Summary Introduction to Conflict Analysis | Minor Conflict Studies @UU | Literature Summaries & Lecture Notes
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Course
Conflict Analysis (CS2V14001)
Institution
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Literature summaries and lecture notes | Introduction to Conflict Analysis (ICA)| First course of the minor Conflict Studies as taught at Utrecht University, September-November 2019.
,Week 1 Introduction
Demmers, J (2017) ‘Introduction: Conflict Analysis in Context’ in Demmers, J.
Theories of Violent Conflict, New York and London: Routledge, pp. 1-19.
- ‘Balkan Ghosts’ example of primordial perspective on ethnic conflict
o Influenced US intervention policy
o Misreading conflict situations can lead to intervention strategies that do
not help / make it worse
- Interpretation of conflict: trends and frames
o UCDP definition of civil war:
▪ “A contested incompatibility, that concerns government or territory
or both, where the use of force between two parties results in at least
25 battle-related deaths in a year. Of these two parties, at least one
has to be the government or state.”
o Conflict becomes war when the number of annual battle-related deaths
reaches the threshold of 1.000
o Global shift of inter-state to intrastate after Cold War
o A peak in the 90’s: 50 intrastate wars
o 118 conflicts between 1989 and 2004
▪ 7 interstate
▪ 39 intrastate
• Of which 13 were internationalized
• (I think todays percentage is bigger)
o These number are contestable; not all conflicts and deaths are recorded or
considered as (related to) a conflict
o International preoccupation with this type of conflict has increased
▪ NATO, UN etc, tribunals
▪ NGO’s
o Representation of this type of conflict changed too
▪ During Cold War: ‘proxy wars’; ideological
▪ Post-Cold War: ethnic / ethno-nationalist
▪ Since late 90’s: driven by greed, terror, evil,
▪ Post-9/11: terrorism, religion
• Violence after Cold War is excessively cruel
o These representations need to be criticised
▪ Dexter and Duffield: the nature of violence did not change, the
international attitude towards conflict did ; warring parties are
denied in their legitimacy
▪ Supporting conflicts was usual during the cold war era; after this
ended, the conflicts continued but lost their international,
geopolitical function and hence legitimacy
- Defining the field: key terms and definitions (conflict, violence, civil war)
o Conflict (all of this is discussed in Mitchells article too, skip to violence in
conflict)
, ▪ Chris ‘triangle guy’ Mitchell: ‘a conflict is any situation in which two
or more parties perceive that they have incompatible goals.
▪ Any conflict consists of:
• Situation
o goal incompatibility
o Goals: desired future outcomes (conditions, end states
etc.)
• Attitudes
o Psychological states that accompany and arise from
involvement
o Common attitudes, emotions and evaluations
o Patterns of perception and misperception
o Note the difference between:
▪ Emotional orientations: anger, fear, envy etc.
▪ Cognitive orientations: stereotyping, tunnel vision
• Behaviour
o Actions undertaken by one party, aimed at the other, in
order to make them modify or abandon its goals
o Note the unimportance of violence as a criterion for
conflict behaviour
▪ Triangle shows that conflicts are dynamic and that the different
compartments are constantly changing and influencing each other
▪ Dynamic aspects are crucial in analysations as they alter both
structure and relationships
▪ The source of the conflict can be placed at different angles
• (is placing it at attitude primordialism?)
o Violence in conflict
▪ Inaction is possible too; people do not always act upon situations of
conflict
▪ Violence does not automatically result from goal incompatibility
▪ Unimportance of violence as a criterion for conflict behaviour
▪ Demmers: violence is not a degree, but a form of conflict
▪ Violence in conflict can have multiple functions
▪ Difference between aggression and violence: aggression derives from
the motivation to harm another as an end in itself. Violence is also
always communicative, it aims to send a message to an audience
o Definitional boundaries (between intra-state and inter-state conflict)
▪ Intra-state wars: here same as ‘new wars’
▪ Intra-state wars defer from inter-state wars because
1. They do not have precise beginnings and endings
2. They are protracted (blurry war-peace boundary)
3. There are different modes of warfare
4. They are externally interfered
, 5. They are deterritorialized (decisions and strategies can be
communicated immediately)
6. The fighting is done by organisations claiming to represent
(ethnic, religious, cultural etc.) groups
o Civil war
▪ (huge, detailed definition of Sambanis on p. 11)
▪ Conclusion: boundaries between global, local, inter, intra, state, non-
state, political and criminal are blurry
▪ The act of categorizing is always political
▪ The point is to accept the complexity and multifacetedness of violent
conflict and its transformative capacity
- Approach: group formation and violent action
o In reviewing theories of ‘violence in conflict’, Demmers focusses on the role
of groups and group formation
o From this perspective she gives three questions that need to be asked:
▪ What makes a group?
▪ Why and how does a group resort to violence?
▪ Why and how do they (not) stop?
- Conflict analysis
▪ Demmers discusses the way prominent theories approach the
questions stated above
▪ The task of conflict analysis is to unravel the complex dynamics of
interactive processes in order to explain and/or understand how and
why people resort to violence
▪ This kind of research is part of social research. Referring to some
prominent researchers, Demmers explains what this kind of research
is about
• Social research involves a dialogue between theory (ideas) and
evidence (data)
• Theories help to make sense of evidence
• Researches use evidence to extend, revise and test theories
• The end result is a representation of social life, shaped and
reshaped by ideas
• An important part of social research is analysis
o Analysis is breaking phenomena into their constituent
parts and viewing them in relation to the whole they
form
▪ In conflict analysis, a researcher aims to break the conflict up into its
component parts, dissecting the different key elements and
conditions that combine to ‘ make’ the conflict
o Conflict mapping
▪ The first step in analysing conflict is conflict mapping
▪ It is used to get a good snapshot overview of a conflict situation
▪ The questions you ask:
• Who are the main parties?
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