Conflict Assessment and Mapping Tools

6. Civic Knowledge and Skills

The first step in confronting any conflict constructively is figuring out what the conflict is about, what is going on, and who is involved. In simple conflicts, that is straight forward. Your spouse might want to go on a family camping trip this weekend, while you want to stay home and get chores done. That's a simple disagreement; it is probably resolved pretty easily (unless there are underlying, larger issues involved). In the kinds of conflicts we focus on in BI — large-scale intergroup or societal-level conflicts — the story is never simple.

But, as we have stated many times, people tend to make complex conflicts simple in their heads. They assume our big conflicts are a great struggle between us (the "good guys") and "others" (the "bad guys") or perhaps between "us" and one particular "bad guy." They assume if they can just get rid of or overpower or subdue the bad guy or guys, things will be better, if not "all fixed."

Large scale, intergroup or societal conflicts are almost always much more complex than that. They involve many groups with differing goals, interests, values, and needs. Given the fragmentation of our media ecosystem, the different groups are likely to have a very different understanding of the current situation, and what is needed to change it in any particular way.

So the first step is to develop a better understanding of what is really going on that is driving the conflict. Who are the people and groups/organizations involved? Who else is likely to be affected by any decision? What are the issues that they are concerned about? Who wants what? Why? What are the other issues that are related to the primary ones? What are the dynamics that are happening (or have happened in the past) that have made this conflict so difficult to resolve?

These questions can be investigated through conflict assessment, analysis, and/or mapping.

Conflict Assessment and Analysis

As described by Deborah Shmueli,

Conflict assessment is the essential first stage in the process of conflict management and resolution. A primary goal of such an assessment is for all concerned parties to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics inherent in their relationships. This understanding not only clarifies one's own interests and positions, but leads to an acknowledgment of the basis for the interests and positions held by others, and thereby promotes reflection by the stakeholders. The assessment maps the conflict, and then uses it as an evaluation tool to determine whether or not there is a reasonable possibility for initiating an intervention process to manage or resolve the dispute.

When done by a third party, conflict assessment has four stages.

Information Gathering. First is information gathering, which occurs by reviewing documents related to the case, and then interviewing the stakeholders and other interested parties to determine

Who the key parties/players are and what are their...
Positions, interests, values, needs, goals and fears.
Their sources of power and ways they are asserting that power
The nature of their relationships, communication, and factual disagreements
The conflict dynamics (for instance, triggering events, escalation or de-escalation spirals, attempts at resolution)
The context in which this is all playing out (such as a failing economy, high environmental stress, etc.)

Analysis: After information gathering, the assessor(s) do an analysis: mapping areas of agreement and disagreement, looking for factual disagreements and considering those might be resolved, looking at what parties or factors are driving the escalation spiral and which relationships or actions might reverse that dynamic, and considering what processes might be used to either resolve the conflict, or if that is not possible, at least make it less destructive.

Process Design: Assuming the analysis suggests that a conflict resolution or transformation process might be useful to either resolve the conflict, or make it less destructive, the third phase is process design: deciding on the process to be used, who will be involved, where and when it will take place, and what the goals of the process might be.

Report: Finally, all of these findings are usually compiled in a report which is shared with the various parties for feedback and revision, if necessary, and then to provide guidance to everyone on how to proceed.

Conflict Mapping

Another approach to understanding "what is going" in a conflict is "conflict mapping." We learned this term from Paul Wehr, who used it in a way that was synonymous with "conflict assessment" and "conflict analysis." But we then learned about what we call "graphical conflict mapping" (to distinguish it from text-based conflict assessment and analysis), though most other people who do it simply call it "conflict mapping."

This approach involves drawing diagrams, showing different aspects of a conflict (indeed, any of the aspects investigated by a conflict assessment can be mapped.) The big advantage of graphical conflict mapping is that it shows relationships and dynamics much better than text-based approaches can do.

For instance, a core feature of conflict maps is feedback loops, which show how one element influences another, which then affects the original element again. Often this takes the form of "reinforcing loops," in which anger and hatred, for example, gets increasingly intense as one side does something to make the other side angry, the other side responds in kind, the first responds again, etc. Sometimes there will be a dampening loop, where a change in one negative aspect is reduced, which then reduces negative attributes or behaviors of other elements. The Lowy Institute's systems map on democratic erosion is a good example of what these maps look like and how they work.

Although maps like this take a lot of work, individuals can do quick-and-easy, but still useful, approximations of conflict mapping by building what we call "why chains" and "why webs." All of this is explored more in the links below.

We should note that there is one more kind of "mapping" that is in use in the conflict resolution/peacebuilding fields and that is actual geographical maps of people and organizations who are doing this kind of work or maps of emerging conflict threats. The U.S. National Civic League's Healthy Democracy Ecosystem Map is one such example; Peace Insight's map of U.S. Peacebuilding is a second. While useful, these are not what we mean when we talk about conflict mapping. We explain more below.