Conflict "Overlay" Factors

3. Factors That Make Conflict Intractable

In Brief

As we have explained earlier, we find it useful to divide up the factors contributing to intractability into two categories: "core" factors and "overlay" factors. Core conflict issues are the things that the conflict is fundamentally about — interests, needs (including identity and security), rights, values, stakes, etc. "Overlay" factors are what we sometimes call "complicating factors." They are things that get lain over the core which obscure it (sometimes almost completely) and make resolution even more difficult. We briefly introduce the most prevalent overlay factors here: incompatible or destructive framing, miscommunication, factual disagreements/disinformation, procedural problems, escalation, and hyper-polarization.

Incompatible or destructive framing. Framing is how we interpret the information that we take in. If we define a particular event as "good," while someone else defines it as "bad," that is incompatible framing. If we simplify complex problems into simple narratives that say that it's all the other sides' fault, that's destructive framing. There is much more to it than that, of course, but we'll get into the details in the framing article.
Miscommunication/misunderstanding When people frame situations very differently, they tend to respond to them and talk about them differently as well. This can lead to unintentional misunderstandings or miscommunication when the assumptions someone else is using to interpret what was said is different from the assumptions the speaker had in mind.
Factual disagreements/disinformation. Two other overlay problems are factual disagreements, when people honestly disagree about that is true and what is not, made more complicated by bad-faith actors' intentional distribution of bad information (a.k.a. "fake facts") which are then unwittingly spread further by people who think the information is true and they spread it further.
Procedural problems: All organizations, communities and nation states have set procedures for how they deal with contentious issues and policies. But when these procedures are seen to be unfair or unevenly applied, this is an overlay problem that can greatly complicate effective problem solving and conflict resolution.
Escalation and Polarization: These intertwined processes are potentially the most dangerous of the overlays, as they cause initial, small disagreements to balloon into major conflagrations as the size of the conflict increases (in terms of numbers of parties, issues, and resources expended), the issues go from specific to general (until both sides simply hate and distrust everything the other side is and does), tactics go from light to heavy (eventually reaching large-scale violence) and the parties' goals go from meeting one's own needs (doing well) to doing better than the other side, to simply hurting "the other," even if it hurts one's own side as well.

This is just a sampling of overview factors; there are many more which are discussed in the linked articles below.