Pushing the Boundaries: New Frontiersin Conflict Resolution and Collaboration: Volume 29

The Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts (PARC) at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs is widely and rightly regarded as a leading center in the theory and practice of conflict analysis and its resolution. In a fitting tribute to its 20th anniversary, many researchers, academics, and practitioners who once studied there returned in 2007 to present their current research and work in the field. This wonderfully edited collection of peer-reviewed papers is the welcome result, and is yet another example of the cutting-edge work that has long been associated with PARC.

The research articles in this volume were initially presented at a conference, entitled “Cutting Edge Theories and Recent Developments in Conflict Resolution,” which celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts (PARC) at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Presenters were encouraged to submit their papers for consideration, and following a rigorous peer review and revision process, nine articles were accepted. The volume explores some of the major themes of conflict analysis, including how powerful dominant discourses can both soothe and exacerbate conflict, the roles of civic organizations in promoting peace and incubating democratic principles, the ways in which different forms of dialogue are used to heal historically dysfunctional intergroup relations, and the importance of a deeply institutional, structural understanding of ethnocentrism and racism. The authors conducted their research in several different countries – the US, Canada, Bosnia, and Northern Ireland – and used a wide range of analytical techniques including in-depth interviews, surveys, and document analysis. What holds them together is the rigorous tie they make between theory and empirical data. Some authors have built conflict theory inductively, based on their own research and/or secondary sources, while others have tested existing models with empirical data. These articles collectively make a solid contribution to theoretical development in the conflict analysis field.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine public apology as a socially acceptable means of institutional communication and the renegotiation of social relations that seeks to redress the power imbalance between the parties to this interaction. After presenting a basic definition of an apology as a communicative act and discussing the social relational implication of the public form of such an act, the paper examines one particular grouping of public apologies – those coming from Canadian Christian church denominations or communities seeking a renewed relationship with Canadian Aboriginal communities. A comparative analysis of the text and context of several of these apology interactions can provide some fascinating hints about the role of public apology in creating a new joint social narrative, affirming common moral norms, clarifying accountability for past relations and empowering the marginalized community through some form of compensation.

This chapter examines the goals and outcomes of intergroup dialogue through the evaluation of a dialogue program between city and suburban high school students located in Syracuse, NY. The Community Wide Dialogue to End Racism, Improve Race Relations and Begin Racial Healing (CWD) organizers share with a wide range of conflict theorists and practitioners the impulse to bring citizens together to talk about complex social conflicts. Two of the main goals of this program, to build participants’ understandings of institutional racism and white privilege, are examined here. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a small sample of dialogue participants, a framework is developed for categorizing participant awareness and understanding of institutional racism and white privilege. The analysis suggests that relatively modest levels of understanding of both concepts should be anticipated from participants both before and after completion of a dialogue of this type. While dramatic changes resulting from the dialogue are not found, the data indicate that the dialogue does have demonstrable impacts on the ways participants think and talk about institutional racism and white privilege. The central challenges faced by participants in understanding the concepts, specifically ability to personalize white privilege and capacity to adopt structural ways of thinking about institutional racism, are identified and described. This research helps to clarify the range of outcomes we can feasibly expect when bringing citizens together to talk about social conflicts by providing a qualitative framework for measuring awareness and understanding of white privilege and institutional racism.

This chapter presents a theoretical argument that looking at how some grand matters of politics are simplified for practical use on the street is necessary to adequately understand how ordinary Serbs and Croats (and to a limited extent, Muslims) were transformed into enemies of their neighbors, workmates, and covillagers in the havoc wrought in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. Locals’ shifting attitudes toward consanguinal identity, expressions of greeting, and dressing patterns are found to be examples of everyday practices through which perceived differences in civilization, competitive ideas of statehood, and macroconstructions of group identity produce ethnic conflict. A broad conclusion is that attention to localized manifestations of the macropolitical will yield more comprehensive understanding in analyses of ethnic conflict.

Democratization has become the prescription for peace in conflictual societies, but often stagnates in a political standoff or devolves back to war. Sustainable and effective democracy in these societies requires a citizenry which actively guides and pressures political leaders toward effective policy making for peace. But in societies with little or no democratic tradition, it takes time to develop the attitudes and organizations required. This study examines the relationship of democratic exposure to the development of the ideology of external political participation among peacebuilding NGOs. Using original field interview data, it compares the ideology of 28 peacebuilding NGOs in Northern Ireland to 37 in the less democratic context of Bosnia. The study examines the effects of exposure to democracy on “externally democratic ideology,” defined as an ideology of participation in the political processes of society external to the organization. Three aspects of exposure to democracy are examined: societal democratization, internal democracy in the NGO, and mentorship by outsiders from established democracies. The findings are that internal democracy is associated with externally democratic ideology, but outsider mentorship is not, even when controlling for dominating relationships, and neither is societal democracy, except indirectly via its effect on internal democracy. Implications for theory, policy, and future research are discussed.

Political leaders often deploy religious symbols and language to legitimate their war polices while opponents use it to forestall or control war. We examine George W. Bush's religious discourse in the post-9/11 and Iraq War era and find that it was marked by binary thinking and the demonizing of a largely religious enemy. Our analysis of the statements of 15 US peace movement organizations after 9/11 further reveals that the US peace movement had three primary responses to Bush's religiously based discourse in support of war.

First, they directly challenged his binaries and his demonizing of a broadly defined, religious enemy. Second, they harnessed the President's religious discourse to turn it against him and his policies. Third, they constructed oppositional knowledge by providing corrective information about Islam.

By examining the movement's discourses over a 15-year period that spans five major conflict periods, our analysis also shows a close relationship between the peace movement's use of religious discourse and its identity-based talk. In addition, we found a close relationship between the movement's religious discourses and its promotion of more costly forms of politics, i.e., extrainstitutional, protest-based politics. Thus, we also argue that the US peace movement's religious discourses during major conflict periods are both strategic and driven by individual agency, are not only tactical but also expressive, and are intended to have both outward and inward effects.

Traditional leadership theory and practice in the public sector has focused on leading within bounded hierarchies. However, the demand for collaborative governance requires new approaches to leadership. The question for scholars is: what is collaborative leadership and how does it compare to traditional leadership thought? To investigate this question, personal interviews were conducted with experienced collaborators in the federal government, with special emphasis on executives in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Interview data were analyzed alongside three public leadership models. Analysis revealed that four strengths are fundamental to collaborative leadership: (1) oral communication, (2) external awareness, (3) continual learning, and (4) interpersonal skills. In the context of collaboration, leadership contrasts significantly from traditional public sector leadership models, which emphasize directive action rather than supporting, or human relations–focused action. While there was considerable congruence among interviewees with regard to the core skills necessary for collaborative leadership, U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) respondents value creativity/innovation as a collaborative leadership attribute, which seems to be in contrast with the organization's formal command-and-control structure.

Groups often perpetuate conflict by developing and enforcing hostile, dehumanized, and objectified images of the “other” with whom they intentionally engage in conflict. The thesis of this article is that if the double hermeneutics of identity “framing processes” (Lewicki, Gray, & Elliot, 2003) drive the dehumanization of the excluded or enemy other, then these same processes can be a factor in the social reconstruction of another's humanity. Specifically, a model of identity affirmation is posited that can ideally challenge and change the dominant discourses and narratives that go into the in-group's social construction of a dehumanized out-group. As such, the process of identity affirmation is designed to be used to rehumanize a once ethnic, excluded, or even enemy “other.” This model was inspired by, and is applied to, a brief case study outlined in the essay involving the Onondaga Sheriff's Department headquartered in Syracuse, New York, and the Onondaga Indians who are part of the Iroquois Confederacy.

Conflict resolution efforts have larger implications for democratic development: they provide a valuable discursive space where social change can be collectively conceptualized and negotiated to the benefit of democratic development, and where participants gain democratic experience, providing a constructive catalyst in the ongoing social transformation of values, norms, and political cultures. Through a fusion of discourse-based and democratic culture analysis of the Nigerian case, we explore how conflict resolution practices may better engage and catalyze public discourses that promote processes of constructive social change, and how conflict resolution practices can help to build democracy and good governance. We use the example of Nigerian discourses on democratic governance to investigate the broader importance of recognizing and engaging discursive realities. Secondly, we explore how transformative conflict resolution methods, such as workshop models, promote democratic values at the same time that they provide a valuable democratic experience.

The graduate field of conflict resolution is composed of an eclectic mix of programs, departments, centers, institutes, and think tanks which conduct a wide range of theory development, basic and applied research, service and teaching functions. Prior research on the graduate field has been limited mainly to either direct comparisons between a few graduate programs or summaries of progress made by program clusters, with the largest being a study of 18 programs. The composition and activities of the graduate field as a whole are not well understood, yet are hotly debated. This research attempts to fill part of this knowledge gap by specifically examining all known graduate programs in Peace Studies (PS), Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Conflict Resolution (CR) in the United States that award verifiable graduate credentials (i.e., certificates, masters, or doctoral degrees) in PS, ADR, or CR. The participants in this study therefore constitute the entire known population (N=94) of graduate credential granting programs in the United States that collectively award roughly 164 certificate and/or degree options. The results of this study constitute a baseline from which to specifically examine and compare program factors including: program location, size, student composition, faculty credentials and areas of expertise. This study also examines program content, including curriculum content, design, and delivery, areas of training specialization; and those elements that participants report make their programs unique. These and other results provide a means of comparing program types and individual program innovations in regard to curriculum, service, research agendas, and areas of practice. The study concludes with participants’ ideas on what program development trends we can expect to see in the coming years as well as where the academy is or is not meeting social needs.

The variety of the subjects examined in the preceding chapters reflects the vastness of the contemporary conflict resolution field. To discuss contexts that encompass them requires relying on basic conflict processes. I have chosen such processes related to three fundamental matters: (1) that conflicts are interlocked with each other, (2) that various kinds of inducements are used in conflicts, and (3) that how conflicts are waged and settled is related to conflict outcomes.

In my view, during the coming decades, research in peace and conflict studies will be characterized by work on nonstate actors, identities, structural inequalities, and multilateral action. Our interdisciplinary research in these areas will be aimed at consolidating our understandings of these factors at all levels of society, from the individual to the macro. It will then: (i) develop understandings of how the dynamics of actions at each level affect and are affected by the other levels, and (ii) develop strategies as to how to promote constructive change in these dynamics, leading to the integration of theory with practice. I turn to some brief comments on each of these areas.

Thomas E. Boudreau graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude from Boston College. He completed his PhD in the Social Science Program in 1985 at the Maxwell School of Citizen and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. While at the Maxwell School, Boudreau was the research assistant for Donald T. Campbell, the Schweitzer Chair of the Humanities at Syracuse University. He also worked as Project Director of the Crisis Management and United Nations Research Projects at the Carnegie Council in New York City. He taught at the School of International Service at American University and the University of Pennsylvania before coming back to the Maxwell School where he currently teaches in the Political Science Department. He is also a research fellow at the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge, MA, where he has specialized in issues of global governance, global climate change, and nonproliferation. Boudreau has written two books: Sheathing the Sword: The U.N. Secretary-General and the Prevention of International Conflict and Universitas: The Social Restructuring of Undergraduate Education in the United States. He is currently working on a third book, The Law of Nations: Legal Order in a Violent World. He has a special interest in interdisciplinary inquiry, especially competing epistemologies and how they contribute to interpersonal, intergroup, and international conflict.