CDSn4001: Conflict Analysis
Defining conflict
October 5, 2021
Miriam Matejova, PhD
Agenda
• What is conflict?
• What is not conflict?
• What is the relationship between conflict,
violence, and peace?
What is a conflict?
• “a situation in which actors use conflict
behavior against each other to attain
incompatible goals and/or to express their
hostility” (Bartos and Wehr 2002).
Incompatibility of goals
• Can evaluate in two ways:
1) Ask: Is it logically impossible for both parties’
goals to be achieved simultaneously?
2) Use payoff matrices
Payoff matrices
Payoff matrices
Goals vs
Interests
Goals: alternatives that have
a positive payoff
Interests: all the outcomes
from all possible alternatives
that have positive payoffs
• Incompatible interests are
negatively correlated (i.e., when the
party’s payoff for an outcome is
high, the opponent’s payoff is low).
Coerciveness of conflict action
Doesn’t change
payoffsChanges payoffsCreates new
outcomes
Payoff matrices: advantages
• Identify incompatibility
– two goals are incompatible if one has a positive payoff only
for the party and the other only for the opponent.
• Consider conflicts in which there are more than two
alternatives.
• Allow for distinguishing between goals and interests.
• Determine the extent to which the goals are
incompatible (e.g., zero-sum game).
• Determine whether an agreement is possible.
• Determine what agreement is “best” for both sides.
Payoff matrices:
disadvantages?
Rationality
1) consider possible actions/determine possible
alternatives;
2) consider the likely consequences of each
action/determine outcomes linked to
alternatives;
3) evaluate each set of consequences/assign
payoffs;
4) choose the action with the most desirable
consequences/choose the alternative with
highest payoffs.
Rational choice theory in IR
• A methodological approach that explains
individual and collective outcomes in terms of
individual goal-seeking under constraints (e.g.,
technological, political social, etc.)
• Assumes that actors are purposive
• Unit of analysis: strategic interactions
• Pragmatic view of theory (i.e., there are multiple
ways of approaching the same problem)
• Uses simplification, generalization, formalization
Hostility
• “antagonism, opposition, or resistance in
thought or principle”
• Rational vs irrational behaviour
Types of conflict
• Structural (i.e., conflict of interest)
– Vertical relations – there is always conflict, because it
is built into the structure; the periphery states are
denied opportunity to pursue goals
• Actor (i.e., conflict of values)
– Horizontal relations – conflict can come and go
(actors are capable of formulating and pursuing goals)
Structural conflict
• Persistent fact of social life.
• Defined in terms of interests: It is in everybody’s
interest not to be exploited.
• Interaction relations:
– Exploitation: the total value effects are much more
beneficial to one actor over the other (imperialistic
relation)
– Penetration: one actor shapes the other’s
consciousness
– Fragmentation: the top relations are integrated by
association, while the bottom relations are
disintegrated by disassociation
Actor conflict
• “the access to one goal-state is blocked
by efforts to reach another goal-state”
(Galtung 1973)
–the goal-states are incompatible
What is
NOT
conflict?
• Is competition a type of
conflict? Bartos and Wehr
argue that actors in
competition seek what
belongs to a third party
rather than what belongs to
an opponent. Therefore,
competition is not conflict.
Do you agree? Why (not)?
• Other: Pure cooperation?
Equity? Peace?
What is violence?
• “the cause of the difference between the potential and
the actual, between what could have been and what
is” (Galtung 1969)
– when this is avoidable, violence is present
Peace
• absence of personal violence and absence
of structural violence - negative and positive peace
Some after-thoughts
• What is the relationship between conflict and
violence in the study of conflict?
– Is violence always conflict and conflict always
violence?
• Does peace mean absence of threat?
• Can we apply the same concepts and/or
metrics to the study of inter- vs intrastate
violence?