Instituting Peace: Third Party Principles and the Mitchell Effect

US Senator George Mitchell's principles of democracy and non-violence are synonymous with peace in Northern Ireland. Mitchell's subsequent deployment to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict armed with the same principles failed, and unwisely fell to a footnote in the history of Israeli-Palestinian interventions. When two US diplomatic initiatives to intervene in protracted conflicts mediated by the same individual reach different outcomes, what means of mediation mitigate failure? The 'Mitchell Principles' of democracy and non-violence are pillars of persuasion for protagonists of protracted conflicts. First successfully applied to mediate the Northern Irish decommissioning crisis in 1996, Mitchell's subsequent efforts to apply the principles to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis in 2001 failed. By comparing the fates of the Mitchell initiatives this essay examines the importance of negotiating precedents, procedures, protagonists and the role of third party policy initiatives in determining the success or failure of the Mitchell Principles.