NGOs and Ethnic Conflict: Lessons from the Work of the Project on Ethnic Relations in the Balkans

This article examines the impact of nongovernmental organization-sponsored contact and communication on fostering peaceful solutions to ethnic conflict via case studies of the activities of the Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) in Romania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Serbia. It explores five operational principles that guide PER activity: creating credible, neutral forums for dialogue; maintaining momentum; working within political realities; encouraging indigenous solutions from within existing processes; and acting with the backing of powerful states. These principles explain PER's success as a "weak mediator" of ethnic conflicts. According to this analysis, PER also exhibits organizational characteristics that contribute to success, including nonpartisanship, area expertise and extensive networks of local contacts, and an ability to secure the trust of local actors.
A significant indicator of the success of PER activities is the establishment by conflicting parties of institutionalized mechanisms for addressing their differences. Contrary to the view that electoral competition contributes to conflict, this study finds that the possibility of achieving an electoral advantage by participating cooperatively in conflict resolution activities creates incentives for local actors to recognize opportunities offered by PER activities and leads local actors to heed PER's advice. Finally, the article offers a cautionary observation. While PER's perceived influence with major international actors may contribute to its local successes, once a state actor with the power to impose a solution has committed itself to ending a conflict, its preferences outweigh any local interests in determining the outcome and renders the efforts of a "weak mediator" such as PER irrelevant.     

英国的调解制度--近期发展

本文分析了英国近来的一些案例,介绍了英国在采取非诉方法解决争议方面的最新发展,强调了法院在一些案件中的态度.     

The World Bank's (post-)conflict agenda: the challenge of integrating development and security

Linkages between security and development, and the need for national and international organizations to integrate these areas and concerns in policy, are widely recognized. It is, however, less clear how to practically accomplish this. Different policies will address different security and development concepts and aspects, and choices on focus and priority need to be made. This can generate tensions and resistance within organizations, resulting in limited integration. A case study of the World Bank's attempt to be more ‘conflict-sensitive’ demonstrates this dynamic. This attempt has had various positive aspects, but the integration of conflict concerns in its programmes and policies remains uneven and somewhat limited. While there is certainly room for improved integration, this should not be pursued beyond the point where the Bank's comparative advantage is undermined and resources from its core mission of combating human poverty diverted.     

Newspaper juries

This article reports on a field experiment on the effect of media information on people’s attitudes towards the justice system. For the duration of a year a Dutch local newspaper took small groups of readers, called ‘newspaper jurors’, to court sessions of criminal cases and subsequently reported on their experiences and perceptions. Using a quasi-experimental design, we examined whether an attitude change in the general reader population of this particular local newspaper occurred as a result of the jury’s newspaper reports. Findings show that, after the treatment interval of 1 year, no attitude change in the general reader population could be identified that was absent in the control group.