Sources of Intractability: The Core Conflict Plus Overlay (Complicating) Factors
The Intractable Conflict Challenge: the Most Serious Problem Facing Humanity (and a Great Opportunity)
In Brief
This page presents a quick overview of our distinction between "core conflict issues" -- what the conflict, fundamentally, is about, and the complicating "overlay" issues that get laid over the core, sometimes obscuring it, and always making the conflict harder to resolve. We list the most common core and overlay factors here, and expound upon them in later sections of the guide. (See Deep-Rooted Core Differences and Conflict "Overlay" Factors.)
Sources of intractability can be grouped into two broad categories. First there are the "core conflict issues" — what the conflict, fundamentally, is about. Second, there are other issues that get lain over the core, which we call "overlay" factors, using a geological metaphor comparing intractable conflicts to the earth which has a small, hot core, and then the mantle and the crust, which geologists sometimes call "the overlay." The core of the earth is small, deep, and very hot, just as the core of intractable conflicts is often very deep-rooted and very "hot." Though the conflict core is not necessarily small—it can be about very big and important issues, it is not nearly as big as it gets when the many "overlay factors" get added on top of it, sometimes obscuring the core issues almost entirely. A prime example of this is political hyper-polarization, when politicians and their followers cease discussing their differing views on particular issues, and focus instead on attacking each other as being fundamentally evil, and trying to figure out how they can definitively defeat, or even destroy, the other.
We will talk in detail about common core and overlay factors in those sections, but for a very quick overview, common core factors (which can overlap and several can be present in one conflict) include:
- very high stakes distributional issues
- moral/value differences
- Unmet human needs, particularly identity, security, and recognition
- Status issues
- Inequitable Power Sharing
Common Overlay Factors (which also exist together and sometimes overlap) include:
- Conflicting visions and frames
- Escalation and polarization
- Communication Failures
- Factual Disputes
- Procedural Problems
- Collaboration Problems
All of these elements are discussed in detail in the Core and Overlay sections of the Guide.
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