Democracy Conflict Research Articles

Social Consensus, Democratic Conflict: The Debate on the Decriminalisation of Abortion in Uruguay

Social Consensus, Democratic Conflict: The Debate on the Decriminalisation of Abortion in Uruguay

The challenges and lessons of security sector reform in post-conflict Sierra Leone

This paper assesses the main elements of SSR process in Sierra Leone, against its historical background as well as the imperatives of a responsive and responsible security sector. The reform of the security sector in Sierra Leone has enhanced the restoration of public safety in the country, and the positive features of the process relate to the inclusion of SSR as the first pillar of the country's poverty reduction strategy, and the emphasis of SSR on the decentralisation of the security apparatus. Significant gaps however remain. Donor dependency and the ‘youth question’ are continuing challenges. Arguably, the most significant deficiency is the fact that the security sector has not been adequately embedded in a democratic governance framework. There is an absence of functional oversight mechanisms, and a failure to involve other actors beyond the executive arm of government in the governance of the security sector. The paper cautions that SSR can be successful only as part of an overarching democratic post conflict reconstruction framework.

Globalization, political institutions and ethnic assertiveness: An empirical study of 32 developing countries

Although there has been an ever increasing body of work that has examined the relationship between electoral rules and ethnic conflict, relatively few works have examined the effects of political institutions as a means to contain (or at least alter) the course of ethnic conflict under the conditions of globalization and economic integration. In this paper I build upon an earlier work that examined the relationship between globalization, democratization and ethnic conflict. In that piece it was found that globalization did not appear to have a direct relationship with ethnic conflict, but did appear to be related to ethnic political ‘awakening’. This article builds upon that previous work by empirically examining the effects of both globalization and institutional arrangements for 32 developing countries and 90 minority groups. Further, the paper employs a multivariate technique that evaluates the effect of globalization, components of the electoral system, parliamentarism, federalism, cultural differences and the state of the economy.

Democracy and susceptibility to UN intervention

The democratic peace proposition has generated the widely supported claim that democratic norms affect states' behaviour, in that democracies rarely, if ever, fight each other. Hitherto, the relationship between norms and the distribution of UN interventions among state conflicts has escaped attention. This article expands the research on state use of force by using quantitative methodology to examine the relationship between democratic norms, conflict issue and allocation of UN interventions. There is a tendency for less democratic state conflicts to experience more of these interventions than other states, as well as a tendency for state conflicts over government to experience more of these interventions than other states. That norms, rather than process, account for the effect of democracy is congruent with most findings in the democratic peace proposition.

The Role of Journalism in Democratic Conflict Management

While media scholars and other observers have long argued that the news typically presents politics in adversarial, dualistic terms that emphasize drama and conflict, the impact of specific journalistic word choices on citizen participation in democracy has received surprisingly little attention. This article applies conflict theory in empirical analysis of newspaper coverage of the New York City budget crisis following 9/11. Metaphor and content analyses illustrate that conflict is often described as a “battle” or “game” that is played by elite decision makers. Stories emphasize political positions of a narrow range of actors rather than underlying interests of constituents. The authors argue that this coverage reinforces public beliefs that even decisions that affect them personally are out of their control and thus discourages public participation in what they call democratic conflict management: the collective processes of managing clashing interests and factions in ways compatible with representative democracy. The article concludes with a discussion of alternative journalistic practices that might encourage participation in the democratic process.

Technocracies, Bureaucracies, or Responsive Polities? Urban School Systems and the Politics of School Violence Prevention*

Objective. Two tacks are implicit in the seminal Chubb and Moe (1990) argument that education bureaucracies tend to be rigidified by democratic conflict. One emphasizes the vulnerability of urban systems to organized interests and community pressures; the other argues that urban systems are unresponsive and ossified bureaucracies. This debate contrasts with traditional assumptions of apolitical “professionalism.” The predictive power of these theses is examined for the case of school violence prevention policy.Methods. Ordinary least squares regression analysis is conducted on the 1995 Council of Urban Boards of Education survey, encompassing 74 urban school districts.Results. Districts with greater levels of racial violence and violence against teachers had more school violence prevention measures. Levels of general school violence and district perceptions of school violence were not statistically significant.Conclusions. Urban systems are quite responsive to interest group pressure as well as to high SES communities. The professionalism thesis is not supported.

From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict. By Jack Snyder. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. 384p. $29.95

From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict. By Jack Snyder. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. 384p. $29.95

Book Review: From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict

Book Review: From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict

Democratization, Political Institutions, And Ethnic Conflict: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis, 1985-1998

Democratization, Political Institutions, And Ethnic Conflict: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis, 1985-1998

Race and Nation in Post-Apartheid South Africa

The post apartheid state forges ahead with nation building, reconciliation, and the cultivation of an inclusive non-racial citizenship. The ANC government seems poised somewhere between denying the importance of group specific realities and having to realise the importance of `difference' in coping with the apartheid legacy. While the state cannot ignore language, culture and identity, its central problem is how to reconcile `difference' with common citizenship. Responses to the TRC Report indicate that all parties resist acceptance of responsibility for their past involvement. The absence of a shared moral universe by all citizens becomes increasingly clear. Different life experiences in legislated inequality have resulted in different value systems, perspectives and identities derived from conflicting interests. The theologically inspired concept of reconciliation, under these circumstances, fails to address conflicting moral claims. An understanding of cultural and psychological influences in the formation of identity and in the construction of the `other' is more important than exposure to moral indignation. Against this backdrop, political education is most likely to be effective where the focus is on more modest goals of democratic conflict resolution.

Review: Ethnoregional Conflict in Democracies

Review: Ethnoregional Conflict in Democracies

Ethnoregional Conflict in Democracies: Mostly Ballots, Rarely Bullets. By Saul Newman. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. 296p. $59.95.

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Linking and Integrating Corporatism and Consensus Democracy: Theory, Concepts and Evidence

Hans Keman's and Paul Pennings's critique (‘Managing Political and Societal Conflict in Democracies: Do Consensus and Corporatism Matter?’, this Journal, preceding pages) of our attempt to link corporatism and consensus democracy falls essentially into three parts. Their first criticism deals with the way we measured corporatism. They reject our ‘composite’ approach on the basis that different experts have different conceptual understandings of corporatism. Hence, they argue, it is unwarranted to add up these various scores. Secondly, they claim that our central relationship between consensus democracy and corporatism is a function of our particular measure of corporatism and, in addition, driven by two outlying cases: Italy and Austria. Thirdly, they claim that corporatism and consensus democracy are two different phenomena, and that therefore, corporatism should not be integrated into the concept of consensus democracy. We shall address these three main criticisms in the order described.

Managing Political and Societal Conflict in Democracies: Do Consensus and Corporatism Matter?

In their Note ‘Corporatism and Consensus Democracy in Eighteen Countries’ (this Journal, 21 (1991), 235–46) Arend Lijphart and Markus Crepaz sought to analyse the conceptual and theoretical linkages between corporatism and consensus democracy. Their aim was not only to investigate whether the concepts were linked to each other, but also to examine to what extent they overlapped. The authors claim that corporatism is part and parcel of consensual types of democracy (p. 235). If corporatism could be included as a dimension of consensual democracy the contrasts between Westminster and consensual types of democracy would be empirically enhanced and would be more comprehensive. Although this is an interesting line of thought, we think that there are a number of conceptual and methodological flaws in the elaboration of this idea that should be discussed in more detail, because they may very well cast some doubt on the degree to which corporatism is indeed ‘part and parcel’ of consensual politics. In this Comment we shall elaborate this argument and also suggest some ways in which the thrust of Lijphart and Crepaz's theoretical arguments can be upheld and their empirical analysis improved.

Family processes and adolescent adjustment in intact and remarried families

This study examines whether family processes that predict positive and negative developmental outcomes are the same in intact and remarried families. Surveys were administered to 758 tenth graders from intact families and 95 from stepfather families. Measures of cohesion, democratic decision-making style, permissiveness, and conflict were used to predict self-rated depression, worry, and self-esteem. Remarried and intact families provide similar family environments for permissiveness and democratic decision making. Remarried families are more conflictual and less cohesive than intact families. In both family types, conflict had negative effects, and cohesion and democratic decision-making had positive effects on adolescents' adjustment. In remarried families, but not intact, permissiveness was related to higher self-esteem.

Ethnic Conflict and International Security

During the Cold War, most international relations theorists and strategic studies analysts paid little attention to ethnic and other forms of communal conflict. Disregard for the importance of ethnic and nationality issues in world affairs, always misguided so far as the developing world was concerned, has been overtaken, in stunning fashion, by recent events from Abkhazia to Zaire. The essays in this volume advance our understanding of the causes of ethnic and communal conflict, the regional and international implications of such conflicts, and what the international community can do to minimize the potential for instability and violence. Drawn from recent issues of Survival, they are organized along thematic rather than regional lines, and will be required reading for scholars, students, and policymakers alike. The contributors to the volume include Michael Brown on the causes and implications of ethnic conflict, Anthony Smith on the ethnic sources of nationalism, David Welsh on domestic politics and ethnic conflict, Renee de Nevers on democratization and ethnic conflict, and Pierre Hassner on nationalism and internationalism. Jack Snyder writes on nationalism and the crisis of the post-Soviet state, Barry Posen on the security dilemma and ethnic conflict, Kathleen Newland on ethnic conflict and refugees, Jenonne Walker on international mediation of ethnic conflicts, and Robert Cooper and Mats Berdal on outside intervention in ethnic conflicts, Adam Roberts discusses the U.N. and international security, and John Chipman explores managing the politics of parochialism.

South Africa: The Prospects of Peaceful Change an Empirical Enquiry into the Possibility of Democratic Conflict Regulation

South Africa: The Prospects of Peaceful Change an Empirical Enquiry into the Possibility of Democratic Conflict Regulation

Family education to enhance the moral atmosphere of the family and the moral development of adolescents.

This study examined the effects of a course for families in democratic conflict resolution on the family's collective decision-making abilities and on the moral reasoning of adolescent participants. Sixteen couples and their adolescent children were divided into three groups: parents and their adolescents, parents only, and a control group. Both experimental groups met for 10 weekly 2V2hour sessions and received training in conflict resolution and the use of family meetings. Assessment was based on two self-report inventories, a behavioral role-play test, the Kohlberg Moral Judgment Interview, and an analysis of tape recordings of the family meetings. A 1-year follow-up assessment of the Kohlberg measure was also used. Parents in both experimental groups significantly increased their equalitarian attitudes toward family decision making. Furthermore, families in both groups significantly improved their effectiveness in collective decision making, the parent-adolescent group showing greater improvement than the parent group on most of the variables measured. Finally, the results suggested that adolescents who participated in the training significantly improved their scores in moral reasoning. This gain was maintained at followup.

A Framework for Analyzing Interorganizational Relationships

Earlier theories on interorganizational relationships have adopted either the social or psychological approach, resulting in incomplete analysis of the nature of and the parameters influencing the phenomenon. This study proposed and tested a framework that combines the two approaches. It analyzed four most common types of interagency relationships-cooperation, conflict, competition, and merger-among three agricultural institutions, and the organizational and personality factors determining their occurrence. Findings show that a limited number and degree of cooperative relationships existed, whereas competition and conflicts were more prevalent. Cooperation was facilitated by dynamic and democratic leadership, while competition and conflicts were attributed to change in leadership style and centralized administrative practices.

Natural Resources Administration and the Public Interest

SIBILITY or clientele, government administrators usually claim that their decisions are in the public interest. This vague concept is often associated with assumed public benefits or needs. But like any other concept, the public interest is subject to opinions, which are based on desires of individuals. Supposedly, public opinion is reflected into the public interest on governmental decisions. But this usually occurs in subjective interpretations of administrators operating through broad legal frameworks. Moreover, public opinion is seldom fully expressed or understood as a determining influence in a given time period. Granted the impact of a vague public opinion and given agency ideology for survival and expansion, there still remains the question of how governmental decisions can best be made for the idealized public interest. Livingston and Thompson state that the central problem of bureaucracy is responsibility to the public interest through the political process of democratic decision making. Yet they note that bureaucracies frequently rely on brokerage politics to solve problems.' By brokerage politics, they mean the process of resolving conflicts in democracy without reference to responsibility through the consent of the governed by elected officials. This process involves bargaining, com-