1 Introduction1
Bruce W. Dayton and Louis Kriesberg
This book focuses on challenging organizations that rely in significant measure on violent means of struggle in intrastate conflicts. Our goal is to better understand how these organizations shift away from violent forms of struggle, engage in politics, and then continue in non-violent relations with their former adversary. Such changes have become more common since the end of the 1980s, with violent conflicts more frequently ending through negotiations or by petering out than through the defeat of one side by the other (Human Security 2008). At the same time, a closer look at the data shows that those intrastate conflicts that ended through negotiation or by petering out had a higher probability of reemerging within five years than those conflicts that ended in victories. Non-violent forms of conflict termination may be on the increase, but nearly 40 percent of peace agreements fail within five years (Harbom et al. 2006). What explains these trends? What contributes to the movement of antagonists away from using violent methods of struggle? How are some processes of political engagement sustained while others are not? Each of the chapters in this book offers some clues to help answer these questions by providing new insights about the conditions and context that nurture and sustain constructive forms of conflict transformation.
This book proceeds from three premises. First, we do not assume that governments occupy a morally privileged position. Some challenged groups may be oppressively dominant and maintain their dominance by recourse to violence or the threat of violence, while others are varyingly responsive to the needs and concerns of their citizenry. Second, although the focus of this book is on the transformation of challenging organizations away from reliance on violent struggle, these transformations always occur in the context of a relationship whereby the actions of each side impacts the perception and choices of the other. As such, we see the actions of both challenger groups and the government that they oppose as shaped by changes occurring within and between them. Finally, we regard social conflicts to be an inevitable and essential aspect of social interaction that allows social groups to change and flourish, to challenge norms and values that they judge to be harmful, and to address the distribution of power at the heart of political processes. Yet the form that social conflict takes does not have to be violent. Groups in conflict can choose to wage their struggle through a variety of non-violent means including forming social movements, entering the political arena, withdrawing cooperation, and enlisting the help of intermediaries. The question, therefore, is not how to avoid conflicts, but rather how to wage conflicts in ways that are constructive rather than destructive (Kriesberg 2007).
Contextual backdrop
Three interesting developments in the frequency, deadliness and duration of intrastate violence are particularly relevant for this volume. First, there has been a world-wide decline in armed violence over the last 15 years. Analysis of data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), for instance, shows that between the early 1990s and 2006 the number of internal armed conflicts decreased from over 50 to fewer than 30, armed conflicts being defined as having at least 25 battle-related deaths per calendar year in one conflict dyad (Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2008). This decrease mirrors an overall decline in other types of violent conflict, including interstate armed conflicts and conflicts between non-state entities (Human Security 2008). A similar study conducted by the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), which used over 1,000 battle deaths to define violent conflicts, also shows a decline in interstate wars since the end of the 1980s, and a marked decline in societal wars after a spike in their incidence at the beginning of the 1990s (Marshall and Gurr 2005).
Second, these decreases in the incidence of armed conflicts may well be celebrated, but they do not signify global peace and harmony. Using a longer time frame, the incidence of armed conflicts defined by 25 or over battle deaths per year or by over 1,000 battle deaths rose steadily starting in 1946, until the declines began around 2000. The levels of violence found in 2006 may be impressive by 1990 standards, but are still equal to those found in the mid-1950s; with the occurrence of armed conflict in 2006 roughly twice what it was in 1946 (Harbom et al. 2006). The difference is not so great if the large increase in the number of independent countries that occurred during this period is taken into account, which raises the number of countries within which and among which violent conflicts can occur (Gleditsch 2008).
Finally, new outbreaks of conflicts often are the result of a recurrence of a conflict that was once thought to have ended. Uppsalaās Conflict Data Program in collaboration with the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) has published a database describing peace agreements between 1989 and 2005, which includes data on the success or failure of those agreements over periods of one and five years (Harbom et al. 2006). Analyses of these data reveal that between 1989 and 2005, 40 percent of the conflicts ending in peace agreements had seen a return to violence within five years. These data further show that conflicts ending with āfull peace agreementsā (the whole incompatibility is settled) were far more likely to hold than those ending in āpartial agreementsā (agreements where only a portion of the incompatibility is settled) and partial agreements more likely to hold than āpeace process agreementsā (agreements where the parties agree to initiate a process to settle the incompatibility). In addition, agreements that included particular provisions were much more likely to be sustained than those without those provisions. Agreements including provisions for elections, for example, failed 38 percent of the time, while those without failed 45 percent of the time. Only 12 percent of peace agreements that included provisions for local government, short of autonomy, failed within five years, while 49 percent of those without such provisions failed in the same time frame.
Data about trends in violent conflict provide an interesting backdrop to the study of peacebuilding following intrastate conflict. Such data do not, however, fully explain why intrastate adversaries engage in violent forms of conflict to begin with, why violent opposition movements sometimes choose to terminate their activities peacefully, and why some processes of political engagement succeed while others fail. We know, for instance, that between 1989 and 2005 more violent intrastate conflicts ended without a formal peace agreement than did with a peace agreement (Human Security 2006). We also know, as outlined above, that close to 40 percent of all conflicts observed between 1946 and 2005 returned to violence at some point after termination was achieved (Harbom et al. 2006). We do not know, however, the reasons that protagonists in these cases chose to end the violent phase of their struggle or why peace processes were successfully sustained in some cases, but not in others.
This book seeks explanations for such transformations by using case studies, supported by theories about the causes of conflict escalation and de-escalation, to uncover the processes and dynamics that lead protagonists to turn either toward or away from non-violent means of opposition. Included in the volume are two types of chapters. First, we include a set of thematic chapters that identify critical factors that facilitate, nurture, and sustain the movement of opposition groups from violence to peace, among them: political leadership, globalization processes, intermediaries, the representation of āthe enemyā in public speech acts, the impact of the āstreet,ā and the de-militarization of politics during interim post-conflict periods. Second, we include a set of cases where protagonists have changed their strategies away from reliance on violent means and toward other modes of contestation, even for a brief period.
Each chapter is a product of several months of interaction among contributing authors, including a workshop on the transformation of organizations using violence held at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and a subsequent roundtable discussion at the 2008 International Studies Association annual meeting. Despite our work together, the authors in this book are by no means unified in their assessment of the most important factors that contribute to intrastate conflict de-escalation. Some contributors stress the importance of material dynamics to conflict transformation processes, while others focus on social-psychological dynamics or leadership style. Yet cross-cutting themes and commonalities can be seen across the chapters. The first of these relates to changes to the structural or material conditions that underlie conflict dynamics. Several cases and thematic chapters show how improving the economic conditions of communities, expanding the educational and employment opportunities available to individuals, and liberalizing access to political power within formal political structures, make it less likely that opposition movements will pursue their aims through violence. Other chapters and cases show how, those communities facing high levels of structural violence, lacking economic or educational opportunities, and facing institutionalized disparities in access to power often suffer from the emigration of skilled workers, a deepening of the conflict cycle, and an increase in militancy on the part of the population.
Second, this book speaks to the general importance of transforming the cognitive and emotional dynamics that sustain intergroup violence. Violent conflicts occur, in part, because of social-psychological processes related to dehumanization, stereotyping, and the application of negative attributions to the motivation of oneās adversary and positive attributions to the motivations of oneās own side. These social-psychological dynamics can be exacerbated by lack of contact over time or through the leadersā use of inflammatory references to past grievances and loses. Evidence in this volume suggest that re-humanizing oneās enemy and/or creating a superordinant identity among conflicting parties can help to create conditions where peacemaking is possible. By extension, the absence of contact across groups only serves to concretize negative stereotyping and dehumanization and makes more likely the use of violence to achieve political objectives.
Third, changes to the internal politics within one or both sides appear to frequently shift opposition movements toward or away from violent tactics. All challenging organizations, as well as the governments they challenge, experience significant levels of internal heterogeneity and fractionalization. These internal political dynamics play an important role in determining their strategic choices for contestation with adversaries. The results of these dynamics, which include the splitting of the movement into different factions, expected or unexpected leadership transitions, or changes in the way that decisions are made within the group, have a great effect on their reliance on, resort to, or renunciation of violence. Several of the cases presented in this volume illustrate, for instance, how the splintering of opposition organizations may weaken them while also complicating negotiations. Other cases show how changes in group leadership become a critical factor in either advancing peace processes or undercutting them.
Fourth, this volume suggests that the actions of external parties often have a powerful impact on the trajectory of conflicts. The parties in intrastate conflicts frequently depend upon the resources of external actors to sustain their activities. This external support is not, however, endless. Diaspora communities, which often provide substantial material support for opposition movements, may shift in their attitudes toward armed struggle and begin to pressure those that they are supporting to engage in peace processes. Similarly, opposition movements or governments may gain or lose the support of those states that are acting as their patrons. This was true, for instance, in Guatemala where long-standing US support for the hard-line policies of the government gave way to new policies as the strategic interests of the US shifted in the 1990s. Such shifts are most evident after the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. After this global transformation, support for proxy wars dropped sharply as the US and the Soviet Union disengaged from several conflicts.
Finally, evidence from this book suggests that constructive engagement often occurs because of the changing prospects of military defeat or of military victory. In some cases the opposition movements shift away from violence and embrace processes of political incorporation because of defeat or near defeat. In other cases the application of violence by the opposition group had the effect of bringing state actors to the negotiation table. That violence is sometimes an effective tool for conducting and managing a conflict may be an uncomfortable reality for practitioners of peacebuilding and constructive conflict transformation. Yet this conclusion points to one of the most important questions raised by this volume: when can some kinds of violence be constructive?
Of course, ending intrastate conflicts is only the first half of what is most often a long and difficult process of achieving a sustainable peace. This volume also suggests that fragile peace agreements easily relapse back to violence if they are not accompanied by post-conflict social integration, economic development, committed leadership, and the demilitarization of politics. Sustainable peacebuilding, in other words, requires transformation across multiple fronts including changed attitudes and perceptions, changed behaviors, and changes to the structural inequalities that provide uneven benefits within political systems.
Overview of chapters
The first eight chapters in this book examine the dynamics and processes that account for constructive engagement in intrastate conflicts. These thematic chapters begin with Kriesberg and Millarās analysis of the primary adversaries in a conflict and the strategies they adopt as they escalate and de-escalate their struggle against each other. Kriesberg and Millar examine the relevant internal features of each side in the conflict and also the way each adversaryās actions affect the opponentās choices of methods of struggle in the course of the conflict.
In the second thematic chapter, Margaret G. Hermann and Catherine Gerard examine how learning about leadership can help us gain access to knowledge about the processes occurring within the groups and organizations of interest to us in this volume.
Elham Atashi then argues that current models, practices and analyses of peacebuilding tend to focus on changes at the leadership level and neglect what happens to people in the streets. Consequently, she notes, postconflict societies can be plagued by an āuneven peace;ā that is, a situation in which the benefits of the peace process are not shared by all. Uneven peace agreements, in turn, reduce the likelihood of achieving a sustainable peace as marginalized groups at the local level continue to fight on, even in the context of a negotiated settlement.
The next three chapters examine different processes that are instrumental in the enduring transformation of violent conflicts. Bruce Dayton examines how parties that are not primary adversaries may or may not intervene to help transform large-scale violent conflicts. Dayton provides a theoretical framework for intermediary activities in violent intrastate conflict, considers the conditions and contexts that lead armed groups to engage with intermediaries, and concludes with observations about the prospects and limits of intermediary activities in transforming organizations that use violence.
Bradford Vivianās chapter addresses two closely related questions: In what forms do public appeals to collective memory foster peace and political reconciliation? And by what principles can we recognize their more destructive varieties, which perpetuate conflict and hostility? Vivianās chapter adopts a rhetorical approach to the subject of collective memory; analyzing how particularly influential speakers persuade target audiences to act upon those visions of the past (either violent or peaceful) that they construct in their public discourse. He argues that transforming collective perceptions of the past ā and consequently of the present and future ā can establish vital preconditions for motivating antagonists to participate in conflict resolution.
Next, Terrence Lyons cautions against an overemphasis on elections as the most important event in achieving sustainable peace. Lyons uses numerous case examples to demonstrate that democratization processes must be accompanied by broader efforts to demilitarize politics in postconflict societies and that to be successful, such demilitarization processes need to begin during transitional periods from violence to peace.
The final two thematic chapters focus on the societal and the global contexts. Gavan Duffy argues that intrastate political conflicts concern groupsā perceptions of their own security. Accordingly, Duffy examines recent efforts to apply the security dilemma analysis, borrowed from neorealist international relations scholarship, to intrastate conflicts. He argues that such analyses have limited usefulness because they lack generality and also because they consider only the threats that groups perceive and not their perceived opportunities. Analysis based on political opportunity structures is described and illustrated by reference to several conflicts. Duffy discusses the implications of the political opportunity framework for conflict transformation and indicates pathways to peaceable conflict outcomes that are inconceivable from within the security dilemma framework.
In the last thematic chapter, Galia Golan and Adir Gal examine the global context and how it contributes to conflict transformation or obstructs it. This chapter provides an examination of the many ways that globalization contributes to the constructive transformations of violent intrastate conflicts and the moderation of violent opposition groups. Among the variables considered are the media, diaspora communities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the transnational private sector; each of which have expanded their capacity to impact intrastate conflicts because of globalization dynamics. The authors caution, however, that globalization entails many developments that may produce negative effects as well as positive ones.
The final eight chapters in this book are case studies. Not all the case studies examined are āsuccessā stories. Even the most constructive conflict transformations have some limitations and exhibit regressive episodes. On the other hand, even the conflicts that have failed to be enduringly transformed do include some interludes without violence. Furthermore, some factions or subgroups within one or more of each side may have withdrawn support for employing violent methods, and adopted non-violent means of struggle.
The eight case studies in this book differ in the extent to which adversaries relying heavily on violence change and engage in non-violent political processes. As the diverse cases illuminate, such transformations sometimes come about as result of victories and of defeats. Interestingly, attributions or claims of success or of failures are often ambiguous and disputed.
The cases vary in other significant ways. One is the content of the issue of contention and the goals the adversaries formulate. In many cases the adversaries struggle for dominance or at least a strong voice in a shared political system, differing in the magnitude of the change they seek. The struggle may be related to the way the adversaries define themselves, by class-based ideological differences, by ethnic or other communal identities, or by organizational or gang claims for political power for themselves. In varying ways this is true for Brazil, Mozambique, Guatemala, South Africa, and Nepal. In other cases, the adversaries struggle about separating from each other and forming independent entities, as in Spain, Sri Lanka, and PalestineāIsrael. This difference is also related to variation between conflicts waged in the context of the ideologically-oriented Cold War and in the context of post-Cold-War era.
Finally, the cases vary in the degree and nature of the violence used by each side in a conflict. The repression in Guatemala by ...
