Almost six decades since the emergence of Track Two diplomacy, a form of informal and unofficial dialogues between conflicting parties facilitated by scholar-practitioners, scholarship on the field has grown exponentially. Originally conceived of as a discreet complement to Track One official negotiations between armed actors in conflict, Track Two has become an established and professionalized form of broader conflict resolution. Specific scholarship on Track Two has occupied the liminal space between theory and practice, in which theoretical propositions are often born out of observations from practical applications in empirical cases. Analyzing how Track Two theories reflect these paradigms can give greater insights into the theoretical evolution of the field and where it is headed. This begets a need to regularly and systematically survey the relevant literature on Track Two given the large-scale changes occurring in its practice. This article discusses the evolution of Track Two theories as embedded in conflict resolution paradigms, namely, strategic bargaining and problem solving; conflict transformation; and liberal and post-liberal peacebuilding. In particular, I focus on how the recent "normative turn" in conflict resolution literature has impacted Track Two scholarship. Following the analytical framework of a mediation process applied to Track Two scholarship, I organize relevant literature into “generations” and compare what are identified as the main constitutive components of a Track Two initiative in order to understand how the theories have evolved in this second generation of literature. My analysis finds that conceptions of Track Two have moved from “narrow” to “broad”: influenced by a normative imperative toward more inclusive and participatory peace processes in conflict resolution, activities labeled as Track Two have expanded from small, discreet dialogues between unofficial actors to include more robust forms of civil society inclusion and participation.

中文翻译：

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走向第二轨外交的规范转变？文献综述

自第二轨外交（一种由学者和从业者推动的冲突各方之间的非正式和非官方对话形式）出现近六年以来，该领域的学术研究呈指数级增长。轨道二最初被设想为对冲突中武装行为者之间的轨道一官方谈判的谨慎补充，现已成为更广泛的冲突解决的既定和专业化形式。第二轨道上的特定学术研究占据了理论与实践之间的临界空间，其中理论命题通常源于对经验案例的实际应用的观察。分析第二轨理论如何反映这些范式可以更深入地了解该领域的理论演变及其发展方向。鉴于其实践中发生的大规模变化，这就需要定期和系统地调查有关第二轨的相关文献。本文讨论了嵌入冲突解决范式的第二轨理论的演变，即战略讨价还价和问题解决；冲突转化；以及自由主义和后自由主义的和平建设。特别是，我关注解决冲突文献中最近的“规范转向”如何影响第二轨学术。遵循应用于第二轨道学术的调解过程的分析框架，我将相关文献组织成“世代”，并比较被确定为第二轨道倡议的主要组成部分的内容，以了解这些理论在第二代中是如何演变的文学的。