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Intractable Conflict and Governance Challenges

The Beyond Intractability Community is organized around a series of "frontier-of-the-field" challenges, which we believe must be considered as part of any comprehensive effort to address the inadequacies of governance and other conflict-handling processes.  While others might conceptualize the joint problems of intractable conflict and inadequate governance  in different ways, we have found this challenge-oriented approach to be particularly useful. Each challenge is additionally divided into materials which are expected to be of interest to different kinds of users.  

• The Chronicle is a frequently-changing news page, likely to be of interest to everyone,
• The Practice Pages are designed to be most useful to conflict and governance practitioners,
• The Research and Development pages are designed for researchers and people in practice working on the development of new strategies, and
• The Education pages are intended to be useful for teachers, trainers, and students.  

While the original conceptual outline of Beyond Intractability essays can be found at the top of the right side of the home page, on the left side, users will find information (from both projects organized according to the Commons' three major challenges and nine subsidiary challenges, ** Two asterisks indicate that this section is still under construction.

Challenge #1: Improving Security Good governance requires basic security. It is very difficult for people to engage in peaceful problem-solving when their security is constantly threatened. Therefore, Beyond Intractability supports efforts to promote security in three key areas:
	Challenge #1a: Limiting Violence and Intimidation by strengthening the ability of police and military forces to protect the public from inter- and intra-state violence, while, at the same time, not taking unfair advantage of their powerful positions within a society.  Portals: Chronicle, Practice, Research, Education, More Information
	Challenge #1b: Protecting Individual and Group Rights from illegitimate uses of state power and from structural violence through effective national and international judicial, political, and social mechanisms.  Portals: Chronicle, Practice, Research, Education, More Information
	Challenge #1c: Providing Basic Human Needs by promoting sustainable economies capable of limiting both the humanitarian tragedies of hopeless poverty and the security threats which can arise when people become truly desperate.  Portals: Chronicle, **Practice, **Research, **Education, More Information
Challenge #2: Promoting Cooperative Relationships For governance to work, inevitable and, in many ways, constructive intergroup competition must be tempered by a willingness to work together to advance mutual interests. This is why Beyond Intractability supports relationship-building efforts in three areas:
	Challenge #2a: Broadening the Sense of Community by overcoming hateful divisions and histories of unrightable wrongs that often prevent communities from recognizing their common interests. In short, we seek to reframe relationships from "us versus them" to "we." Portals: Chronicle, **Practice, **Research, **Education, More Information
	Challenge #2b: Fostering a Sense of Fairness by encouraging development of a moral basis for balancing individual freedom and the pursuit of self-interest with reasonable obligations to others and to future generations. Portals: Chronicle, **Practice, **Research, Education, More Information
	Challenge #2c: Encouraging Agreement-based Problem Solving  through public- and private-sector approaches that focus on identifying and then pursuing mutually beneficial solutions. Portals: Chronicle, **Practice, **Research, **Education, More Information
Challenge #3: Assuring Efficiency and Effectiveness Good governance requires more than security and the willingness to work together. It requires effective decision-making processes as well.  Effectiveness has at least three components:
	Challenge #3a: Dealing Wisely with Technical Issues by mobilizing available scientific expertise to effectively identify and assess options for dealing with complex contemporary problems. Portals: Chronicle, **Practice, **Research, **Education, More Information
	Challenge #3b: Making Politics Work through institutions that are capable of making tough but equitable decisions in complex political environments and in cases where consensus is impossible. Portals: Chronicle, **Practice, **Research, **Education, More Information
	Challenge #3c: Fostering Legitimate Governance through transparent and accountable processes that build public trust by demonstrating that the processes are, in fact, worthy of the public's trust. Portals: Chronicle, Practice, Research, Education, More Information