Re-Envisioning Conflict Resolution

Vision, Action and Evaluation in Creative Conflict Engagement

Jay Rothman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351766708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the process of assessing success in the field of conflict resolution, with a focus on the Action Evaluation method pioneered by the author.

Since the early days of the field of conflict resolution, researchers and practitioners have been trying to determine how to define and assess success. Are its various approaches to engaging conflict effective? How is effective defined and operationalized and by whom? How might we know? Action Evaluation (AE), a methodology for defining, promoting and assessing success in and of the field, has been developed over the past two decades to answer these questions theoretically and in-use. It was designed from its inception to help create sound and contextualized standards around which the field could coalesce. AE is an appropriate methodology for evaluation of conflict engagement, in part because it is grounded in key values of the field, like participation, ownership and the constructive engagement of conflict among stakeholders in project development and implementation. By illustrating how AE is applied through case studies, and providing tools for others to use, this book is intended to make AE a more widely available, user-friendly and rigorous action-research tool for researchers and practitioners in the still-emerging field and beyond.

This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, peace studies, research methods and international relations in general, as well as practitioners in the field.

1
What is success in conflict engagement?

Overview

In this chapter I describe the purpose and process of Action Evaluation (AE). It is a methodology developed over the past two decades to systematically inquire into questions about, and promote success in, the field commonly known as “Conflict Resolution.” I suggest, however, that this name gives the wrong focus for the field and is partly of why nearly four decades after its formal founding as an academic and applied field in its own right, it may be perceived as failing more than succeeding. Instead, I along with others are seeking to re-envision the field to be more consistent with its best aspirations, along with more realism about its effectiveness in practice. That is, as builders of the field, we view conflict as an opportunity for participatory and creative change and development. We do not, for the most part, believe in or aspire for the “end of conflict.” Thus “Resolution” is misleading both conceptually and practically. This chapter engages the questions: What is success in the field? Who defines it? And how? It provides one set of methodological answers that are born out of practices and values of the field – most of all around notions of ownership and participation – and aims at improving and deepening the capacity of the still-emerging field to take on questions of success in nuanced and contextually appropriate ways. Without this, I claim, the field will remain relatively under-developed and under-recognized – as it seems to be more today than it was a decade or two ago in its early halcyon period of can-do spirit and must-do ideals. As it began to coalesce into a systematic set of theories and practices in the early 1980s, to ideally be synthesized and coordinated into a robust new discipline, there was a great sense of adventurous unfolding in new paths to social, cultural and political peace within and between individuals, groups, organizations and nations. Today, there is a meandering sense of “where to and how?” The field unfortunately seems to be reflecting a current global malaise about the present and future rather than providing coherence and leadership. Systematically defining, promoting and assessing success in our field will hopefully help the field to be more grounded, legitimated and effective in contributing to a better, more peaceful future.

Part I: Engaging Conflicts

Dichotomies and integrations

In 1981 I joined the first cohort of the first master’s degree in conflict resolution in the world (today there are many dozens¹). What were its goals? What was the purpose of the field it set out to help build? What should constitute a successful education program for this new field, and who should determine it? Many students, I among them, who came largely from professional and activist backgrounds felt we should have a lot to say in this regard. Members of faculty fairly uniformly felt this was their job, particularly as the program was to be a theoretically rigorous one. In short, should the field be at least in large measure defined by those who did and would practice it “in the world,” or would it be defined primarily by academics who largely theorized about it? Would the program emphasize applied training or theoretical foundations? The rather obvious answer some 35 years later is… both. Clearly the key question would become how to fruitfully bridge this gap. Not easily, as Einstein said, “In theory, theory and practice are the same thing, in practice they are not.” From its inception, as illustrated by the anecdote above and noted by others (see Coleman, 2013), there has long been a theory-practice split in the new field of conflict resolution.

I cannot say it has been a particularly generative or constructive split. In fact, as just one example of its negative effects, I often feel out of step with many of my academic colleagues (and indeed have felt suspicion from some of them about whether I am truly in their “club”) since my academic work has an unapologetically applied purpose. On the other hand, my practitioner colleagues have often had impatience with my insistence on data gathering, on model building and testing, on trying to apply and test best theories in practice settings toward the end of contributing to improved practice and the robust development of a field. For me, Lewin’s adage that there is “nothing so practical as a good theory” and its converse, that good practice is perhaps the best source of meaningful theorizing, are axiomatic (Lewin, 1951: 169; Brydon-Miller, Greenwood, & Maguire, 2003: 8). While most would agree in principle, as Einstein suggests, the rub comes in the practice. Theoreticians generally are suspicious of practitioners and vice versa. And yet, the praxis and merging of theory and practice are, or should be, a hallmark of our field that seeks to foster “thinking and acting for peace” (Rothman, 1989).

In terms of further major dichotomies in the field, one of the earliest divisions in the theoretical framing of this applied field was between the conflict management school led by Roger Fisher, and the conflict resolution school led by John Burton. Successful conflict management for the former school is about moving parties from unbridgeable positions in conflict to shared interests in cooperation. Successful conflict resolution for the latter school is about moving disputants and those they represent from unbridgeable positions to insight and new policy about people’s deeper and shared universal needs.

Since its publication in 1981 by Fisher and Ury, Getting to Yes (GTY) has become the standard text for the conflict management field (and in particular for the domestic alternative dispute resolution – “ADR” – and negotiation components of it). While earlier versions of this book began as a text for international negotiators (1978), GTY evolved into a handbook aimed primarily at domestic conflicts in which interests are presented as the silent movers behind conflict and its constructive management. Its publication was followed by the establishment of the Harvard Negotiation Project as the principal go-to place for conflict management training and education. Even though much more nuanced approaches to the field evolved (Susskind & Field, 1996; Rubin, 1989; Stone, Heen & Patton, 1999; Shapiro, 2002), the field continues to largely revolve around this original set of terms and methods.

In contrast, the needs-based approach gained many followers, but to this day it remains much less known and influential, certainly in domestic Conflict Engagement work, and particularly in the United States. Burton and the English school of international conflict resolution (Burton, 1966; Banks, 1990; Mitchell, 1988) developed their approaches as an alternative to mainstream international power politics (Morgenthau, 1948; Kissinger, 1962). Their work was adapted and further developed by social and political psychologists and others mostly based in the US (Kelman, 1972; Azar, 1990a; Volkan, 1988). The graduate program in conflict resolution mentioned previously in this chapter was founded by many who were acolytes of the Burton approach (and later he himself joined the faculty).

Thus, these two paradigms framed the early definitions of success – in theory and practice – for the field. These can be briefly summarized and contrasted in terms of processes and outcomes. For GTY the process is to separate people from their problems. The conflict management outcome is to forge “mutual gains” solutions to these problems now fairly well separated from the emotions or identities of disputants. For the Burton school, people and their threatened and frustrated needs are the problem, so separation is unrealistic, and the effort counterproductive. The conflict resolution outcome is to help disputants foster resolutions such that their respective and shared underlying needs are recognized at least, and ideally, fulfilled through coordinated policy making and cooperative practices.

The focus on interests beneath the positions became for the first two decades of the field its lingua franca. Historically and etymologically speaking, the noun interest is a legal claim or right. It denotes a specific concern, benefit and advantage. It suggests a focus of attention and concern – most narrowly, interest is money paid on a loan. In terms of its professional usage in industrial relations, interests are focused on acquisition and retention of necessary material resources for business purposes. In international affairs, “the national interest” is about control of territory, economic wellbeing and the power to protect and promote such interests. As mentioned above, when Fisher and Ury began their work, they did not intend it for a domestic audience, but rather to guide international diplomats and business leaders so that their negotiations would be more productive (1978). Although when defining interests in their writing they refer to fears, needs, and emotions, the more economical, managerial image of interests has prevailed as the legacy of their constructive formula of Conflict Engagement. Moreover, the GTY approach elides differences between interests and needs by claiming that needs are the deepest form of interests.

In Burtonian conflict resolution, these distinctions are central (Burton, 1966, 1987; Banks, 1990; Mitchell, 1988; Azar, 1990b; Kelman, 1972, 1990). The basic problem of conflict, they suggest, lies not in conflicting positions over who gets what when and how (i.e., politics) but in the more fundamental conflicts between each side’s basic human needs, desires, concerns, hopes and fears. This school views the suggestion of the interest-based school (that needs are the deepest form of interests) as obfuscating some useful tools in analyzing and distinguishing between deeper levels of conflicts and more resource and goal-based issues (that together may be a more accurate operational definition of interest-based conflicts). By maintaining a focus on basic human needs – for dignity, recognition, meaning, safety, identity, control, distributive justice – conflict resolution is defined and pursued by this school as the fulfillment of these fundamental human needs, rather than simply the management of the underlying or tangible interests.

While the Burtonian conflict resolution school framed an alternative view and approach to the then developing field, it was more limited in its appeal, as it focused primarily on the international arena and more narrowly defined “deeply-rooted” conflicts (Burton, 1987), or “protracted social conflicts” (Azar, 1990a and 1990b). Moreover, in ways that linked it to the interest-based school, the Burton school was also limited in scope because it held to an individualistic notion of identity, albeit switching the perceived economic, interest-based focus of human beings with an ontological notion about fundamental, non-negotiable needs (see Avruch & Black, 1991; Scimecca, 1991).

Another way to frame this split between the field-founding Needs and Interests schools is to organize them along the lines of Jurgen Habermas’ epistemological distinctions between Instrumental and Communicative rationality (1984). Like all models, this attempt to put the complexity of entire schools of thought and practices into neat categories is reductionist. Nonetheless, I believe it helps to capture and explain essences and differences in useful ways and more to the point of this book, to guide readers in following the specific argument about how the field has developed and this book’s contribution, borrowing from and building upon aspects of each of these streams, toward a new synthesis. Habermas, whose Critical Theory is central to this work as presented in the next chapter, essentially differentiated between efforts to improve the functions of society through “technical rationality” and ways to transform it through “communicative rationality.”

These will be further delineated in the next chapter, but for now suffice it to say that the former, instrumental rationality, in the form of what could be defined as “interest-based” management and policy, is viewed as necessary to grease these wheels and keep society running efficiently. Communicative rationality, on the other hand, is grounded in shared and effectively communicated aspir...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 What is success in conflict engagement?
• 2 Epistemologies of peace practice
• 3 Gone fishing: Fleet visioning project for building deep consensus over goals
• 4 The Power of Why: Reflection as Practice
• 5 “Just-talk” in action: Cincinnati Police—Community Relations Collaborative
• 6 New horizons: Systematic collaborative visioning for action and evaluation in creative conflict engagement
• 7 Appendix
• Index