Hoorcollege 5: conflict prevention and nonviolent resistance

Question 1

Conflict prevention is to prevent:

Answer 1

• The emergence of violent conflict.
• Ongoing conflicts from spreading.
• The re-emergence of violence.

Question 2

Aim conflict prevention

Answer 2

To avert violent conflicts, not to avoid conflicts altogether.

Question 3

Constructive conflict

Answer 3

When parties [eventually come to] regard the outcomes as mutually acceptable. Moreover, conflicts are constructive insofar as they provide a basis for an ongoing relationship in which future conflicts tend to be waged constructively.

Question 4

How conflict formations emerge:

Answer 4

Social change –> people collectively define interests, formulate goals & act together, mobilizing support –> when goals are incompatible with others, this can lead to a conflict –> when incompatibility is severe –> relationships broken –> institutions and context they live in can’t contain the conflict –> violence possible.

Question 5

Structural/deep prevention

Answer 5

Aims to address the root causes of the conflict. Here, preventors of war can be positive polcies, political inclusion and pluralism.

Question 6

Direct/light prevention

Answer 6

Aims to prevent an existing conflict from becoming violent. Here, the capacity to manage a conflict is a preventor of war. Examples conflict management: mediation, confidence building measures and crisis management.

Question 7

Questions that help think about conflict prevention:

Answer 7

1. Can war be prevented by removing its necessary conditions?
   a. Under what conditions is war not considered a
   serious possibility?
2. Can the incidence of wars be reduced by controlling the circumstances under which they arise?
3. Can a particular conflict be influenced to avoid it becoming violent?

Question 8

Conflict early warning system:

Answer 8

1. Identification of the conflicts that could become violent.
2. Monitoring and assessing their progress with a view to assessing how close to violence they are.

Question 9

Qualitative conflict monitoring

Answer 9

Comprises the mass of reports, news stories, academic analyses and general information that is available about particular situations. Offers vastly more content-rich and contextual information than quantitative statistical analysis, but presents problems of noise and information overload.
Key issue is mustering the political resources to make an appropriate early warning response when a warning has been issued.

Question 10

Structural factors that prevent interstate wars

Answer 10

• ‘Universalistic’ periods where there is a common interest in system maintenance.
• Security communities.
• Complex bonds of interdependence create a set of interlocking issue areas in which security concerns aren’t necessarily privileged over others.
• Involvement in international organizations.
• Development.
• Democracy (only if both countries are democratic).

Question 11

Liberal peace

Answer 11

Common trade, common democracy, development and participation in international organizations and security communities.

Question 12

Effects liberal peace on developing countries

Answer 12

1. Exposure of weaker economies to international competition leads to an uneven process of development which leads to global inequality.
2. Democracy may tend to legitimize one-party rule, entrench the dominance of the largest ethnic group and pose a security threat to autocratic rulers in the region.

Question 13

Structural factors that prevent civil wars

Answer 13

• Stable governance.
• Economic development.
• Political and economic inclusiveness.
• The mitigation of horizontal inequalities.
• Protection of human rights.

Question 14

Direct prevention policy options

Answer 14

• Official diplomacy (mediation, conciliation, peace conferences, hotlines, etc.).
• Non-official diplomacy (private mediation, problem-solving workshops, round tables, conflict resolution training, etc.).
• Peacemaking efforts by local actors (church-facilitated talks, debates between politicians, etc.).

Question 15

Prevention of conflict recurrence

Answer 15

Main factor of recurrence is political exclusion, so inclusive settlements form the main way of avoiding recurrence. Strong institutions are negatively associated with civil war recurrence, so strengthening legal and political institutions is a good way of getting countries out of the conflict trap.

Question 16

Mass atrocity

Answer 16

At least 5000 citizens killed intentionally.

Question 17

Prevention of genocide and mass atrocities

Answer 17

Many of the mass atrocities have occured within armed conflicts, so measures for preventing conflict should also prevent mass atrocities.

Question 18

Structural prevention of genocide and mass atrocities

Answer 18

Includes efforts to reduce level of exclusiveness, improve governance, reduce discrimination and protect security and human rights.

Question 19

Direct prevention of genocide and mass atrocities

Answer 19

Includes fact-finding missions, envoy and support for indigenous efforts for conflict resolution, responding with local and international police forces for investigations and arrests, and peacekeepers for protection in extreme cases.

Question 20

Main point Chenoweth and Gallagher

Answer 20

We should do more research about nonviolent resistance.

Question 21

3 reasons why conflict scholars have largely ignored nonviolent resistance:

Answer 21

1. Violence is often viewed as a more pressing and troubling global problem.
2. Nonviolent resistance may be viewed as extraordinarily difficult to measure empirically.
3. There has been a trend in studies of conflict to equate the word ‘nonviolent’ with ‘passive’, ‘weak’, ‘pacifist’, or ‘activist’.

Question 22

Nonviolence

Answer 22

The eschewing of violent or armed action because of a moral, philosophical, or principled commitment.

Practitioners are often engaged in instrumental action as well, but remaining committed to nonviolent means is as important to them for moral reasons as ‘winning’ the conflict is.

Question 23

Civil resistance

Answer 23

Transgressive and non-institutional, whereas a variety of actor strategies may be nonviolent, legal, and institutionally sanctioned or recognized, such as participating in elections or engaging in government-sanctioned protest. A key characteristic of civil resistance is its organization, coordination, and purposive quality, in which civilians bring to bear certain methods toward a particular political, social, or economic goal.

Question 24

Effective preventive strategies rest on 3 principles:

Answer 24

1. Early reaction to immediate signs of trouble.
2. Comprehensive balanced approach to alleviate the pressures that enable violent conflict.
3. Extend effort to resolve underlying root causes of violence.

Question 25

Structural/root/underlying causes of conflict

Answer 25

Long-term or systemic causes of violent conflict that have become built into the norms, structures and policies of a society.

Question 26

Proximate/immediate causes of conflict

Answer 26

More recent causes that change more quickly, can accentuate structural causes and lead to an escalation of violent conflict.

Question 27

Triggers

Answer 27

Specific events, or the anticipation thereof that ignite violent conflict.

Question 28

Addressing structural causes

Answer 28

Socioeconomic, territorial, and cultural structural causes of conflict merit attention in early warning and prevention. E.g., better and more inclusive political representation, better protection of minority rights, reduction of structural inequalities.

Under a short-term threat of violence these structural measures may be unable and/or too slow to halt violence, may also be politically unfeasible or risky.

Question 29

Addressing proximate causes

Answer 29

Proximate causes provide entry points for immediate and short-term prevention, may change (internally/externally) quickly. E.g., official or non-official diplomatic efforts to avoid (recurrence of) violence on different levels.

In some cases vital, but on itself insufficient for long-term comprehensive and positive peace.

Question 30

A response is not guarenteed:

Answer 30

There is often a focus on other crises/wars and there could be an unwillingness to change the existing policy.

Question 31

Prevention, political will and attention

Answer 31

• States have to make a commitment not just to the consequences of violence and repression, but also to manage the causes.
• Political will is essential – internationally, emerging conflicts are often overshadowed by other crises and wars.
• Coordination, flexible mandates, strong leadership.
• Level of openness of parties involved.
• Early (!) response – prevention should still be possible …

Question 32

How do we prove successful prevention?

Answer 32

Conflict prevention and the political will needed is all the more difficult by the concept’s inherent conundrum: the impossibility of proving a negative. If its application in a particular instance is wholly successful, it will by definition eliminate any proof of that such measures were needed in the first place.
Comparative perspectives may help. Qualitative research in depth into successes of prevention can work to some extent.

Question 33

Nonviolent civilian action

Answer 33

Instances of public, collective and predominantly nonviolent action by which noncombatants make conflict related demands on armed actors within the context of armed conflict.

Question 34

Aim of nonviolent resistance in civil war

Answer 34

Nonviolent action could influence all of the stages of conflict, but mostly during the steps violence, war, ceasefire and agreement.

Question 35

How nonviolent civilian action works

Answer 35

• Can limit armed actors’ ability to exert power.
• Can limit armed actors’ access to population-based benefits (!) (e.g. government needs population-based benefits and nonviolent action can deplete the government of that).
• Can transform destructive societal structures into constructive societal structures.
• Can increase diplomatic pressure on the warring actors (international actors are more positive of nonviolent actions than violent actions).

Question 36

Dark side of nonviolent action

Answer 36

Instances of public, collective and predominantly nonviolent action by which noncombatants make conflict related demands on armed actors within the context of armed conflict can have negative effects. For example, when the government reacts heavily.