Each year, a number of violent communal conflicts take place around the world. Because they do not directly challenge the central state, communal conflicts often receive less media attention than civil wars. This dissertation seeks to increase knowledge about how durable peace can be established after violent communal conflict.
This report was presented during the seminar Fred.
Main findings
- Governments are more likely to intervene in conflicts that involve groups represented in executive power, that take place in an economically important area, or that revolve around land and authority.
- Recurrence following state intervention is more than two times more likely in a conflict with negative bias than in one with positive bias.
- When bias relates to resources, it is more resistant to change, while political turnover may alleviate former bias related to relationships and open up possibilities for peacemaking
- Specific local peace processes are deeply intertwined with national politics, yet highly context-specific. National political dynamics affect the history and dynamics of conflict and the role that non-state conflict resolution could play.
Emma Elfversson is a researcher at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University. She defended her dissertation Central Politics and Local Peacemaking: The Conditions for Peace after Communal Conflict on 6 October 2017. Parts of the dissertation have been published in Journal of Peace Research and Journal of Modern African Studies. This is a summary of her dissertation.