CDSn4001:
Conflict
Analysis
Defining conflict
October 8, 2024
Miriam Matejova, PhD
Summaries
• Applying theoretical schools of thought
• Theory vs methodology
• Definitions
• Theoretical allies/opponents
Agenda
• What is conflict?
• What is not conflict?
• What is the relationship between conflict,
violence, and peace?
What is 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
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.
• 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
• Assumes that actors are rational
• Unit of analysis: strategic interactions
• Pragmatic view of theory (i.e., there are multiple
ways of approaching the same problem)
• Uses simplification, generalization, formalization
Problems with
the rational
actor model?
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)?
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