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Committee on International Conflict Resolution
Alexander L. George (Chair),
Department of Political Science, Stanford University
Juergen Dedring,
Graduate Center, City University of New York
Francis M. Deng,
Brookings Institution, Washington, DC
Ronald J. Fisher,
Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan
James E. Goodby,
U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC
Robert H. Mnookin,
School of Law, Harvard University
Raymond Shonholtz,
Partners for Democratic Change, San Francisco
Janice G. Stein,
Department of Political Science, University of Toronto
Stanley J. Tambiah,
Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
M. Crawford Young,
Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison
I. William Zartman,
School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Paul C. Stern, Study Director,
National Research Council
Daniel Druckman, Consultant,
George Mason University
Heather Schofield, Senior Project Assistant,
National Research Council
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Preface
This paper is one of a series being prepared for the National Research Council's Committee on International Conflict Resolution. The committee was organized in late 1995 to respond to a growing need for prevention, management, and resolution of violent conflict in the international arena, a concern about the changing nature and context of such conflict in the post-Cold War era, and a recent expansion of knowledge in the field.
The committee's main goal is to advance the practice of conflict resolution by using the methods and critical attitude of science to examine the effectiveness of various techniques and concepts that have been advanced for preventing, managing, and resolving international conflicts. The committee's research agenda has been designed to supplement the work of other groups, particularly the Carnegie Corporation of New York's Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, which issued its final report in December 1997. The committee has identified a number of specific techniques and concepts of current interest to policy practitioners and has asked leading specialists on each one to carefully review and analyze available knowledge and to summarize what is known about the conditions under which each is or is not effective. These papers present the results of their work.
Each paper in the series attempts to address important practical questions by testing conventional wisdom against experience, identifying critical issues, making concepts clearer, and summarizing the lessons of experience. In the committee's judgment, such analysis will help conflict resolution practitioners in governments, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and academic centers to diagnose conflict
situations and make better informed choices about whether, when, and how to intervene.
The committee recognizes the great difficulties inherent in any effort to draw conclusions about the effects of interventions in historical processes. We nevertheless believe that these papers, by virtue of their thorough and critical examination of the relevant evidence, will add appreciably to practitioners' understanding. They will also advance a second goal of the committee, which is to improve the quality of future analytical efforts to understand international conflict and conflict resolution.
We express our appreciation to the Carnegie Corporation of New York for its generous support of the committee's activities and to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance for support for the separate publication of this work. We thank Ben Reilly and Andrew Reynolds for their work on this paper. We also express our appreciation to the many practitioners and scholars who contributed to this effort by granting interviews, participating in a seminar to discuss an early version of the paper, or formally reviewing drafts. We also thank Heather Schofield, who has managed the logistics of this project from its inception, and James Ryan, who did the copy editing.
ALEXANDER L. GEORGE, CHAIR
PAUL C. STERN, STUDY DIRECTOR
COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Papers on International Conflict Resolution
This paper is one of a series being prepared for the National Research Council's Committee on International Conflict Resolution. When the series is completed, the papers will be published in a volume, tentatively entitled International Conflict Resolution: Techniques And Evaluation. The expected contents are listed below.
Overview
1 International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War
Alexander George, Stanford University, and Paul C. Stern, National Research Council
2 Evaluating Interventions in History
Paul C. Stern, National Research Council, and Daniel Druckman, George Mason University
Concepts from Traditional Diplomacy
3 Defining Moment: The Threat and Use of Force in American Foreign Policy Since 1989
Barry M. Blechman and Tamara Cofman Wittes,
Henry L. Stimson Center (Paper No. 1)
4 Economic Sanctions and Post-Cold War Conflict Resolution: Challenges for Theory and Policy
Bruce Jentleson, University of California, Davis
5 "Spoiler" Problems in Peace Processes
Steven John Stedman, Stanford University
(A version of this paper appeared in International Security, fall 1997, 22(2):5–53.)
6 Timing and Ripeness
William Zartman, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Nontraditional Forms in Conflict Resolution
7 OSCE Interventions in Regional Conflicts
P. Terrence Hopmann, Brown University
8 Interactive Conflict Resolution: A View for Policy makers
Harold Saunders, Kettering Foundation
9 Evaluating Interactive Problem-Solving Efforts
Nadim Rouhana, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Structural Approaches to Conflict in Divided States
10 Electoral Systems and Conflict in Divided Societies
Ben Reilly, International IDEA (Stockholm) and Andrew Reynolds, University of Notre Dame (Paper No. 2)
11 Autonomy Regimes and Conflict Resolution
Yash Ghai, University of Hong Kong
12 Language Policy and Conflict in Multilingual States
David Laitin, University of Chicago
13 Truth, justice, and Reconciliation in National Transitions
Priscilla Hayner, Project on Comparative Truth-Seeking, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Conclusions
14 Lessons from Recent History