When Development Is Not Enough: Structural Change,Conflict and Gendered Insecurity

Despite two decades of rapid global economic growth and social modernisation, including increases in gender equity, levels of violence against women remain stubbornly high. Moving beyond conventional liberal views, a growing literature has identified how structural change and conflict associated with economic development can exacerbate women’s physical insecurity. We examine the relationship between development patterns and variation in the Physical Security of Women index—the best available cross-national indicator—to fill the gap in emerging ethnographic, case and survey-based accounts with systematic cross-country assessment. We find that, after controlling for standard explanatory variables, income inequality, urban crowding, corruption, political violence, autocracy and unequal representation of women in politics are associated with more physical insecurity, confirming the relevance of structural change and conflict approaches to development. Correcting the conventional wisdom, high national incomes are associated with greater security for women only if they are well distributed, and the relationship with female labour force participation weakens as women’s work rises. These relationships are robust to the year in which they are measured, and to the introduction of region and time fixed effects. We also demonstrate that gender-based violence has different correlates than generic insecurity.     

Skill Is Not Enough: Seeking Connectedness and Authority in Mediation

Coauthor Christopher Honeyman was struck by the flagging "marketability" of mainstream professionally trained mediators in the U.S. More and more parties were choosing retired judges and other practitioners who were not classically trained mediators to help them resolve their disputes. Searching for an explanation of this phenomenon, Honeyman found a possible answer in Melbourne, Australia, where he listened with a Western ear to the presentations of coauthors Loretta Kelly and Bee Chen Goh about the importance of connectedness and individual perceptions of authority to the parties in the mediation of indigenous disputes. In this article, the authors present case histories from Australia and Malaysia to illustrate these concepts. They contend the same concepts are behind the shifting of the market for mediation in the United States.     

Thucydides on Ripeness and Conflict Resolution

Ripeness is the moment when parties to a conflict become willing to accept a settlement. It necessarily has a large subjective or psychological component. Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War may be viewed as a case study in ripeness, or its lack. Thucydides claims the conflict was foreordained to be a "great" war, meaning it could not be resolved before its cataclysmic end. His account of its origins reveals why this was so, and his presentation of select moments during the war constitute explorations of the obstacles to resolution. What Thucydides adds to the current literature on ripeness is a distinctive account of the psychology behind it.     

Civic Fusion: Moving from Certainty through Not Knowing to Curiosity

Civic fusion occurs when people bond across passionate difference to solve a shared public problem. It requires bringing people close together under conditions that enable them to bond, even as their polarizing beliefs remain intact. In managing multiparty multi‐issue negotiations, public policy mediators help disparate, passionate parties negotiate actionable agreements. To achieve and sustain civic fusion, interested parties recognize and acknowledge confining assumptions and move through a continuum in which their certainty about each other and their presumed solutions is challenged and transforms to uncertainty and then to curiosity. They connect across common public goals and find mutual understanding and respect for the interests of others as they come to understand and accept the opportunities and limitations that are inherent to their complex situations. A steady stream of new understandings moves people beyond their long‐held perspectives to foster productive negotiations and build innovative solutions. Ultimately, the parties generate sustainable consensus agreements even as they retain their deeply held and often opposing values and beliefs.     

Conflict Resolution: Lessons from the Dayton Peace Process

The Bosnian War (1992–1995) was one of the most brutal conflicts in Europe since the end of World War II. Thirty‐four cease‐fires failed to produce peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina until the late American diplomat, Richard Holbrooke, brokered one that set the stage for a series of negotiations—starting in the Balkans and ending in Dayton, Ohio. The Dayton peace process finally terminated the Bosnian War. The interplay of military intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and diplomacy by the United States was remarkable. This article highlights thirteen conflict resolution lessons or “Holbrookeisms” that can be learned from the Dayton peace process. Some aspects of Holbrooke's approach toward the peace process helped him to successfully mediate an end to the Bosnian War, while others contributed toward some of the existing cleavages in today's Bosnian society.     

Russia: “European But Not Western?”

The question whether Russia is part of the Western world has plagued Russian intellectuals and Western observers alike for the past two centuries. The question matters because where Russia “belongs” is part of a larger debate about how one differentiates between “the West” and “the Rest” given changes in the Western family of nations, and because of larger questions of geopolitical alignment. The Slavophile vs. Westernizer paradigm, which suggests that throughout Russia there are two opposing camps engaged in a struggle to determine the course of the country is too simple to reflect the true complexity of post-Soviet Russia. Moreover, an equilibrium may have been reached where not answering the question of Russia's relationship to the West is desirable for all parties concerned.     

Understanding the Art and Techniques of Conflict Resolution

Negotiation Journal -     

Long Peace or Long War: A Conflict Resolution Perspective

Since the end of the 1980s, both the incidence and severity of violent conflicts and of domestic and international wars have declined globally. These declines are attributable to the convergence of many developments that help prevent, limit, and stop large-scale violence, and the author suggests that those developments persist. Consequently, he suggests that the recent U.S. engagement in wars and recent surges in terrorist attacks are limited spikes in violence that can be overcome. The author discusses how the current violent events may be in part a consequence of behaviors of the U.S. government and other governmental and nongovernmental organizations that are contrary to the major developments that contribute to global peace and cooperation. Governments and peoples acting in concert with those ongoing changes can help reduce the current mass violence.     

Correspondences and Comparisons in International and Domestic Conflict Resolution

The eclectic field of conflict resolution is characterized by a constant interplay between practice and theory (to say nothing about varying interpretations of what practice and theory actually are or should be). The author raises a number of questions about how to develop and test theory; the significant role of context in theory generation; and a variety of themes or issues that can be explored to provide scholarly synthesis as well as guidance for the practitioner, in both domestic and international conflict situations.     

Parenting Coordination: The Risks of a Hybrid Conflict Resolution Process

Parenting coordination is a conflict resolution process that blends the roles of mediator, decision maker, monitor, assessor, educator, counselor, and enforcer for families involved in high‐conflict divorces. This article explores the potential benefits and risks of blending roles in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, trust, posturing, dual roles, self‐determination, and allegations of bias.     

The Cairo Stories: Some Reflections on Conflict Resolution in Egypt

The author relates three cases of conflict which he has observed in Cairo and recognizes patterns that cut across each of these stories. The stories shed light on how people in Egypt approach and deal with conflict; in addition, they may help readers understand conflict in their home culture as well as be instructive on how to listen to conflict in different cultures. Six general themes in the way Egyptians approach or handle conflict are identified, and each of these themes is analyzed.     

Prescriptive and Elicitive Approaches to Conflict Resolution: Examples from Papua New Guinea

Negotiation Journal -     

Confectionery and Conflict Resolution? What Chocolat Reveals about Mediation

A close analysis of the film Chocolat discloses a new metaphor for the mediator — the mediator as cook. The use of this metaphor throughout the film suggests new insights about mediator style and practice. Specifically, the mediator–protagonist in Chocolat demonstrates that: (1) mediations need not be voluntary to be sound, (2) non-neutral, directive, evaluative mediators can be effective if they individualize their approaches to each disputant and dispute, and (3) effective approaches to mediation celebrate emotion and pleasure, contrary to many conflict resolution theorists who write about the importance of emotions, but do not privilege them in practice.     

Visibly Invisible: EU Engagement in Conflict Resolution in the South Caucasus

Abstract

This essay examines growing European Union (EU) involvement in the South Caucasus, focusing on efforts to resolve the protracted conflicts in the regions of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh. To date, the EU has occupied a back seat in conflict resolution efforts, supporting organisations such as the UN and OSCE, which have taken the lead role. However, over a decade of negotiations has produced few tangible results and the EU now has the opportunity to play a much greater role. This essay argues that the EU needs to become more involved: it has a much wider range of tools at its disposal with which to influence the various situations and it is in its own interest to ensure the stability of its neighbours.     

Engaging Conflict History and Memory Across the Taiwan Strait: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Conflict Timelines from Interactive Conflict Resolution (ICR) Dialogues

An analysis of twenty pairs of Taiwanese and mainland Chinese timelines of cross-Strait relations demonstrates a highly dynamic way in which the two societies' conflict memories have evolved over two decades. These timelines were developed in the context of twenty weeklong Interactive Conflict Resolution (ICR) dialogues that the author facilitated. A cohort of civil society delegates from both sides of the Strait, each with five persons, participated in each of the dialogues and produced the timelines. A longitudinal content analysis of the timelines reveals that the participants' experiences of cross-Strait relations have continuously altered their mental frames of the conflict. It also reveals distinct patterns of their recollections. These findings challenge the prevailing practices of conflict mapping and analysis that uncritically presume a static nature of conflict parties' goals. Broader implications of the study include the usefulness of action research and applied practice for methodological innovations and theory building.     

The Evolution of International Conflict Resolution: From Cold War to Peacebuilding

Shaped by the changing nature of international conflict, the field of international conflict resolution evolved significantly throughout the latter years of the twentieth century and continues to be redefined. The end of the Cold War created space for a major transformation of the international conflict resolution field. This transformation was marked by three trends: (1) an expansion from a focus on superpower negotiating strategies to a wider peacebuilding agenda, (2) an increase in the role of nongovernmental actors as both disputants and third parties in international conflicts, and (3) a growing concern about human security in addition to state security, creating both tensions and opportunities for collaboration between governmental and nongovernmental bodies. This article presents a brief overview of each trend, as well as some concluding questions to frame the field's further development at this important juncture.