Theoretical Concepts on different schools on resolving conflicts The Conflict Management School

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Theoretical Concepts on different schools on
resolving conflictsThe Conflict Management
School
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Peacebuilding Debated Context

• Conflict is a divergence of interests, views or
  behavior between persons or groups, and is normal
  in any society. When dealt with in a constructive
  way, conflict can lead to positive outcomes for
  individuals and society. However, conflict can
  also lead to violence when channeled
  destructively.
• Since the end of World War II there had been 228
  armed conflicts in 148 locations around the
  globe. In 2004 the number of wars and armed
  conflicts was estimated to range from 30 (Harbom
  and Wallensteen 2005) to 42 (Schreiber 2005)
  depending on the definition of armed conflict.
• There are different definitions of armed
  conflict in the literature. Their common
  determinants are that armed conflicts involve
  organized, armed groups, in most cases with the
  government as a party to the conflict.

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Peacebuilding Debated Context

• ?? The Uppsala Conflict Data Program
  (www.pcr.uu.se/research/UCDP) is frequently used
  data sets in the world.
• ?? In order to be an Armed Conflict there should
  be at least 25 battle-related deaths per calendar
  year.
• ?? In order to be a War, there should be at least
  more than 1000 battlerelated deaths per calendar
  year.
• ?? Peacebuilding is understood as an overarching
  term to describe a long-term process covering all
  activities with the overall objective to prevent
  violent outbreaks of conflict or to sustainably
  transform armed conflicts into constructive
  peaceful ways of managing conflict. This
  definition, however, is only partial because it
  is not entirely clear on the scope and time frame
  of peacebuilding.

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Peacebuilding Debated Context

• ?? In the peacebuilding discourse, Galtung
  (1969) distinguishes two forms of peacenegative
  peace (end of violence) and positive peace
  (peaceful society at all levels).
• ?? A narrow definition of peacebuilding based on
  the concept of negative peace is evident in the
  1992 UN Agenda for Peace where the aim of
  peacebuilding is defined as preventing large
  scale violence or the recurrence of violence
  immediately after wars or armed conflicts (1-3
  years, maximum 5 years).
• ?? A wider definition sees the end of
  peacebuilding when a positive peace has been
  achieved.
• ?? Thus Positive Peacebuilding aims at
  preventing and managing armed conflict and
  sustaining peace after large-scale organized
  violence has ended in order to create conducive
  conditions for economic reconstruction,
  development and democratization.

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Peacebuilding Different Schools

• ?? Four schools of though can be distinguished
  within peace research. These schools use
  different terminologies, and have different
  conceptual understandings, approaches and actors.
  The history of these schools of thought is
  closely linked to the history and evolution of
  the field of
• Peacebuilding.
• ?? They are namely
• ?? The Conflict Management School
• ?? The Conflict Resolution School
• ?? The Complementary School
• ?? The Conflict Transformation School

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The Conflict Management School

• ?? The approach of the Conflict Management
  school is to end wars through different
  diplomatic initiatives. This is the oldest school
  of thought, closely linked to the
  institutionalization of peacebuilding in
  international law.
• ?? The peacebuilders within the logic of this
  school are external diplomats from bilateral or
  multilateral organizations.
• ?? Its theoretical approach is referred to as
  outcome-oriented approach, which aims to identify
  and bring to the negotiating table leaders of the
  conflict parties. Its main focus is on the
  short-term management of the armed conflict.
• ?? Recent examples include the Camp David
  agreement and the Sudan peace accord.

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The Conflict Management School

• ?? Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach, we
  could state that the father of conflict
  management is Thomas C. Schelling, an American
  economist and Nobel Prize winner, who authored
  the Strategy of Conflict in 1960. Schellings
  main goal was to lay the foundation for a theory
  of conflict that would includee the fields of
  economics, psychology, sociology and the law.
• ?? Research and theory on conflict management
  has been further developed by Allan Horwitz,
  Calvin Morill, James Tucker, Mark Cooney, M.P.
  Baumgartner, Roberta Senechal de la Roche, Marian
  Borg, Ellis Godard, Scott Phillips, Bradley
  Campbell, Willam Ury, Roger Fisher.
• ?? Conflict Management Approach is useful in
  many fields such as Business Management, Law,
  International Relations, Political Science and
  also at the personal and intimate level.

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The Conflict Management School

• ?? Conflict Management is a process of making
  progress developing mutual gains of both
  parties, achieving agreements, lying foundations
  for further negotiations or managing the conflict
  as much as possible to reduce violence.
• ?? In legal sense CM is application of
  existing laws regulations to ensure the rights
  provides remedies that reconcile past
  prejudices.
• ?? In the political discourse management of
  conflict is sharing of power and privileges.
• ?? Two schools of thoughts prevails within CM
  Discourse
• ?? Conflict as Pathological Dysfunctional
  needs to be suppressed or end it.
• ?? Conflict as functional means for Social
  Change constructive social process.

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The Conflict Management School

• ?? Power mediation is a special form of conflict
  management, with the same criteria as the
  outcome-oriented approach but including the
  possibility of applying external power, including
  financial carrots and/or military sticks, on the
  parties.
• ?? Examples include the 1995 US mediated peace
  treaty for Bosnia, when the US linked
  reconstruction support to a peace agreement, and
  threatened the bombing of Bosnia-Serb artillery
  in case no agreement was reached.
• ?? There are two forms of interventions in
  Conflict Managements

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The Conflict Management School

• ?? What forms and means used to for conflict
  interventions
• ?? Right - based Approach Legal
• ?? Interest based Approach Alternate
• ?? Right based approach is the use of the
  existing legal instruments for interventions in
  conflicts such as litigations arbitration
  procedures through courts police.
• ?? Interest based approach look for mediation,
  negotiations, and other collaborative methods for
  conflict interventions.

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The Conflict Management School

• ?? Strategies of CM are force, withdrawal,
  collaboration, accommodation, compromise,
  consensus, passive acceptance, cheating, lying,
  requesting, maneuvering, pressuring, threatening,
  demanding, monitoring, arguing by rules, staying
  neutral, exploiting etc.
• ?? The preference for a particular CM procedures
  depends upon the time and context.
• ?? Most used approaches for intervening conflict
  through CM approaches are
• ?? Negotiation
• ?? Mediation in Conflict
• ?? Arbitration in Conflict
• ?? Litigations in conflicts

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The Conflict Management School
Critique of Conflict Management ?? The Conflict
Management school has been criticized because
mediators tend to concentrate solely on the top
leadership of the conflicting parties, are not
always neutral (in internal conflicts), and the
approach overlooks deep causes of conflicts and
thus cannot guarantee long-term stability of the
peace agreement. ?? Many criticize that CM only
work on to establish Negative Peace and
completely undermines the aspects of Positive
Peace. ?? It is only involves the High Level
People completely undermining the role of the
other people or civil society thus neglecting the
peoples concerns and needs.
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The Conflict Resolution School

• There are three approaches to act or intervene
  on any conflict.
• They are
• Rights Based Approach
• Interest Based Approach
• Need Based Approach
• Conflict resolution as a discipline diverged
  from power-based conflict theory, which dominated
  and still dominates political science, and
  international relations and converged from
  psychology and sociology, which was interested in
  group dynamics, motivation and relationships
  between institutional structures.
• So many view CR CM as identical but CM is an
  outcome oriented approach whereas CM is a
  process oriented approach.

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The Conflict Resolution School

• The foundations of this discipline is emerged
  in Europe and North America and were particularly
  shaped in the twentieth century by the first and
  second world wars.
• Principal antecedents of conflict resolution
  included philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel
  (1858-1914) and Gestalt (influential on social
  psychology) psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890- 1947).
  Modern conflict resolution scholars, often quote
  Georg Simmel, for his contribution to the field
  for his book Conflict, published posthumously in
  English in 1955.
• Other contributors to the development of this
  schools are Lewis Coser, Kenneth Boulding, Anatol
  Rapoport, Johan Galtung, John Burton, Peter
  Wallensteen, Roget Fisher, William Ury, William I
  Zartman, Edward Azar, Thomas Ohlson, Paul Rogers,
  Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Roger Fisher, Willam Ury etc.

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The Conflict Resolution School

• This schools was in academic research in the
  1970s, adopting strategies from
  socio-psychological conflict resolution at the
  interpersonal level.
• Normative political theory saw conflict as a
  competitive struggle to be won by one side. In
  contrast, needs-based conflict resolution
  theorists developed a cooperative approach to
  conflict resolution, focusing on fundamental
  human needs, to encourage win-win solutions.
• Thus Conflict resolution is any reduction in
  the severity of a conflict which may involve
  conflict management, but adopt less extreme
  tactics where conflicting parties reach
  agreement on enough issues that the conflict
  stops or removal of the underlying causes of the
  conflict.
• The approach of the Conflict Resolution School
  is to solve the underlying causes of conflict and
  rebuild destroyed relationships between the
  parties.

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The Conflict Resolution School

• Initially in Conflict Resolution school,
  peacebuilders were mainly Western academic
  institutions carrying out conflict resolution
  workshops. The principle of these workshops is to
  bring individuals from the conflict parties
  together that are close to or can influence their
  leaders. Workshops are designed to rebuild
  relationships between the representatives of the
  conflict parties and work with them to solve the
  causes of the conflict.
• As the approach evolved, additional
  participants entered the field, such as
  international or local NGOs, CSOs, religious
  leaders who can exerts some influence over
  conflicting parties. The common features are that
  all actors work to address the root causes of
  conflict with relationship-building and long-term
  resolutionoriented approaches.

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The Conflict Resolution School
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The Conflict Resolution School

• The methods used in Need Based Conflict
  Resolution are
• Integrative Bargaining Workshop
• Analytic or Interactive Problem solving
  Workshops
• Human Relations workshops
• Integrative bargaining (Principled
  Negotiations) involves both concession making
  and searching for mutually profitable solutions.
  This tries to move beyond position-based
  bargaining and determine underlying interests
• Analytical problem solving workshop is
  nontraditional, nongovernmental approach
  emphasizing analytical dialogue and
  problem-solving. It begins with an analysis of
  the political needs and fears Track II
  Diplomacy.

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The Conflict Resolution School

• Human Relation workshops recognize and deal
  with dehumanizing biases, discriminations, and
  prejudices and creates learning environments that
  contribute to positive interpersonal relations
  and the self-esteem of all parties
• Conflict resolution scholarship, despite its
  preference for a needs based or cooperation
  approach to conflict resolution, still
  acknowledges the place power-based and
  rights-based methods have in conflict resolution.
  
• Realist theory argues that international
  security is best achieved through the action of
  Great Powers which can create regional power
  balances in unstable regions across the globe, by
  force or by geostrategic mediation
• Thus CR is incorporates CM Approach within
  itself and give the need based dimentions to the
  theory.

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The Conflict Resolution School

• Thus the approach of the Conflict Resolution
  school is to solve the underlying causes of
  conflict and rebuild destroyed relationships
  between the parties.
• Conflict resolution is a process which is
  worked our with parties
• 1. Voluntarily Ripeness, Leadership, Civil
  society
• 2. Agreement Big or Small
• 3. Regulate the issue
• 4. Stop actions Ceasefire
• 5. Implementation of Agreements
• Conflict Resolution is a social situation where
  the armed conflicting parties in a (voluntary)
  agreements resolve to peacefully live and/or
  dissolve their basic incompatibilities and
  henceforth cease to use arms against one another.
  Uppsala University.

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The Conflict Resolution School

• Criticisms of Conflict Resolution Schools
• The critics of CR schools points out that CR
  undermines the basic definition of conflict as
  Conflict cannot be resolved, it can either
  managed or transformed to other forms.
• Conflict Resolution is not necessary identical
  with Peace The definitions is dependent on what
  the parties wants or can agree to include.
• There is a danger that the agreed form of
  conflict resolution will contain privileges for
  the armed groups, at the expenses of other
  interests in the society.
• Conflict Resolution school has been highly
  criticized, especially by supporters of the
  Conflict Management school, because the process
  is too lengthy to be able to stop wars and
  because improving communications and building
  relationships between conflict parties do not
  necessarily result in an agreement to end the
  war.

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The Conflict Resolution School

• Criticisms of Conflict Resolution Schools
• Most of the critics also criticize that
  Conflict Resolution is rather a Conflict
  Manipulation as parties use conflict resolution
  process whilst in reality, dialogue is only
  engaged to buy-time and increase bargaining
  power.
• Some also criticize that conflicting parties
  use Conflict Resolution Approach to legitimize
  their actions and a window of opportunity for
  them to be a legitimate parties.
• Similarly there is also criticism regarding the
  sustainability of the Conflict Resolution
  approach as most of the Peace Process which adopt
  Conflict Resolution Approach has crumbled after
  certain period of time. Most of the Peace
  Agreements are violated or broken after sometime.
• From 1989 2005, there are 144 Peace
  Agreements which resolved 42 conflicts. So this
  questions on the approach as a whole regarding
  its sustainability.

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