Instruments Of Conflict Management Research Articles

The Utility of International Negotiation: Four Hundred Years of Attempts to Negotiate Political and Diplomatic Stability

Abstract This article examines the challenges to international negotiation processes in a world where attempts have been made to create order, but, at present, disorder is on the rise again. Several historical cases are analyzed and compared to detect both positive and negative factors influencing the utility of negotiation processes as an instrument of conflict management and international governance. How has mankind managed to use negotiation as an alternative to warfare? What are the conditions for negotiation effectiveness? What is the utility of negotiation if the context is not ripe for solving problems in a peaceful way? What does history tell us about the ways to deal with interstate wars in the 21st century?

THE CHALLENGES OF PEACEKEEPING IN AFRICA: A REVISIT

1. Introduction The most visible international response to Africa's armed conflicts was the proliferation of peace operations, which between 1990 and 2012 numbered more than 60, far more than in any other region. This period was also the most tumultuous in the history of peacekeeping. The operations assumed various shapes and sizes. They were authorized and conducted by various actors and international institutions. As instruments of conflict management, they produced decidedly mixed results. This was in large part because the United Nations (UN) and other institutions had to learn, while on the job, how to keep the peace in messy armed conflicts. These institutions also had to develop the relevant tools and structures as they went along. Peacekeeping in Africa after the Cold War was a way of trying to professionalise peace operations. Since peace operations are a reflection of international society's assumptions and priorities about conflict management and resolution, tracing their evolution provides an important barometer for the involvement of international engagement in Africa's violence. The results are instructive. The peace operations helped shepherd transitions from armed conflict to peace (among others in Liberia, Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Namibia). But peacekeepers failed to stop genocide in Rwanda and mass killings in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Angola and other African states. They also at times abused and exploited the local people they were supposed to protect. Perhaps the central explanations for this mixed record were that some mission mandates were tougher than others and some operations were given more resources than others. This article concludes that peacekeepers in Africa are often used as a substitute for an effective political plan and that peacekeeping missions are bound by the international legal requirement of seeking consent from the host governments, even when those governments constitute problems in several African armed conflicts. 2. Peacekeeping trends in post-Cold War Africa At the end of 2012, Africa had military based peace operations, involving more than 242 000 peacekeepers. The complex and multidimensional efforts necessitate the analysis of two intertwined issues: The first is the conflict management and resolution efforts carried out by African states and international institutions, while the second is those of non-African initiatives, primarily by the UN and the European Union (EU), although African governments are clearly involved in the UN activities and external actors are usually involved in African initiatives. The peace-making, peacekeeping and peace-building operations conducted by the UN and other non-African actors were in most cases considerably larger than those carried out by their African counterparts. Between 1990 and 2012 over 20 peace operations were conducted by African institutions. These involved the deployment of just over 74 000 uniformed personnel. Deployments by sub-regional institutions were mainly by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), amounting to over 56 000 personnel, while over 18 000 were deployed as African Union (AU) peacekeepers. During the same period non-African institutions and actors, primarily the UN, conducted 35 peace operations on the continent. These involved the deployment of approximately 200 000 uniformed personnel of whom approximately 157 500 were UN peacekeepers while some 41 200 were deployed by other actors. 32 000 of these came from the United States (US)-led Unified Task Force for Somalia, 1992 and 1993. In the 21st century, the UN peace operations in Africa have accounted for some 70 per cent of its peacekeeping forces globally and cost the institution over US$300 billion. Peacekeeping in Africa unfolded in two distinct phases: before and after the AU was established. …

Teacher Leadership and Conflict Management in EFL Classroom in the Light of the Contingency Theory of Human Resource Management: An Interdisciplinary Study

The present interdisciplinary research was enlightened by the contingency theory of human resource management (HRM) and aimed to explore Iranian EFL teachers’ leadership and conflict management styles in the private sector. To this aim, Fiedler’s leadership measurement instrument along with Thomas & Kilmann’s conflict management instrument were used to collect data from 51 EFL teachers teaching in private language institutes of Khorasan Razavi, Iran. The aim was to find what proportion of teachers were task-oriented and what proportion were relation-oriented in leadership, and which conflict management styles were more prevalent among task-oriented and which were dominant among relation-oriented teachers. Furthermore, comparisons were made between male/female, younger (20-30 yrs.)/older (>30 yrs.) and experienced (>5 yrs.)/novice (<5 yrs.) teachers in terms of the leadership style as well as the conflict management style. Descriptive as well as inferential statistics were used to analyze the data in SPSS21. The results revealed that the majority of participants used task-oriented leadership style in class. Task-oriented teachers showed to use the accommodating conflict management style more while relation-oriented teachers prevalently used the collaborating style. Statistically significant differences were found between demographic groups in terms of the leadership and conflict management styles. Awareness of different leadership and conflict management styles can enrich teacher training courses and professional development programs in Applied Linguistics.

THE CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS WHILE CONFLICTING WITH THEIR SUPERVISORS

Conflict is everywhere as there are conflicts at educational organization. One of the most affected groups from conflicts is administrators who are a bridge between teachers and parents, supervisors. The aims of this study are to determine which strategies the school administrators use and how often they use these strategies and whether their strategies change according to their genders, educational situations and managerial status. 370 school administrators participated in this study and they were applied Organizational Conflict Management Instrument developed by Putnam and Wilson. Lisrel 9.0 and SPSS 20.0 programs were used during analysis. As a result, compromising strategy is the most used one while dominating is the less used strategy by school administrators while they were conflicting with their supervisors. Although the frequency of avoiding and dominating strategies differ according to their genders significantly, there aren’t any significant differences among administrators in terms of their educational situations. Their reasons for conflict management strategies can be examined through qualitative research method. Article visualizations:

Osce and the Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process

The Minsk Process for Nagorno-Karabakh has directed unprecedented engagement from key world powers on this decades-old dispute. osce’s first peacemaking effort survived a rocky start, evolving into a functional multi-faceted conflict management instrument. While the envisioned “Minsk Conference” was never held, not one of the myriad peace proposals adopted, no status determination for Nagorno-Karabakh ever made, and no refugees or lands returned, the Minsk Process may still be considered a success. Frequent criticism notwithstanding, it has kept Armenia and Azerbaijan engaged in a near continuous diplomatic dialogue, restrained large-scale fighting, and belied fears of a significant regional conflagration. That is a noteworthy achievement.

Dual Substate Citizenship as Institutional Innovation: The Case of Bosnia's Brčko District

This article analyzes the politics and constitutional position of the Brčko District of BiH, drawing on this case to inform several important debates in the field with regards to questions of federalism, citizenship, and electoral politics. The article shows that the condominium logic of territorial arrangement has profound implications for substate citizenship in Brčko. It argues that apart from territorial options and consociational institutional mechanisms substate citizenship is an important element of conflict management. Though often neglected in the literature, dual substate citizenship could be considered an instrument of conflict management and, as this article argues, as a model of institutional innovation in divided societies.

Conflict management capabilities of peace-brokering international organizations, 1945–2010: A new dataset

The expectation that international organizations (IOs) can play a role in the resolution of violent conflict has spawned a process of institutional growth in the post-Second World War period. IOs at all levels have expanded existing instruments of conflict management and have gradually established new ones, such as mediation support units, early warning systems and standby military forces. Empirical research on this process has suffered from a lack of systematic, cross-temporal data. Seeking to rectify this weakness, this article introduces an original dataset on the institutional design of 21 peace-brokering IOs, organizations endowed with standing capabilities for conflict management interventions. The dataset contains yearly observations on 14 institutional variables during the 1945–2010 period, centered around three instruments of IO conflict management: mediation, economic sanctions and peacekeeping. It also includes observations on IO membership characteristics, power polarity and a set of security-related institutional features. This dataset provides scholars with a new source of variables for the study of institutional evolution, institutional heterogeneity and the impact of institutional characteristics on IO performance. A preliminary descriptive analysis shows that IOs display significant variation in terms of mandates, capabilities and rates of change. Using the data, I also perform a re-appraisal of an earlier study on IO dispute resolution, demonstrating the analytic benefits of having disaggregated measures of institutional design.

Reactions of the Governments of Nigeria and Biafra to the Role of the Catholic Church in the Nigeria–Biafra War

The high incidence of conflict in the world today, and the overwhelming influence of religion on man and his society, have resulted in an increasing engagement of religion in conflict management. However, in spite of its high profile in managing conflict, religion can sometimes form a barrier to conflict resolution. The Nigeria–Biafra war was one of those wars in which religion, as an instrument of conflict management, played a double-edged sword. This paper examines the reaction of the parties to this conflict to the role of the Catholic Church in managing the conflict.The involvement of the Catholic Church in the Nigeria–Biafra war has ever remained one of the highly controversial themes of this war. While the role played by the church appeared to be a welcome development on the part of the Biafran Government, the Federal Military Government of Nigeria (FMG) was against the church and its activities, particularly its relief programme in Biafra during the war. From the available evidence, the church’s relief services, just like those of the International Committee of the Red Cross, were carried out on both sides of the war. The difference was on the level of dependence on it, as well as the degree of its exploitation by the two parties. In addition to its high dependence on the Caritas airlift, the Biafran Government, in its war of propaganda hinged on religion, was out to exploit every available opportunity provided by the church’s relief programme in Biafra. It therefore made its overtures of ‘friendship’ to the church in Biafra and beyond as it assumed the status of a ‘maligned child’ of the mother church. To the FMG that was out to crush a rebellion, such manipulation of religion, using the platform of the church’s programme of relief in Biafra was more than a frustration of its war effort. Its anger was thus directed against the church both locally and internationally such that the latter, among other things, could achieve little or nothing in terms of conflict resolution, although the relief programme of the church in general saved the Biafran population from a war in which starvation was obviously an instrument.

Who Can Keep the Peace in Africa?

The African Union: Pan-Africanism, peacebuilding and development, by Timothy Murithi. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. vi + 182 pp. £50 (hardback). ISBN 0-7546-3953-3 (hardback). Uniting Africa: Building regional peace and security systems, by David J. Francis. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006. ix + 296 pp. £20 (paperback). ISBN 0-7546-4689-0 (paperback). Dangers of Co-Deployment: UN co-operative peacekeeping in Africa, by David J. Francis, Mohammed Faal, John Kabia and Alex Ramsbotham. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. xii + 192 pp. £47.50 (hardback). ISBN 0-7546-4027-2 (hardback). Twisting Arms and Flexing Muscles: Humanitarian intervention and peacebuilding in perspective, edited by Natalie Mychajlyszyn and Timothy M. Shaw. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. vii + 162 pp. £49.95 (hardback). ISBN 0-7546-1671-1 (hardback). In the contemporary world, Africa is the continent where the demand for peacekeeping is most acute. UN peacekeeping operations have been the predominant type of conflict management instrument on the continent, and it is therefore no surprise that African conflicts have influenced UN peacekeeping techniques or that UN peacekeeping techniques have offered models and inspiration for intra-African attempts at peacekeeping missions.1 Conflict in Africa cannot be easily pigeonholed, but many share the conviction that African conflicts in the post-Cold War world are complex and multidimensional. Most often, they are protracted intra-state conflicts in which peacekeeping missions based on the principles of consent, impartiality, and minimum use of force seem doomed to be insufficient dressings for large open wounds. Warring factions may consist of militias, armed civilians, and parts of regular armies. These actors may be undisciplined and devoid of hierarchical structures. Moreover, it cannot be assumed that the belligerents will have a political agenda or a desire to end the conflict. In these circumstances, civilians are the main victims and often the main targets of the conflicting parties. Among the multiple causes of such conflicts, the internal causes cannot be separated from their international contexts. Global causes may consist in historical legacies, such as the imposed state borders, external involvement, such as the structural adjustment programmes, and the negative effects that the configuration of the international economic and trade system has in Africa.

Russian perceptions of state failure and Russia's involvement with fragile states

Russia's policies towards fragile states demonstrate not only the sustained reduction of outreach to its immediate neighbourhood, but also the accumulation of contradictory claims, and combination of incompatible activities. Its sensitivity to the problem of international interventions is underpinned with the uncertainty in the viability of the bureaucratized political order and in the outcome of the forthcoming political transition. Sustained economic growth driven primarily by the energy sector leads to the unmistakable rise of great power ambitions that shaped Russia's chairmanship in the G8 in 2006. At the same time, there is very little readiness to accept responsibility for maintaining order in the world system, and public opinion remains firmly set against providing humanitarian aid to states suffering from civil wars or natural disasters. Moscow is increasingly inclined to interfere in the political processes in other post‐Soviet states while neglecting the needs to put its own house in order; it also fails to build reliable instruments of conflict management. These contradictions have acquired a particularly pronounced character in the Caucasus where Georgia has emerged as the main target of 9 sanctions and pressure aimed at exacerbating internal vulnerabilities, while the overlapping economic and security challenges in the regions of the North Caucasus demonstrate many features of state failure in progress.

Auditors’ Conflict Management Styles: An Exploratory Study

This study explores the conflict management styles used by auditors when resolving disputes with clients concerning financial statement issues. Rahim’s (1983a, 1990) ROCI–II conflict management instrument was used to establish both the styles generally used and also those used in a scenario concerning possible inventory obsolescence. Size of the client and the strength of its corporate governance mechanisms were manipulated in the scenario. It was found that auditors indicate that they primarily use the integrating style to resolve disputes. The compromising and dominating styles are used to a lesser extent while the obliging and avoiding styles are rarely used. Partners are more likely than managers to use more assertive styles of conflict management. The size of the client and the strength of corporate governance mechanisms in place have a significant but relatively minor impact on the choice of styles. The study also identifies the parties whom the auditor would expect to help resolve the dispute. It was found that, when resolving a dispute with the client’s chief financial officer, the audit committee is perceived to give the most assistance, followed by the chief executive of icer.

Comparative Perspectives on Educational Decentralization: An Exercise in Contradiction?

The principal thesis of this article is that policies of decentralizing the governance of educational systems, although often popular and compelling in the abstract, tend to carry the seeds of their own contradictions. Based on material from a number of European and developing countries, the three most common arguments in favor of decentralization—redistributing power, enhancing efficiency, and improving learning—are shown to conflict with powerful forces favoring centralization. In an attempt to make the political dynamics of the debate more transparent, the utility of decentralization as an instrument of conflict management and compensatory legitimation is being analyzed against the background of contemporary theories of the state. Lastly, the article focuses on the uneasy relationship between decentralization and evaluation as a case in point for the tensions surrounding the decentralization issue.