Peter T. Coleman, PhD2013-06-19T01:36:24-04:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=peter-t-coleman-phdCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Peter T. Coleman, PhDGood old fashioned elbow grease.Communicating With Rogue States: The Power of the Weaktag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30843202013-04-15T17:17:57-04:002013-06-15T05:12:02-04:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/
How can the UN or the U.S. break these deadlocks and avert new waves of atrocities or nuclear catastrophe? Most likely they can't. Constrained by their own policies, histories, symbolism and strategies, they are probably among the last actors in the international community with the power to ratchet down tensions with these nations. They are ironically too prominent and powerful.
Intractable, entrenched patterns of destructive conflicts like these typically reject out of hand strong-arm attempts pressing for peace and stability, or even less coercive approaches to statist diplomacy or third-party mediation. History provides countless examples of the UN, the US and other powerful outside parties' failing to forge peace in such enmity systems. Israel-Palestine, Cyprus, and Kashmir stand as three contemporary examples.
Nevertheless, peace does sometimes emerge out of long-term conflicts, and one path is through the power of powerlessness. That is, the unique influence of people and groups with little formal or "hard" power (military might, economic incentives, legal or human rights justifications, and so on) but with relevant "soft" power (trustworthiness, moral authority, wisdom, kindness, etc.) can have in these settings. Hard-power approaches in high-intensity conflicts tend to elicit greater resistance and intransigence from their targets. Weak-power third parties are at times able to weaken resistance to change by carefully introducing a sense of alternative courses-of-action, hope for change, or even a sense of questioning and doubt in the ultra-certain status quo of "us versus them" conflicts. They can also begin to model and encourage other more constructive means of conflict engagement such as shuttle diplomacy and indirect communications through negotiation chains.
In other words, what the world needs today are a few good weaklings.
Like Monsignor Jaime Gonçalves and the Community of Sant'Egidio in Mozambique in 1990. At the time Mozambique, which had won independence from Portugal in 1975, was in the throes of a bloody civil war that had killed one million of its 12 million people and ravaged the country for over 16 years. The continual interference of the neighboring anti-independence countries, Rhodesia and South Africa, made the emergence of a peaceful solution highly improbable. The international community tried and failed on many occasions. And the many failed peace attempts merely contributed to the peoples' hopelessness and increased resistance to new intervention. Ideologically, militarily, and politically there was no way for non-contentious communication and exchange between the warring groups. It was an impossible conflict.
While the violent conflict between the FRELIMO government and the RENAMO rebels in Mozambique became more entrenched, an unexpected group of actors began to explore alternatives. A young native, national bishop Monsignor Jaime Gonçalves was linked to the Community of Sant'Egidio, a Catholic lay association that had already engaged with the FRELIMO government to facilitate religious freedoms there in the 1970s. These efforts had been successful, so Mozambique's president, Joachim Chissano, sought the help of Sant'Egidio to establish back-channel contacts with RENAMO.
Initially, Sant'Egidio met enormous challenges. Its power to exert influence was very limited, as was its recognition by the international community, and so communication with the leaders in Mozambique proved difficult. But using its channels, Sant'Egidio arranged for a clandestine visit of Bishop Gonçalves to RENAMO headquarters deep in the jungle. At this meeting, Bishop Gonzales and Alfonso Dlakama, the leader of RENAMO, were surprised (and lucky) to discover they were from the same ethnic tribe and spoke the same dialect. Their meeting was the beginning of an unpredictable series of events leading to an unorthodox journey to peace that included 27 months of negotiations over eleven sessions, resulting in the signing of the General Peace Agreement (GPA) on October 4, 1992.
In Mozambique, we saw the emergence of peace sparked by the actions of a few locally trusted actors. Change emerged at the margins through nonthreatening communications allowing decision-makers to begin to consider alternatives to the conflict. This initial consideration was made possible by the "weaknesses" of the proponents. Weak mediators, not perceived as a threat or source of pressure, can disrupt the certainty and constraints of enemy dynamics and begin to relax internal pressures for consensus.
This is not unlike to the role that Leymah Gbowee and the Women's International Peace Network (WIPN) played in the early 2000s, when they helped end Liberia's decades-long civil wars. This ordinary group of women -- mothers, aunts and grandmothers -- organized amid the grueling armed conflict in Liberia, with no formal authority and few "hard" resources -- and helped mobilize and shepherd the peace process between the government of strongman Charles Taylor and the rebels. For example, at one point in the war, UN peacekeepers were stuck in a protracted gun battle with rebel forces in the jungle and could see no way out. They contacted the WIPN, who arrived at the scene in their white T-shirts and headdresses. The women then entered the jungle with hands raised, dancing and singing. After spending two days there, feeding and speaking with the rebels, the women brought the rebels out of the jungle, ending the stalemate.
The moral: Weak power can be immensely powerful.
The UN, the U.S. and other nation states interested in fostering stability and peace in Syria, North Korea, and Iran can learn much from these examples.
First, the UN and the international community of nations need to see beyond themselves and their own capacities for brokering peace. Traditionally, peace processes are conceived of as attempts at bringing disputing parties to the negotiation table and securing an agreement which facilitates peace. However in studies we have conducted with effective peacemakers, they describe a much more complex scene; a multitude of inter-related stakeholder groups which extend far beyond those more readily identified as disputants and third parties, including the general population, marginalized groups, extremist groups, the diaspora, civil society, the elite, academics, informal decision-makers, funding agencies, community institutions, business and industry, activist groups, and agnostics (relatively unaware, uninterested, or unwilling groups whose active involvement is seen as critical for peace). This means that a wide variety of actors and constructive processes may be available, in addition to direct negotiations and mediation, for bringing about a host of complementary objectives related to readying, triggering and establishing sustainable peace.
Second, they need to understand the nature of the role they are playing in this complex system of conflict and peace. The pressures imposed by the international community on regimes such as Syria, North Korea, and Iran today are a critical -- but insufficient -- condition for peace. Research has shown that disputants locked in protracted conflicts become ripe for negotiating peace when two basic conditions are met: 1) they find themselves in an unwinnable, mutually hurting stalemate and 2) they can see a way out of the conflict. Actions by the international community today in Syria, for example, largely increase the pain of stalemate. What is missing is a vision of a feasible way out.
Third, they need to do what they can to support non-state actors like the Community of Sant'Egidio and WIPN and, even more importantly, not interfere in their efforts. Like it or not, the more powerful actors in the international community are not alone out there, and the sooner we recognize and learn to work effectively and constructively within our complex systems of war and peace, the better.
Peter T. Coleman, PhD is a social psychologist on faculty at The Earth Institute and Teachers College at Columbia University, Director of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, and author of the books: The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts (2011) and Psychology's Contributions to Sustainable Peace (with Morton Deutsch, 2012).]]>The Consequences of Our Gamestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.23926952013-01-01T12:48:31-05:002013-03-03T05:12:01-05:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln, I found myself thinking, "Damn, we are good at games." Whether it is the CIA gaming Iranian revolutionary leaders by posing as a Hollywood film crew to rescue U.S. diplomats in 1980, the U.S. government, military and CIA playing the long game in the hunt for Osama bin Laden after 2001, or our sixteenth president playing the radical left against the racist right in the Congress of 1865 to pass a constitutional amendment to ban slavery, we Americans play, win and honor our games like no other nation.
Increasingly today, our lives are becoming games. Whether in business, politics, espionage, the military, education, health, sex, media, parenting, social networking, you name it, our world is being "gamified." That is, game-thinking, rewards, win-lose competition and game-mechanics are gradually infiltrating and defining major portions of our lives. In a recent article in The New York Times on the gamification of business, Nick Wingfield writes, "At a time when games are becoming ever more realistic, reality is becoming more gamelike." Quoting Jesse Schell, a game designer, he writes, "game ideas [are] creeping into 'every nook and cranny of everything.'"
Why does this matter?
Because games are fast becoming the defining metaphor of our time. How we think about, see and engage our world is largely determined by the metaphors we use to make sense of it. Whether we feel life is like a blank canvas to paint, an ocean to traverse, a box of chocolates to sample, or a game to play, matters. In fact, one of the most important findings coming out of cognitive science in the past 25 years is that most human thought operates through metaphors at a level that is out of normal conscious awareness. This means that the metaphors we employ shape all conscious thought, largely determining our sense of the world. These metaphors are packed with a set of basic, unexamined assumptions that affect how we frame and construct the world, influencing our social interactions with other people and operating like road maps that guide the organization of knowledge and the processing of new information, events, and experiences. In time, these metaphors become physically present in the synapses of our brains, in our neural circuitry, which can result in a total disregard for information that is inconsistent with them. So, we, too, are becoming gamers.
What is the problem with seeing -0 and constructing -- the world as a game? Certainly in some arenas -- politics and business and sports, for example -- it seems perfectly fitting. The problem is not that games are inconsistent with many aspects of our lives; it is that they provide a limited and skewed lens on the world and yet are spreading and becoming ever more pervasive and determining.
Game theorists have been helpful in identifying the limits of games. Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that approaches the study of human decision-making and social interaction through the use of game matrices, or simplified models of reality. It stresses the strategic interdependent interests of humans and assumes that in games there is always a rational choice which is the best counter-choice to your opponent's. Thus, game theorists recognize that this metaphor for understanding human decisions and behavior is limited to those situations where rational strategic thought (as opposed to intuition, affiliation or irrational or emotional impulses) is most influential.
In a brilliant treatise entitled "Reason in Society" written in 1962, the philosopher Paul Diesing goes even deeper to explain the perverse consequences of the gamification of our world. Diesing distinguishes between five different forms of reason that operate in societies: technical, economic, legal, political and social. Each form has its own assumptions, place, and consequences in the social order. But a main thrust of Deising's work is in articulating the drawbacks resulting from an over-emphasis on the most pervasive form of reason in America, and that behind strategic games and game theory; economic rationality.
Economic reasoning is focused laser-like on the maximum and efficient achievement of a plurality of goals. In other words, in an economically-rational society like ours what is considered reasonable is that which wins us the biggest piece of the pie as proficiently as possible. This form of rationality is based on a set of utilitarian values and assumptions that suggest that people should always try to get the most out of life (maximization of goals), and that the most efficient way to go about this is to view all aspects of life as either means, like commodities, or ends, like profit. With this as our focus, there is great pressure to convert more and more aspects of life into neutral commodities which can be exchanged and allocated to achieve maximization of our goals.
As Diesing writes, "The elements that become commodities during economic progress include time, land, capitol, labor, also personality itself, as well as all the artifacts produced by man: art objects, ideas, experiences, enjoyment itself, and even social relations. As these become commodities they are all subject to a process of moral neutralization and increase of mobility and competitiveness."
This means that with economic progress, more aspects of life become commoditized. Ancient or sacred lands become real estate for sale at a premium, leisure time becomes merely another segment of time that competes with our work time and productivity, and people and social relationships become other commodities to be allocated and exchanged for our more desired ends (who is worth more today, Nelson Mandela, Donald Trump or Snooki?). And as Diesing notes, "The more economically advanced a culture is, in general, the wider the scope for economic rationality."
Seeing more and more aspects of our lives as games to win through maximization has a sort of self-perpetuating effect with perverse consequences, not the least of which is the impairment of what Diesing terms social rationality; the cherishing of unique relationships, personal connectedness, cooperative functioning, solidarity and sentiment. These niceties are in direct conflict with utilitarianism because they waste time and other scarce resources and muddy the logic of maximization. In addition, economic rationalizing encourages us to change the rules of the game. If winning efficiently is the goal, then the rules (ethical, moral, legal, and spiritual), are essentially obstacles to game. Changing them simply allows us to move to higher levels in the competition.
We see the consequences of this gamification trend play out today on many fronts.
In our schools, competition for access to elite preschools, for grades, for social status, in sports, over positions of leadership, and for admission to exclusive colleges transforms one of our most basic institutions for fostering community, ethics and learning into competitive, individualistic corporate training-grounds. In these settings, the importance of competitive sports becomes paramount, for both financial and training purposes, and the artistry of cheating (see this year's Stuyvesant High School cheating scandal) and rule-bending (see Joe Paterno) revered. Such intense competition encourages the professionalization of parenting -- through tutors, highly-educated nannies, prep courses, and professional training camps (such as investment camps). You can imagine the deleterious effects these trends have on the ethos of care and moral responsibility in our families and schools, a critical buffer against bullying and violence in the lives of our children.
In our military, we have a long tradition of viewing war as a strategic game. Today, we train our soldiers with video-computer games to hunt down and destroy the enemy with greater efficiency (in the exact terrain they are being trained for), and award points for inflicting maximum damage. We also equip them with smart-bombs and drones, which are controlled from afar through a computer console. When their actual field-missions are complete, we ask them to reboot and play again. The effects of this gamification of our soldiers are only beginning to be felt in the unprecedented levels of suicide, addiction and domestic abuse among our returning vets.
In our fight against terrorism, we face competing priorities between more efficient tactics of intelligence gathering, prevention and intervention (torture and drone strikes -- see Zero Dark Thirty) and more socially-rational approaches of citizen exchanges, foreign aid and humanitarian support. Guess which is prevailing.
In governance, relationships with friends and colleagues become social and political capital to be spent, and one's identification with social and religious institutions, like the VFW or the Catholic Church become political assets to play or deficits to avoid. Ultimately, governing, cooperating across the aisle, and heading off national catastrophes (see the fiscal cliff) are viewed in competition with winning and keeping office, which typically triumph.
In business, again, the bottom-line rules. Therefore all decisions regarding hiring, firing, salaries, benefits, outsourcing, and even staff morale, counseling and support are measured by this criterion. This is rational. Changing the rules and regulations for business is also now the rule, no longer the exception (see, well, most business enterprise).
Personally, this trend leaves many of us feeling lost in the vast gamisphere. We can't ever work enough. We multitask so we can never go too deep on a project. Our successes and accomplishments are fleeting. Our relationships are too costly so they become ever thinner and more dispensable. We become hyper-connected through technologies, boasting our number of "friends" on Facebook, and have less and less intimacy. We choose friends with benefits or Internet porn over romantic relationships as they are less messy, more efficient. We order in and eat out because who has time to cook, let alone garden. We have less time for everything and simply have no time for idle chat (i.e., conversation). Health problems are a costly nuisance to be treated symptomatically and efficiently. Life is a race and we are losing.
Ultimately, the choice between economically-rational and socially-rational decisions, actions and societies is a false one. Healthy, functioning individuals and societies must manage both effectively (as well as technical, political, and legal). Diesing's prophetic warning to us is that the economizing and gamification of our world is spreading into domains where the consequences are insidious and tragic. The antidote, of course, is to be mindful of the difference between economic and social, technical, political, and legal reasoning in our world, and to bolster the latter through alternative metaphors.
One alternative is on display in this year's somewhat less-celebrated film, Amour. It is a small, French film about an elderly couple at the end of their life together. It is a cinematic masterpiece and a meditation on basic things like life, love and death. It is a film bereft of games. It is slow, personal, painful, moving, and requires time -- perhaps even multiple viewings -- to take hold. I guarantee if you see it you will leave the theater with no measureable gains. It is a must.
Peter T. Coleman, PhD is a social psychologist on faculty at The Earth Institute and Teachers College at Columbia University, and author of the books: The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts (2011) and Smart Power: How Adaptive Leaders Navigate Conflict Effectively (forthcoming). ]]>The Missing Piece in Sustainable Peacetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20841952012-11-06T18:03:56-05:002013-01-06T05:12:01-05:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/
Why? Because we don't study peace. We study war, violence, aggression and conflict -- and peace in the context of those states and processes -- but few study peace directly.
Here is a cautionary tale. For well over a decade, the noted psychologist and mathematician John Gottman and his colleagues in his "Love Lab" in Seattle, Wash., studied married couples and theorized about marriage and divorce. Eventually, they developed a robust mathematical model for predicting divorce in married couples, which was 97 percent predictive. The researchers felt very satisfied about this accomplishment until they realized something odd: their model did not predict happiness in marriage. They had been able to isolate the basic conditions which predicted divorce (or no divorce), but the opposite of these conditions did not predict marital bliss. When they realized the error of their assumptions they developed a program of extensive study of happily married couples. After 16 years of studying marital happiness and stability, they came to understand more clearly that the predictors of each, divorce versus happiness, were not opposites, but were in fact qualitatively different conditions.
We believe the same to be true for peace. In a recent set of studies we conducted in Israel and the Palestinian Territories investigating the motives that drive people to support negotiations to end the conflict versus those that motivate them to work actively for improved relations and peace, we found something similar to Gottman. Employing Howard Moskowitz's unique method of Rule Development Experimentation to assess motives (which revolutionized market research in the food industry), we found that the reasons Israelis and Palestinians are motivated to end conflict are fundamentally different from and independent of the reasons they are motivated to make and sustain peace. They are not opposites -- the drivers for peace and the drivers for conflict -- but are in fact fundamentally different animals.
This means that the seventy plus decades of systematic research that has been conducted on the conditions that promote and prevent war, violence, aggression, and conflict -- although important and useful, are only half the story. It also means we have yet to really understand peace comprehensively.
To be clear, it is not that psychology, international affairs and related fields have not been concerned with peace; on the contrary. In fact, scholarship on the psychology of peace has been accumulating for decades and several thousand research studies have been conducted in this area since the end of the Cold War. However, this research has been predominantly problem-focused. In other words, the approach employed through these decades of research on peace has focused primarily on addressing and preventing the problems associated with conflict and violence and not on the solutions associated with peace. Concerns around nuclear annihilation, enemy images, discrimination, denial of basic human needs, terrorism and torture have been the main focus. Even the idea of positive peace, first put forth by Johann Galtung (1985) to distinguish it from negative peace or attempts to eliminate overt forms of violence, fundamentally concerns problems of injustice and oppression and the needs for "a more equitable social order that meets the basic needs and rights of all people." This work has been necessary and critically important. However, a basic assumption inherent to this approach is that if we can gain a sophisticated enough understanding of the problems of conflict, violence, oppression and war that we will better understand, and be better able to foster and sustain, peace. But will we?
Other areas of scholarship have reached similar conclusions regarding the problems and limitations of studying problems. In fact, there is evidence from the study of attitudes that positive & negative evaluative processes often operate independently, and that positive and negative attributions function orthogonally as well. In particular, contemporary research on motivation has taught us that differences in our prevention versus promotion orientations to goals and outcomes have profound consequences for the types of information we seek, how we process it, the emotions we experience, and how we go about accomplishing our goals. This has led scholars who study anxiety-based motives of conflict such as terror management to call for more comprehensive models of human behavior that can account for the tensions and complementarities of both concerns for security as well as our hopes and dreams for nurturance and peace.
But this is easier said than done.
For example, The Global Peace Index (GPI) is a new attempt to measure the relative position of nations' and regions' peacefulness. It is the product of the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) and developed in consultation with an international panel of peace experts with data collected and collated by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The list was launched first in May 2007, then again in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and most recently on June 2012, and ranks 158 countries around the world according to their peacefulness. This year the Global Peace Index for the first time included a Positive Peace Index (PPI), which looks at attitudes, institutions and structures that, when strengthened, can improve a country's peacefulness.
The good news is that the PPI is oriented to societal resilience, with 8 Pillars of Peace measured including: well-functioning government, sound business environment, equitable distribution of resources, acceptance of the rights of others, good relations with neighbors, free flow of information, high levels of education and low levels of corruption. So the intention to measure positive states is there.
The bad news is that on most social dimensions, the PPI still measures only the absence of problems. For example, the PPI's approach to measuring "good neighbor relations" and "acceptance of other's rights" uses two indices from the Indices of Social Development from the International Institute of Social Studies. The measure for safety and trust (an index of good neighbor relations) reads:
We measure personal security and trust by using data on general social trust from a wide variety of surveys, indicators of trustworthiness such as reported levels of crime victimisation, survey responses on feelings of safety and security in one's neighbourhood, data on the incidence of homicide, and risk reports on the likelihood of physical attack, extortion, or robbery.
Regarding intergroup cohesion (an index of acceptance of other's rights), it reads:
We measure intergroup cohesion using data on inter-group disparities, perceptions of being discriminated against, and feelings of distrust against members of other groups. ISD also use data on the number of reported incidents of riots, terrorist acts, assassinations, and kidnappings; agency ratings on the likelihood of civil disorder, terrorism and social instability; and reported levels of engagement in violent riots, strikes, and confrontations.
So why are we stuck on measuring problems despite the recognition of the need to assess positive states? Here are three reasons.
First, as humans, fear is simply more primal and basic than hope. Brain research has shown that fear reactions to threat are triggered sooner in a more primitive place in the brain (amygdala) than experiences of hope and optimism, which are considered secondary emotions which are experienced more downstream. So we are in fact hard-wired to focus on problems and threats first.
Second, there are definitional problems with peace. For example, a search of the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge database on articles published in English since 2000 with "peace" in the their title reveals over forty terms distinguishing different types or aspects of peace. This is more than a matter of semantics. Peace can differ in a variety of ways, including by level (interpersonal to international to global peace), direction (internal and external peace), durability (from fragile to enduring peace), source or conditions (peace through coercion, democratic participation, economic incentive, etc.), type (negative, positive and promotive peace) and scope (local to global peace). So even though the PPI is attempting to assess an "optimal environment for human well-being and potential to flourish" (a decent definition of peace), it is still assuming that the absence of negatives (crime, discrimination, rights violations) is sufficient to create such environments.
And third, it matters who is doing the measuring. Many scholarly disciplines operate on a set of basic, often unquestioned assumptions about cause and effect, the nature of human motivation, and what constitutes ideal, positive states. In economics and political science, a prevention-focus (avoiding harmful problems) is primary. This was also true in other areas of the social sciences such as anthropology and psychology until recently when movements to study positive processes and states came more into vogue.
So, what is needed going forward to better conceptualize, measure and realize sustainable peace? Here is one strategy:
1) A clear working definition of sustainable peace that includes both the prevention of destructive dynamics and the promotion of positive. We define sustainable peace as existing in a state where the probability of using destructive conflict, oppression and violence to solve problems is so low that it does not enter into any party's strategy, while the probability of using cooperation, dialogue and collaborative problem-solving to promote social justice and well-being is so high that it governs social organization and life.
2) Support for the development of basic theory and research on sustainable peace. There are few scholars today conducting basic research on the fundamental conditions and processes conducive to sustainable peace (the anthropologist Douglas Fry is one exception). However, it is critical that the applied frameworks which inform practice be informed by basic, sound, empirically-tested theoretical models, in order to foster peace most effectively. Our recent book, Psychology's Contributions to Sustainable Peace (Coleman & Deutsch, 2012), offers a sound beginning.
3) Education for Promotive, Sustainable Peace. It has been increasingly recognized that our schools have to change in basic ways if we are to educate children so that they are for rather than against one another, so that they develop the ability to resolve their conflicts constructively rather than destructively, so that they are prepared to contribute to the development of a peaceful and just world. An emphasis on cooperation and constructive conflict resolution in schools can offer children and adults an orientation to problems and a set of norms and skills that can assist them in fulfilling their needs in a non-violent manner. Teaching and modeling these processes are methods for preventing violence in that they can establish a culture of peace, and a sense of caring, within schools that provides students with experiences of safety, inclusion, fairness and hope. At the university level, we should commit to developing courses which involve a core group of faculty from different disciplines that are committed to working together to weave and develop the ideas and practices of sustainable peace to instruct the next generation of leaders.
4) The enhancement of current data-based indices for annual reporting on state and regional levels of sustainable peace. This project could build on the Global Peace Index for measuring and reporting on sustainable peace worldwide, but integrate promotive, pro-social assessments. This initiative could be informed by such initiatives as the Gross National Happiness Index (Med Jones, 2006), the eight bases of a Culture of Peace (UN Resolution A/RES/52/13), and the Peace Scale (Klein, Goertz & Diehl, 2008). Another possible step would be to develop a dynamical computational model with variables from multiple disciplines that have been shown to predict both violence and peace and then try to keep a "Violence Watch" as well as a "Peace Watch" on countries by plugging data in to see if we can identify nations susceptible to outbreaks of violence and outbreaks of peace.
5) Annual theory-practice-policy forum on sustainable peace. There is currently a need for an annual gathering of policy-makers, peace-practitioners and scholars, where leading-edge research on sustainable peace could be translated and provided to policy-makers.
6) The Development and Launching of UN Sustainable Peace Goals (SPGs). Modeled on the UN's approach to development (MDGs, now the SDGs), the SPGs suggest that states, regional organizations and the international community would benefit greatly from specifying a set of measureable goals for achieving and sustaining (both preventative and promotive) peace. An inclusive constellation of experts (from community-based organizations, NGOs, academia, the UN and donor nations) could identify preventative, intervention and reparative goals for peace-making, peace-keeping, peace-building and peace-sustaining - in a manner that coordinates all three activities. These goals would help better situate UN mediation efforts in the context of broader, sustained efforts for peace. They would need to employ the enhanced metrics for assessing state-level sustainable peace goals annually detailed in #4 above.
Copyright Peter T. Coleman]]>Why Politics Are Stuck in the U.S.tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20784912012-11-05T16:20:09-05:002013-01-05T05:12:01-05:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/In this recent TEDx talk in Miami, Professor Peter T. Coleman, Chair of the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4) at The Earth Institute explains why politics in the U.S. are more deadlocked and polarized today than they have been since the end of the U.S. Civil War and what our next president and our citizens can do about it.
Research shows that the U.S. government is more polarized today than it has been for 130 years -- and this is particularly evident in the increasing divisions in Republican versus Democrat congressional voting patterns since 1979. This trend is also apparent in the pattern of Red-Blue voting nationally by citizens over the last three presidential elections.
And you probably think, well, yea, that's how it works -- that's how it's always been. It's just the nature of politics
But the fact is that if you look back at voting patterns over a couple of hundred years or so, you see it's not how it's always been, and in fact in the past we enjoyed many decades of effective non-partisan consensus-based problem-solving -- and were actually able to fix problems in this country.
But not today.
Although the world has changed dramatically since 2000, our leaders and U.S. citizens keep voting the same way in the same places -- and the chasm keeps getting deeper. The bad news is this stand-off is happening at a time when our deficit is astronomical and increasing by $4.2 billion a day, millions of Americans are in desperate need of jobs, food and decent housing, and our education system is in a free-fall.
Applying ideas from complexity science, Dr. Coleman explains how the current "attractor" pattern of polarization we are stuck in came about, the crisis it presents, and the window of opportunity it offers us for positive change to be sparked from both above (our leaders) and below (us).
]]>America Needs Political Shock Therapytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17903272012-08-16T14:02:32-04:002012-10-16T05:12:28-04:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/
Politics in the US are more deadlocked and polarized today than they have been since the end of the US Civil War. We see this in voting patterns in the US Congress as well as in citizen voting patterns across the country.
This is happening at a time when our nation is facing crises on multiple fronts -- joblessness, housing foreclosures, border insecurity, declining education outcomes, soaring healthcare costs, you name it. Yet we are too divided and alienated from one another to do much about it.
But why? Is it simply tribalism? Political parties with sacred ideologies and contrasting narratives over the values and pathologies of government -- exacerbated by partisan media and internet chat rooms? Is it our rising inequality and the effects of opposing economic philosophies in hard times? Is it differences in religiosity and beliefs in moral order and the Protestant Work Ethic? Or is it simply emotional ethnocentrism -- that popular game where we project our worst qualities on out-groups -- hating them and therefore loving ourselves all the more?
The answer is yes and no. If you look back long enough at the trends in the data on polarization in the US, you can see it is the combination of all of this - and something more.
A series of studies by political scientist Nolan McCarty and colleagues shows that the US Government is more polarized today than it has been for 130 years --and this is particularly evident in the increasing divisions in Republican versus Democrat congressional voting patterns since 1979.
But a similar trend is apparent in the pattern of Red-Blue voting nationally over the last three presidential elections. If you look at the geographic breakdown of Democratic and Republican voting within each of the 50 states over the last 12 years, you see a fascinating pattern. The world has changed dramatically since 2000; by 9/11, the global threat of terrorism, a world financial crisis, the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history (the BP oil spill), and so much more. Yet despite this, Red versus Blue voting breakdowns within every state have barely budged. The world around us is being buffeted by extraordinary forces from every direction, but U.S. citizens keep voting the same way in the same places -- and the chasm keeps getting deeper.
For example in 2011, President Obama's third year in office, an average of 80 percent of Democrats approved of the job he was doing in Gallup tracking polls, as compared to 12 percent of Republicans who felt the same way. That's a 68-point partisan gap, the highest for any president's third year in office -- ever. The previous high was George W. Bush in 2007, when he had a 59 percent difference in job approval ratings. In fact, out of the ten most partisan years in terms of presidential job approval in Gallup data, seven -- yes, seven -- have come since 2004.
The bad news is this stand-off is happening at a time when our deficit is astronomical and increasing by $4.2 billion a day, millions of Americans are in desperate need of jobs, food and decent housing, our education system is in a free-fall -- we recently ranked 14th out of 34 OECD countries in reading, 17th in science and 26th in math, and our children's health is at risk; today, we rank 42nd worldwide in child mortality rates, behind Cuba, Chile and Serbia.
Why are we so stuck?
The field of complexity science, a branch of applied mathematics, has taught us that such long-term, stable patterns of polarization, hostility and stalemate are both uncommon; happening with only about 5% of our most difficult conflicts, and unusual; operating with a unique set of rules and dynamics. It's like the difference between colds, flus and minor injuries, and chronic longer-term illnesses like diabetes, MS, or many cancers. They are all ailments, but some are more extreme, stable and resistant to treatment.
These patterns in Washington and across the country are what complexity scientists call attractors. They are patterns of behavior that resist change and that people and groups feel drawn to reenact repeatedly, often automatically, even when they prefer not to. Attractors are created by a combination of many things -- party affiliation, ideology, habits, loyalties, the media -- that come together to form powerful constraints on how we think, feel and act. In other words, the stable pattern of hostile divisions within our political landscape is today being dictated by forces largely beyond our control.
What does this mean for understanding our current political quagmire?
The study of long-term conflicts as attractors has taught us that of the approximately 850 enduring international conflicts that occurred throughout the world between 1816 and 2001, 95% of them erupted within 10 years of a major political shock to the world or region (end of the Cold War, coup d'état, assassination, etc.). This means two things. When major ruptures to political systems occur, we often don't see significant repercussions from them for 5-10 years or longer. But if a qualitative change does occur, it is usually dramatic and lasting in nature.
For example, about ten years before the "Arab Spring" uprisings spread across North Africa and the Middle East, 9/11 shocked the world, and on its heels the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, deposed their leaders, and triggered an unprecedented level of turmoil and instability in the region. Such events, as horrible and costly as they are, can rupture the status quo and provide ideal conditions for repositioning of socio-political systems, even those well beyond the borders of the countries directly affected. However, the effects of such destabilization are often not immediately apparent, but can result in long-term hostilities like we see in Syria today.
Returning to our own political quagmire in the US which has now lasted about 33 years, pundits often suggest that it began with the Reagan administration. But if we look at the political shocks that occurred in the US within 10 years of this 1979 spike in partisan suspicion and hostility, a more likely cause is the outbreak of the US Culture Wars:
• 1968 Summer of Love & Anti-Vietnam movement
• 1968 MLK & Bobby Kennedy assassinations
• 1968 My Lai Massacre
• 1970 Kent State shootings
• 1970 EPA, OSHA, PBS founded
• 1971 Pentagon papers released
• 1972 Watergate scandal
• 1973 Roe V. Wade decision
• 1974 Nixon Resigns
• 1976 Carter elected
• 1980 Reagan elected
In other words a series of major political shocks occurred that ruptured our unity and tore this country apart into Blue Liberals and Red Conservatives, which settled into the self-reinforcing pattern of divisions we live with today. Even 9/11 appeared to do little to unite this country for long -- instead simply bolstering our divisions.
So what can we do?
The bad news is we can't force such patterns to change. When these types of conflicts set a course, then the typical fixes (problem-solving, diplomacy, negotiations -- even threats and coercion) don't seem to help and often only make matters worse. However, we can act now to begin to decrease the probabilities that things will remain stuck or get worse over time, and increase the probabilities that our leaders return to more constructive problem-solving.
Here are four tactics informed by complexity science.
Leverage instability. The good news is that not only do 95% of enduring conflicts begin within 10 years of a political shock, but 75% of them also end within 10 years of shocks. Our history is full of examples when crises -- the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Great Depression, natural disasters -- mobilized and united citizens to work together for the greater good.
For instance, in 1924 -- about 10 years after the start of World War I -- Congress came together and enjoyed an uncommonly high level of stable consensus-based problem-solving for 30 years! This means crises -- like the recent world financial and economic crises, or the next unforeseen catastrophe -- can also rupture patterns of political polarization -- and create the conditions for positive radical change to (eventually) emerge. Of course the effects of such destabilization do not ensure positive change; it is only a key facilitating condition.
First moves matter. One thing that mathematics tells us helps determine the direction we take after a political shock are the initial conditions. That is, the earliest actions taken in a new regime largely determine its trajectory. In marriages, it's the first things said by a spouse when a young couple finds themselves in a new conflict. With moral conflicts it's how people start to feel within the first 3 three minutes of conversation that sets the course. Even very slight differences in initial conditions -- minor differences in the framing of social problems or political crises -- can eventually make a big difference.
This means that whoever wins the election in November will have a unique opportunity to reset our course. This is what our greatest leaders such as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Mandela were able to do in the wake of crisis. The effects of their actions may not be visible at first, but they can trigger other changes that trigger others and so on over time, until they have an amplified impact on our relations and abilities to solve problems.
Work the invisible. Research has also found that in many protracted conflicts the disputing factions often maintain benevolent islands in their relationships -- across the aisle or in their personal or professional life -- where they continue to communicate and cooperate, despite the escalation of tensions. These islands are evidence of what complexity scientists call latent positive attractors between groups. However, their effects are usually tightly constrained by the dynamics of the conflict. Thus, early steps should explore and support these connections carefully and help to free them up. This is similar to bolstering a body's own immune system when under attack from disease. Supporting islands between Reds and Blues -- particularly those focused on working together to address our national crises -- can help to contain further polarization and get us back on track.
Small things matter. Finally, it is critical to recognize that the divisive attractor we are trapped in as a nation was created and is maintained by all of us. Our words and deeds in our homes and communities do much to contribute to the current climate of vitriol, blame and contempt in our country. But research on complex systems shows that even small changes in one basic rule of behavior can have enormous emergent effects on the qualities of a system. If each of us made one slight change in how we act in our own lives, it could trickle up and affect how our leaders lead. In other words, we can change our course from the bottom up by:
Complicating. Recognizing that the more serious problems we face today are very complicated. Typically, solutions to these problems will be mixed -- with both good and bad outcomes. If someone is selling you on solutions that are problem-free sure things, beware.
Contradicting. We all have conflicting impulses and do things at times that go against our values and better intentions. Acknowledge these. Research shows that being mindful of such contradictions within ourselves makes us more tolerant and accepting of people who are different.
Concentrating. Science also tells us that 90-95% of our daily behaviors are automatic -- things we do every day without thinking (driving a car, preparing a meal, reacting to our kids, neighbors, coworkers). Notice these. Many of our automatic behaviors are contributing to our divisions. When was the last time you listened actively to the POV of a member of the other party to learn? Not to sell anything or persuade, but just to try to discover something new?
These actions may seem trivial, but they can add up. If repeated often enough, they can change a person, a home, a community and can help us break out of our attractors; our habits of blame, negativity and denial of responsibility. Remember: Ask not what your country can do for you ... but what you can do with a crisis.
Peter T. Coleman, PhD is Professor of Psychology and Education on faculty at Teachers College and The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and author of the books: The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts (2011) and The Psychological Components of Sustainable Peace (2012)]]>The Decade for Peace in Israel-Palestinetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15143832012-05-14T11:05:54-04:002012-07-14T05:12:04-04:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/
This is at a time when unemployment for the 4 million Palestinians living in the territories is at roughly 24 percent (more than 40 percent in Gaza), exports have flat-lined and imports have skyrocketed for 10 years, the ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli deaths since 2000 is 6:1 (close to 10:1 for children), and the military actions and settlements of Israel have called into question the legitimacy of the current government, isolating them increasingly internationally. Yet the barrier wall constructed around the territories has reduced violence against Jews in Israel substantially, leading to a creeping sense of complacency for many Israeli citizens. Yet Israel will soon be exposed to increasing danger from long-range missiles able to hit its large population centers. In other words, the status quo of the conflict and occupation today feels like the only option and is completely unsustainable. That's the bad news.
The good news is that radical change is today unfolding everywhere in the Middle East. Beyond the turmoil of the Arab Spring we are now seeing televised political debates in Egypt (the first ever in the region), potential civil war in neighboring Syria, signs of life in the multiparty talks over Iran's nuclear program, and this week thousands of young protestors again taking the streets in Tel Aviv under the slogan "Returning the state to its citizens."
Why is such tumult in the region good news? Because radical change can be good for peace in areas that have been stuck in intractable conflict for decades.
Experts estimate that about five percent of international conflicts become intractable: highly destructive, enduring and resistant to multiple good-faith attempts at resolution. These conflicts seem to develop a power of their own that is inexplicable and total, driving groups to act in ways that go against their best interests and sow the seeds of their own ruin. And although uncommon, they last an average of 36 years and have accounted for 49 percent of international wars since 1816, 76 percent of civil wars since 1946, and evoke disproportionate levels of expense, misery, hopelessness and instability. What is particularly daunting about this 5 percent of protracted conflicts is their substantial resistance to resolution. In these settings, the traditional methods of diplomacy, negotiation and mediation -- and even military victory -- seem to have little impact on the persistence of the conflict. In fact, there is some evidence that these strategies may only make matters worse.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is such a conflict. An immensely complicated hundred-year-old conflict that today operates and is reinforced across a multitude of issues, time periods, stakeholders and lands. It has become what Stephen Cohen, founder of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development describes as "the crucible of multiple conflicts in the region and multiple grievances that feed upon one another and that produce reoccurring eruptions of violence." Unfortunately, every large-scale effort at peacemaking to date -- at Oslo, Wye, Camp David, Taba, Geneva, all twenty-six proposals and counting -- have been overwhelmed by the conflict and seem to have only contributed to peace fatigue.
So it is good news that the status quo is unsustainable.
Fortunately, the resolution of other seemingly intractable conflicts elsewhere in the world offer Israel-Palestine important lessons, particularly in light of the changes currently taking place in the region. In South Africa, Mozambique, Liberia, and Northern Ireland, we witnessed conflicts that were locked in violent cycles for decades, even generations, where many attempts at peacemaking failed, and where, eventually, peace emerged.
What have we learned?
Leaders can capitalize on current regional instability. In studies by Paul Diehl and Gary Goetz of the approximately 850 enduring conflicts that occurred throughout the world between 1816 to 1992, over three-quarters of them were found to have ended within ten years of a major political shock (world wars, civil wars, significant changes in territory and power relations, regime change, independence movements, or transitions to democracy). Events such as those erupting in the Middle East today promote optimal conditions for dramatic realignment of sociopolitical systems.
For example, ten years ago 9/11 shocked the world, and on its heels the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, deposed their leaders, and triggered an unprecedented level of turmoil and instability in the region. Such events, as horrible and costly as they are, provide ideal conditions for repositioning of socio-political systems, even those well beyond the borders of the countries directly affected. However, the effects of such destabilization are often not immediately apparent and do not ensure radical or positive change; it is therefore only a necessary but insufficient condition for peace. Nevertheless, instability does present unique opportunities to steer the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a new direction.
Envision complex networks of causation. Although the sources and responsibility for the conflict is always under dispute, at this point they are almost irrelevant. For over time such conflicts gather new problems and grievances and disputants which combine in complicated ways to increase their intractability. It helps to understand this, even to map out the different parts of the conflict, in order to get a better sense of what is operating. This is particularly important when the polarizing tide of Us vs. Them becomes strong and leads to the oversimplification of the sources of the conflict ('Them!').
Decouple the conflict. Because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is embedded in a complex network of independent but related conflicts, change will require a period in which it delinks from other, more distant conflicts. For instance, the Arab-Israeli conflict became less severe as Jordan chose not to take part in the 1973 war and Egypt made peace with Israel.
Work from the bottom up. Shifting focus from top leaders negotiating global ideals and principles (territorial ownership, sovereignty) to community leaders problem-solving achievable, on-the-ground goals can loosen the conflict's stranglehold on the peace process and ignite it from the bottom up. During the round-table negotiations over solidarity in Poland, focusing first on moving the practical aspects of the society forward (functional health care, agriculture, transportation, tourism, etc.) went a long way toward a peaceful transition. Working at a lower level, while temporarily circumventing the global issues of power, control and identity, can help to initiate an altogether new emergent dynamic.
Welcome weak power. Case studies of intractable conflicts like Mozambique in the 1980s-'90s where sustainable resolutions eventually emerged have taught us that forceful interventions by powerful authorities or third-parties rarely help for long. Paradoxically, they have shown that it is often weaker third-parties who employ softer forms of power (are trust-worthy, unthreatening, reliable, and without a strong independent agenda) who often are most effective as catalysts for change.
Support existing islands of agreement. Harvard Law Professor Gabriella Blum has found that during many protracted conflicts, the disputing parties often maintain areas in their relationship where they continue to communicate and cooperate, despite the severity of the conflict. In international affairs this can occur with some forms of trade, civilian exchanges or medical care. Bolstering such islands can not only mitigate tensions and help contain conflict, but also offers some of the most promising sources of constructive change for moving forward toward peace.
Rethink cause and effect. Research has also shown that the changes brought on by destabilizing shocks to systems often do not manifest right away. In fact, with intractable international conflicts, changes can take up to ten years after a major political shock before their effects take hold. Thus, conflicts of this nature require us to rethink our tendency to think in terms of immediate cause-and-effect, and to understand that changes in some complex systems operate in radically different time frames.
Work incrementally to effect radical change. The real work for the advocates of peace, justice and freedom in the region, the Arab world, the U.S. and the international community begins now. This entails essentially two tasks. First, the arduous work of bolstering or establishing a complex array of institutions, mechanisms and social norms -- through grassroots NGOs, schools, government initiatives and international agencies -- which encourage tolerance, cooperation, inclusion and justice. But in parallel each community must begin to actively dismantle the institutions and mechanisms that have for decades fomented inequality, resentment, exclusion and contempt. The effects of this work, like those of political shocks, may take a decade or more to surface. But without them, the status quo of Israel-Palestine will soon detonate.
Peter T. Coleman, PhD is a psychologist on faculty at Teachers College and The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and author of the books: The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts (2011) and The Psychological Components of Sustainable Peace (2012).
Cross-posted from Psychology Today. ]]>President Obama's Mixed-Motive Dilemmatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12531142012-02-03T14:20:53-05:002012-04-04T05:12:01-04:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/
And although some on the left and the right in this country saw this approach as too meek and compromising, it seemed to pay-off domestically as he steadily managed to pass a host of important legislation including his landmark healthcare reform bill.
But times have changed. The launch of the antigovernment Tea Party movement in 2009, resulting in a caucus in the House which today includes 62 sitting Republicans, and the signing of Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge by 238 members of the House and 41 members of the Senate (all except 13 sitting Republicans), has led to an era of obstructionism and polarization not seen in Washington since before the Civil War.
Enter the campaign for the presidency. The current Republican primary season has ushered in a whole new level of enmity and vitriol to Washington political discourse. In addition to a continual barrage of attacks on President Obama's policies and person, the Republican candidates have turned on one another with such viciousness and indignity that the probabilities for any type of constructive dialogue over serious issues in Washington is today at zero. Americans seem to sit by and watch this titillating new reality show, quietly amused by it and endorsing it with our complacency.
So what is the leader of the free world to do in order to continue to govern and address the current employment, debt, financial, education, infrastructure, poverty and climate crises, to name just a few? Especially given that he has now entered the race for re-election, and will therefore unleash the dogs of political resistance.
Scientists who study conflict and negotiations have a term for this problem: the intense mixed-motive dilemma. These are situations where the parties to a conflict (read legislative battle, election, etc.) share critically important common and competing goals. The competing goals are painfully obvious. But the common goals at stake here today include the strength of the U.S. economy, the functioning of our (big or small) government, the health, education and future of our children, and our status and ability to lead effectively in the world.
When parties to conflict face such high-stakes competing and common goals, the result is often either to: 1) suffer from a debilitating sense of paralysis and stagnation over the painful trade-offs of action or, more commonly, 2) go on the attack and do everything possible to defeat the opponent, and then suffer the consequences to your shared concerns (This is what we are currently witnessing within the Republican party as the candidates fight to defeat their opponents and subsequently do enormous harm to their party, their own reputation and dignity, and to America's sense of trust and identification with government).
But the study of mixed-motive dilemmas has revealed other, often more effective or optimal strategies. They include:
• Conditional assessment contingencies: Employing both hard-ball and integrative win-win strategies at different times when situations demand or allow for one or the other, but remaining aware of the fact that more contentious strategies typically elicit the same and lead to escalation, alienation and other negative consequences.
• Tit-for-tat (reciprocal) strategy: Research on game theory has shown that when parties employ a strategy of reciprocity -- essentially deciding to reciprocate whatever tactics their opponent employs -- it often leads to learning by both parties that they are both ultimately better off when they both cooperate, or work together towards joint-solutions. This strategy however requires that the parties are of essentially equal power.
• Overt/covert strategy: Used increasingly in international affairs, this is a strategy of employing one tactic publically, while using essentially the opposite approach in a clandestine manner. This can take the form of displaying a hard-line, contentious position publically while secretly holding negotiations that attempt to find common solutions, or the reverse. For example, it has been suggested that the South African Afrikaner Government, while holding negotiations with Mandela and the African National Congress to end Apartheid, were simultaneously supporting the Inkatha Freedom Party in an attempt to divide and conquer both Black African political parties.
• Negotiation chains: Typically employed under conditions when leaders engaged in a contentious conflict need to hold a hard-line and cannot be associated in any way with the other party, this tactic involves holding negotiations through a sequence of individuals in a manner that allows the leaders on both sides to maintain deniability of knowledge of the negotiations should they fail, back-fire or become public.
• Internal split strategy: There is a myth in the world of politics and negotiations that groups in conflict are most successful when they share one position within their group, the party-line. However, research has shown that groups who contain internal splits within -- hawks or hard-liners and doves or conciliators -- often fare better in negotiations. This is because the hard-liners serve to demand or "claim value" in the negotiations, while the conciliators who are often more flexible will work to "create value" or find integrative solutions that address the needs of all parties. This provides a more balanced approach and optimal solutions.
• Establishing "bottom line" positions: Another approach to mixed-motive dilemmas is to decide to be creative, flexible and integrative on certain issues, or up to a point in your "bargaining range" with divisible resources -- but to be clear about your own bottom-line and on issues you see as non-negotiable, and plan to shift into hard-ball tactics if or when those come into play.
• Stage model: A variation on some of the above, this tactic sees negotiations as moving through several stages, and is often employed by representative negotiators in labor disputes. The first stage involves the negotiators working in a creative, flexible manner with their own constituents to identify underlying interests, options and trade-offs that provide them with an arsenal of options to use during direct negotiations. The second stage, known as the ritual dance, involves contentious public statements made to send the message that they plan to be tough and to ensure their constituents that they are in control. When this is understood by the negotiators on both sides as a ritual, it is less likely to trigger escalation. The third stage, typically conducted behind closed doors, is the meat of the negotiation and involves a combination of both horse-trading (trading-off more and less important concessions) and integrative problem-solving (identifying shared interests and creative solutions). And finally, the last stage is re-entry, where negotiators return to their constituent groups and negotiate the acceptability of the proposed agreement. These stages often cycle through several times before agreements are reached, but require comfort with a wide menu of tactics.
• Short-term/long-term strategy: Another approached attempted by the more intrepid negotiator is to agree to enter typically contentious negotiations with a more cooperative, flexible orientation -- and to try their best to make that work -- but to resort to hard-ball tactics if their initial approach fails. This requires a high-level of skill in integrative bargaining.
• GRIT, or graduated reciprocation in tension-reduction. Originally proposed by Charles Osgood during the Cold War, this mixed-motive strategy is particularly useful in highly escalated, high-stakes conflicts. It outlines a 10-step strategy for reversing escalatory spirals by providing decision-makers with something hard to see in such threatening situations -- alternative options. It involves agreeing to offer unilateral concessions to the other side, often in the form of disarmament, troop reductions or humanitarian goods and services, coupled with an invitation to the other side to reciprocate. The idea is that often these concessions are just as good for the offering-party (as they free up resources for other endeavors), as long as they don't make the party vulnerable to harm. Often, international pressure increases on the receiving party to reciprocate, and thus shifting the dynamic towards peace.
• Options. Effective leaders usually have options when dealing with strong opposition and conflict. President Obama, as well as his opponents in Washington and around the globe, would be well-counseled to learn from the study of effective negotiations and conflict management, so that our country and our world can get back to work on the potentially catastrophic challenges of our time.
]]>Awakening to Women: The Nobel Effecttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10114592011-10-17T13:12:57-04:002011-12-17T05:12:01-05:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/Leymah Gbowee is an occasion for both celebration and reflection. Gbowee, 39, one of the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and currently the Executive Director of the Women in Peace and Security Network, was prompted to action by her refusal to accept that incessant war was her country's destiny. She organized thousands of women, dressed in plain white, to gather everyday to protest nonviolently in Monrovia's fish market and in centers of power. Risking life, the extraordinary efforts spearheaded by Gbowee and the women of Liberia eventually helped cement a peace agreement between the government and the rebels, who had been fighting for years.
Gbowee's journey provides us with a great deal of insight into what successful peacebuilding entails. To that end, we have culled together a number of key lessons that we believe can be generalized and applied to other destructive conflicts around the world.
Lesson 1: Women are the missing story.
Before the film Pray The Devil Back To Hell -- which featured Gbowee and documented the role of the Liberian women's peace movement -- the international media generally addressed the subject of women in the Liberian civil war from the perspective of the victim; the story of women as "spoils of conquest", raped and abused from both sides of the conflict. From this perspective, women's agency, to the degree that it was acknowledged equaled the courage to testify. Missing from the narrative was the way in which women became significant actors, shaping the trajectory of their country's fractured history; the way in which the women of Liberia mobilized, crossed religious boundaries and non-violently spoke truth to power. Leading the way was Gbowee, but she was not alone.
That the international media did not tell this story was a curious fact; all the more so since it was well known in Liberia. The reporting was congruent with the perception that conflict and peacemaking are the domains of men. Those who have access to hard power -- political authority, material wealth, weapons, and physical strength -- get to make the important decisions regarding war and peace. They also get the coverage and accolades.
Yet the story of the women's movement in Liberia shows us how our dominant perspectives bias our perception and understanding of the world. In psychology, this bias is known as inattentional blindness: when focusing on a particular task or object literally blinds us to something that others can easily see. The women of Liberia remind us to check our assumptions and biases and broaden our perspective.
Lesson 2: Employ soft power and non-sense.
In examining the successes of the women's peace movement, we also have to ask, "Why did it work?" How were these women, armed only with white shirts and faith, able to affect change?
Part of the answer seems to lie in the non-threatening use of power wielded by Gbowee and her movement: what scholars call "soft" or "weak" power. Soft power is a capacity to influence outcomes based on a person's moral authority, intellect, trustworthiness, charisma, wisdom, warmth and kindness. Unlike hard power, soft power tends to expand when shared and is often developed in cooperation with others.
Coming from the churches and the mosques, representing archetypes of spiritual and emotional nourishment, the women impressed themselves on the conscience of all those involved.
Another factor of success was the way the women's movement injected an element of surprise into a rigid system. Times of war, even when chaotic, are often times of predictability: people's thought, emotions and behavior get pulled in a particular destructive direction. Patterns of aggression and victimizations are formed. Any sense of complexity and nuance collapses into an ultra coherent "us vs. them" polarizing narrative. And often peacemakers become just another component of the war discourse.
Gbowee and the women of the movement broke that pattern. They did so by bringing into the public and political sphere individuals -- mothers, grandmothers, aunts, etc -- who embodied values of connection and nurturance. They did so by uniting Christians and Muslims -- unified under the realization that a bullet does not differentiate between faiths. They did so by organizing non-violent protest aimed at both shaming and reaching the hearts of those responsible for the war. They did so by orchestrating a sex strike and by using their bodies to barricade the warlords and government officials in a building until they negotiated an end to the war.
None of this made sense in the discourse of war. Instead, the women's action produced a rupture in the story. For example, after they barricaded themselves in the building where the negotiation between rebels and the government was taking place, Gbowee and her "troops" where threatened with arrest by police and physical violence by the warlords. In response, the future Noble Peace Prize winner began stripping off her clothes, challenging anyone to lay their hands on her (in African culture it's considered a curse to see a married or elderly woman intentionally expose herself). As one warlord later reflected:
You have to imagine what would drive your mother to do such a thing, to strip, to offer to cast off her last shred of dignity like that. When they did that there was not one man in that room who did not ask himself, no matter what he had done during the conflict, 'What have I done to bring us to this place?'
Lesson 3: Adaptation = sustainability.
Another lesson derived from Gbowee and her movement is the importance of adaptation. The women learned and adapted, adjusting their membership and tactics as they progressed. They moved from advocating for talks, to advocating for genuine negotiations and settlements. They came to the assistance of UN peacekeepers. They organized around implementation on the ground in each village regarding the treaty. Even today, they stand ready to mobilize if need be. This is sustainability.
Lesson 4: All we are saying is give women a chance.
It's impossible to look at this story and not wonder whether women are the missing link for peacebuilding the world over? While its true that many times women enter centers of traditional power by imitating and perpetuating the dominant militaristic discourse (David Ben-Gurion once described Golda Meir as the only man in his cabinet), history is beginning to show us that when allowed to enter in their own terms, women speak and act for peace in a different voice.
The Nobel Committee's decision to celebrate the role of women in peace does so much more than celebrate three extraordinary heroines. It wakes us all up to the power of women everywhere to transform and sustain a peaceful planet.
]]>The Mandela Doctrine: Lessons for Obamatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9726862011-09-20T22:49:38-04:002011-11-20T05:12:02-05:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/
What's a leader to do? Ask Nelson Mandela.
Mandela was a man of many contradictions. Born the son of a village community leader, he developed an abiding respect for authority. Yet as a young man, he spent decades of his life fighting doggedly against state authorities in South Africa. Modeling his father, he learned to collaborate and unite. But training as a boxer and trial lawyer, he became a tenacious fighter. Sharing the African National Congresses' core value of non-violence, he became a master at non-cooperation and civil disobedience. But when these strategies were met with brutal violence on the streets of Johannesburg, he became a student of military strategy, munitions, sabotage and guerilla warfare.
While a political prisoner in Robben Island, he developed jujitsu tactics of influence; learning to use his lessor-power and the rules of the authorities for their undoing. But when elected president, Mandela displayed the compassion, grace and benevolence of a truly great leader. Through the many decades of his struggle against Apartheid and towards a united, multiethnic South Africa, Mandela needed all of these tactics and skills. He needed them to adapt, survive and be effective.
President Obama should follow Mandela's lead. He should employ every strategy available to him -- hard and soft, public and private, short-term and long-term -- to help jump-start the U.S. economy. He should:
A) Command and control -- Use the bully-pulpit and every ounce of his power, information and authority to demand, incentivize, threaten, coerce, expose and publicly shame resistant members of Congress to get them to pass an ambitious bill;
B) Take the high road -- Model exemplary, collaborative, win-win leadership by listening carefully to the needs and concerns of the bill's opponents, finding common ground on the priority objectives, and uniting both parties and the country around a common vision and purpose;
C) Build bottom-up support -- Reach out to as many constituent groups as possible, including his base, his younger Internet community, his allies in business, media and politics, as well as his opponents, and plead, barter, beg, and ingratiate himself in order to mobilize them and secure their support for the bill;
D) Appease his opponents -- Ignore the attacks, inflammatory rhetoric and hyperbole of his opponents when absolutely necessary, and be willing to negotiate with them on their key demands while quietly laying-in-wait for conditions to change and opportunities to present themselves where he can effectively turn the tables;
E) Develop a strong BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) -- Spend time and energy developing alternative strategies, where he can still achieve his principle goals -- some unilaterally through executive action if necessary -- to lessen his dependence on Congress in these matters; and
F) Revolt -- know the limits of conciliation. Know where he must draw a line for what matters most. Know that some situations call for a revolution; for drastic measures -- and communicate clearly what those principles are and when enough is enough -- damn the consequences.
This is smart power -- the capacity to employ different types of influence in different situations -- in an artful manner -- to achieve one's goals. Harvard Professor Joseph Nye has been advocating the use of smart power, a combination of hard power (military, economic, etc.) and soft power (moral, cultural, etc.) in our foreign policy for years. And President Obama has taken to this idea. Now is the time to employ a similar approach on critical economic issues.
Research has found that although many of our leaders tend to get stuck in one approach to negotiating conflict (domination or over-conciliation), our more effective leaders are more nimble. They read situations more carefully, consider their short and long-term objectives and then employ a variety of different strategies in order to increase the probabilities that their agenda will succeed. They know the difference between a temporary dispute and a long-term war. They know when to stay the course and when to change tactics. They recognize that good leadership requires both -- providing a sense of stability, vision and purpose, and the capacity to recognize and respond effectively to important changes in the landscape.
And this is what is needed to address our country's economic hardships today. President Obama must privately pressure, publically shame, even coerce Republicans and Democrats in Congress to pass the bill, continue to model the high-road public leadership he has displayed through his administration, return to the aggressive bottom-up coalition-building tactics of his campaign, tolerate and appease his opponents only when absolutely necessary, and all the while be thinking long-term and developing alternative scenarios and venues for reform. This strategy should be based on a clear sense of a bottom-line; the point at which he is willing to accept the consequences of drastic actions to do what he believes is right.
An environment as complex, volatile and polarized as Washington is today requires adaptive leaders who employ smart power effectively. Leaders who are masters at combining A through F above and employing networks of agents skilled in them all to move us forward. No, President Obama is not fighting apartheid, but he is battling an obstinate congress in a time of economic crisis for the majority of Americans.
Here's hoping that our President is up to marshaling all the above.
Peter T. Coleman, PhD, is on faculty at Teachers College and the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Director of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, and author of The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts.]]>The Mathematics of Middle East Conflict and Peacetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8877232011-07-01T10:59:56-04:002011-08-31T05:12:01-04:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/ Experts estimate that about five percent of international conflicts become intractable: highly destructive, enduring and resistant to multiple good-faith attempts at resolution. These conflicts seem to develop a power of their own that is inexplicable and total, driving groups to act in ways that go against their best interests and sow the seeds of their own ruin. And although uncommon, they last an average of 36 years and have accounted for 49% of international wars (including two world wars) since 1816, 76% of civil wars since 1946, and evoke disproportionate levels of expense, misery, hopelessness and instability.
A branch of applied mathematics called complexity science provides a basic platform for understanding how intractable conflicts assemble themselves into attractors; these are tightly-coupled systems that resist change. Think of how a person's heart rate stabilizes around a certain beat pattern, or how one's blood pressure seeks a particular level, or how bodyweight seems to have a specific set point. These are attractors. And even though they may change temporarily (we may lose seven pounds on a crash diet), odds are they will soon return to their attractor. The five percent of intractable social conflicts evidence the same rules: no matter what we do they always return.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an immensely complicated hundred-year-old conflict that today operates and is reinforced across a multitude of issues, time periods, stakeholders and lands. It has become what Stephen Cohen, founder of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development describes as "the crucible of multiple conflicts in the region and multiple grievances that feed upon one another and that produce reoccurring eruptions of violence." Unfortunately, every large-scale effort at peacemaking to date -- at Oslo, Wye, Camp David, Taba, Geneva, all twenty-six proposals and counting -- have been co-opted by the conflict and seem to have only contributed to peace fatigue. In fact, there is some evidence that such efforts only make matters worse with the five percent.
However, given that the broad parameters of a permanent two-state settlement are clear, for the most part, it seems that something more basic is contributing to the continued intractability of the conflict. Namely, the tightly-coupled nature of the conflict's many dimensions (psychological, political, communal, structural, religious, regional, and international), the accumulation of negativity and dissipation of positivity over decades, the disproportional influence of small groups of extremists, and the resulting closed, non-adaptive, self-organizing system. In other words, we are confronted with an intractable conflict attractor.
What does the Five Percent perspective recommend for the Israel-Palestinian conflict? Here are a few thoughts.
Capitalize on current regional instability. In studies by Paul Diehl and Gary Goetz of the approximately 850 enduring conflicts that occurred throughout the world between 1816 to 1992, over three-quarters of them were found to have ended within ten years of a major political shock (world wars, civil wars, significant changes in territory and power relations, regime change, independence movements, or transitions to democracy). Events such as those erupting in the Middle East region today promote optimal conditions for dramatic realignment of sociopolitical systems. However, the effects of such destabilization are often not immediately apparent and do not ensure radical change; it is therefore only a necessary but insufficient condition for peace.
Decouple the conflict. Most enduring conflicts require a period in which they de-link from other, more distant conflicts, before peace can emerge. The fate of Israel-Palestine would improve considerably were it to de-link from the many other regional and international conflicts with which it is associated. In the 1970s and 1980s, in fact, the Arab-Israeli conflict became less severe as Jordan chose not to take part in the 1973 war and Egypt made peace with Israel.
Work from the bottom up. Shifting focus from big-picture ideas to achievable, on-the-ground goals can loosen the conflict's stranglehold on the peace process and ignite it from the bottom up. During round-table negotiations, focus first on moving the practical aspects of the society forward (functional health care, agriculture, transportation, tourism, etc.). Working at this lower level, while temporarily circumventing the global issues of power, control and identity, can help to initiate an altogether new emergent dynamic.
Stop making peace. It may seem counterintuitive, but is probably best for some peacemakers to not work directly on increasing the peace. While it is critical that members of NGOs and community-based organizations do whatever possible to increase intercommunal positivity and decrease negativity and suffering, it may be best to do so in a manner divorced from the "peace process," so as to avoid the polarization that can result from falling prey to the politics of the attractor.
Identify and support indigenous repellers for violence. Communities around the world -- indeed, most especially the major religions present in the Israel-Palestine region -- have well-established taboos against committing particular forms of violence and aggression. To varying degrees, they all emphasize impulse control, tolerance, nonviolence, and concern for the welfare of others. These values, when extended to members of other groups, hold great potential for the prevention of violence and the peaceful resolution of conflict.
The five percent of intractable conflicts are different. They follow a unique set of rules and dynamics that make them particularly damaging and unresponsive to standard forms of diplomacy. Middle East peace may at last erupt when we learn to understand this.
Peter T. Coleman, PhD is on faculty at Teachers College and the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Director of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, and author of The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts. ]]>Ethnic Divisions and the Fall of the Arab Spring: What's in a Name?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8747712011-06-10T10:12:03-04:002011-08-10T05:12:01-04:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/
Is this inevitable?
It's true that humans are tribal. Not just Sunni and Shia or Coptic Christians and Muslims, but Pro-Life and Pro-Choice supporters, Republicans and Democrats, Red Sox and Yankee fans. We, each of us, identify by clan, borough, school, profession, religion, ideology, skin color, disease, sexual preference, nationality, etc.
But group identification is a mixed-bag. It can bestow great benefits -- an enhanced sense of esteem, efficacy, belongingness, harmony and security -- and it can lead to great harms -- outgroup intolerance, exclusion, contempt, violence and annihilation. The central question is what determines the mix -- whether our ethnic identities unite us or divide us? Decades of social-psychological research has shed light on this.
First, ethnic identity is not a stable or innate thing. It is our sense of who we are in the social world, which unfolds through a life-long process of discovery (assimilation) and creation (accommodation) that occurs through countless interactions with members of various groups in a cultural and political context. So context is key. For instance, researchers studying minority identity development in the US have stressed the profound influence a context of majority privilege, dominance and exclusion has in shaping the oppositional identities of many minority youth.
Our collective identities are also typically complex; composed of multiple group associations each with different aspects and sub-identities. Scholars have mapped roughly 22 different elements that distinguish identities, including their level of relative importance, certainty, salience, positivity, active involvement, emotional attachment, choice or imposition, and so on. They are like those beautiful Calder Mobiles -- with their many components spinning and moving off in various directions -- which ultimately combine to compose a whole -- I/we. But it is how these different components come together to constitute us vs. them that's critical to understand.
Scholars believe that humans are hard-wired to categorize the world and that children begin to see group differences as early as three-to-five years old (they favor their ingroup around 3, then around 5 years start to connect this to outgroup negativity). Early research found that simply placing people in arbitrary groups (bean-quantity over and under-estimators) was enough to elicit a sense of identification with an ingroup. But it's important to note that these "minimal groups" only led to ingroup bias when people assumed that members of their own group were more likely to help them than members of other groups. And they were more likely to spark outgroup discrimination when people started to suspect unfair treatment from the outgroup. So interdependence and injustice is where intergroup strife begins.
Conflict between groups can stem from many sources, but typically involves three universal elements: ethnocentrism (our group is best), stereotyping and an uneven distribution of goods. Most of these conflicts are fleeting or negotiable. However, research indicates that the longer a conflict goes unresolved, the more likely identity-based concerns for group dignity, security, efficacy, and justice will be evoked as the conflict becomes more and more integral to an understanding of self and others in the situation.
Under conditions of long-term stress and threat (economic hardship, oppression, violence, etc.) ethnic identities can convergence toward monoliths where all dimensions of a group's identity -- such as ethnicity, religion and language -- collapse and become viewed as aligned. This is very common in war. Ingroups develop strong group loyalties and negatively sanction contact with outgroups, eventually viewing their identities as zero-sum such that a negation of the other becomes a fundamental aspect of their identity. This can be reinforced by negative, homogeneous, abstract, and stereotypical outgroup images which are self-perpetuating. Over time, these identities are passed onto future generations through parenting, the media, and the teaching of history, resulting in new generations with rigid intergroup beliefs and simplistic views of the other. At this point, the ongoing processes of adaptation through social interaction associated with normal identity development cease to function, resulting in a frozen sense of us vs. them, which seems impossible to change under conditions of high threat. This is a recipe for protracted interethnic violence.
So what can be done to mitigate the collapse and ossification of ethnic identities to prevent such disaster?
First, check assumptions.
Violent groups. It is a common error to assume that other groups are inherently more tribal and violent than our own. But the social-political conditions in which groups operate largely determine this. Just recall the actions of good Americans at Abu Ghraib, My Lai, Hiroshima and Wounded Knee. Good groups can do horrible things under the right conditions.
Outgroup homogeneity. It is also an error to assume that members of outgroups, even extremist groups, are all alike. Although groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic Brotherhood are often viewed by Westerners as monolithic threats, it is important to recognize that they often evidence internal divisions within their groups; individual members or subgroups who differ in their motives and in their willingness to negotiate. Assuming only the worst usually guarantees the worst.
Ethnic conflict. It is also important to recognize that destructive ethnic conflict is relatively rare; most ethnic groups tolerate other groups or live together in harmony and are able to resolve their differences constructively. The more problematic ones simply get more attention and thus seem pervasive. In most societies, functional intergroup relations provide a safety net of civility and a model for ethnic tolerance.
Second, increase complexity. A wide-body of research suggests that increasing the level of complexity within societies goes a long way in mitigating intergroup polarization and violence. For instance:
Societal complexity. Anthropological research has shown that some societies are organized in nested groups (low complexity), where members of distinct ethnic groups tend to work, play, study, and socialize with members of their own group; they have little collaborative contact with members of other groups. Other societies are organized through crosscutting structures (high complexity), including ethnically integrated business associations, trade unions, professional groups, political parties, and sports clubs. This has been identified as one of the most effective ways of making interethnic conflict manageable and nonviolent.
Social network complexity. People with more diversified, complex social networks have been found to be more tolerant of out-groups and more supportive of policies helpful to them. They tend to have more positive out-group experiences, share more interests with people outside their own groups, and learn more about the contributions of outgroup members and the problems they face.
Social identity complexity. People also differ in the degree to which they see themselves as members of different identity groups that are aligned and coherent versus groups that are contradictory and do not overlap. A liberal, pro-choice, pro-gay rights antiwar individual would therefore have much lower social identity complexity (more coherence) than a gay, Republican, antiwar NRA supporter (higher internal contradiction). Research shows that people with higher social identity complexity are more tolerant of out-groups and more open in general.
Integrative complexity. This refers to the level of complexity of the cognitive rules people use to process and analyze incoming information. Research spanning decades shows that people who have higher levels of integrative complexity tend to be more conciliatory in conflict; and also that as conflicts escalate, peoples' level of cognitive complexity diminishes.
These findings point to the critical importance of building or bolstering more complex and integrated social institutions and networks, educational experiences, history curriculum, and media representations to establish the infrastructure for peaceful ethnic relations to emerge. Ultimately, the problem of ethnic conflict is less the severity of the actions of the parties and more so the closed, fixed, and intolerant nature of intergroup attitudes and their subsequent imperviousness to change.
Peter T. Coleman, PhD is a social-organizational psychologist on faculty at Teachers College and The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and author of the new book: The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts.
]]>Are Peacemakers Helping or Harming? Conflict Resolution and the Science-Practice Gaptag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8679672011-05-27T10:42:27-04:002011-07-27T05:12:01-04:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/
Then in 1910, the Carnegie Foundation released the Flexner Report, which, among other shocks, exposed the vast drift between science and practice in medicine. The Report triggered a scandal in the field and led to profound changes in the education and licensing of physicians. Even today, it is estimated that only 20 to 25 percent of medical practices are evidence-based; that is, based on strong research which supports the effectiveness of the treatment.
In the past several years, there have been similar rumblings in such areas as teaching, psychology, organizational consulting and peacemaking. A surge in activity and investment around negotiation, mediation, and other conflict resolution practices in the United States have brought the efficacy of these practices under increasing scrutiny. However, an evaluation of the 18 university-based, Hewlett Foundation-funded conflict resolution theory centers found that the work of most practitioners surveyed had been largely unaffected by the important contributions generated by the Centers (new theory, tactics, publications, etc.).
At the same time, much of the research conducted at these Centers was found to be "removed from practice realities and constraints." Many practitioners of conflict resolution dismissed the contributions of theorists and researchers, particularly when the research challenged their own opinions or methods. At the same time, scholars often failed to utilize the expertise of highly skilled practitioners in their development of theory, and research designs often failed to take into account what practitioners and policy makers wanted or needed to know.
This means that too few of the theoretical models employed in the field today are sufficiently informed by the practical realities of conflict, and that current practices used in the field have been insufficiently informed by new research coming out of the lab -- research which could help determine if the practices actually do what we think they do on the ground and which could help explore how to make them most effective.
Direct experience is not enough. Virtually any method of resolution may prove effective in addressing one or two situations of conflict. But we often do not know why. It might be because they are sound methods, because the particular method happened to work well with a particular type of conflict, because the intervener was particularly skillful or artful, or because of random luck. This gap between the science and practice of conflict resolution presents a dangerous challenge to the field of peacemaking today, particularly when it involves the high-stakes world of our most deadly, enduring conflicts.
So it is critical that peacemakers be trained in methods that have been proven to work to address the current state of the conflict, increase the probabilities for constructive relations between the parties in the future, and decrease the probabilities for destructive future encounters.
The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts, written by Professor Peter T. Coleman, Director of Columbia University's International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, presents one such approach. It offers the first systematic, integrated, evidence-based model for understanding our most difficult conflicts, and offers a coherent set of principles and practices for resolving them. Combining research from complexity science and the social sciences, it offers an optimistic but realistic view of contemporary peacemaking.
Peter T. Coleman, PhD is a social-organizational psychologist on faculty at Columbia University's Teachers College and The Earth Institute, and author of The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts. See: http://www.fivepercentbook.com/?p=1
]]>Seasons of Change in the Arab World: For Better or Worse?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8648312011-05-20T14:33:46-04:002011-07-20T05:12:01-04:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/
There is no shortage of speculation as to the causes of this political tsunami. Initial reports suggested that the trigger for the revolutions occurred in Tunisia when a college-educated street vendor burned himself to death in protest of his dismal prospects for survival amid poverty in that country. Experts tout the economic malaise that has gripped the region and much of the world. When the extravagant trappings of the ruling elite -- exposed in part through WikiLeaks documents -- coupled with the heavy-handed rule of autocratic rulers who often seemed inept or unwilling to provide sufficient services to their people, events reached a tipping-point. Add to this the mounting sense of injustice from widespread forms of political repression and exclusion that have been enforced in many states in the region, where Islamists groups and communists have been barred from active participation in politics for decades. And then there is the youth. The growing multitudes of unemployed, energized, well-educated, tech-savvy young people have given birth to an extraordinary pan-Arab youth movement. Through Facebook and Twitter, they share their grievances with the world and, combining strategies of non-violent activism with Madison Avenue marketing techniques, have managed to fuel and sustain multiple uprisings. Capping it off is acute outrage at the violent responses to protests by local and national police and military, which in Tunisia left 78 dead and 94 injured and in one day claimed the lives of 86 people in Syria. All of these factors have combined to create a perfect storm for contagious revolt.
But why now? Why not 5, 10, even 20 years ago? Here is something to consider.
Research by Paul Diehl and Gary Goetz on the approximately 850 enduring conflicts (those lasting 20+ years) that occurred throughout the world between 1816 and 2001 found that over 95% of them started within ten years after a major political shock; a massive change in the domestic or international political environment (world war, civil war, etc.). Ten years ago 9/11 shocked the world, and on its heels the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, deposed their leaders, and created a level of turmoil and instability in the region from which it has yet to recover. Such events, as horrible and costly as they are, provide optimal conditions for dramatic realignment of socio-political systems, even those well beyond the borders of the countries directly affected. However, the effects of such destabilization are often not immediately apparent; they can take several years to unfold.
The bad news is that the enduring conflicts triggered by such shocks, which constitute only about 5% of international conflicts, are the most grueling, costly and destructive and are responsible for most major wars. The good news is that the current state of instability presents one of the region's best hopes for achieving a more durable peace between the regions' ruling elite and its many marginalized, underprivileged groups. For in the same studies of enduring conflicts, the authors found that over three-quarters of them also ended within ten years of a major political shock. Thus, ruptures to stability can bring radical changes in political systems in the form of the most destructive wars or new chances for sustainable peace. If we view the past few decades of political repression, exclusion and coercive rule by states in this region as multiple simmering, enduring conflicts, then we see the time is also ripe for peace.
The real work for the advocates of peace, justice and freedom in the region, the Arab world, the U.S. and the international community, begins now. This entails essentially two tasks. First, the arduous work of bolstering or establishing a complex array of institutions, mechanisms and social norms -- through grassroots NGOs, government initiatives and international agencies -- which encourage tolerance, cooperation, inclusion and justice. But in parallel each nation must begin to actively dismantle the institutions and mechanisms that have for decades fomented inequality, resentment, exclusion and contempt. The effects of this work, like those of political shocks, may take a decade or more to surface. But without them, the Arab Spring is likely to descend into a long, abysmal winter.
Peter T. Coleman, PhD is a social-organizational psychologist on faculty at Columbia University's Teachers College and The Earth Institute, and author of The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts.]]>Bottom-Up Peacetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8481642011-04-22T15:48:14-04:002011-06-22T05:12:01-04:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/Co-authored by Morton Deutsch
The protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict has again reached a stalemate and negotiations between the parties have broken off. However, we believe it is urgent that the United States and the others in the Quartet (The UN, the EU and Russia) take steps to initiate a renewed movement for peace. It is urgent because the Egyptian revolution is likely to harden positions on both sides of the conflict making it unlikely that negotiations will resume unless there is an important, dramatic change. With the deadlock, we believe that the Palestinians will suffer even more than they have under Israeli occupation and the Israelis will be exposed to increasing danger from long-range missiles able to hit large population centers in Israel.
Our proposal is:
1. The United States, preferably with the other members of the Quartet, present the Geneva Accord, which was unofficially negotiated by a team of highly respected Israelis and Palestinians, as the final agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. However the Accord must be ratified by referendum by each of the two populations. It presents a comprehensive solution to most issues (including security, border crossings, the Implementation and Verification Group (IVG), roads, water management, environmental concerns, the economy, and the division of Jerusalem) vital to ensuring the end of the conflict and the realization of the national visions of both parties.
2. Prior to the referendum, the United Nations would take responsibility to see that the details of the agreement be widely and accurately publicized through media accessible to both populations. These information sessions should begin within communities facilitating shared understanding of the current issues and the Accord. This would help buffer against the intentional use of misinformation in fostering political divisions. The UN could look to groups like the Public Conversations Project and the National Issues Forum as well as local Israeli-Palestinian dialogue groups for guidance here. In addition, a comprehensive understanding of the Accord would need to be made accessible to others as well, including other Arab-speaking countries in the region and the large Diasporas around the globe.
3. An agreement is only the start of a peace process. To help its further development as well as to incentivize the agreement, we propose that the Quartet offer a contemporary version of the Marshall Plan that would involve Israel and Palestine as well as other Arab countries (such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Tunisia) in a large scale economic redevelopment initiative aimed at a cooperative reconstruction of basic infrastructure, education, healthcare, housing and business and industry across the region. These activities should involve members of both communities in joint-projects aimed at improving the day-to-day existence of the general populations.
This proposal is based upon the recognition that the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority have, after many attempts, been unable to come to a final agreement. Their continued hostility is not only dangerous for both communities, but it also poses a serious threat to many other nations including the United States. The two parties are deadlocked and stalemated largely because of extremists on both sides. We believe that the general populations of Israel and the Palestinian territories would both support the Geneva Accord, or some modification of it. This would by-pass the stalemated official negotiations and place an agreement in the hands of the most important parties: the citizens on both sides.
The time to act in NOW. The recent events in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere in the region present both potential danger and potential opportunity for a radical shift in the conflict dynamics in Israel-Palestine. We believe that implementation of this proposal provides the best chance for a permanent productive Israel-Palestine peace and for the democratic transformation of many of the nations in the Middle East
Morton Deutsch, PhD is E. L. Thorndike Professor Emeritus at Teachers College, Columbia University, founding director of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, author of The Resolution of Conflict: Constructive and Destructive Processes and co-editor of The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice.
Peter T. Coleman, PhD is on faculty at both Teachers College and the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Director of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, co-editor of The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice and author of the forthcoming book: The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts.]]>Give Peace a (Last) Chancetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8304202011-03-07T09:36:57-05:002011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00Peter T. Coleman, PhDhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-t-coleman-phd/
Mercifully, the resolution of other seemingly intractable conflicts offers Israel-Palestine a ray of hope and a way forward, particularly in light of the change currently taking place in the region. In South Africa, Mozambique, Liberia, and Northern Ireland, we witnessed conflicts that were locked in violent cycles for decades, even generations, where multiple good-faith attempts at peacemaking failed, and where, eventually, peace emerged.
Why? Here are a few facts.
Destabilization. In a study by Paul Diehl and Gary Goetz, of the approximately 850 enduring conflicts that occurred throughout the world between 1816 to 1992, over three-quarters of them were found to have ended within ten years of a major political shock (e.g. world war, regime change, transitions to democracy). Events such as those erupting in North Africa and the Middle East today create optimal conditions for dramatic realignment of sociopolitical systems. However, the effects of such destabilization are often not immediately apparent and do not ensure radical change; it is a necessary but insufficient condition for peace.
De-linking. Today the Middle East conflict operates across several interrelated levels in Israel-Palestine and beyond, including the large canvas of Arab and Jewish communities operating outside of the region. Research has shown that the de-linking of conflicts that have become enmeshed is strongly associated with the termination phase of most enduring rivalries. For instance, the Arab-Israeli conflict became less severe in the 1970s and 1980s, as other rivalries began to delink, including Jordan's choice not to take part in the 1973 war and Egypt making peace with Israel.
Alternatives. The emergence of sustainable peace requires the presence of stable alternatives to war. Beyond a negotiated agreement, it requires the establishment of attitudes, relationships, policies and structures that promote constructive ways of relating. One reason the Egyptian-Israeli peace may come under threat now is that it relies too heavily on geopolitical interests of governments, and not enough on cooperation between various segments of the Israeli and Egyptian populations. The enduring peace in post-Apartheid South Africa is due, in part, to the more integrated communities there, which sprung from a multitude of interethnic initiatives that took root in the aftermath of the settlement.
Today, Israel-Palestine and their respective international advocacy groups can use these factors to steer the region toward peace. A peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians will go a long way to strengthen the secular or pluralistic elements within the populations clamoring for change in the region, which will be crucial for the survival of both nations. As widely noted, the two most powerful forces propelling the destabilizing democracy movements in the Middle East are youth and technology. And while the older, more established American-Jewish and Arab diaspora communities have become more vigorously opposed to Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, the younger, more secular and progressive generations of Arabs and Jews outside of Israel-Palestinian are de-linking; distancing themselves from their respective establishments and less identified with the status quo of the stalemated conflict. If this younger generation can link-up with their counterparts and youthful members of both Diasporas through Internet social networks, they may further de-link themselves from the intractability of the conflict and push both governments towards reconciliation.
To the extent that this combination of grassroots leadership, youth and technology succeeds, it can provide a sense of viable alternatives; the third factor required for sustainable peace. The importance of the diaspora communities to their respective homelands, financially and culturally, can be leveraged to encourage and inspire the formation of on-going intercommunal relationships between Palestinian and Israeli youth. As President Obama put it after the fall of Mubarak, "And above all, we saw a new generation emerge -- a generation that uses their own creativity and talent and technology to call for a government that represented their hopes and not their fears." Now is the time to inspire the Israeli and Palestinian youth to join their peers elsewhere and give peace one more chance.
Peter T. Coleman, PhD is director of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Teachers College, Columbia University, co-editor of The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice and author of the forthcoming book: The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts. Alon Gratch, PhD is a New York based clinical psychologist and an author. He is currently working on his third book, The Israeli Mind: The Israeli National Character and How it's Shaping Our World.
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