A God of One's Own: Religion's Capacity for Peace and Potential for Violence

This book analyzes the shifting functions of religion in a globalized world. In addition to providing some general information about inter-religious contact, conflict, and potential for peace, the author also addresses new research like globalized religion, new forms of coexistence and conflict among world religions, the decline of secularization, shifting boundaries, etc.

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Conflict Transformation

Many people believe that conflict happens for a reason and that it brings much-needed change. Therefore, to eliminate conflict would also be to eliminate conflict's dynamic power. In transformation, a conflict is changed into something constructive, rather being eliminated altogether.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Culture and Conflict

People from different cultures often have such radically different worldviews that what seems like common sense to one side, is anything but sensible to the other. Different cultures and worldviews can lead to completely different understandings or frames of a conflict, making resolution a challenge.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Deciphering Disorder in Africa: Is Identity the Key?

Noted Africa-watcher Crawford Young reviews five books that examine the role of identity in recent conflicts in Liberia, Rwanda, Algeria, and elsewhere. While competing identities certainly can influence conflict, they are just one factor among many that cause and perpetuate them.

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Deconstructing Political Will: Explaining the Failure to Prevent Deadly Conflict and Mass Atrocities

After the Holocaust, many said "never again." But then there was Rwanda. And Cambodia. And Darfur. And no one (at least for a long time) intervened. Why not? "Lack of political will" is a common answer. But what is "political will" and why is it absent when it is so needed? This article explores this question.

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Engaging Religion in the Prevention of Genocide

"The idea of engaging religious leaders and organizations in order to resist the spread of genocide has been ignored by those working in the growing field of genocide prevention. This idea, however, has... potential."

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Ethnic Conflict and International Relations

Local political systems can either exacerbate ethnic rivalries or help to subdue them. Likewise, international politics can either intensify hostilities or help to calm them. This book examines political systems and policies (both locally and internationally) to determine which policies are better or worse at resolving ethnic tensions.

Book Summary

Evaluation and Assessment of Interventions

Winston Churchill said, "True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information." This essay explains how evaluation can make interventions into intractable conflict more effective.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Intractable Conflicts and their Transformation

Seemingly inherent and essential aspects of a conflict might be context-specific. Thus, intractable conflicts may resist resolution, but under differing contextual circumstances might be resolved with relative ease. This collection of essays examines the sources of intractability and suggests ways to prevent and transform intractable conflicts.

Book Summary

Moral Victories: How Activists Provoke Multilateral Action

"This book combines four analytical threads: an account of the development of a transnational human rights regime; a detailed discussion of human rights intervention in El Salvador and Guatemala (with comparative references to Cambodia, Argentina, and briefly, Colombia); an analysis of the role of civil society in the form of transnational networks of human rights activists in making human rights intervention possible and successful; and a set of propositions about what makes human rights missions succeed or fail." -- from Website

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Propaganda and Conflict: Theory and Evidence from the Rwandan Genocide

This paper investigates the impact of propaganda on participation in violent conflict. The author examines the effects of the infamous "hate radio" station Radio RTLM that called for the extermination of the Tutsi ethnic minority population before and during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. The author develops a model of participation in ethnic violence where radio broadcasts a noisy public signal about the value of violence. Findings indicate that Radio RTLM increased participation in violence.

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Raising the Cost of Genocide

Because it is unlikely that Western leaders will have the vision to recognize that they endanger their countries' long-term vital national interests by allowing genocide, the most realistic hope for combating it lies in the rest of us creating short-term political costs for those who do nothing.

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Reconciliation after Genocide, Mass Killing, or Intractable Conflict: Understanding the Roots of Violence, Psychological Recovery, and Steps Toward a General Theory

This article explores psychological avenues to reconciliation between groups. It describes the psychological changes in survivors, perpetrators, and passive bystanders in the course of the evolution of increasing violence and points to healing from the psychological wounds created as an essential component of reconciliation. It also explores the role of understanding the roots of genocide, and of violence between groups in general, in contributing to healing, to the creation of a shared history in place of the usually contradictory histories held by groups that have been in violent conflict, and to reconciliation in general.

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Religion, Violence, and Conflict Resolution

Religion has a dual legacy in human history regarding peace and violence. Conflict resolutions therefore must examine more systematically the decision-making of religious actors and leaders in order for strategies of peacemaking to be effective in the relevant contexts. It is the argument here that the study of religion and conflict resolution will yield and important new field of inquiry. A series of topics needs to be addressed, including the mixture of religious and pragmatic motivations in behavior, the struggle between intracommunal moral values and the other traditional values that generate conflict, multifaith dialogue and pluralism as conflict resolution strategies, the sociopolitical impact of religious ethics in regard to the rejection of nonbelievers and traditional outgroups, and the promising role of interpretation of sacred tradition in generating peacemaking strategies.

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Some Current Problems of Genocide Prevention

The author analyzes four types of genocide threats, focusing in particular, on groups that perpetrate genocide identifying with global genocidal ideologies atttempting to conquer the world and annihilating opposing groups in the process. Yehuda uses Radical Islam as a particular case study to illustrate how this fourth type of genocide threat plays out and how to counter it.

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Special Affinities and Conflict Resolution: West African Social Institutions and Mediation

This essay describes a particular kind of interpersonal relationship common in West Africa called "joking kinship." This relationship has importance for conflict resolution and transformation in that region and has further implications for the way trainers and intervenors work in cultures different from the ones they are familiar with.

Beyond Intractability Essay

State-Sponsored Mass Murder: The Onset and Severity of Genocide and Politicides

The author argues that openings in the political opportunity structure, rather than the levels of concentration of power, best predict the onset of genocides or politicides and which states will engage in the most severe state-sponsored mass murder. These and other hypotheses are tested. Analysis of logit models reveals that civil war involvement is the most consistent predictor of the onset of genocides or politicides, and other political opportunity structure variables have some effects, especially when in combination with at least one of the other political opportunity structure variables. Analysis of negative binomial event-count models also reveals that political opportunity structure variables best account for the degree of severity of a given genocide or politicide. In sum, openings in the political opportunity structure are more important in understanding what affects the onset and degree of severity of genocides and politicides than other more static variables.

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Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power

Taking Lives is a pivotal effort to reconstruct the social and political contexts of twentieth century, state-inspired mass murder. Irving Louis Horowitz re-examines genocide from a new perspective -- viewing this issue as the defining element in the political sociology of our time. This book asserts that genocide is not a sporadic or random event, nor is it necessarily linked to economic development or social progress. Taking Lives is a fundamental work for political scientists, sociologists, and all those concerned with the state's propensity toward evil.

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The Brahimi Report and the Future of UN Peace Operations

This new study, led by William Durch and Victoria Holt, will assist both experts and generalists to deepen their understanding of how the UN and its peacekeeping department have worked to implement significant changes in its practices proposed three years ago.

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The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies

Genocide is not an invention of the twentieth century, say Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn in this absorbing book, but has occurred throughout history in all parts of the world. This study--the first comprehensive survey of the history and sociology of genocide--presents over two dozen examples of the one-sided mass slaughter of peoples, spanning the centuries from antiquity to the present.

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Track II (Citizen) Diplomacy

Track II or citizen diplomacy are peacebuilding efforts undertaken by unofficial (usually non-govermental) people who try to build cross-group understanding and even develop ideas for conflict resolution that have not been broaded in official channels.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Transitional Justice Database Project

"The Transitional Justice Data Base Project began at the University of Wisconsin in 2005, and is run by three political scientists: Leigh A. Payne, Tricia D. Olsen, and Andrew G. Reiter. The team has created a global data base of over 900 mechanisms (trials, truth commissions, amnesties, reparations, and lustration policies) used from 1970-2007." -- from Website

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Understanding Genocide: The Social Psychology of the Holocaust

The primary focus of this volume is on the Holocaust, but the conclusions reached have relevance for attempts to understand any episode of mass killing. Among the topics covered are how crises and difficult life conditions might set the stage for violent intergroup conflict; why some groups are more likely than others to be selected as scapegoats; how certain cultural values and beliefs could facilitate the initiation of genocide; the roles of conformity and obedience to authority in shaping behavior; how engaging in violent behavior makes it easier to for one to aggress again; the evidence for a "genocide-prone" personality; and how perpetrators deceive themselves about what they have done.

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What Does 'Intent to Destroy' in Genocide Mean?

Genocide is a crime with a double mental element, i.e. a general intent as to the underlying acts, and an ulterior intent with regard to the ultimate aim of the destruction of the group. The prevailing view in the case-law interprets the respective 'intent to destroy' requirement as a special or specific intent stressing its volitional or purpose-based tendency. While this view has been followed for a long time in legal doctrine without further ado, it has recently been challenged by knowledge- and structure-based approaches, which have not received sufficient attention.

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