Keeping Many Peaces: Conflict Resolution in Local, Non-State Based Conflicts
Allard Duursma
2019 - 2022
Much of the conflict resolution literature focuses on peacemaking between states or on efforts to end a civil war through a comprehensive peace agreement that brings peace to the entire country. This project instead, focuses on peacemaking efforts in conflicts that are ‘non-state based’ and ‘local’ and take place below the surface of the highly publicized peace processes that have the potential to end in a Nobel peace prize ceremony in Oslo.
The project addresses one central question: what explains the resolution of local, non-state based conflicts? This type of conflict rarely take place in a vacuum. Instead, seemingly ‘local’ conflicts are often connected to higher-level political contests on the national or regional level. Hence, one cannot meaningfully study the resolution of local, non-state based conflict without also looking at the roles of national or regional sponsors of non-state based conflict parties.
This project examines how national and transnational linkages influence the resolution of local, non-state based conflicts from a patronage politics perspective. A theory is developed that specifies how transactional politics, whereby political allegiance and political services are exchanged for material reward, shape the prospects for local conflict resolution.
In order to examine how linkages between the local and national level influence the prospects for conflict resolution, this project involves the collection of data on peacemaking efforts in local, non-state based conflicts in Africa between 1989 and 2019.
Expected outputs include an article that looks at the effectiveness of local peacemaking efforts in the context of UN peacekeeping missions, a conceptual article on how local the local level really is, an article on how national peace trickles down to the local level, as well as a monograph that ties all these different research topics together.
Publications