The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

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  CONCLUDING OVERVIEW

  Peter T. Coleman

  Eric C. Marcus

  We begin the conclusion of this third edition of the Handbook with a story of hope. For several years, our center, the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR), cosponsored a course with our colleagues at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs on the theory and practice of preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution at the United Nations. This was an innovative course, bringing eminent theorists and researchers from academia together with highly skilled international diplomats and practitioners and encouraging lively dialogue among them. The students for the course were a mix of graduate students from Columbia and foreign embassy and UN personnel.

  In
1999, we began the course with a conceptual overview of Deutsch’s theory of cooperation and competition (see chapter 1) and discussion of its relevance for resolving international conflict. After providing a summary of the theory, we asked the students to work in small groups to apply the ideas from the theory to the emerging conflict in Kosovo (this was in January, prior to the NATO bombing campaign), with the objective of generating recommendations for the United States and the international community.

  At the conclusion of this exercise, one particularly articulate student, a military attaché to a UN ambassador, summarized his group’s discussion. He said they felt there were few feasible options to the crisis other than recommending that NATO threaten to bomb or use other force against the Serbians to stop the ethnic cleansing in the area. There was general consensus on this conclusion among the students in the class.

  Three months later, at the final meeting of the course, Richard Holbrook (whose position as US ambassador to the United States was at that time pending approval in Congress) spoke to the class about what was then current US and NATO policy in Kosovo and Serbia. He spoke passionately for the need to continue the bombing campaign against the Serbs. His argument was detailed, articulate, and very convincing. After Holbrook concluded his statement and left the room, discussion of the situation in the former Yugoslavia continued.

  It was at this point that the same young attaché who had advocated bombing earlier in the term spoke again. He began by saying that he had been struck by something during Holbrook’s remarks: the fact that the military initiatives that were typically employed in these situations, such as use of bombing missions or sending in ground troops, were rarely successful in achieving their political objectives. The objectives, he claimed, in many such situations were to inflict enough harm on the general population that either the leadership feels its pain and acquiesces or the people organize and remove the leaders. The use of military force, he said, as we had seen in Vietnam, Iraq, and now in Kosovo, rarely achieved these objectives. I paraphrase him: “The notion of bombing a village in order to save it, as in Vietnam, is insane. The Serbs are bombing Kosovo in order to save it, and we are bombing Serbia in order to save it. It simply makes no sense. There has to be a better way!”

  He continued, as best I recall: “Every day I look at a map of Africa hanging in my office, and I think that if these are the types of solutions we have to offer the many conflicts on that continent, there will never be peace.” Here was an accomplished US Marine, someone who had risen in the ranks of the military to a position of substantial importance, stating emphatically, “There has to be a better way!” In subsequent discussion with this student, he thanked us for the course and said that learning about a constructive approach to conflict had challenged his thinking about conflict resolution and peacemaking in important ways.

  For more than eighty years, scholars and practitioners in the field of conflict resolution have been searching for a better way. As is evident in the many chapters of this Handbook, a great deal of progress has been made toward understanding conflict and resolving it constructively. However, a great deal of work remains to be done.

  We find this opening story hopeful because it illustrates how education in conflict resolution, particularly when presented in practical terms to individuals who are in influential positions, can begin to have an important impact on our world. The story also points out, however, that there are no simple answers to complex conflicts and that we all must keep striving to find a better way.

  THE CHALLENGES THAT LIE AHEAD

  In the last section of the Introduction to this Handbook, Morton Deutsch outlines a series of questions that the field of conflict resolution has been or is currently addressing. In this, the Concluding Overview, we outline some of the questions and challenges that theorists, researchers, and practitioners of conflict resolution will face in their work in the years ahead. Many of the issues outlined here are themes that run throughout the book; we summarize them here for purposes of clarity and to begin to set out a new agenda for scholar-practitioner collaboration in the field.

  Oppression and Conflict

  The first question is, How can a field that holds notions of neutrality and egalitarianism so dear work constructively and ethically in situations where intergroup dominance and oppression are the norm?

  In 2012, the National Urban League released a study reporting that 149 years after the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation, the equality gap between blacks and whites in the United States continues to be substantial, and in some areas it is increasing. According to the report, black unemployment is 15.8 percent, while white unemployment rate is 7.9 percent; the health status of black Americans is 76 percent that of whites; and teachers without an undergraduate major in the subject they are teaching are working in minority schools at twice the rate they teach in white schools. The incarceration rate (prisoners per 100,000) for blacks is 1,540, while the rate for whites is 252. In 2006, the overall equality index was 73 percent, but in the 2012 report, the equality index was 71.5 percent (an equality index of 100 percent would mean that blacks and whites are equal). So there was a 1.5 percent decrease in equality for blacks over those six years. To be specific: black economic standing is 56.3 percent of whites, black health standing is 76.5 percent of whites, black education standing is 59.7 percent of whites, and black social justice standing is 56.8 percent of whites. In addition, median income for blacks was $33,578 (2010 data reported in 2012 report), while median income for whites was $54,168 (2010 data reported in 2012 report). The poverty rate for blacks is 27.1 percent, and for whites, 10.6 percent. These are just a few examples of the extraordinary disparities in equality between groups that are becoming more and more pronounced worldwide.

  In the 1990s, the Minorities at Risk Project documented 275 minority groups at risk for ethnopolitical conflict in 116 nations. This constitutes 17.4 percent of the world’s population who belong to groups disadvantaged due to discriminatory practices or currently politically organized to defend their interests. The links between such inequities and protracted conflict and violence cannot be overstated. (See chapter 2 by Deutsch on social justice, chapter 29 on violence, chapter 6 on power, and chapters 3 and 31 also.

  The substantial scholarship on oppression, particularly in the social sciences, does an excellent job of describing the intractability of systems of dominance and conflict (see, for example, Sidanius and Pratto, 1999) but offers little direct utility for interrupting patterns of injustice or sustaining constructive changes in the balance of power when they do occur. Thus, it becomes paramount for conflict scholars and practitioners in the field to identify the processes and conditions that can undo the dynamics of oppression at individual and group levels and thus enable constructive conflict resolution processes to work in tandem with those that promote justice.

  Beginning in 2002, we at the ICCCR began conducting a faculty seminar to explore and develop comprehensive conceptual models for addressing oppression and conflict. The main focus of the seminar was on strategies that can ameliorate the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots in institutions and societies worldwide. This investigation culminated in a two-day working conference at Teachers College, Columbia University in spring 2004, which brought together eighty invited participants from a wide variety of academic disciplines (e.g., economics, psychology, politics, and education) and professional practice areas (scholars, activists, philanthropists, students), focused on generating strategies for interrupting oppression and sustaining justice. The work from this meeting resulted in the development of a new cross-sector network of individuals interested in supporting each other in their work in this area, and in a special issue of Social Justice Research in 2006. It was our hope that the outcomes of this conference would evolve and shape, enrich, or transform future research agendas on justice and conflict spanning across disciplinary boundaries. Much work in this area continues to be needed.

  Readiness

  The second qu
estion is, How can readiness to resolve conflict constructively be fostered in individuals, groups, and nations?

  This raises many issues, several of which were touched on in the chapters on personality, intractable conflict, training, change, and large group intervention in this Handbook. However, many questions remain. People and institutions are seldom ready to undertake significant change. Yet competitive and avoidant approaches to resolving conflict are ingrained in many people and institutions; collaborative, integrative approaches represent a new way of thinking and acting for them. The collaborative approach generally goes against the prevalent competitive style of resolving conflict modeled in families; by the media; and by many of our leaders in sports, business, and government.

  The first task is, quite often, simply to broaden people’s awareness that there are options available to them when in conflict other than to fight or flee. This is largely what most preliminary training or course work in conflict resolution attempts to achieve: to increase people’s understanding of their own competitive or avoidant tendencies in conflict and of the fact that they have a broader menu of available options. For these educational experiences to be successful, it is important that they effectively engage and inspire students sufficiently to motivate them to try something new and strengthen their skills at resolving conflict constructively.

  A separate but related concern with regard to readiness has to do with our ability as third parties to assess and engender a degree of authentic readiness for disputants involved in a conflict. Collaborative negotiation and mediation are voluntary processes. They work only when the disputants engage in them willingly, by choice, if they are to help to make real progress toward understanding each other’s needs and reaching agreement. At times, disputants may seem to be cooperative during a negotiation process, while having no intention of following through once an agreement has been reached. This is related to the distinction between compliance and commitment. This is thought to have occurred at the Cambodian Peace Accords in the mid-1990s, an exemplary collaborative peace process that fell apart on implementation because the parties reneged on the agreement. Work needs to be done on developing better methods of assessing and fostering disputants’ genuine willingness to collaborate and make peace.