Introducción a los

estudios de paz y
conflicto
Módulo II: Estado, gobierno y
poder local 2008
“war appears to be as old as
mankind, but peace is a
modern invention” (Henry
Maine)

“Would it not be wise to

endow the science of peace
with rich and strong schools,
just as one has done for its
elder sister, the science of
war?” (Raphael Dubois)
 ¿Qué son los estudios de
paz?
 Postura multidsciplinaria

 Postura multinivel

 Postura multicultural

 Es analítica y normativa

 Es teórica y aplicada

 Posee programas minimalistas y maximalistas

 Bases teóricas: Galtung y los
estudios de la violencia
 1959: Johan Galtung forma el grupo de
investigación PRIO en Noruega en 1959 y el
Journal of Peace Research in 1964
 Bases Teóricas: ¿paz positiva
o paz negativa?
 Paz
negativa como la ausencia de
guerra

 Pazpositiva como la superación de la

violencia estructural y cultural
Intellectual foundations in
peace research 1918-1945
 There were many attempts through the 19th and 20th
centuries to establish a ‘science of peace’

 Mary Parker Follett – mutual gains; David Mitrany –

functional peace system

 Late 1930s Pitirim Sorokin (Professor of Sociology at

Harvard) and Philip Quincy Wright (Professor of
International Law, Univ Chicago) publish Social and Cultural
Dynamics: and A Study of War

 Lewis Fry Richardson, Quaker, mathematician, and

meteorologist, researches causes of war from 1920s
(Statistics of Deadly Quarrels, published1960)

 Founding of the United Nations (Holsti’s ‘prerequisites for

peace’)
 1950s and 1960s: Conflict
Resolution becomes
institutionalised
 1957: Kenneth Boulding and Elise Boulding
launch the Journal of Conflict Resolution at the
University of Michigan in 1957, and the Centre for
Research on Conflict Resolution (eirenics=the
science of peace: conflict could be systematically
analysed)

 1959: Johan Galtung forms PRIO in Norway in

1959 and the Journal of Peace Research in 1964
(structural violence, positive and negative peace)

 1963: In England the Conflict Research Society at

the University of London: 1966 the Centre for the
Analysis of Conflict established by John Burton
 A common philosophy ….
 A non-adversarial framework

 the crafting of a win-win or an integrative solution (a non-

zero sum outcome)

 an analytic problem-solving approach to conflict

 an assumption that conflict can be creative

 direct participation by the parties in a co-operative and

problem-solving orientation

 facilitation by a third party skilled in CR processes

 empowerment of indigenous capacity

 CR principles applied
 Osgood: ‘Graduated reciprocation in
tension-reduction’ (GRIT) and arms
control/disarmament

 Azarand Burton: Resolving

Protracted Social Conflicts

 Alternative
Dispute Resolution, and
active democracy Public Conflict
Resolution
 Problem-solving in CR
 Methodand philosophy emerged in
the work of John Burton and
developed at Harvard (Kelman) and
Yale.

 Principled negotiation: Getting to

Yes.

 Theart of mediation: Adam Curle at

Bradford.
Conflict Resolution becomes
‘internationalised’
 IPRAlaunched at a conference in
Groningen, Holland, in 1965, holding
bi-annual meetings of the peace
research and conflict resolution
communities.

 The work of Elise Boulding: imaging

the future and the ‘200 year
present’.
 Post-cold war expansion
 Peacemaking and conflict prevention

 UN Peacekeeping after 1979

(Namibia)

 Post war peacebuilding

Conflict transformation and
peacebuilding from below
 Implies a variety of multilateral actors and
strategies

 1991 Bercovitch, and Fisher and Keashly publish

ideas on ‘contingency’and ‘complementarity’

 John Paul Lederach’s ideas influential, especially

 Conflict transformation/peacebuilding from below

 Changed role for CR practitioner, from neutral

analyst (Burton) to impartial ‘enabler’
 Resolution or
transformation
 Conflict transformation seen some as a significant step
beyond conflict resolution (more radical)

 Particular salience in asymmetric conflicts, where aim is to

transform unjust social relationships (committed)

 Also used in the understanding of peace processes -

denotes a sequence of necessary transitional steps but
based on bottom up not top down approach (democratic)

 Implies a deep transformation in the parties and their

relationships and in the situation that created the conflict.

 We see conflict transformation as the deepest level of

change in the conflict resolution process.
 Critiques and challenges

 Culture critique – non-Western perspectives and

inputs missing?

 Gender critique – gender blind?

 Power critique – especially from development /

political economy – concerned with peace as
harmony, not as justice and social change?

 New approaches in discourse analysis

 Has the paradigm changed post S 11?

 Diálogo Democrático
 Necesidad de una cultura democrática

 Cuatro capacidades de la democracia

“suave”
– Capacidad de resolver problemas
pacíficamente
– Capacidad de cooperación interpartidaria
– Capacidad de crear una agenda incluyente
– Capacidad de participación ciudadana

 Pero también hay necesidad de una

democracia “fuerte”: gobernabilidad
 Procesos de diálogo
efectivos
 Hay una práctica concreta que demuestra
la efectividad del diálogo

 Cinco retos para entablar diálogos

efectivos
– Afrontar la complejidad
– Coordinar significados
– Producir innovación
– Facilitar la deliberación
– Producir resultados sostenibles
 Definiciones
 OAS dialogue experts, for example, define
dialogue simply as a ‘problem solving process’
that is ‘utilized to address socio-political and
economic-based issues that cannot be adequately
and effectively solved by one or several
governmental institutions alone’.

 ‘The critical quality of dialogue lies in that

participants come together in a safe space to
understand each other’s viewpoint in order to
develop new options to address a commonly
identified problem.’20 Juanita Brown, co-
developer of the World Café process, captures
this key quality in simple terms by talking about
‘conversations that matter’.