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Introduction:
Track I and track II are thought to be distinct realms of practice
in the field of peacemaking. However, according to Chester Crocker of Georgetown University, is the use
there are various points of convergence. The two tracks often employ quite similar
techniques.
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This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Track I Communication in Track II
Chester Crocker
Georgetown University
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I think
there's a notion out there in the literature that somehow Track I people and
Track II people operate in fundamentally different ways, with very different
techniques. I think that that's a distortion, that in fact what happens is that
you operate in fundamentally different ways at different stages in the life
cycle of a conflict, or at different stages in the progress of a peace process.
For example, when you haven't yet got the parties to even agree on a common
agenda or agree to meet, you're dealing with what I still call the
pre-negotiations phase. You are often using pretty basic tools of statecraft:
carrots and sticks, if you like, and manipulations and efforts to come up with
ideas about future formulas that might attract parties. In other words,
you're engaged in ripening.
Once you're pretty well along and you have parties
with delegations going to the same city, even if not the same conference site,
and you're engaged in proximity procedures or even direct talks, or direct
plenaries followed by side talks or whatever model you use, once you get to that
point, you're using very much some of the techniques that people in the Track II
side of the literature would think of as theirs. You know, you're getting people
to actually listen to each other and not so much to feel each other's pain-I'll
leave that lingo to somebody else-but to hear each other and to engage in
assessing the seriousness of the other side to see if in fact there's a deal to
be done. These kind of techniques that involve a lot of listening training sound
almost like Track II at times, but Track I people, if they're any damn good,
better be able to that. That's my point. These things converge.
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