Conflict Resolution And Ethnicity

This book follows an approach that combines the viewpoints of both the realists and the idealists in dealing with the issues of conflict and peace. The ideas, models, and peace processes it proposes take into consideration the imperatives of real life without abandoning the dreams of a more peaceful and just world. The shared homeland model, as developed here, provides hope that ethnic conflict can be resolved in a manner that satisfies a group's need for recognition and cultural particularism, as well as its need for economic development, security, and regional activity. The book also defines and integrates steps of political conflict resolution into one theory that produces one of the first textbooks on the subject.

Published in 1999, this text examines domestic wars, looking at inter-state relations only in as far as they are directly relevant to understand such wars. The book aims to indicate how intra-state war differs from the inter-state war, and focuses primarily on such domestic armed conflicts that at least have significant ethnonational components. The book assesses how heterogeneous a category "ethnic conflict" is in terms of causes and consequences, and gauges the complex interplay between class, regionalism and ethnicity. It is not limited to description and causal analysis, but also attempts to assess suggestions as to what types of actors may contribute in what ways to avoiding ethnonational mobilization/polarization, avoiding militarization of manifest conflicts, and de-escalating militarized conflicts by looking for tenable generalizations on what types of approaches are fruitful in bringing about de-escalation, ceasefires, political compromises, peaceful division or peaceful integration, reconciliation.

This book offers an intellectual history of an emerging technology of peace and explains how the liberal state has come to endorse illiberal subjects and practices. The idea that conflicts are problems that have causes and therefore solutions rather than winners and losers has gained momentum since the end of the Cold War, and it has become more common for third party mediators acting in the name of liberal internationalism to promote the resolution of intra-state conflicts. These third-party peace makers appear to share lessons and expertise so that it is possible to speak of an emergent common technology of peace based around a controversial form of power-sharing known as consociation. In this common technology of peace, the cause of conflict is understood to be competing ethno-national identities and the solution is to recognize these identities, and make them useful to government through power-sharing. Drawing on an analysis of the peace process in Ireland and the Dayton Accords in Bosnia Herzegovina, the book argues that the problem with consociational arrangements is not simply that they institutionalise ethnic division and privilege particular identities or groups, but, more importantly, that they close down the space for other ways of being. By specifying identity categories, consociational regimes create a residual, sink category, designated 'other'. These 'others' not only offer a challenge to prevailing ideas about identity but also stand in reproach to conventional wisdom regarding the management of conflict. This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, ethnic conflict, identity, and war and conflict studies in general. Andrew Finlay is Lecturer in Sociology at Trinity College Dublin.

Throughout the world there are efforts both large and small to address ethnic conflicts-identity based disputes between groups who are unable to live side-by-side in the same state. This book brings together a collection of case studies on interventions in ethnic conflicts throughout the world in which the nature of the state is a core concern (Turkey, Russia, Macedonia, Guatemala, Israel, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, South Africa, US) and asks how the projects themselves understand success and failure in ethnic conflict resolution. It emphasises the complexity and importance of better understanding ways in which small-scale interventions can sometimes have a large impact on large-scale ethnic conflict, and how the goals of the intervenors shift as the participants redefine the identities and interest at stake.

Ethnic conflicts have shaped the 20th century in significant ways. While the legacy of the last century is primarily one of many unresolved conflicts, the author contends that Western Europe has a track record in containing and settling ethnic conflicts which provides valuable lessons for conflict management elsewhere. Focusing on ethno-territorial crossborder conflicts in Alsace, the Saarland, South Tyrol, and Northern Ireland, Andorra and the New Hebrides, the author develops a four-dimensional analytical framework that synthesizes the distinct factors that influence the complex relationship between host-state, kin-state, actors in the disputed territory, and in the international context.

The author traces the changes that have taken place in international politics since 1989 and the impact these have had on the global awareness that ethnic conflicts are a major problem for international society. Coverage includes the Kurdish, Bosnian, and Sudanese conflicts.

Ethno-national conflict is one of the central issues of modern politics. Despite the emergence of approaches to managing it, from nation-building to territorial autonomy, in recent years, the application of these approaches has been uneven. Old conflicts persist and new ones continually emerge. The authors of this book contend that what is needed to drive forward the theory and practice of ethno-national conflict management is a more nuanced understanding of ethnicity and nationalism. The book addresses this issue by linking theories of ethnicity and nationalism to theories of conflict management. Its contributors share a common goal of demonstrating that a nuanced understanding of ethnicity and nationalism can beneficially inform conflict management in theory and practice. To do so, they analyse both hot and cold conflict zones, as well as cases that have been important in the development of the most widely-used conflict management models. The book is aimed at those interested in the theory and practice of ethno-national conflict management as well as the study of ethnicity and nationalism. It is well-suited for undergraduate and advanced research students, experts and policy-makers. This book was originally published as a special issue of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics.

A definitive global survey of the interaction of ethnicity, nationalism and politics, this handbook blends rigorous theoretically grounded analysis with empirically rich illustrations to provide a state-of-the-art overview of the contemporary debates on one of the most pervasive international security challenges today. Fully updated for the second edition, the book includes a new section which offers detailed analyses of contemporary cases of conflict such as in Ukraine, Kosovo, the African Great Lakes region and in the Kurdish areas across the Middle East, thus providing accessible examples that bridge the gap between theory and practice. The contributors offer a 360-degree perspective on ethnic conflict: from the theoretical foundations of nationalism and ethnicity to the causes and consequences of ethnic conflict, and to the various strategies adopted in response to it. Without privileging any specific explanation of why ethnic conflict happens at a particular place and time or why attempts at preventing or settling it might fail or succeed, The Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict enables readers to gain a better insight into such defining moments in post-Cold War international history as the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and their respective consequences, the genocide in Rwanda, and the relative success of conflict settlement efforts in Northern Ireland. By contributing to understanding the varied and multiple causes of ethnic conflicts and to learning from the successes and failures of their prevention and settlement, the Handbook makes a powerful case that ethnic conflicts are neither unavoidable nor unresolvable, but rather that they require careful analysis and thoughtful and measured responses.