The United Nations as a Platform Enabling Agonistic Contestation and Engagement? (UNPEACE)

UNPEACE brings agonistic theory to diplomacy studies, developing the concept of agonistic diplomacy and investigating the enabling and inhibiting conditions for agonistic interactions in multilateral settings.

The project analyses agonistic dimensions of diplomatic interactions in two central UN platforms, the UN Security Council (UNSC) and the UN General Assembly (UNGA), focusing specifically on meetings related to the Israeli Palestinian conflict (1948-), a conflict highly intertwined with the history and workings of the UN.

To do so, UNPEACE uses a mixed methods approach combining Video Data Analysis (VDA), interviews, and participatory observation.

As the first project to take advantage of the comprehensive and rich video dataset of UNSC and UNGA meetings available on UN Audiovisual Library, UNPEACE produces in-depth findings on conditions for agonistic diplomacy categorized as 1) contextual factors, 2) intra-meeting factors and 3) topical factors.

Analyzing comprehensive qualitative material and comparing across platforms and time, UNPEACE generates important knowledge on the dynamics of disagreement and conditions for agonistic engagement in diplomacy.

Investigating how a new era of power politics can be an agonistic power struggle rather than an antagonistic one, the project findings hold promise of profound implications for the theory and practice of diplomacy.