Conflict Studies: Key Terminology

Conflict Studies & Peacebuilding Terminology

• Conflict involves the pursuit of incompatible goals by different groups through political struggles that can be peaceful or violent
• Armed conflict is a specific type where both sides use force, ranging from skirmishes to full-scale war
• Violent conflict, or deadly conflict, includes armed conflict and one-sided violence like genocides against unarmed civilians
• Contemporary conflict refers to political and violent conflicts in the early 21st century
• Conflict Settlement is the act of reaching an agreement to settle a political conflict, preventing or ending armed conflict, settlements may be revisited
• Conflict containment involves peacekeeping to limit violence through constraints or termination
• Conflict management involves settling or containment, and regulating conflict to prevent escalation
• Conflict resolution is a comprehensive approach addressing the root causes of conflict, transforming behaviors, attitudes, and structures
• Conflict Transformation goes beyond conflict resolution by focusing on deep institutional and cultural changes, addressing root causes and shifting relationships
• Negotiation involves parties attempting to settle or resolve conflicts through dialogue
• Mediation is a voluntary 3rd party intervention where a mediator aids communication and negotiation, parties retain outcome control
• Conciliation/Facilitation is similar to mediation with an intermediary helping parties negotiate, sometimes with a minimal role
• Problem-solving approach encourages parties to reconceptualize conflict and seek creative, mutually beneficial solutions
• Reconciliation is a longer-term process focused on overcoming mistrust and hostility between divided groups
• Peacemaking involves efforts to settle armed conflict, encouraging voluntary agreements, often under international organizations like the UN
• Peacekeeping is the deployment of international armed forces to separate belligerents, often with monitoring, policing, and humanitarian aid tasks
• Peace-enforcement is powerful third party imposition of a settlement, typically using force
• Peacebuilding Activities such as peacekeeping and peacemaking address structural issues and long-term relationships to prevent future conflicts
• Conflict Resolution Goal transforms violent conflicts into peaceful social and political change processes

Evolution of Conflict Studies

• The field was primarily referred to as Civil War Studies in the past
• Conflict Resolution transforms violent conflicts into peaceful social and political change, requiring ongoing efforts due to emerging conflicts
• Conflict resolution started during the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s applying approaches from industrial relations and community mediation
• Conflict transformation addresses deeper structural and relational conflict causes rooted in unmet human needs, unlike conflict resolution's short-term settlement
• Conflict resolvers and transformers engage in the same enterprise, conflict resolution is a broad term due to its historical roots, recognition, and ambiguity
• The Soviet Union's dissolution ended domination by a single international conflict, internal conflicts, ethnic conflicts, and power struggles became the norm in the 1990s
• Conflicts stem from economic differentiation, social change, cultural formation, psychological development, and political organization
• Conflicts become overt when parties form and perceive goals as incompatible that evolve over time with third parties getting involved
• Destructive conflict should be avoided, meanwhile constructive conflict is essential for creativity

Integrative Approach of Conflict Resolution

• Emerged in the 1950s addressing destructive conflicts including multilevel analysis considering all levels e.g. individual, international, etc
• Multidisciplinary approach needs insights from politics, international relations, strategic studies, development studies, psychology
• A multicultural perspective involves internationally understanding designing interventions
• Analytic combined with normative dimensions with transforming violent conflicts into peaceful change through statical analysis
• Theoretical involves bridging theory and practice, that theoretical insights inform real-world interventions and practical experiences refine frameworks

Defining Conflict

• Conflict encompasses both consensual conflicts over interests and dissensual conflicts over values
• Some scholars distinguish between disputes, requiring settlement, and conflicts, requiring deeper resolution
• Conflict applies to any situation where parties perceive goals as incompatible
• This definition differs from sporting, economic, or legal contexts where engagement rules are not questioned

Causes & Phases of Conflict

• Conflict triggers are often categorized as background, root, underlying, and structural causes like poverty, ethnic or religious discrimination
• Explanations are built upon statistical generalizations, such as poverty and undemocratic regimes increasing likelihood, and must remain in context-specific
• First Phase is pre-World War focused on traditional warfare (classical war) and the theories of Clausewitz
• Second Phase is the Cold War Era shifting to bipolar power structure based on nuclear deterrence and proxy wars e.g. Korea
• In the cold war Era politically and ideologically driven conflicts-capitalism (liberalism) vs communism saw a decline in interstate wars after WW2 leading to the use of propaganda
• Propaganda was used in key conflicts of the post-war period, Korean War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and partition of India and Pakistan still disputed
• The Day After raised the question "What does peace really mean" as a film broadcasted during the cold war
• Third phase is the Post-Cold War Era seeing the emergence of new wars/wars of the third kind/hybrid wars e.g. economic/cyber warfare
• Conflicts concerning statehood governance and the role of nations and communities saw fewer interstate wars, and genocides increased during the 1990s and 2000s
• Transition from PSC to TCN models requires open political dialogue to attain peace
• War can be seen as a continuation or as the failure of politics

Framework Models for Conflict

• Universal generalization of conflict explanations using a single model/theory is not possible
• Internal approaches involves ethnographical and anthropological to focus on inherent human behaviors and cultural influences
• Relational approaches involves behavioral sociology and psychology to examine interactions between individuals and groups
• Contextual approaches involves perspectives that primarily consider external factors e,g, Marxist theories that emphasize socio-economic structures and class struggle
• Early modern European theories are Machiavelli's self-preservation, Hobbes's competition, and Hume's scarcity
• Johann Galtung's theories provide a comprehensive framework to understand conflict nature, types of violence, and distinction between negative and positive peace

The Conflict Triangle

• Galtung's three interconnected components are Contradiction, Attitude, and Behavior
• Contradiction is the core conflict issue stemming from goal incompatibilities arising symmetrically from clashed interests or asymmetrically from shaped power imbalances and inequalities
• Chris Mitchell states the contradictions lead to a mismatch between social values and social structures
• Attitudes is how parties perceive themselves and each other can be positive or negative that involve emotive "feelings", cognitive "beliefs", and conative "desires/ wills" elements
• Analysts focusing on subjective conflict aspects emphasize an expressive view of conflict source
• Behaviour actions parties take range from negotiation to hostility and coercion that involve threats in violent conflicts
• Material interests is taken by analysts focusing on structural relationships as an instrumental conflict source

Latent vs Manifest Conflict

• All three components (C, A, B) must be present for a full conflict to emerge and contradiction without hostile intent or violent behavior is a latent conflict
• Conflict escalates over time as attitudes/behaviors shift and grow
• As conflicts widen involving parties, become entrenched or deepen generating new secondary conflicts spreading, therefore, requiring attention to contradiction, attitudes, and behaviors for transformations

Addressing Conflict

• To address and resolve conflicts is crucial to understand underlying causes, military power does not tackle deeper issues sustaining conflict
• Preventing or addressing conflict needs insight into root causes
• Root causes can fuel conflict even after peace agreements
• Latent is sustained after military victories e.g. tensions between the U.S. and China
• Latent conflict occurs when violence goes unresolved, with tensions e.g. trade inequality
• Structural violence refers to inequality or societal deprivation e.g. caste system, resulting in tensions
• Attitudes/belief justifies violence e.g discrimination rationalized through norms allowing persist
• Structural and Cultural is results in tensions, need to be addressed
• Transformation occurs with proper handling
• Negative Peace leads to unresolved tension, positive peace can be achieved if properly adressed
• Proper positive peace goes outside of that and is defined as the genuine justice

Types of violence

• Direct violence (visible) - Physical harm and suffering such as war, murder, torture
• Ends can be stopped through ceasefire and peace keeping
• Structural violence (invisible but systematic) - Structures that create an unequal society. The goal is poverty, discrimination
• Ends addressed through social justice
• Cultural Violence (ideological justification) - Ideology belief that justifies direct and structural violence which makes things natural. This is stopped through education
• Negative (absence of director violence but structural and cultural still exists) and Positive Peace (eliminating structure/cult violence, ensuring equality)

Negative Vs Positive Peace

• Imposed through force (Pax Romana)
• Military repression (Hungary in 1951)
• Direct violence limited but ongoing violence (Tibet), where negative peace is still valuable as it prevents active violence
• The elimination of structures with ensuring sustainability, this can occur at all levels personal, national, and global, leading to psychological peace

Challenges to conflict

• perceived and unjust which conflicts arise out of. paradox groups fighting against all self. “Forcing people to be free”, some activists, force liberational people may not see as depressed. False consciousness people have. All of this means  transforming to read causes that can't do violence.

Conflict escalation and De-escalation

• Simplifies the process of mapping through it. Every bit complex with it having small differences. In compability of goals when can go late at no acknowledgement if not an output over dispute. The time gets out for party to find more define positions. Emotions and interest in test by conflict and is it has been and make something that we’re divisions get sharper, breaking physical attack or forms of confrontational conflict. 

Complexities to De-escalation

• Initial hostility agreements negotiations between parties. Common to achieving sustainable inequalities so by addressing you is the truest lasting you can achieved because you 
• Top half of it. Top half of escalator in the. Political space narrows. It all become very limited and make it harder for parties involved to find resolution. Space goes on political space. Political space, new cooperative