Understanding Conflict and Conflict Analysis

Ho-Won Jeong, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781412903097, 9781412903080
• eBook ISBN: 9781473902893
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

?...effectively fills a long-standing void and will no doubt be hailed as a much-needed new addition to the literature... This text very much exemplifies the strength of Ho-Won Jeong as a theorist and one of the more prolific writers in the larger peace and conflict studies field... the final three chapters on ?De-escalation Dynamics? (which includes a brief section on third party intervention), on ?Conciliation Strategies,? and especially the one on ?Ending Conflict,? which provides a range of outcomes beyond the usual focus on third party intervention (read mediation) epitomizes the value of this new text? - Journal of Peace Research

?…an awesome tour d?horizon of modern war, violence, and confrontation within and between nations. Illustrating via just about every conflict in every corner of the world, the author invokes an endless array of insights and interpretations, ranging from the micro to the macro, beautifully written in a seamless sequence of closely linked and discursive essays.? - Professor J. David Singer, University of Michigan

?Ho-Won Jeong has written an illuminatinbg analysis of the dynamics of conflict. He lays out the tools we have to analyze conflict in a literate and comprehensive way. A valuable book for anyone interested in a more comprehensive understanding of conflict, its sources, and its deescalation and termination? - Janice Gross Stein, Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management, Director, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto

?Jeong has successfully combined behavioral and structural analysis of the dynamics of social conflict. This volume covers the multiple dimensions - escalation, entrapment, de-escalation, termination, and resolution - both of violent and non-violent confrontation between adversaries, as well as the utility and limitations of external intervention. For students of the social sciences, it should serve as an excellent introduction to the complex realities of social conflict.? - Milton Esman, John S. Knight Professor of International Studies, Emeritus, Cornell University

By examining the dynamic forces which shape and re-shape major conflicts, this timely book provides students with the knowledge base needed to successfully study conflict sources, processes and transformations. Broad in focus, it addresses the multiple social, political and psychological features central to understanding conflict situations and behaviour. A range of both recent and historical examples (including the Arab-Israeli conflict, the ?War on Terrorism?, the Cold War, and the civil wars in Sudan, former Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka) are discussed, illustrating the application of concepts and theories essential to the analysis of inter-group, inter-state and intra-state conflict and conflict resolution in a wider context.

Understanding Conflict and Conflict Analysis is key reading for students of international relations, peace and conflict studies, conflict resolution, international security and international law.

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Part I
Concepts and Analysis

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Approaches to Understanding Conflict

1

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Conflict dates from the beginning of human history and will probably never end. Our survival on this planet hinges on how we manage the various features of conflict that is fuelled not only by seemingly incompatible interests and values but also by hostilities. The most destructive types of conflict such as interstate and civil wars consist of a coercive, violent mode of confrontation among adversaries. Whereas conflict embraces personal loss and societal destruction, its many features are not limited to physical violence. Non-violent forms of struggle are also prevalent in pursuit of different values and scarce resources. In bringing about important social change, resorting to force is neither necessary nor inevitable.

In order to explore strategies of managing and possibly resolving conflicts, our goal needs to be an in-depth analysis of human behaviour and its surrounding environment. It is generally accepted that psychological and behavioural elements, as well as structural conditions for alienation, combine to fuel conflict (Azar, 1986; Burton, 1990; Kelman, 1972; Mitchell, 1981). The examination of motivational and perceptional aspects of human decision making is essential to exploring the dynamics of mass violence, arms races, and international crises. Perceived and actual threats originate from the misinterpretation of intentions or a lack of trust fed by opposing interests and power struggles. In assessing protracted conflict, major attention has been paid to the very nature of a system that reproduces incompatibility among social units. A large scale conflict arises from collective human action often precipitated or controlled by a structural environment.

Each year 20 to 40 armed conflicts of various size rage around the world. Some conflicts have been successfully managed, but others have brought about devastating consequences such as wholesale killing (Marshall and Gurr, 2005). In Cambodia, the unheralded mass extermination of the regime’s enemy classes in the mid-1970s was marked by more than a million deaths; in Rwanda, indiscriminate killings of civilians by militia groups led to the loss of almost a million lives. Civil wars in Sudan and the Congo represented the most brutal internal wars, involving the deaths of as many as four million people, caused both directly and indirectly by armed fighting. Bosnia-Herzegovina experienced ethnic cleansing, expressed in mass killing of the innocent Muslim population by Serbian militia groups. The wars in Chechnya have been responsible for the most horrific human rights violations, while the civilian populations in Iraq have become terror victims and are hostage to religious, sectarian violence unleashed as a consequence of the US invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government.

Whereas violence and intractable conflict seem certain to remain a prominent and tragic part of the human condition, some conflicts have been successfully transformed for resolution. Many decades of struggle in South Africa ended with the building of new institutions that transferred government power to the black majority. Although all of the parties still need to agree to the overall political relations, decades-old sectarian violence in Northern Ireland has been stopped. Three decades of civil war in Angola finally ceased in 2002, moving toward political transition. The reconstruction of war-torn societies was accompanied by negotiated settlements of civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mozambique in the early and mid-1990s. These examples suggest that conflict can be transformed to avoid further hostilities and continuing violence. On the other hand, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been rekindled following a seven-year period (1993–2000) of efforts to bring harmony between the two adversaries. What are the differences that distinguish these conflicts? This is one of the questions which this book plans to address.

In understanding conflict, it is imperative to examine the sources of discontent and animosity, to identify the phases of evolving relationships between adversaries, and to illuminate the escalation of their struggles and the eventual recession of violent cycles to the peaceful resolution of differences. Given the enormity and severity of the consequences of uncontrolled violence, serious attention needs to be devoted to the regulation and management of hostile relations, even if it may take longer to resolve deadly conflicts.

The methods of intervention in any type of violence have to be associated with understanding the very nature, causes, and dynamics of the conflict. This book is intended to advance our knowledge of the psychological and structural conditions for conflict that are embedded at various levels of social and political systems. It covers the decision-making processes in the social dynamics of human interaction which can be transformed. Our analysis needs to include the causes of violent conflict and the interconnectivity of diverse elements within and between conflict systems. With this purpose in mind, the chapters in this book illustrate how conflict emerges and escalates prior to an endeavour to regulate and overcome antagonistic relationships. At the same time, multiple types of conflict relationship at the inter-group, national, international, and global levels will be discussed in the context of past and current efforts to manage irreconcilable differences.

The nature of conflict

Conflict represents the persistent and pervasive nature of inter-group and international competition among disparate interests and values that underlies power dynamics. The comprehension of mass violence and war needs to be based on an understanding of institutional roles besides the psychological and behavioural elements that instigate aggression. The experience of conflict is so basic that its negative effects spread to many aspects of a community’s life.

The sources of adversarial relationships are not limited to tangible economic interests or control over power, but also extend to value and identity differences. The antagonisms in question may arise from interpersonal tensions between government leaders, labour management issues comprising multinational corporations and manual workers, disagreements between states on foreign policy directions, or international quarrels over trade imbalances and disparities in decision-making power at the World Bank or other international organizations.

Since conflict is entailed in diverse types of social interactions, its concepts have been applied to a variety of situations. The potential for conflict exists where opposing interests, values, or needs tinge our relationships with others. The latent conditions of conflict eventually translate into multiple forms of enmity in the visible issues.

In general, conflict is most popularly described as ‘a struggle over values and claims to scarce status, power and resources’ (Boulding, 1962: 5). The efforts to attain desired objects become more intense in the absence of agreed rules prescribing their equitable allocation. People’s expectations alter in response to a shift in their social and economic environment. If governing norms are too rigid to be adjusted to new demands and expectations, such inflexibility breeds resentment utilized for the mobilization of groups that are discontent with the status quo (Mack and Snyder, 1971). In conflict situations, the dynamics of actions and counteractions inevitably engage attempts to control the other’s behaviour, often with the intent to injure or destroy. In addition, violence may follow an unconstrained attempt to dominate in a fight over power, prestige, and material interests.

The essential nature of a conflict situation is easily understood in terms of the difficulties involved in meeting everyone’s aspirations simultaneously (Pruitt and Kim, 2004). Goals and activities become incompatible when one’s own interests are threatened by the actions of another. Parties to conflict make attempts to prevent each other from achieving desired objectives, in part, owing to perceptions of divergent interests. Tensions essentially emerge due to the pursuit of different outcomes or disagreement on the means to attain the same end.

Thus, a conflict situation is represented by perceived goal incompatibilities and attempts to control each other’s choices, which generate adverse feelings and behaviour toward each other. In the end, ‘what is at stake is the relationship itself and how the relationship is defined’ (Lulofs and Cahn, 2000: 4). If the sources of discontent are left unaddressed, the conflict has the potential to affect negatively an interdependent relationship that is mutually beneficial.

The relationships in conflict are often described in terms of an exercise of coercive power. In a generic sense, power provides the ability to ‘compel others to do something’ and is also the source of people’s ability to exercise control over decision making on valuable positions, limited goods and services (Winter, 1973: 5). In an adversarial relationship, a coercive process is linked to one party’s efforts to change the other’s objectives and behaviour. Thus power becomes an important element in the struggle for winning a conflict, since it is essential to engendering a desired difference in the targeted person’s emotions and behaviour.

The context of defining conflict

In ordinary parlance, ‘conflict’ has been broadly associated with tensions surrounding decisions on various choices, sometimes being manifested in confrontations between social forces (Dahrendorf, 1959). The nature of the contest can be illustrated in terms of how issues arising from a variety of competitive social relationships are defined and framed. We confront an unlimited array of issues that stem from diverse social settings. Differences in opinions, disagreement, and arguments are ubiquitous in every human relationship, whether organizational, communal, or international. Long-term grievances over economic and social inequities are derived from a failure to enhance the quality of life of a particular group (Azar, 1986).

In a broad sense, the concept of conflict has been stretched and moulded to describe any discord resulting from almost every aspect of social situations. The existential, penetrable nature of decision making over incompatible choices can impact politics down to such mundane choices as where to shop and eat. The term ‘conflict’ has been applied to quarrels within a family and workplace arguments as well as violent clashes between states. Thus it was declared long ago that ‘the distinctions between conflict and non-conflict are fuzzy at best and at worst are not made at all’ (Mack and Snyder, 1971: 3).

While practitioners have often used ‘conflict’ and ‘dispute’ synonymously, John W. Burton (1990, 1997) developed clearer distinctions. According to Burton, conflict is interpreted in the context of a serious nature of challenges to the existing norms, relationships, and rules of decision making. On the other hand, the term ‘dispute’ applies to management issues and the control of discontent relating to the implementation of specific policies. In so doing, it may respond to the unfairness of authoritative decisions without questioning the legitimacy of decision making rooted in dominant values and established institutional procedures.

Polite disagreement, quarrel, litigation, and war differ in terms of the intensity and scope of activities (Burton and Dukes, 1990). The sources of misunderstanding and misperception are as diverse as a lack of information, misinformation, inadequate knowledge, and different interpretations of data or legal principles. Contradictory interests, hostile sentiments, and irreconcilable values are signified by antagonistic attitudes and behaviour. Beyond these elements, a destructive type of conflict involves attempts to inflict physical harm on the other side.

The bulk of interstate relations at a management level, like domestic affairs in an ordinary political setting, reflect disagreements within the existing system in lieu of hostile behaviour. If it is embedded in long-term rivalry, a simple argument may turn into a deadly contest with increased stakes. A protracted period of struggle stemming from value differences, as well as incongruent political and economic interests, is more serious than dissimilarities of opinion, mere bickering, and quarrel in electoral politics. In this situation, simply walking away from escalation becomes more difficult especially in the event of poorly handled inter-group cleavages spilling over into organized, armed clashes.

In a broad context, conflict can be compared with an intense form of competition. It is inevitable, even without direct contact, as exemplified in the efforts to expand sales in a consumer market. In the natural world, competition is considered to be an underlying rule of the game for survival, regulated by the surrounding environment, between and within species in search for food, shelter, and other limited resources.

Thus competition between behavioural units is the most universal and basic form of interaction in the world of living things, which is full of many mutually incompatible positions, for example, in the quest for scarce food or prestigious jobs. If the struggle is waged more directly and consciously, it may be regarded as a form of ‘conflict’. In fact, competition is not identical to conflict, because the purpose of competition is winning valuable or scarce objects, not the destruction or injury of opponents (Mack and Snyder, 1971).

In economic transactions and sports, competition is governed by an acknowledged process of decision making. Many forms of competitive interaction may become so highly regulated and institutionalized that the participants do not challenge the fairness of the rules that determine the outcome. Thus, disputants in a legal proceeding, partisans in a legislative body, or candidates in an electoral race are seeking irreconcilable goals by means of procedures that may be so well accepted by all of the participants that violence is eschewed and hostility remains minimal.

Many types of competition are resolved automatically through the impersonal forces of economic and social transactions. Even market mechanisms, however, do not operate in a vacuum without regard to pre-existing power relations and other types of arrangement that favour one over another. For example, by privileging certain communication skills, personal background, and social status, labour markets advantage one group of individuals over another. Owing to the inevitable interference of informal influence and recognition, sole reliance on market forces has not always guaranteed fairness, and has sometimes contradicted the general principles of equity and protection of public interests.

Regulations usually embody rules that bind acceptable means of contest to be adopted in pursuing contradictory goals by prescribing and proscribing conduct. In general, competitors are limited regarding what they can do to each other in the course of their efforts. Established procedures and rules may clarify the legitimate forms and degree of coercion, in addition to setting a limit on the circumstances under which a permissible level of force will even be tolerated.

The degree of institutionalization of competition differs according to how the rules have been internalized by the participants and have been supported by traditional norms or broadly accepted criteria. Thus the effectiveness in the control of conduct is affected by not only sanctions, available for the enforcement of rules, but also an internal sense of moral obligations.

Disputes can be provoked by broken agreements, unobserved norms, and unfair rules on access to resources. The established remedies may include group sanctions, arbitration, or court procedures. Disputes within an institutional framework can also be settled either by direct bargaining or facilitated by professionals (Burton, 1997).

International disputes can be handled by institutional procedures derived from environmental or trade treaties. For example, quarrels, stemming from unfair practice in the exchange of goods and services, have been mandated to the World Trade Organization’s arbitration panels which interpret rules agreed upon by member states. The institutionalized rules reflect the need for the professional management of international disputes.

Fragile political and judicial institutions, in combination with ambiguities in rules, lead to unregulated competition and struggle. In this situation, conflicts outside judicial and bargaining processes emerge, along with declining central authorities. The requirements for new rules arise from modifications in technology and economic systems that create uncertainties. A lack of a world authority, in conjunction with a weak international legal system, has been one of the main obstacles to regulating the clashing interests and differences in values that are commonly manifested in an international conflict (Goodman, 2005; Waltz, 2007).

Given anarchy in an international system, many serious quarrels have often been handled through military force. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 represents the ignorance of established international procedures such as votes at the UN Security Council following the UN inspection of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. The use of force and torture can be asymmetric and unjust in places such as China-occupied Tibet, but the international community has not made more concerted efforts to mitigate that suffering. New types of violence (such as terrorism), which are increasingly prominent in the international scene, certainly require different approaches to our understanding of conflict that cannot be contained in normal interstate relations.

Socio-psychological dynamics

Diverse forms of competition between parties with incompatible goals can be explained, in part, by subjective character. However, any events also have to reflect an underlying objective situation that contains contentious values and power imbalances. Equally importantly, inequitable social and economic relations have to be felt by those who organize protest. Thus, ‘material bases of social life as well as psychological aspects of social relationships’ have the main impact on behavioural respo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I Concepts and Analysis
• Part II Sources and Situations
• Part III Process and Structure
• Part IV Dynamics and Escalation
• Part V De-escalation and Termination
• References
• Index