Leadership under civilizational constraint: Extending context in critical leadership studies through a comparative analysis of three (1990s) peace processes

This article introduces civilizational depth as an undertheorized dimension of context in critical leadership studies. Through a comparative analysis of three Nobel Prize–associated peace processes of the 1990s—Northern Ireland, South Africa, and the Oslo Accords—it argues that institutional design, rational-choice incentives, and leadership agency are necessary but insufficient conditions to explain why the first two processes culminated in negotiated settlements, whereas the third ended in implosion. The missing variable is the civilizational environment (sacralized territory, metaphysical claims, and millennial temporal horizons) within which leadership is enacted. Drawing on Braudel’s longue durée , the article demonstrates that leadership effectiveness varied with the civilizational depth of the context. Peace-making was feasible in the ‘thin’ contexts of the first two processes, where identity claims could be politically reframed, institutionally mediated, and embedded within wider structures of democratic legitimation. By contrast, the Israel–Palestine conflict remained constrained by civilizational spoilers that rendered negotiated settlement unattainable. The article reconceptualizes leadership as a situated and discursive practice whose possibilities are conditioned by historically sedimented symbolic environments. In ‘thick’ civilizational contexts, leadership is less about resolving conflict than containing antagonism and sustaining political possibility. ‘Civilizational’ leadership involves the disciplined practice of working within the constraints. Its primary objective is navigating and reframing inherited structures; and its deployment hinges on sensitivity and fluency in the discursive management of civilizational meaning. The implications extend beyond the context of peace-making to contemporary politics, where identity conflict, religion, and quasi-religious forms of political mobilization are becoming increasingly salient.