Indicators of Potential Conflict

This paper focuses on the main factors that contribute to the dangers of violent internal conflict erupting, or re-igniting after a peace has been concluded. The conflict literature has identified greed and grievance as the principle causes of conflict. But for either of them to take the form of large-scale violence there must be other factors at work, specifically a weakening of the 'social contract'. Such a viable social contract can be sufficient to restrain opportunistic behaviour such as theft of resource rents and violent expression of grievance. The social contract, therefore, refers to the mechanisms and institutions of peaceful conflict resolution. Three main risk factors are considered in this briefing: The breakdown of redistributive mechanisms, democratic transitions and lack of economic progress.Conflict, civil war, greed versus grievance, social contract, democratic transition, redistributive mechanisms

Potential Conflict Between the Malay and the Dayak Ethnic Groups in the Hinterland Region of West Kalimantan

This research was conducted in two villages in the hinterland region of West Kalimantan. The two villages are separated only by a small stream, and they are inhabited by two different ethnic groups. Seen from the upstream of the river, the left side of the riverbank is where the Dayak lived, while at the right side of the riverbank is where the Malay ethnic resided. The Malay, as Muslims, led their live according to Islamic teaching, while the Dayak is oblivious to theirneighbor's Islamic way of life. This in turn had fostered seeds of tensions with a potential for a conflict in the social relation between the two groups. Fortunately, the potential for conflict has not erupted into an open confrontation between them. The objective of this study is to find out the background issues that breed the potency of conflict between these two ethnic groups, the Malay and the Dayak, and why it never erupted into an open confrontation

Social Capital, Survival Strategies, and Their Potential for Post-conflict Governance in Liberia

This paper investigates how people created, adapted and used social capital and conflict resolution during more than a decade of violent conflict in Liberia, and the potential of such capital to contribute to post-conflict peace building and self-governance

War with Outsiders Makes Peace Inside

In many situations there is a potential for conflict both within and between groups. Examples include wars and civil wars and distributional conflict in multitiered organizations like federal states or big companies. This paper models such situations with a logistic technology of conflict. If individuals decide simultaneously and independently about the amount of internal conflict, external conflict and production, there is typically either only internal conflict, or only external conflict - but not both. If each group decides collectively how much each member has to put into the external conflict before the members individually decide on the amounts put into the internal conflict and production, groups choose sufficiently high external conflict in order to avoid internal conflict. This is a model of the "diversionary use of force". We also study the optimal number of groups

Ethnic polarization, potential conflict and civil wars

This paper analyzes the relationship between ethnic fractionalization, polarization, and conflict. In recent years many authors have found empirical evidence that ethnic fractionalization has a negative effect on growth. One mechanism that can explain this nexus is the effect of ethnic heterogeneity on rent-seeking activities and the increase in potential conflict, which is negative for investment. However the empirical evidence supporting the effect of ethnic fractionalization on the incidence of civil conflicts is very weak. Although ethnic fractionalization may be important for growth, we argue that the channel is not through an increase in potential ethnic conflict. We discuss the appropriateness of indices of polarization to capture conflictive dimensions. We develop a new measure of ethnic heterogeneity that satisfies the basic properties associated with the concept of polarization. The empirical section shows that this index of ethnic polarization is a significant variable in the explanation of the incidence of civil wars. This result is robust to the presence of other indicators of ethnic heterogeneity, other sources of data for the construction of the index, and other data structures.Ethnic diversity, conflict, indices of diversity

Local conflict in Indonesia : Measuring incidence and identifying patterns

The widespread presence of local conflict characterizes many developing countries such as Indonesia. Outbreaks of violent conflict not only have direct costs for lives, livelihoods, and material property, but may also have the potential to escalate further. Recent studies on large-scale"headline"conflicts have tended to exclude the systematic consideration of local conflict, in large part due to the absence of representative data at low levels of geographic specification. This paper is a first attempt to correct for that. We evaluate a unique dataset compiled by the Indonesian government, the periodic Village Potential Statistics (PODES), which seeks to map conflict across all of Indonesia's 69,000 villages/neighborhoods. The data confirm that conflict is prevalent beyond well publicized"conflict regions,"and that it can be observed across the archipelago. The data report largely violent conflict in 7.1 percent of Indonesia's lowest administrative tier (rural desa and urban kelurahan). Integrating examples from qualitative fieldwork, we assess issues in the measurement of local conflict for quantitative analysis, and adopt an empirical framework to examine potential associations with poverty, inequality, shocks, ethnic and religious diversity/inequality, and community-level associational and security arrangements. The quantitative analysis shows positive correlations between local conflict and unemployment, inequality, natural disasters, changes in sources of incomes, and clustering of ethnic groups within villages. The institutional variables indicate that the presence of places of worship is associated with less conflict, while the presence of religious groups and traditional culture (adat) institutions are associated with conflict. We conclude by suggesting future areas of research, notably on the role of group inequality and inference, and suggest ways to improve the measurement of conflict in the village census.Services&Transfers to Poor,Post Conflict Reconstruction,Public Health Promotion,Education and Society,Peace&Peacekeeping,Post Conflict Reconstruction,Education and Society,Social Conflict and Violence,Rural Poverty Reduction,Services&Transfers to Poor

Status Quo Analysis of the Flathead River Conflict

Status quo analysis algorithms developed within the paradigm of the graph model for conflict resolution are applied to an international river basin conflict involving the United States and Canada to assess the likeliness of various compromise resolutions. The conflict arose because the state of Montana feared that further expansion of the Sage Creek Coal Company facilities in Canada would pollute the Flathead River, which flows from British Columbia into Montana. Significant insights not generally available from a static stability analysis are obtained about potential resolutions of the conflict under study and about how decision makers’ interactions may direct the conflict to distinct resolutions. Analyses also show how political considerations may affect a particular decision maker’s choice, thereby influencing the evolution of the conflict

Capitalizing on National Self-Interest: The Management of International Telecommunication Conflict by the International Telecommunication Union

This article will examine the potential for conflict and the need for international cooperation in the contemporary telecommunication industry, with a particular focus on the role of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in international conflict management. After addressing particular aspects of modern telecommunication which invite international conflict, the article will present an overview of the ITU as the principal instrumentality for maintaining world order in telecommunication. The Union\u27s importance in conflict prevention, dispute resolution, and arbitration will be analyzed in detail. Finally, this article will assess the success of the ITU in conflict management and evaluate the need for change in the ITU as it enters a new era of international telecommunication

Conflict and the Social Contract

We consider social contracts for resolving conflicts between two agents who are uncertain about each other's fighting potential. Applications include international conflict, litigation, and elections. Even though only a peaceful agreement avoids a loss of resources, if this loss is small enough, then any contract must assign a positive probability of conflict. We show how the likelihood of conflict outbreak depends on the distribution of power between the agents and their information about each other