How to analyze the conflict?

Foreign opinion

A multitude of intra-state and inter-state conflicts contributes to instability in the world. Successful resolution of conflict requires a complete understanding of it that can be gained by looking at the essential elements of the conflict. Benjamin Reilly, Professor of political science at the Australian National University, is an author of the analytical framework for conflict analysis. In this special interview for the RIAC he lays out the set of questions that researchers should pose when analyzing the conflict, thus providing an effective tool for studying a conflict at a particular point in time.

Foreign opinion

The Russian International Affairs Council launches a series of interviews with prominent experts and political scientists aimed at revealing the best methods, approaches and tools for analyzing political and international problems and processes.

Interviewee: Benjamin Reilly, Professor of Political Science in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University

Interviewer: Maria Prosviryakova, RIAC

A multitude of intra-state and inter-state conflicts contributes to instability in the world. Successful resolution of conflict requires a complete understanding of it that can be gained by looking at the essential elements of the conflict. Benjamin Reilly, Professor of political science at the Australian National University, is an author of the analytical framework for conflict analysis. In this special interview for the RIAC he lays out the set of questions that researchers should pose when analyzing the conflict, thus providing an effective tool for studying a conflict at a particular point in time.

What should a researcher know when approaching conflict analysis? What is the key to successful conflict analysis?

The basic idea of conflict analysis is the need for an integrative understanding of any given conflict. What this means in essence is looking at all sides of a conflict from different points of view and trying to understand the conflict from the views of the opponents, the conflict progenitors (the people who started the conflict), the rebel movements (if there is that kind of conflict) – from all sides rather than just looking at it from one particular point of view.

That sounds simple and straightforward, but you would be surprised how often that basic analysis of a conflict fails to see it from the points of view of the participants involved. The reason that an integrative approach to conflict analysis is important is that it is the only approach that is likely to produce useful progress in terms of peace negotiations.

For example, if you have a very partisan approach to negotiation you are unlikely to be able to get some kind of deal. Any successful negotiation implies some movements, it requires cooperation to move creatively away from a stalemate, and that requires an attempt to see things from the other side, as well as your own. That is the basic idea of conflict analysis.

Photo: theepochtimes.com
Zambian soldiers from the UN peacekeeping
force sit atop an armoured personnel carrier
at the UN base in Sudan's Abyei town

One example that I was personally involved with was the Cambodian peace process in the 1990s where there was the government of Cambodia as one actor, there were other actors such as the Khmer Rouge, who was opposed both to the government and to the United Nations intervention (the UN was active there). There was a peace process in which the Khmer Rouge was acting as “spoiler” to the peace process. To successfully analyze that conflict, we needed to actually break down the interests of all of those parties involved and see the conflict from different points of view.

In the book “Democracy and Deep-Rooted Conflict: Options for Negotiators” you describe an analytical framework for conflict analysis, consisting of five key elements: 1 Actors; 2 Root Causes; 3 Issues, Scope and Stage; 4 Power, Resources and Relationships; 5 History of the Relationship. What questions should a researcher ask to get to the core of the conflict?

The kinds of questions that you need to ask are very basic analytical questions: Who are the actors? What are the identity groups involved? Who are the leaders of these groups? (Instead of just looking at the names of the political parties, you need to look at their deeper interests.) Are there factions within them? Are there government actors? What are the interests of those actors? Are there private sector parties involved? And so on...

What I normally do is I give students some background papers on a particular conflict and ask them to define what the real issues that driving the conflict are? So, for example, in many separatist conflicts the surface demand might be a demand for independence. This is happening in many places, including in Russia. But the real issues driving the conflict might be deeper: they might be about the distribution of economic or social or political resources, they might be about discrimination of work against a particular identity group, or they might be about discrimination in terms of religion.

You need to ask: What are the underlying needs of the parties involved? What are their fears? What drives them? What are their stereotypes? How do they view others? And if you start to break down the conflict in this way then you can start to get a more integrative understanding of it.
And you should do the same thing when it comes to other basic issues: looking at the geographic scope of a conflict, at the temporal scope of a conflict (as a change over time). Most conflicts will have periods of greater violence and then lesser intensity, knowing this will help you to time peace initiatives.

There might be periods in conflict in which all the parties to the conflict are so exhausted by the conflict that they are ready to start to make a deal and make peace. My colleague William Zartman from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies called that “hurting stalemates”. In fact, Professor Zartman’s theory is very useful because he is giving us ideas of hurting stalemates, ripe moments which mean that conflict is going to be settled when there is a right moment.

This was seen in several conflicts recently. For example, the conflict in Indonesia that has been settled after many decades of conflict. One of the reasons for that is that – there was a moment of ripeness – when parties on both sides to the conflict were exhausted by the fighting and were willing to accept peace deals that they would not previously have accepted.

What sources of information should the researcher consult with?

Well, I ask my students to look around beyond official sources, to look on the Internet, to look at the works of some of the prominent NGOs who produce conflict analysis. For example, the International Crisis Group often does very good publicly available analysis of conflicts that I would recommend to all my students. And of course, going and actually gathering information on the ground. One of the things we do at SAIS is we actually send groups of students into conflict zones - where the peace process is going on - to talk to the local actors and produce a report from their point of view.

What are most effective ways of interpreting information? How do you ensure that the outcome of the analysis is as objective as possible?

You will have a lot of amount of information from different sides, as each side will have its own interpretation of the conflict. You need to ask: What are the core issues that are really driving the conflict: What is the distribution of economic, social, political resources? Are there particular groups that feel discriminated against? Are there deep social cleavages? What are the needs of the parties involved? What are their fears? What is the geographic scope of the conflict? What are the temporal phases of the conflict as the intensity of violence shifts over time? What is the balance of power between the different parties involved? Is one stronger than the other? Is the conflict asymmetric in some way? Is it possible that one party might win an outright victory in the future? For example, we saw it happened in Sri Lanka where there was a long running civil war with a minority Tamil community, and in the end the government actually defeated them militarily, wiped them out.

Finally, the big issue is knowing what attempts to settle the conflict have there been. If you want to do a successful conflict analysis a big part of it is understanding the history of the conflict in terms of attempts to resolve it, knowing what outside organizations, NGOs, other governments and so on have been involved. If you can do this and break the conflict into these component parts and answer those questions you will have much better prospects of producing a successful conflict analysis.