social buy-in accompanied by efforts to achieve social justice and an ethic of "responsibility sharing" in a secure environment. 

Peace agreements are often unable to address the structural, social and economic risk factors and power dynamics that have led to violent conflicts (inequality, racism, access and opportunity, marginalisation, and group grievances), or face weak implementation when they do address these issues. Such structural transformations are often actively or passively resisted by armed or powerful actors whose interests would be affected. Without persistent and careful investment in longer-term transformations, power-sharing agreements can serve to institutionalise the root causes of conflict, entrench social divisions and allow systems of patronage and clientelism to flourish.

The architects and negotiators of peace agreements are often perceived as distant from peoples' concerns or are not seen as trustworthy or legitimate. This creates a lack of trust in decision makers and represents an added challenge for both international and local actors. Domestic legitimacy can sometimes be enhanced by changing the visibility and role of international actors to bolster local accountability relationships. Corrupt procurement practices or discriminatory service provision can mean that local populations regard external support for basic service provision and infrastructure as violating principles of fairness and equal treatment.