Peter T. Coleman
Eric C. Marcus
We begin the conclusion of this third edition of the Handbook with a story of hope. For several years, our center, the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR), cosponsored a course with our colleagues at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs on the theory and practice of preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution at the United Nations. This was an innovative course, bringing eminent theorists and researchers from academia together with highly skilled international diplomats and practitioners and encouraging lively dialogue among them. The students for the course were a mix of graduate students from Columbia and foreign embassy and UN personnel.
In 1999, we began the course with a conceptual overview of Deutsch’s theory of cooperation and competition (see chapter 1) and discussion of its relevance for resolving international conflict. After providing a summary of the theory, we asked the students to work in small groups to apply the ideas from the theory to the emerging conflict in Kosovo (this was in January, prior to the NATO bombing campaign), with the objective of generating recommendations for the United States and the international community.
At the conclusion of this exercise, one particularly articulate student, a military attaché to a UN ambassador, summarized his group’s discussion. He said they felt there were few feasible options to the crisis other than recommending that NATO threaten to bomb or use other force against the Serbians to stop the ethnic cleansing in the area. There was general consensus on this conclusion among the students in the class.
Three months later, at the final meeting of the course, Richard Holbrook (whose position as US ambassador to the United States was at that time pending approval in Congress) spoke to the class about what was then current US and NATO policy in Kosovo and Serbia. He spoke passionately for the need to continue the bombing campaign against the Serbs. His argument was detailed, articulate, and very convincing. After Holbrook concluded his statement and left the room, discussion of the situation in the former Yugoslavia continued.
It was at this point that the same young attaché who had advocated bombing earlier in the term spoke again. He began by saying that he had been struck by something during Holbrook’s remarks: the fact that the military initiatives that were typically employed in these situations, such as use of bombing missions or sending in ground troops, were rarely successful in achieving their political objectives. The objectives, he claimed, in many such situations were to inflict enough harm on the general population that either the leadership feels its pain and acquiesces or the people organize and remove the leaders. The use of military force, he said, as we had seen in Vietnam, Iraq, and now in Kosovo, rarely achieved these objectives. I paraphrase him: “The notion of bombing a village in order to save it, as in Vietnam, is insane. The Serbs are bombing Kosovo in order to save it, and we are bombing Serbia in order to save it. It simply makes no sense. There has to be a better way!”
He continued, as best I recall: “Every day I look at a map of Africa hanging in my office, and I think that if these are the types of solutions we have to offer the many conflicts on that continent, there will never be peace.” Here was an accomplished US Marine, someone who had risen in the ranks of the military to a position of substantial importance, stating emphatically, “There has to be a better way!” In subsequent discussion with this student, he thanked us for the course and said that learning about a constructive approach to conflict had challenged his thinking about conflict resolution and peacemaking in important ways.
For more than eighty years, scholars and practitioners in the field of conflict resolution have been searching for a better way. As is evident in the many chapters of this Handbook, a great deal of progress has been made toward understanding conflict and resolving it constructively. However, a great deal of work remains to be done.
We find this opening story hopeful because it illustrates how education in conflict resolution, particularly when presented in practical terms to individuals who are in influential positions, can begin to have an important impact on our world. The story also points out, however, that there are no simple answers to complex conflicts and that we all must keep striving to find a better way.
In the last section of the Introduction to this Handbook, Morton Deutsch outlines a series of questions that the field of conflict resolution has been or is currently addressing. In this, the Concluding Overview, we outline some of the questions and challenges that theorists, researchers, and practitioners of conflict resolution will face in their work in the years ahead. Many of the issues outlined here are themes that run throughout the book; we summarize them here for purposes of clarity and to begin to set out a new agenda for scholar-practitioner collaboration in the field.
The first question is, How can a field that holds notions of neutrality and egalitarianism so dear work constructively and ethically in situations where intergroup dominance and oppression are the norm?
In 2012, the National Urban League released a study reporting that 149 years after the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation, the equality gap between blacks and whites in the United States continues to be substantial, and in some areas it is increasing. According to the report, black unemployment is 15.8 percent, while white unemployment rate is 7.9 percent; the health status of black Americans is 76 percent that of whites; and teachers without an undergraduate major in the subject they are teaching are working in minority schools at twice the rate they teach in white schools. The incarceration rate (prisoners per 100,000) for blacks is 1,540, while the rate for whites is 252. In 2006, the overall equality index was 73 percent, but in the 2012 report, the equality index was 71.5 percent (an equality index of 100 percent would mean that blacks and whites are equal). So there was a 1.5 percent decrease in equality for blacks over those six years. To be specific: black economic standing is 56.3 percent of whites, black health standing is 76.5 percent of whites, black education standing is 59.7 percent of whites, and black social justice standing is 56.8 percent of whites. In addition, median income for blacks was $33,578 (2010 data reported in 2012 report), while median income for whites was $54,168 (2010 data reported in 2012 report). The poverty rate for blacks is 27.1 percent, and for whites, 10.6 percent. These are just a few examples of the extraordinary disparities in equality between groups that are becoming more and more pronounced worldwide.
In the 1990s, the Minorities at Risk Project documented 275 minority groups at risk for ethnopolitical conflict in 116 nations. This constitutes 17.4 percent of the world’s population who belong to groups disadvantaged due to discriminatory practices or currently politically organized to defend their interests. The links between such inequities and protracted conflict and violence cannot be overstated. (See chapter 2 by Deutsch on social justice, chapter 29 on violence, chapter 6 on power, and chapters 3 and 31 also.
The substantial scholarship on oppression, particularly in the social sciences, does an excellent job of describing the intractability of systems of dominance and conflict (see, for example, Sidanius and Pratto, 1999) but offers little direct utility for interrupting patterns of injustice or sustaining constructive changes in the balance of power when they do occur. Thus, it becomes paramount for conflict scholars and practitioners in the field to identify the processes and conditions that can undo the dynamics of oppression at individual and group levels and thus enable constructive conflict resolution processes to work in tandem with those that promote justice.
Beginning in 2002, we at the ICCCR began conducting a faculty seminar to explore and develop comprehensive conceptual models for addressing oppression and conflict. The main focus of the seminar was on strategies that can ameliorate the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots in institutions and societies worldwide. This investigation culminated in a two-day working conference at Teachers College, Columbia University in spring 2004, which brought together eighty invited participants from a wide variety of academic disciplines (e.g., economics, psychology, politics, and education) and professional practice areas (scholars, activists, philanthropists, students), focused on generating strategies for interrupting oppression and sustaining justice. The work from this meeting resulted in the development of a new cross-sector network of individuals interested in supporting each other in their work in this area, and in a special issue of Social Justice Research in 2006. It was our hope that the outcomes of this conference would evolve and shape, enrich, or transform future research agendas on justice and conflict spanning across disciplinary boundaries. Much work in this area continues to be needed.
The second question is, How can readiness to resolve conflict constructively be fostered in individuals, groups, and nations?
This raises many issues, several of which were touched on in the chapters on personality, intractable conflict, training, change, and large group intervention in this Handbook. However, many questions remain. People and institutions are seldom ready to undertake significant change. Yet competitive and avoidant approaches to resolving conflict are ingrained in many people and institutions; collaborative, integrative approaches represent a new way of thinking and acting for them. The collaborative approach generally goes against the prevalent competitive style of resolving conflict modeled in families; by the media; and by many of our leaders in sports, business, and government.
The first task is, quite often, simply to broaden people’s awareness that there are options available to them when in conflict other than to fight or flee. This is largely what most preliminary training or course work in conflict resolution attempts to achieve: to increase people’s understanding of their own competitive or avoidant tendencies in conflict and of the fact that they have a broader menu of available options. For these educational experiences to be successful, it is important that they effectively engage and inspire students sufficiently to motivate them to try something new and strengthen their skills at resolving conflict constructively.
A separate but related concern with regard to readiness has to do with our ability as third parties to assess and engender a degree of authentic readiness for disputants involved in a conflict. Collaborative negotiation and mediation are voluntary processes. They work only when the disputants engage in them willingly, by choice, if they are to help to make real progress toward understanding each other’s needs and reaching agreement. At times, disputants may seem to be cooperative during a negotiation process, while having no intention of following through once an agreement has been reached. This is related to the distinction between compliance and commitment. This is thought to have occurred at the Cambodian Peace Accords in the mid-1990s, an exemplary collaborative peace process that fell apart on implementation because the parties reneged on the agreement. Work needs to be done on developing better methods of assessing and fostering disputants’ genuine willingness to collaborate and make peace.
Systems must also be readied. Research has shown that unless schools and districts are sufficiently motivated to embrace a change initiative such as instituting a program of conflict resolution training, it is likely to fail. This readiness must exist for a majority of the system, including regents, board members, superintendents, principals, teachers, other professional staff, students, and parents. One method for assessing organizational readiness in schools was used in the Learning Communities Project initiated by the New York City Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (Roderick, 1998). For a school to be included in the project, 70 percent or more of the faculty must vote in favor of its implementation. This approach could be taken for entire school districts or even for statewide school initiatives. Administrators and conflict practitioners need to work to develop innovative methods of assessing and fostering readiness throughout these and other systems.
Finally, awareness of constructive responses to conflict needs to be widespread among the general population. One way of attaining this is for the field to attempt educating prestigious individuals in high-profile positions within a given society. In 1995, a campaign was initiated in Australia through the leadership of the nationwide Conflict Resolution Network (CRN), which sought to influence the campaign process of local, state, and federal elections in that country. Their basic objective was to ensure high-level political dialogue by encouraging the candidates to adopt an orientation to issues, not insults; dialogue, not debate; and collaboration, not confrontation. Immediate response to the campaign was very positive, with 32 percent of candidates for their House of Representatives committing to the CRN conflict-resolving principles. In the United States, the League of Women Voters has been doing important work in promoting its Code of Fair Campaign Practices, which requires candidates for public office to commit to uphold basic principles of decency, honesty, and fair play.
These efforts hope to foster a new type of political process and a government that models respect, care, and common sense in addressing the issues, conflicts, and visions of the people it represents. A general shift in attitude and response to conflict could come about if those in influential positions of high visibility (political leaders; sports, entertainment, and media celebrities; and business leaders) were to model constructive strategies and skills.
Third, How can we help people in the field of conflict resolution understand and develop skills in their roles as change agents?
The field is increasingly aware of the fact that conflict professionals often have to act as change agents within the systems in which they work. Whether intervening in a professional relationship, a family, an organization, a community, or a nation, you will find it useful to think about conflict resolution systemically. This has two implications, one practical and one political. The practical concerns the need to broaden understanding of what we do. Much of the emphasis of past work in the field has been on training conflict specialists in the skills of getting disputants to the table, facilitating a constructive process, and reaching an agreement. However, there is increasing recognition of the problems that occur in implementation, both in helping to ensure that disputants can effectively implement their agreements and implementing effective mediation and training programs within larger systems.
In the case of disputes between individuals, it is not uncommon for good agreements to fall apart because of problems with implementation or changes that occur after the agreement is made. Conflict specialists need to be better trained to help disputants anticipate future problems and build in feedback mechanisms so that if problems occur with implementation, the disputants will attempt to resolve them collaboratively or return to the table to work them out.
Considerable challenges can also occur in implementing mediation or training programs within systems. There is increasing recognition of the difficulties of implementing any lasting change in systems with regard to dispute resolution mechanisms and the need to identify the processes and conditions that give rise to successful implementation. Introducing cooperation and conflict resolution concepts and practices into systems often involves, in a sense, a paradigm shift in how people see and approach differences. Fostering this type of fundamental change in the norms and practices of a system requires that conflict specialists have the necessary skills to motivate and persuade, organize, mobilize, and institutionalize the change. These skills need to be adequately integrated into the training of conflict specialists who work in systems, particularly complex ones.
The second implication of defining our work in terms of change concerns the conflict resolver’s level of awareness of the political repercussions of his or her work. Intervening in part of any system in some way affects the whole system. If one department in an organization undergoes a substantial change in how it functions, this is likely to have an impact on the entire organization. It is therefore important for the intervener to be informed about the political context in which she or he works and to be aware that the intervention has a likely impact on the balance of power existing within the system.
This is both a moral and a practical obligation. In The Promise of Mediation (1994), Bush and Folger discussed this issue under the heading “The Oppression Story” of mediation. They argued that in some settings, mediation can serve to oppress those in low power by masking patterns of injustice within systems or allowing those in high power to set the agenda and intimidate others. Conflict specialists must be trained to think in terms of the social and political processes within organizations and reflect critically on their own role in the power dynamics within institutions so that they can work fairly and effectively. Furthermore, the moral obligation of the conflict specialist extends beyond understanding his or her impact on power dynamics and toward undoing systemic injustices that may exist.
The fourth challenging issue is, How can our growing recognition of the importance of cultural differences be used to improve the practice of constructive conflict resolution and help develop practical theories in this area that are universally valid?
Most scientific theories and models of practice have the laudable aim of being universally true. Theorists commonly assume that the basic ideas in the theories related to cooperation and competition, equity theory, social judgment, communication, self-control, persuasion, and so on are as applicable to, say, the aborigines in Kakadu as to Park Avenue sophisticates, to people living in caves as well as to astronauts. However, most theories are developed in particular societies with their particular cultures, gender roles, and other characteristics that are often invisible to the theoreticians.
Theorists often do not articulate their assumptions about the relations between the theory and the social context in which it is to be applied. Does a theory developed in the United States implicitly assume that the social context is one in which there is a market economy and individualistic values are strongly held? If so, it may be applicable only in social contexts similar to the ones in which it was developed. There is a strong need for the field of conflict resolution, and the social sciences generally, to better articulate explicitly aspects and assumptions about the social context that are understood as relevant to theories.
Even if the basic ideas of a theory are applicable in a variety of social contexts, specific implementation of its ideas always depends on the characteristics of the social context in which they are applied. Thus, effective implementation of many of the theoretical ideas in this book depends on whether a practitioner is working in a social context (such as the American one) that is predominantly individualistic, has low power distances, is strongly task oriented, has low uncertainty avoidance, and is more masculine and modern or in a social context that differs significantly on any of these dimensions.
In general, scholars and practitioners can respond to these concerns in several ways. First, it is important that both scholars and practitioners be aware of their own gendered, cultural, and societal mind-sets with regard to their work (see Fisher, 1988). Some degree of mindfulness of our own biases and assumptions can help us examine our theories, models, and practices for similar biases and make them explicit.
Second, a significant amount of work has been conducted in the past few decades on identifying the psychological dimensions on which people differ due to variations in culture, ethnicity, religion, and gender (summarized in chapter 25; see also Hofstede, 1980; Kolb and Coolidge, 1991; Markus and Kitayama, 1991; Segall, Lonner, and Berry, 1998). Conflict specialists working cross-culturally need to be informed about these dimensions and be mindful of how they affect the way people make meaning in conflict situations.
Third, scholars and practitioners need to better distinguish those elements of conflict resolution that are universal and therefore applicable across cultures from those that are not. For example, Deutsch (in chapter 1 in this Handbook) has suggested that specific values such as reciprocity and nonviolence universally occur in enduring, voluntary, and significant relations of cooperation and constructive conflict resolution. The cross-cultural universality of the linkage between such values and constructive conflict resolution is different from the culturally specific usefulness of certain prescribed processes (such as recommendations to “separate the people from the problem,” openly express one’s needs, or take an analytical approach to understanding the issues); these are likely to vary considerably across cultures, gender, class, and so on.
Lederach (1995) has suggested practicing an “elicitive” approach when offering conflict resolution training across cultures. He argues that “prescriptive” approaches to training, which view the trainer as the expert and participants as passive recipients of predetermined knowledge, models, and skills, are often inappropriate in many cultures. Lederach advocates an approach in which the context expertise of the participants is emphasized and combined with the process and content expertise of the trainer, so that the trainer and the participants together create a new model of constructive conflict resolution that is specifically suited to the resources and constraints of the particular social context in which the participants are embedded.
Fifth, given the existence of much conflict in the field of conflict resolution (as among the scholarly disciplines, among theorists, researchers, and practitioners; and among training programs and graduate studies for scarce resources—students, clients, grants, and so on), How can the field learn to better walk its talk and model how conflicts can be resolved constructively?
The field of conflict resolution has become, ironically, a fairly competitive arena. This competition and the resulting conflict between individuals, disciplines, programs, and institutions pose substantial challenges to progress in our field.
For example, the various scholarly disciplines often approach conflict from contrasting perspectives. Take a dispute over water rights between two neighboring tribal groups. A social psychologist is first concerned with the characteristics of the parties, their prior relationship, the strategies and tactics they use in the dispute, their respective needs in the situation, escalatory dynamics, and so on. A legal scholar working in this area is concerned with prior treaties or contracts, land rights, the existence of legal precedents, and so on. A scholar of international affairs may be oriented to contextual or structural factors such as the balance of power in the dispute or the national or regional sources and implications of the conflict. Scholars from anthropology, business, history, and economics may emphasize still other aspects of the situation.
At one level, these orientations are due simply to the varieties of educational training and task orientation. At a deeper level, however, beneath many of the disciplinary contrasts are ideological and value differences. If conflict is believed to exist within a unitary ideological frame (where society is seen as an integrated whole in which the interests of the individual and society are one) as opposed to a radical frame (in which antagonistic class interests are seen as comprising society), it requires one kind of response and not another. Similarly, whether one’s primary orientation to conflict is competitive or cooperative dictates strategy.
These and other variations in how conflict is understood and approached typically come into conflict themselves when scholars or practitioners attempt to work together. Because many of the significant conflicts that societies face are rooted in political, economic, and social histories and are fueled by social psychological dynamics, we are finding that analysis and resolution cannot be adequately conducted from any one disciplinary perspective; a multidisciplinary framework is required. But the traditional reward systems and orientations of the disciplines lessen the chances for such an approach. Combining traditional disciplinary paradigms and methodologies with multidisciplinary ones is a daunting task, though an essential one if the field of conflict resolution is to offer effective solutions to some of the world’s most perplexing problems.
At another level, there is concern in the field of conflict resolution over the substantial gap between theory and practice. As Deutsch notes in the Introduction, many practitioners of conflict resolution dismiss (or are simply unaware of) the contributions of theorists and researchers, particularly if the research challenges their own opinions or methods. At the same time, scholars often fail to use the expertise of highly skilled practitioners in their development of theory, and research designs often fail to take into account what practitioners and policymakers want or need to know. In fact, an evaluation of the eighteen, mostly university-based Hewlett Theory Centers found that the work of most practitioners surveyed was largely unaffected by the important contributions generated by the various centers (theory, publications, and so forth). At the same time, much of the research conducted at these centers was found to be “removed from practice realities and constraints.” This lack of effective collaboration between scholars and practitioners hinders the development of the field and is a significant loss for both scholars and practitioners.
There exists an interesting problem when trying to enhance the connections between theory and practice. It is embodied in this Handbook, which is geared more toward the scholarly, academic modes (learning through reading) than the practice mode (learning through doing). The issue is, How can we foster the growth of knowledge in this field by using more practical modalities? We have made efforts on two fronts in this regard. One way we have done so in this Handbook is by asking those trained in the knowledge aspects of conflict, but whose work lies primarily in its practice, to contribute chapters (see, for example, Burke; Bunker and Coleman; Marcus; Coleman and Prywes; Honeyman; and Bartoli, Manojlovic, and Magellan). Although the balance is not equal, we have sought an even greater contribution from the practice side in this third edition. A second way we have sought to strengthen the linkage is that we have asked contributors to devote a section of each chapter to the implications of their contributions to the arena of practice.
A curious and related matter concerns the distinction between knowledge and skill in the area of conflict resolution. Unlike other scholarly areas, we in the field of conflict studies have all experienced conflicts: within ourselves, with other people, within and between groups we belong to, and so forth. That is, we have more skill practice than theoretical knowledge in both well-resolved and poorly resolved conflicts. So even the most scholarly oriented conflict student continues to have many opportunities to increase her skill by practicing with the very concepts she is studying. This is less likely to be the case in other areas of scholarship (e.g., the study of comparative political systems). In other words, there is more of an inherent connection between theory and practice in the conflict field. Furthermore, as our understanding of conflict phenomena increases in both knowledge and practice, it becomes ever more important to find ways of cross-fertilizing these: theory-informed practice and practice-informed theorizing.
The field will be well served if we work harder at practicing what we preach and learn to work together to resolve the conflicts that exist across orientations, organizations, and disciplines and between theory and practice. There is much strength in the diversity of our field, but we must come together to realize it.
The sixth challenge is, How can we learn to learn about our methods and practice?
The field of conflict resolution has been criticized for being broad but not deep. The issue is whether work in this area is both based on sound theoretical thinking and systematically studied and evaluated in a manner that allows the field to grow. We believe this volume attests to the rich theoretical foundations of the field. However, much of the practice of conflict resolution is not evaluated, or poorly evaluated. This is a lost opportunity to learn from our collective work, understand the conditions under which certain tactics and strategies are more or less effective, and build on what is effective and discard what is not. This type of research is still uncommon despite its increase in the past ten years. (See chapter 44.) Systematic evaluation of conflict resolution practices needs to be conceptualized and implemented at the onset of intervention, not as an afterthought. Additionally, there would be much benefit from longitudinal studies examining the long-term effects of training and mediation programs.
A growing area of challenge looks at the following question: As occupants of a single planet, how can we become more deeply aware of our cooperative interdependence with all other occupants? In order for us to survive as a species and allow for the dignity and rights of all inhabitants to flourish, it is critical to expand our understanding of identity to include that of a global identity: to behave in ways that not only fulfill our individual interests but maximize our interests as members of a cooperative global community. Too often these are pitted against one another and viewed as an either-or situation. This is captured well by the commons dilemma (Hardin, 1968), where continued pursuit of individual interests over long-term communal interests ultimately results in the failure to fulfill individual interests and communal interests.
Clearly, much intellectual work is needed to better understand ways to resolve this dilemma and develop a strong global identity that connects us to an effective, cooperative, global community (Deutsch, Marcus, and Brazitis, 2012). As such, the scholarship and practice of understanding conflict becomes paramount to the enhancement of our interdependent, global community. More important, increased recognition of our interdependencies will contribute to more rather than less conflict. This calls for even greater efforts to develop and test theory that is informed by practice and, just as important, practice guided by theory.
Finally, How can we foster creative innovation in our thinking and our practice of resolving conflict constructively?
Betty Reardon (private communication) a renowned peace educator, has stated that “the failure to achieve peace is in essence a failure of the imagination.” In addition to studying what we already do, it is essential that we develop new methods and ways of thinking about conflict that move beyond our current approaches. As the nature of the conflicts that we face changes, so must our thinking and our strategies for resolution. This often requires adopting a novel point of view (see chapter 20 on creativity in this volume). We must continuously view our current understanding of conflict and conflict resolution as a beginning—the first few steps toward the much needed means for finding “a better way” of improving and enhancing human conflict interaction.
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