The roles of conflict resolution scholars in Georgian–Abkhaz and Georgian–South-Ossetian conflict and conflict resolution

The evolving close relationship between the scholarly study of conflict resolution and the practice of waging and resolving conflicts can be seen in Georgian–Abkhaz and Georgian–South-Ossetian relations from 1992 to 2008. This article focuses on two related case studies of the many roles played by international conflict resolution scholars in Georgian–Abkhaz and in Georgian–South-Ossetian relations from 1992 to 2008. Drawing on interviews with insider-partial conflict resolution scholars, relevant international scholar-practitioners of conflict resolution, and the leadership of all parties of the conflicts, conducted between 1996 and 2008, the article presents a comprehensive analysis of the variety of roles conflict resolution scholar-practitioners have played in these conflicts during the wars and the recovery from war. The analysis suggests the need for clear ethical guidelines that cover traditional scholarly roles as well as scholar-practitioner roles including advising conflict parties, facilitating conflict resolution processes and analysing the conflicts. In particular, dilemmas emerge as scholar-practitioners move back and forth between these modes of engaged scholarship.     

Beyond the Thomas–Kilmann Model: Into Extreme Conflict

This article discusses an extension to the Thomas–Kilmann conflict mode instrument (Thomas and Kilmann 1977) designed specifically for conflict situations in which strong negative emotional relationships are at play. The Thomas–Kilmann (TK) model is widely used to help participants (disputants and mediators) identify how two basic conflict characteristics interact to influence how stakeholders shape their actions with regard to their interests. Essentially the TK Model is built on the premise that the two salient conflict variables are the relative importance of the relationships at hand and the substantive issues being discussed. These variables are illustrated with a simple matrix that shows how each party will interact with the other based on the relative importance it places on these variables. Graphically illustrating where the behaviors fall on the matrix can explicate parties' behaviors to add a new perspective that may change the dynamic of the conflict. But the TK Model does not address scenarios in which individuals have very negative or destructive relationships, and sabotage, blocking, and exclusion are behavioral norms. Hence, we developed the Baumoel–Trippe (BT) Extension to the TK Model to address the highly negative and often identity‐based conflicts that are often found in the world of family business. Accordingly, the BT Extension to the TK Model explores conflicts in which the relationships are not merely unimportant or uncooperative, but where they become negative to downright vengeful. There is so much at stake for family business stakeholders that the family relationships may become so adversarial that the very business and family harmony all parties value are at risk. With our extension of the TK Model, we seek to provide insight into how decisions might be made when stakeholders are in highly negative, conflictual relationships.     

A social theory of war: Clausewitz and war reconsidered

This article presents a new theory of war that is grounded in the insights of Clausewitz on the social nature of conflict. Clausewitz had argued that war is a political process; he therefore distinguished between ‘war’—understood in political terms—and warfare—understood as fighting. He then created a typology covering a spectrum of war ranging from total to limited, the political stakes of a conflict determining where it would fall on the spectrum. I develop and modify this basic framework by arguing that the social organization of the actors has a determining role in predicting the stakes of war. I then show how this framework helps us understand some key problems in the political science literature on war and conflict. I attempt to show two main things: (1) that there are different types of wars (and that these differences are not necessarily related to the standing of the actors, i.e. the presence or absence of sovereignty); and (2) that how war and warfare are related is more complicated than previously understood and that this has implications for the political science literature on order, conflict and violence.     

Violence Against Civilians: A Disaggregated Analysis

Disaggregated approaches to conflict research have led to new insights into the patterns and processes of political violence in developing countries. This article uses the most comprehensive subnational political violence data (ACLED) to observe where and when violence against civilians occurs within civil wars. Several new conclusions are evident from an event-based analysis of civilian violence: retribution or collateral damage are poor explanations for attacks on the unarmed. Instead, civilians are targeted because they are accessible; rebel groups kill more civilians, often in an attempt to create new frontlines for conflict. However, governments are also responsible for high rates of civilian death, yet they often “contract” this violence out to militias. This analysis confirms that there are multiple violent groups within civil war spaces, and small opposition groups commit higher levels of violence against civilians in local spaces. The strength of a violent group compared to its competition shapes how much civilian violence it commits. The results suggest that theories that emphasize civilian support and retribution as a basis for violence against civilians have overlooked the importance of how multiple violent opposition groups compete within civil wars, and how civilians suffer as a result.     

Threats,opportunity, and force: Repression and diversion of domestic pressure, 1948–1982

This paper explores empirically how domestic political and economic challenges affect political leaders’ propensity to respond with the use of force at home and abroad. The foreign policy and world politics literatures are replete with references to leaders’ alleged use of external conflict when confronted with domestic challenges, but rarely consider domestic responses to dissent or the role of interstate threats. Comparative research on repression primarily focuses on linkages between domestic challenges and leaders’ resort to repressive policies, but ignores international alternatives. Neither literature considers the influence of external threats and opportunity structures on resort to use of force and coercion at home and abroad. Alternatively, we contend that foreign conflict and repression are complementary and potentially interchangeable policies that leaders may use to maintain political power in the face of domestic pressure. We hypothesize that the level of domestic political constraints conditions the opportunity and likelihood of selecting either repression or foreign conflict in response to domestic challenges. Since the ability to capitalize on external conflict involvement in all likelihood is not independent of international opportunity structures, we explicitly address differences in the availability of historical interstate animosity. We test our hypotheses on resort to repression and external dispute involvement on a global sample of political leaders for the period 1948–82. Our results indicate that repression and external conflict involvement appear to be largely independent and driven by different challenges: While there is some evidence that domestic conflict increases the likelihood of disputes and that external threat may promote repression, there is little support for the idea of direct substitution in kind since leaders frequently combine both dispute involvement and repression.     

Socioeconomic Inequality and Communal Conflict: A Disaggregated Analysis of Sub-Saharan Africa, 1990–2008

This article examines the role of economic inequality in influencing the risk of armed conflict between communal groups in Sub-Saharan Africa. We argue that socioeconomic inequality can generate intergroup grievances, which, due to the exclusionary legitimacy of the African state and elite incentives to engage in competitive mobilization of communal groups, precipitate violent communal conflict. To examine this argument, we rely on a series of household surveys to construct subnational inequality measures. For each region, we calculate measures of inequality in terms of household welfare and education between individuals (vertical inequality) and between ethnic groups (horizontal inequality). Combining the inequality data with new georeferenced data on communal conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1990–2008, we find that regions with strong socioeconomic inequalities—both vertical and horizontal—are significantly more exposed to violent communal conflicts. More specifically, regions in which the largest ethnic group is severely disadvantaged compared to other groups are particularly prone to experience communal conflict.     

Following the Party in Time of War? The Implications of Elite Consensus

Prominent perspectives in the study of conflict point to two factors that exert substantial influence on public opinion about foreign intervention: (1) news about casualties and (2) signals from partisan elites. Past work is limited, however, in what it can say about how these two factors interact. We present an experiment designed to understand the surprisingly common scenario where elites send competing messages about whether the public should support war or oppose it—and these messages do not coincide with party divisions. We find that partisans are generally insensitive to news about casualties, but they become noticeably more sensitive when they perceive within-party disputes over support for the war. Independents, however, respond to news of casualties irrespective of what messages elites send. These findings shed light on when and how the public responds to competing and unclear cues and speak to the role of public opinion in determining conflict outcomes and democratic foreign policy-making more broadly.     

History writing and securitization of the other: the construction and reconstruction of Palestinian and Israeli security discourses

In conflict situations the protagonists are driven by rival visions of the past. The protracted conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is a particularly extreme case to illustrate this point. In protracted conflict like the Israeli–Palestinian conflict historians themselves are acting as combatants. In this regard, the article argues that history writing, particularly in the cases of protracted conflicts, constitutes an important part of the construction and reconstruction of security discourses whether by supporting mainstream security discourses or by challenging them. By discussing the role of history writing in the securitization process, this article aims to contribute to the centuries-long debates over the history-writing–politics nexus by taking a security studies perspective.     

Just the Two of Us? Civil Conflicts,Pro-State Militants,and the Violence Premium

Quantitative literature discussing violence in civil conflicts tends towards a typical model of engagement between governments and revolutionaries. Whilst recent work has shown the significant impact of multiple anti-government groups, a further feature remains understudied—the role of pro-state militants. This article theorizes a “violence premium” when such groups arise, which leads to all connected groups devoting greater energy to conflict than they would in isolation. Employing duration analysis and data from The Troubles in Northern Ireland, where Republicans act as revolutionary insurgents, Loyalists as pro-state militants, and the British Army as government forces, the violence premium is empirically confirmed. Both Loyalists and Republicans deviate from their underlying strategies to attack more frequently when violence by their rivals increases, with Republicans and the British Army engaging in the same way. An extended analysis, accounting for the status of the victim, shows that the violence premium resulting from interaction between Loyalists and Republicans targeted only the civilian population of Northern Ireland, elucidating the sectarian component of The Troubles. These results show that including all conflict parties and considering how they are linked are important features in studies that aim to determine the net level of violence in civil conflicts.     

Bounded by Violence: Institutionalizing Local Territories in the North of Ireland

This article analyzes the relationship between territoriality and organized violence through an examination of two relatively understudied aspects of the production and reproduction of informal territorial boundaries in situations of violent conflict. It looks first at the role of the state in the establishment, maintenance, and institutionalization of substate territories associated with challengers, outlining how these bounding processes are generated through interaction between the state and challengers, rather than primarily through the actions of challengers. Secondly, it explores the shaping force of geopolitical contexts on the everyday maintenance of informal boundaries in conflict situations. The argument is illustrated with examples from the most recent period of violent conflict in the north of Ireland, drawing on a range of primary sources, including official and private papers. The article argues that an analysis that gives due recognition to the central role of the state and the importance of the geopolitical context in the delineation and institutionalization of substate territories associated with armed challengers can help us to better understand the dynamics of organized violence.     

Decoding Negotiation Systems in the Middle East and North Africa: A Framework for Analysis

Regional conflicts are becoming increasingly complex due to the involvement of an ever more numerous and interconnected set of actors. Previous research has focused on regional conflict systems and has generated theoretical approaches such as the regional security complex paradigm. However, when complex, multifaceted, seemingly contradictory webs of relationships are spun in a region, new tools are needed to analyze and evaluate them. Drawing on previous regional conflict models, we propose a negotiation-oriented framework of regional conflict analysis that explores the type and intensity of relationships between state and nonstate actors in a conflict system. We offer a seven-step scale of relationships (ranging from ally to active armed opponent) that represents a novel contribution to the methodological efforts to analyze relationships in conflict systems. This framework brings to light the relational imbalance of the MENA region and has the potential to contextualize for negotiators and mediators the complex system of conflicts within, and possibly outside, the region.     

Madagascar between peace and conflict—domestic capabilities for peaceful conflict management

Despite severe political instability and many political crises since independence, Madagascar has experienced peace for nearly four decades. Unlike the dominant research on causes of armed conflict, this article focuses on the causes of peace. It introduces a new concept—domestic capabilities for peaceful conflict management—to identify factors related to conflict fault lines, civil–military relations and a culture of constructive conflict management, that facilitate the prevalence of peace. The domestic capabilities for peaceful conflict management perspective draws attention away from preventive diplomacy and external intervention and places the focus on internal capabilities for peace. On this basis, the article also analyses the severe crisis in 2009 and how it was handled.     

Diplomacy in the media age: Three models of uses and effects

This study offers three conceptual models to promote systematic research into uses of the media as a major instrument of foreign policy and international negotiations: public diplomacy, where state and nonstate actors use the media and other channels of communication to influence public opinion in foreign societies; media diplomacy, where officials use the media to communicate with actors and to promote conflict resolution; and media-broker diplomacy, where journalists temporarily assume the role of diplomats and serve as mediators in international negotiations. The first two models, while previously defined, undergo serious revision in this study. The third model is new. This article demonstrates the analytical usefulness of the models through applications to various examples and case studies of significant contemporary diplomatic processes.     

The role of private sector actors in post-conflict recovery

Countries need active, equitable and profitable private sectors if they are to graduate from conflict and from post-conflict aid-dependency. However, in the immediate aftermath of war, both domestic and international investment tends to be slower than might be hoped. Moreover, there are complex inter-linkages between economic development and conflict: in the worst case private sector activity may exacerbate the risks of conflict rather than alleviating them. This paper calls for a nuanced view of the many different kinds of private sector actor, including their approaches to risk, the ways that they interact and their various contributions to economic recovery. Policy-makers need to understand how different kinds of companies assess risk and opportunity. At the same time, business leaders should take a broader view of risk. Rather than focusing solely on commercial risks and external threats such as terrorism, they also need to take greater account of their own impacts on host societies. Meanwhile, all parties require a hard sense of realism. Skilful economic initiatives can support—but not replace—the political process.     

Rebellion without a shot—peaceful conflict management in Ecuador

Most conflict studies focus on the causes of war and violence. In contrast, this article on Ecuador explores the causes of peace in a country with strong conflict fault lines, a political army and several deep political crises during the last two decades. The article suggests that focusing on domestic capabilities for peaceful conflict management provides a new entry point to explaining why peace is sustained. An important aspect lies in the role of the armed forces and of civil society. Theories on civil-military relations provide an understanding of why armed forces intervene. However, there is less analysis of factors that influence political armies' behaviour in terms of the use or non-use of violence. This is the focus of this article. Furthermore, the article asks why actors in civil society opt for non-violent strategies. In summary, the article analyses the capabilities for peaceful conflict management of national actors—particularly of the armed forces and of civil society—through a focus on their behaviour in three recent political crises, and by tracking the influence of historical experiences, cultural context and the structural and institutional framework on their behaviour.     

The Paradox of Accepting One's Share of Responsibility in Mediation

Mediators generally avoid the issue of whether parties accept their individual share of responsibility for a conflict. But the results of this study demonstrate the important role that taking responsibility for the conflict can play to encourage the emergence of cooperation within the mediation process. In this article, the author first explores the role of responsibility within the context of various mediation approaches and styles. Next, he reports the results of a quantitative study that examined the attitudes of disputants involved in workplace conflict mediations. His results indicate that acceptance of responsibility can play a parodixical role in the mediation process: it seems to be effective only when both parties jointly acknowledge responsibility. When responsibility is acknowledged unilaterally, it seems to have a negative effect on the emergence of cooperation. Finally, the author proposes an intervention strategy for mediators that is designed to encourage the joint acceptance of responsibility and thus facilitate the emergence of cooperation in mediation.     

Seeking Sustainable Solutions: Using an Attractor Simulation Platform for Teaching Multistakeholder Negotiation in Complex Cases

We live and work in an increasingly complex and dynamic world. The demands of working in such environments require that negotiators understand situations of conflict and work with these situations in correspondingly complex and dynamic ways. Dynamical systems theory offers important insights and tools to enhance the understanding of difficult social conflicts, including the conceptualization of ongoing destructive conflicts as strong attractors: a particular form of self-organization of multiple elements comprising the mental and social systems associated with conflict. This article describes the pedagogical use of a computer simulation of conflict attractors (the attractor software) that allows participants to visualize and work interactively with the dynamics of conflict as they unfold over time. It further describes a negotiation workshop that employs the simulation to enhance participants' understanding of complex long-term dynamics in conflict and presents the findings of two outcome studiescomparing the effectiveness of a workshop that employed the simulation with one that employed a traditional integrative problem-solving method. While not definitive, these studies suggest that an understanding of the dynamical approach to conflict, supported by use of the attractor software, can promote the generation of more sustainable solutions for long-term conflicts.     

In the Nick of Time: Conflict Management, Mediation Timing, and the Duration of Interstate Disputes

This paper develops a theoretical argument linking time and the timing of conflict management efforts to dispute duration. We test competing hypotheses on conflict data drawn from disputes in the post-1945 period. Our analysis demonstrates that the effects of mediation vary substantially over the course of a dispute. Specifically, we note that mediation has a curvilinear relationship with time and the ending of disputes. Mediation efforts that occur soon after disputes begin have the best chance of reducing expected future dispute duration. Following this initial period, subsequent mediation efforts lead to longer rather than shorter disputes. After a long period, mediation again leads to shorter rather than longer disputes. We also find that there should be consistency in the mediators used to manage a conflict rather than shifting personnel to interject new ideas.     

Mediation and the Art of Shuttle Diplomacy

Mediation caucusing — that is, separate meetings conducted by the mediator with some, but not all, of the parties — is widely used, but it has become increasingly controversial, as some mediators advocate for a no‐caucus form of mediation using only joint sessions with all parties present. The rationale for the no‐caucus model is that caucuses give the mediator too much power at the expense of the parties, and joint sessions improve the parties' understanding of each other's views. But caucusing adds value to mediation in several ways. First, from the standpoint of economic theory, caucusing provides mediators with an important tool for overcoming two impediments to settlement — the “prisoner's dilemma” (caused by the parties' fear of mutual exploitation) and “adverse selection” (caused by the failure to disclose information). Second, caucusing can help the mediator overcome a variety of negotiation problems, such as communication barriers, unrealistic expectations, emotional barriers, intraparty conflict, and fear of losing face. Third, caucusing provides a more private setting in which the mediator can develop a deeper and more personal understanding of the parties' needs and interests. Although the no‐caucus model may be appropriate for certain types of mediation (particularly those cases in which the parties will have an ongoing relationship), some parties may prefer the efficiency that can be achieved with caucusing, even if that means sacrificing certain other values — such as greater understanding — or giving the mediator more information than the parties have, thus creating the risk of manipulation by the mediator. Moreover, the choice is not binary — numerous variations and hybrid formats can be useful, such as sessions in which the mediator meets with only the parties' lawyers or with only the parties. Choosing the best format for a mediation is more of an art than a science, and mediators should consider, with the parties, whether the parties' objectives would be best served using only joint sessions, extensive caucusing, or a combination of these approaches.