Working Papers and Occasional Papers
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Working Papers and Occasional Papers produced by the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. Earlier imprints were published originally by the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.
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Item Conflict Resolution as a Political System(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1988) Burton, John W“‘Conflict Resolution as a political System" was the first of the Institute's series of working Papers to be published, and when it came out in 1988 both the author and the then Director regarded the series as a vehicle for timely ‘think pieces’ or reports of research in progress at the Institute, then only a small Center. John Burton's original paper was introduced as extending the boundaries of conflict resolution and offering ‘. . .a view of what the field's fundamental philosophy should be...’ Over the last five years, however, it has become more and more evident that one of the fundamental problems facing the so called ‘Post Cold War World’ is the intellectual and practical construction of innovative forms of political systems, to replace the dominant model of the unitary, "‘national", territorial state which, in the real world, has increasingly been shown to be non-unitary, multi-national, and inconveniently unwilling to remain confined to assigned chunks of state territory. Without new thinking about possible and appropriate forms of political organization, that contain within themselves means of resolving inevitable conflicts, the ‘Post Cold War World’ seems likely to become the Small Shooting War World and to be filled with Bosnias, Somalias, Ngorno Karabakhs, or Afghanistans. Hence, the Institute's decision to republish John Burton's piece is both a timely response to the need to rethink the fundamentals of political organisation and a reminder of the liveliness of Burton's original work, which still has much to say about the world of the mid-1990s.”Item Group Violence in America(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1989-03) Rubenstein, Richard“‘Group Violence in America: The Fire Next Time?’ is the second working paper of the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. Both writings will come as a surprise to those who think of conflict resolution as being essentially a process, a process by which parties to conflicts are brought together and helped to transform their relationships. In fact, conflict resolution, as defined by the center in its Mission Statement, is more than a process. It is an approach to social relationships at all levels of interaction, from the family to the international, that seeks to take into account inherent human aspirations and needs of development, and that seeks to isolate those environmental constraints, political, social, and economic, which frustrate the attainment of such development. With such a perspective, conflict resolution is by definition a challenge to conventional approaches to public policies, in that its focus is on the person, not on institutions, except to the extent that institutions should be adapted to the needs of persons. This raises the time-honored question of the individual and the social good. But that question has in the past been posed by those who have an interest in the preservation of institutions in order to justify their positions. Now the question is being posed more to tilt the balance in favor of the person. It was for this reason that the first working paper posed the question whether conflict resolution was a political philosophy. Given that it is concerned with resolving deep rooted conflicts, that is, conflicts over fundamental human needs for identity and recognition that emerge, for example, in ethnic and class struggles, and given that it recognizes that such resolution may be possible only through structural change and fundamental policy changes, it follows that conflict resolution is in the arena of political analysis and change.”Item Conflict Resolution and Civil War: Reflections on the Sudanese Settlement of 1972(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1989-03) Mitchell, Christopher“Christopher R. Mitchell's ‘Conflict Resolution and Civil War: The Sudanese Settlement of 1972’ is the third in a series of Working Papers reflecting the research interests and findings of the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.”Item On the Need for Conflict Prevention(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1989-09-01) Burton, John W.For many years Dr. Edwin and Mrs. Helen Lynch, endowers of the Vernon M. and Minnie I. Lynch Chair in Conflict Resolution, have been most supportive of this Center. Dr. Lynch and other members of an Advisory Board; the chairman Douglas Adams; the tireless organizer Drucie Cumbie, whose husband, Steve, has now endowed the Drucie French Cumbie Chair in Conflict Resolution in her honor; and others who came regularly to monthly meetings have, along with President Johnson, acted largely on the basis of faith, asking few questions about direction and philosophy involved in this new disciplinary study of conflict and its resolution. I wish this evening to promote further the valuable interaction that this Center enjoys with members of its Advisory Board, the university administration, and its other supporters, and to invite observations on a fundamental issue: the evolving mission of the Center.Item Negotiating Military Base-Rights with Spain, The Philippines, and Greece: Lessons learned(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1990) Druckman, DanielThis essay asks what can be learned from three cases of negotiations over United States military bases in foreign countries. The lessons, developed from observations made by negotiators and support staff to each of the U.S. delegations, are organized in terms of a general framework emphasizing context and process. This framework provides a structure for insights that contribute both to theory and to practice. A concluding section frames the essay by highlighting key lessons, just as the section on the background of each case frames it at the beginning.Item The Dialectics and Economics of Peace(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1990-03) Boulding, Elise; Boulding, Kenneth E.If conflict is a basic fact of human existence, then the key to peace must be the management of conflict, not its abolition. An important concept for me is the conflict management continuum; one end represents destruction of the other. The continuum shades from threat through arbitration, mediation, negotiation to integrative processes that bond us to each other. In a profound sense, where on that continuum our own conflict management behavior lies is a matter of day-by-day choice. Peace, then, is a highly charged dynamic process involving constant negotiation at every level of human interaction from local to global. Peace is dialectical, in that each resolution of a conflict, or synthesis, creates the basis for dealing with the next conflict. Applying good conflict resolution skills creates the conditions for increasingly productive conflict outcomes in the future. On the whole, we underestimate our own peacemaking skills. In fact, we negotiate our way through daily life. The differences we confront range from the trivial to the profound.Item A Willingness to Talk(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1990-10-29) Mitchell, Christopher“Moves intended to initiate de-escalation and begin a peace process are often difficult to make and even more difficult to identify unambiguously. Two examples from recent Anglo-Argentine relations provide a basis for investigating whether successful gestures of conciliation demonstrate any common qualities or occur only in highly propitious circumstances. A number of hypotheses are advanced concerning characteristics which enhance a gesture's credibility and chances of success. Although it is noted that even gestures attempting to signal a clear ‘willingness to talk’ with an adversary, which demonstrate these characteristics, can be missed entirely, misinterpreted, or ignored by a Target firmly committed to continuing the conflict by coercive means; the initiation of a successful process of conflict termination remains a highly uncertain procedure. “Item Prospects for a Settlement of the Falklands/Malvinas Dispute(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1992-03-01) Willetts, Peter; Noguera, FilipeOne of the research projects currently under way at the Institute is the monitoring of Anglo-Argentine relations after the 1982 war and the analysis of the protracted conflict over the South Atlantic islands, known in Buenos Aires as the ‘Malvinas’ and in London as the ‘Falklands’. [See an earlier product of this research in W. Little & C.R. Mitchell (eds) In the Aftermath, College Park, MD: University of Maryland Press, 1989.1 The original focus of our research was on the nature and causes of the conflict itself and on the efforts of the parties [the Argentines, the British and the Islanders] to rebuild relationships after the short, but violent war and to seek long term solutions to the fundamental issues in conflict. Recently, its focus has broadened to a more general consideration of alternative governance systems or ‘regimes’ for small island communities and of innovative solutions for conflicts over such communities. Whatever ingenious resolutions might be discussed or devised, however, there always remains the problem that options and agreements have to be ‘sold’ to constituents and general publics, so that the process of arriving at a long term resolution of any conflict needs to take into account the barriers which public views and attitudes may [or may not] pose to policy changes. Accurate assessment of the ‘ripe moment’ needs, therefore, to take into account both the flexibility or intransigence of public opinion as well as leaders' perception of their own room for maneuver within that range of opinion. This present Occasional Paper throws considerable light on this issue by analysing the dynamics of public opinion in both Argentina and Britain in the period since the 1982 war. The Institute was fortunate that Dr. Noguera and Dr. Willetts were both interested in carrying out the survey they conducted in 1990 and agreeable to presenting their findings in both an Institute and in a South Atlantic Council Occasional Paper. We were able to support this work out of a grant from the Glad Foundation in New York. We would like to express appreciation to both researchers and to the Foundation for making the research and the publication of this paper possible.Item The OAU and African Conflicts: Past Successes, Present Paralysis and Future Perspectives(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1992-05) Amoo, Samuel G.“This Working Paper is part of a project to develop approaches and processes for a more effective management of African conflicts by the Organization of African Unity. This project is supported by a grant from the United States Institute of Peace whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged. While much recent writing about conflict settlement and resolution at the international level tends to focus on processes of negotiation, mediation and some of the newer, ‘Track Two’ procedures, it is still the case that the primary responsibility for coping with such conflicts remains with the major global and regional political organizations - the United Nations and such bodies as the OAS, ASEAN and the Arab League.”Item Conflict Resolution in the Post Cold War Era: Dealing with Ethnic Violence in the New Europe(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1992-10) Sandole, Dennis J. D.“This timely paper by Dr. Sandole is part of a continuing project at the Institute intendedto analyse and recommend remedies for the resurgence of overt and violent conflict in Eastern Europe. It takes the form of a consideration of the manner in which the ‘security problematic’ for Europe as a whole has changed as a result of the end of the confrontation there between the USSR and the USA, and how this has become a matter of coping with conflicts that are internal or transnational, arising from long suppressed ethnic rivalries. Such conflicts have not been wholly unknown in Western Europe since 1945 - Alto Adige, Catalonia, the Basque country, Northern Ireland - but since the ending of Soviet control in Eastern Europe and the development of the idea of a ‘common European home’ the world has become all too familiar with the management and mismanagement of conflicts between Croats and Serbs, Russians and Lithuanians, Czechs and Slovaks, Georgians and Ossetians. In these, and many more, ethnicity and the search for ethnic identity and security play major roles.”Item Personal Change and Political Action: The Intersection of Conflict Resolution and Social Mobilization Movement in a Middle East Dialogue Group(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1992-12) Hubbard, Amy S.“This working paper is based on a six-year participant observation study of a U.S.-based grassroots dialogue group of Palestinians and Jews and other Americans. It compares the grassroots dialogue group experience in the United States to problem solving workshops between Israelis and Palestinians aimed at change on a diplomatic level. It describes and analyses the special challenges dialogue groups face in building a social movement based on mutual reconciliation between Palestinians and Jews in the United States. Finally, it suggests we look more closely at the interrelationship between conflict resolution and social movement mobilization in order to understand how community groups expand their power base. This project was supported by grants from the Syracuse University Senate Research Fund and the Syracuse University Roscoe Martin Fund. The author also thanks the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution for providing important office and technical support for the project.”Item On Taking Sides: Lessons of the Persian Gulf War(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1993-03-01) Rubenstein, RichardImmediately following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi troops in August 1990, many scholars and practitioners in the field of conflict resolution went on record opposing military action by United States or United Nations forces to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. At a forum sponsored by the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University and televised nationally by C-SPAN in September 1990, a number of us argued that war was unnecessary because better means of resolving current disputes between Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia were available. Negotiations dealing with the immediate issues in dispute--the Rumaillah oil field, Iraq's war debts, and so forthcould get the Iraqis out of Kuwait before they laid waste the country. Meanwhile, using facilitated problem-solving processes, the parties could begin to deal with the fundamental causes of the conflict, of which Saddam Hussein's militarism was only a symptom: problems like the needs of ethnic and religious groups for identity and autonomy, the great disparities of wealth and income among the peoples of the region, and the need of the region as a whole for independence from foreign domination and manipulation. If these problems were not dealt with locally, we warned, the Persian Gulf would remain a hotbed of conflict and a magnet for continuing foreign intervention.Item Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution: A Decade of Development(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1993-03-01) Lewis, Samuel JThis century has been scarred by many violent international conflicts: World War I, World War II, Korea, the War in Vietnam and Cambodia, two India-Pakistan wars, nine major wars in the Middle East, and many other conflicts. The decades we have passed through have been de cades of almost endless warfare in one or more regions, punctuated by brief moments of peace. The names remind us of a violent era: Afghanistan, Sahara, Somalia, Ethiopia, Angola, Yemen, and on and on. Many so-called minor wars have produced hundreds of thousands of casualties. The bloodiest war of the twentieth century—with the exception of the two great world conflicts—the Iran-Iraq War, dragged on for eight years of wholesale bloodshed. The 1991 Gulf War was the shortest war of the twentieth century, but it was also very bloody. And, of course, in the part of the Middle East where I have spent most of my last 20 years, the Arab- Israeli front, the record spans Israel's War of Independence in 1948-49; the Suez War in 1956; the major Six Day War in 1967; the 1969-70 War of Attrition between Egypt and Israel—somehow often left out of the record books but actually one of the bloodier of the Arab-Israeli wars and one of the longer—the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a surprise attack on Israel on the holiest of days for Israelis and Jews everywhere; and the 1982 Lebanese War, the first ‘war of choice’ for Israel since the Suez Crisis. And outside the Middle East, the Associated Press once identified more than 300 ‘small wars’ that were underway at that particular moment around the world. Of course, the United States has not been at peace all this time either. We have not stayed at war for a long period of time since Vietnam. But during this decade of your Institute's existence, the United States deployed more than 500,000 troops against Iraq in Operation Desert Storm and was also involved in military operations of a ‘peacekeeping’ or ‘policing’ nature in Lebanon, Libya, Grenada, and most recently Panama.Item Resolution: Transforming Conflict and Violence(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1993-03-01) Laue, James H.There are three major areas I want to address tonight. First is the development of the field of conflict resolution and the establishment and growth of the Center here at George Mason. Second, I will focus on what we mean by ‘resolution’ among all the many possible responses to social conflict and a dimension I have been exploring recently: the concept of transformation in individuals and in the conflict relationship as peacemaking takes place. Finally, I want to talk about some of the challenges we face in this exciting field, which is now on the edge of what I have called the ‘ravages of success.’ We have been successful enough to begin to face some of the predicted Weberian problems of bureaucratization and rationalization and, as I would put it, the unique combination that happens when original sin and organizational sin get together.Item Negotiation Theory Through the Looking Glass of Gender(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1994-03-01) Kolb, DeborahThere are a number of ways to investigate gender in the context of negotiations. Many have looked at similarities and differences between men and women when they negotiate (See Kolb and Coolidge, 1991; Lewicki, Minton, and Saunders, 1994). The intent here is different. Following contemporary feminist critique in the social sciences and humanities generally, and the organizational field specifically, we consider how emerging theory of negotiation analysis and the psychology of bargaining, seemingly neutral and natural, is gendered (Calas and Smircich, 1990; Martin, 1990; Mumby and Putnam, 1992). We will argue that negotiation analysis is gendered in that it sustains and reinforces dichotomous thinking in which masculine attributes dominate those associated with the feminine (Flax, 1990), because it also fails to consider how the material conditions of different negotiators shape their understandings of negotiation and abilities to participate (Ferguson, 1984), and because its dominance closes out other potential ways of conceptualizing and acting in negotiation. Our argument takes the following form. First, we identify three assumptions inherent in the dominant discourse that have gender implications. These are existing conceptions of negotiator agency, bargaining power as a function of alternatives to an agreement, and a split between rational and emotional processes. Second, we suggest that negotiators who are different along these dimensions come to be seen, and/or experience themselves as different and often disadvantaged. Third, both from a theoretical and practical perspective, the discourse has the effect of rendering invisible and unimportant a wider set of strategic practices than are generally considered in the negotiation analysis framework. Looking at negotiation through a lens of gender helps us recover and revise negotiator agency as a performative activity, empowerment as an ongoing process, and a formulation of emotion as basic to intersubjective meaning construction.Item Cities After the 1960s-- Where Have All the Promises Gone?(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1994-03-01) Wilkins, RogerThe promise for the cities in the 1960s was that America had taken an honest look at its racial history. The country was rich then and growing and vital. Some people thought that America had experienced a profound change of heart and that justice could be purchased with our bountiful growth. We were then experiencing a continual period of low inflation, low unemployment, and steadily growing gross national product. I remember I was upbraided once after I had given a speech by a man who said, ‘We will have justice out of growth. America is never a zero-sum game. We will always grow. Out of our bounty, we will have justice.’ Well, unfortunately it did not turn out that way. Some of us had strong suspicions-Jim and I, Wally Warfield among them-that there was less promise and more foreboding in our sixties experiences. From the things that we had seen in the cities all across the country, I had profound doubts that the humane trajectory of the early sixties could be sustained in the cauldrons of despair deep in our inner cities. There was too much animosity toward the people there. There was too much poverty. There was too much human devastation. And, there was too little will and money to be marshaled against those things. So, I left the federal government almost exactly 25 years ago, making the same warnings in speech after speech. There were really two warnings. First, if we do not change our national investment patterns, our cities will become blacker and poorer, and that will be a disaster for our nation. Second, if we continue to treat people like savages, they will become savages, and raising groups of savages in the middle of the central points of growth and renewal of a culture is a wonderful way for a civilization to commit suicide. Now, 25 years later, the forebodings have clearly outdistanced the promise.Item Microenterprise Development: A Tool for Addressing the Structural Conflict Between Rich and Poor(1994-07) Beinhart, Eric“Conflict resolution and micro enterprise development are both fledgling fields. This paper attempts to show the relevance of viewing micro enterprise development within an overarching analytical framework of structural conflict. Johan Galtung provides the foundation, and Hernando De Soto, Muhammad Yunus and Mary Clark add supporting beams to this analytical construct. The modernization, dependency, and world system theories of development are dismissed as inadequate frameworks for analyzing micro enterprise development.”Item Peace and Identity: Some Reflections on the South Asian Experience(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1995-06) Gandhi, RajmohanBeing the kind of person I am, a 59-year-old man who has lived most of his life in India, a country where for almost every necessity demand outstrips supply and where you quickly accept what is available-the train, bus, flight, seat, or loaf of bread—I have been attempting, in these last ten weeks in Fairfax, to find a personal, even a physical, balance while taking in, from bottom to top and left to right, the display in your stores of cereal, bread, milk, and orange juice. The fact that I have low blood pressure makes this bid for a personal balance slightly more difficult and certainly more necessary. From your Native Americans I learn that balance is best symbolized by the circle. This rings a bell inside me; in India to show respect to a shrine we walk round it, completing one or more circles, and a Hindu marriage is pronounced when with their steps the bride and groom encircle a sacred fire. I have found some truth in the view that if the circle or wheel represents India, the fork in the road marks the West because in India we continue doing what we have always done while the American is always choosing the road to take, or, nowadays, the button to press.Item Cutting Losses: Reflections on Appropriate Timing(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1995-12) Mitchell, Christopher“The field of conflict resolution has reached a point in its evolution where hunches and intuitive guesses are being transformed into testable theoretical propositions. Nowhere is this more important than in the debate about when conflicts are ‘ripe for resolution.’ The conventional wisdom is that early intervention is preferable to late intervention since conflicts are more tractable when there is cognitive flexibility, when the structural conditions are conducive to settlement and the issues are clear and unclouded, and when the protagonists have not lapsed into a malignant spiral of violent hostility. If this wisdom is correct, and there is much evidence that it is so, then conflict revolutionaries should direct most attention to the prevention of violent conflicts. If conflict resolvers fail to prevent the occurrence of violence, however, the question of when it is timely and appropriate for third parties (or the antagonists themselves) to initiate peace processes remains. This is a vital issue, since premature or tardy interventions may impede rather than advance positive peace processes.”Item Conflict Resolution and Power Politics/ Global Conflict After the Cold War:Two Lectures(School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1996-01) Rubenstein, Richard“The two public lectures contained in this working paper were presented by Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution faculty member Richard E. Rubenstein at the University of Malta. ‘Conflict Resolution and Political Power’ was presented in Valletta, Malta, on January 12, 1995, under the sponsorship of the International Foundation. ‘Global Conflict After the Cold War’ was given on November 30, 1994, at Sir Teri Zammit Hall, Msida, under the auspices of the University of Malta's Department of Sociology. Malta's continuing interests in international peacemaking and conflict resolution are well known throughout the world. Almost from the time it became independent, this former British colony saw itself as a force for peace in the Mediterranean region: a natural bridge between Europe and North Africa, the First World and the Third. Pursuing these interests, Maltese public officials and academics have played a leading role in negotiating international agreements on the Law of the Sea and on environmental security. They have reached out to the Islamic nations and to Israel and have convened important conferences on Mediterranean regional problems. In fall 1994, I was pleased to attend the annual meeting of the International Peace Research Association hosted in Valletta by the University of Malta's Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.”
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