Conflict-prone Societies Research Articles

Preserving Diversity: Lessons from Batang Tarang Village of West Kalimantan

The recurring communal, racial conflicts in West Kalimantan have left unpleasant memories among the local community. Unfortunately, some people believe that similar events will keep happening. This article was based on field research that relied on interviews and observations involving several crucial things. This research argues that communal conflicts in West Kalimantan can be averted by empowering internal forces to maintain balance in a plural society. This article found that conflict-prone societies such as those in Batang Tarang have the capacity to build harmony through togetherness, inter-ethnic marriages, the moderate practice of Islam, fair practice of adat [customary law], and strengthening awareness of shared origins.

Everyday peacebuilding among Ghanaian men: ambiguities, resistances and possibilities

Dominant peacebuilding scholarship and praxis tends to focus on African men�s adherence to violent fragile masculinities in conflict prone-societies, and African masculinities are often approached, analysed, measured and theorised through externally derived standards and concepts. This article, by contrast, investigates the extent to which men can contribute to everyday peacekeeping. It does so by drawing on ethnographic interviews with men in northwestern Ghana. It illuminates how discourses and practices of male headship and breadwinner, as everyday masculine subjectivities, may contribute to creating fruitful possibilities for everyday peacebuilding subjectivities of men at the micro-levels. The article argues that approaching African masculinities through externally designed frameworks risks impoverishing critical understanding of the tensions, ambiguities, resistances and contestations of multiple configurations of masculinities beyond liberal, western-centric conceptualisations of masculinities. It further highlights that critical intervention seeking to address the systems and structures that may legitimise, and re/produce violence and social disorder must invest in carefully rethinking the everyday struggles of men within their locatedness. Peacebuilding scholars should invest in broadening discourses and representations of masculinities by offering nuanced understandings of how men can and are embracing peaceful and nonviolent masculinities in their everyday meaning-making.

Investment in the Shadow of Conflict: Globalization, Capital Control, and State Repression

In conflict-prone societies, the fear of expropriation that accompanies a regime change reduces capital investment. These reductions in investments, in turn, harm the economy, amplifying the likelihood of regime change. This article studies the implications of these feedback channels on the interactions between globalization, capital control, state repression, and regime change. I show that processes that facilitate capital movements (e.g., globalization, economic modernization, and technologies that reduce transportation costs) amplify the likelihood of regime change in conflict-prone societies and strengthen the elite’s demand for a strong coercive state. In particular, to limit their collective action problem and manage the political risk of regime change, capitalists support a state that imposes capital control. We identify two conflicting forces, the Boix Effect and the Marx Effect, which determine when capital control and state repression become complements (Nazi Germany) or substitutes (Latin American military regimes) in right-wing regimes.

Can land title reduce low-intensity interhousehold conflict incidences and associated damages in eastern DRC?

Abstract The broad aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of land reform policy as a sustainable tool for averting low-intensity local conflict and protecting vulnerable households in conflict and post-conflict societies from adverse consequences of conflict. Empirical studies on micro-level conflict have been limited on two fronts - the difficulty of collecting survey data from conflict prone societies, and a general lack of attention to the consequences of low-intensity local conflict. This paper attempts to address both these limitations. Using a survey on violent and non-violent conflict experiences of 1582 farming households from the postwar society of North Kivu, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), I explore whether land title can i) lower the probability of low-intensity conflict between households; and ii) lower the damages for households in the event of a conflict. To address concerns of potential selection bias, I employ the quasi-experimental estimation technique of propensity score matching (PSM). A rigorous set of tests and sensitivity analyses ensures both the quality of matching and reliability of estimates. These findings show that land title reduces a household’s probability of experiencing low-intensity interhousehold conflict roughly between 10 and 18 percentage points. However, I find no evidence that households with land title are subject to lower damages in the event of a conflict. These findings suggest that in vulnerable societies with high exposure to conflict, land reform programs that just grant title to households may reduce conflict to some extent but will not necessarily reduce the adverse consequences associated with conflict. Thus, land title is not a panacea for all conflict related adversities and cannot serve as a stand-alone tool for reducing adversities associated with conflict. Further research is required on whether supplementing land reform programs with policies such as promoting good governance and strengthening local institutions can sustainably promote peaceful societies.

Capitalists in Revolution

In conflict-prone societies, the fear of expropriation that accompanies a regime change reduces capital investment. These reductions in investments, in turn, harm the economy, amplifying the likelihood of regime change. This paper studies the implications of these feedback channels on the interactions between globalization, capital control, state repression, and regime change. I show that processes that facilitate capital movements (e.g., globalization, economic modernization, technologies that reduce transportation costs) amplify the likelihood of regime change in conflict-prone societies, and strengthen the elite's demand for a strong coercive state. In particular, to limit their collective action problem and manage the political risk of regime change, capitalists support a state that imposes capital control. We identify two conflicting forces, the Boix Effect and the Marx Effect, which determine when capital control and state repression become complements (Nazi Germany) or substitutes (Latin American military regimes) in right-wing regimes.

Regulating party politics in the Western Balkans: the legal sources of party system development in Macedonia

Party regulation in general and its systemic consequences in particular have not been a matter of concern for scholars until very recently. Despite recent efforts to study how political parties are regulated in post-authoritarian democracies and in conflict-prone societies, the question of how party legislation affects party formation and party system development in the Western Balkans still remains a mystery. Adopting a multi-disciplinary (that is, legal and political) approach, this article attempts to fill a gap in the literature by analysing how different party (finance) regulations shaped the party system in Macedonia, one of Europe's most recent (and under-researched) democracies, while controlling for changes in electoral regimes. There are two main findings. On the one hand, registration requirements had the strongest impact on the party system format, even when the electoral system pushed in the opposite direction. On the other, public funding, rather than “cartelizing” the system, mainly facilitated the survival of (both big and small) parties. Finally, the article also points to the need to explore the role of shadow financing and corruption when analysing the effects of party finance in new democracies.

Japan's Approach to Peacebuilding in Afghanistan: Money, Diplomacy and the Challenges of Effective Assistance

Japan has been a principal player in international assistance to Afghanistan, ranked second only to the United States in its overall financial assistance disbursed since 2002. This article places a spotlight on the largely underappreciated subject of Japan's primarily non-military and economic infrastructure-oriented assistance by articulating three major characteristics of Japan's policies and practices in Afghanistan — relatively large disbursements for reconstruction programmes, designating disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration as Japan's niche area, and substantial reliance on international organisations for fund disbursement. Despite its comparatively advantageous position vis-à-vis other donors, Japan has faced a set of institutional and structural impediments to carrying out effective stabilisation and reconstruction assistance, not just in Afghanistan, but also in other conflict-prone and fragile societies. These include, among other things, the shortage of expertise, bureaucratic pressure for ‘cash burning’, inter-agency coordination problems, and waning political interest. As a result, this article argues that Japan has been underequipped to provide peacebuilding assistance on the large scale it committed in Afghanistan. If Tokyo hopes to safeguard its major investments in Afghanistan, it needs to revive the substantive political leadership it exercised in the early years of Afghan peacebuilding.

Mutual veto and power-sharing

We address the incidence and correlates of mutual veto institutions by examining a global dataset on power-sharing provisions. Our data show that mutual veto provisions are relatively rare and found mostly in diverse societies that are more highly developed than the world average. We find that mutual veto arrangements must be (a) enforceable, (b) inclusive to pacify all potential spoilers and (c) compatible with the interests and incentives of those groups to which they would apply. Mutual veto provisions often fail to meet one or more of these conditions. They are difficult to enforce, as conflict-prone societies often have ineffectual political institutions and weak administrative capacity. It is difficult to make them incentive-compatible, as incumbent power-holders will not benefit from them. Finally, they are often not credible, as the dominant political coalition would find it in its interest to punish any actual exercise of a veto. These conditions jointly explain the near absence of effective mutual veto regimes outside relatively prosperous polities with well-established political institutions.

Benjamin Reilly and Per Nordlund (eds), Political parties in conflict-prone societies: Regulation, engineering and democratic development, reviewed by Kenneth Janda

Benjamin Reilly and Per Nordlund (eds), Political parties in conflict-prone societies: Regulation, engineering and democratic development, reviewed by Kenneth Janda

The violence of statebuilding in historical perspective: implications for peacebuilding

In historical perspective statebuilding has often been violent because it threatens the interests of groups which are on the outside of the process and it encounters outlying resistance which must be subjugated. The consolidation of national political projects is a related process that has often been accompanied by significant armed conflict as groups with vying political visions compete for control of the agenda. Yet, in the twenty-first century some scholars and most policy analysts interested in peacebuilding portray peacebuilding and statebuilding as complementary or even mutually dependent. International peacebuilding activities in post-conflict and conflict-prone societies – undertaken by international organisations and individual donor states – focus upon the creation or recreation of state institutions as a conciliatory process and as the key to peace and stability. This article explores this apparent paradox and considers if there has been a historical transformation in the relationship between statebuilding and peace, and what implications historical statebuilding experience holds for international peacebuilding activities.

Power-sharing and political party engineering in conflict-prone societies: the Indonesian experiment in Aceh

Establishing legitimate political leadership through non-violent means is an essential step in the rebuilding of post-conflict societies. For this reason the successful holding of democratic elections is often seen as the crowning achievement of the peace process. In recent years, however, it has become clear that elections do not always guarantee the peace, and may in fact, make societies more dangerous.1 This has prompted political scientists to look more closely at other dimensions of the transition from violent conflict to democratic politics, including the role of political parties. Political parties play an essential role in all democracies, but their importance is magnified in conflict-prone societies. While some scholars have argued that political parties may help to consolidate peace by forming coalitions between groups formerly in conflict, more recent research suggests that such parties may also entrench social cleavages, especially if party formation is based along former conflict fault lines. This article considers these arguments in the case of Aceh, Indonesia, where an historic peace agreement allowed former Acehnese rebels to form their own political party—one based along both ethnic and former conflict lines.

The ethno-demographic structure of democratic consolidation in Mauritius and Fiji

This article investigates political demography as a predictor of the onset and prevalence of inter-communal conflict and different political outcomes in cases with conditions that are otherwise quite similar. Applying a most similar systems design, the article compares the Mauritius and Fiji to assess the currency of independent variables to which the article posits political demography as a complementary explanation. The article posits demographic equilibrium between groups in ethnopolitical conflict as favourable towards democratic consolidation; a demographic imbalance, by contrast, appears to have the opposite effect. Political demography distinguishes itself from commonplace ex post facto explanations since demographic trends can be projected into the future. The findings thus have implications for conflict prevention, especially in Small Island Developing States which are among the world's most conflict-prone societies.

Political Parties in Conflict-Prone Societies: Regulation, Engineering and Democratic Development, Benjamin Reilly and Per Nordlund, eds., Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2008, pp. xiii, 325

Political Parties in Conflict-Prone Societies: Regulation, Engineering and Democratic Development, Benjamin Reilly and Per Nordlund, eds., Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2008, pp. xiii, 325 - Volume 43 Issue 4

Political parties in conflict-prone societies: regulation, engineering and democratic development

Political parties are an essential component of representative democracy. They organize voters, aggregate and articulate interests, craft policy alternatives, recruit and socialize new candidates for office, set policy-making agendas, integrate disparate groups and individuals into the democratic process, and provide the basis for coordinated electoral and legislative activity. Well-functioning political parties are therefore central to the process of democratic development. Since the start of the third wave of democratization in 1974, various multiparty systems have been introduced in new, restored and emerging democracies around the world. Today more countries decide on their leaders through multiparty elections than ever before. The number of competitive democracies has increased threefold, and the number of political parties now contesting elections worldwide has increased many times more over the last 30 years.

Political Engineering and Party Politics in Conflict-Prone Societies

Comparative scholarship suggests that democracy in ethnically-diverse societies is likely to be fostered by the development of broad-based, aggregative, and multi-ethnic political parties, rather than fragmented, personalised, or ethnically-based party systems. However, surprisingly little scholarly attention has been given to how party fragmentation can be addressed or how broad-based parties can be sustained, despite some remarkable recent experiments in conflict-prone societies such as Indonesia, Turkey, Nigeria, Kenya, Thailand, the Philippines, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea aimed at influencing party system development. Drawing on these and other cases, this article identifies four strategies of ‘party engineering’ that have been used to promote broad-based, cross-regional, or multi-ethnic political parties in new democracies around the world.

Taming mammon: corporate social responsibility and the global regulation of conflict trade

Unethical business practices, the conduct of corrupt rulers and conflict entrepreneurs in conflict-prone societies have provoked genuine humanitarian concern from NGOs and activists who constitute the main driving force behind calls for ethical markets. However, powerful players, such as western multinational corporations and OECD governments, have been able to undercut campaigns for compulsory legal regulatory codes by promoting industry self-regulation and voluntary codes of conduct. This article assesses a number of these initiatives to control the trade in conflict goods and promote good resource governance. It concludes that current mechanisms constitute a weak attempt to control the negative impacts of the market and, by failing to tackle the real causes of instability, are inadequate for building a political economy of peace.

Public administration and conflict management in plural societies: the case for representative bureaucracy

Public administration affects the management of ethnic conflict by (1) the criteria employed in recruitment to state bureaucracies and (2) policies and practices that determine the distribution of the benefits and costs of government among members of competing ethnic communities. The goals pursued by mobilized ethnic communities include domination, secession, integration, power-sharing and minority rights, each of which is implemented by state-sanctioned policies and practices. Recent experience with civil and military bureaucracies in India and South Africa, two highly pluralistic and conflict-prone societies, suggests that ethnically representative bureaucracy, though by no means trouble-free, contributes to the legitimacy of government by demonstrating that members of all ethnic communities can and actually do participate in the administration of public affairs. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.