Framing Conflict: Applying an Interpretive Approach to Understanding Decision Making of the African Union and United Nations in Darfur, 2003-2008

A growing body of research has illustrated how narratives and the framing of an issue underpin domestic policy debates and decisions, especially in the environmental realm. There is relatively less research, however, about how the framing of today’s violent conflicts around the world, as evidenced in the stories people and institutions tell about them, shapes international decision-making about interventions to resolve them. This dissertation will fill a gap in the literature on conflict analysis and resolution by taking an interpretive approach to understanding the way in which framing delimits the field of action in third party interventions through a case study of conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan.  The United Nations and African Union’s intervention in Darfur from 2003 to 2008 is a particularly interesting case because of its potential to reveal multiple and possibly divergent storylines among the primary two multilateral institutions that have led the political negotiations and peacekeeping mission there.  The case is also unique because of the large international advocacy movement that has grown up around Darfur, contributing to rich social and institutional discourses about the conflict and its nature.