There are books like Embassytown where the conflicts are a little bit more like a medical crisis (for that matter, there are books like James White's Sector General books where that's mostly what's going on)

Iain M. Banks' Culture novels have this vibe a lot, usually the Culture is technologically far superior to the forces it's up against and it COULD just bully in there and make it's will known, but that isn't the style, so they have to use manipulation, diplomacy, and occasional small team operations. I particularly like how a common tactic with dealing with oppressive, totalitarian gov'ts on primitive planets is to Spoiler But there still is a lot of action and direct conflict because, well, I do think it's pretty hard to do one without any, at least in novel length (there are plenty of shorter works, but I can't think of any off hand).

This isn't FULLY along the lines of your request, but I have to throw in a rec for Karl Schroeder. Often he does ones where there's a war or something but resolves it in sometimes unusual ways, and respects varying different sides as having legitimate points of view that happen to be in conflict but could potentially be in concert. His premiere novel Ventus starts out as a search for a "bad guy" that turns out to be not so bad and is also an interesting philosophical look at using technology to give nature it's own voice and place at the table rather than subduing it or making it purely a reflection of humanity. Lady of Mazes, set in the same universe, has something of a CULTURAL attack rather than a physical one (although there are physical elements), and the thrust is trying to both find assistance and find the source, but in the process they start questioning whether there's any point, that maybe the changes in their home are a good thing, etc. I think it's somewhat in the spirit (and given how often things like alternative non-hierarchical government systems crops up in his work, I suspect at some point he will write something exclusively about cooperative conflict resolution).

Though I do have to warn that there often is some level of romantic plot within, I wouldn't personally consider them romance stories.