Comprehensive Conflict Resolution: Connecting Academic 'Silos'

This SSHRC Connection Grant workshop seeks to bring together a small group of experts to discuss the fact that peace processes do not operate with a clear understanding of the varied and comprehensive elements of conflict resolution, or the impact that those elements have on each other in achieving desired goals.

This problem is in part due to the 'siloed' approach through which many experts on conflict resolution approach their work: security experts work on security, human rights and transitional justice experts on human rights and justice, constitutional design specialists on power-sharing or on autonomy arrangements, and so on.

The workshop has two main objectives: First, to develop an understanding of the 'comprehensive' nature of conflict resolution, with its seven key dimensions: power-sharing; autonomy; refugee returns; security sector reform; disarmament, demobilization and re-integration; transitional justice; and economic reconstruction. Second, to explore how the different dimensions impact on each other in either positive or negative ways, and what the best approach is to provide lasting conflict resolution that satisfies stability and justice concerns.

Thursday 13 October

13:00–14:14           Lunch

14:15–14:20           CCR Workshop welcome and brief introductory remarks – Stephen Larin

14:20–15:45           CCR Panel 1 (E202)

Ian O’Flynn: “Vetoes Rights in Power-Sharing Democracies: A Justificatory Test”

Dawn Walsh: “Caring is Sharing: Why Independent Commissions in Post-Conflict Societies Have Powersharing Arrangements”

15:45–16:00           Coffee break

16:00–17:30           Keynote address (B201)

John McGarry & Brendan O’Leary, “Mediation and Advisory Work in Deeply Divided Places”

End of day’s events, end of IPSA colloquium

Friday 14 October

9:30–11:15             CCR Panel 2 (E202)

(Coffee service begins outside the room at 9:15)

Neophytos Loizides: “Can institutions shape preferences so ethnic grievances be accommodated? Conjoint experiments as counterfactuals”

Allison McCulloch: “Getting Things Done? Process, Performance, and Decision-Evasion in Consociational Systems”

Samantha Twietmeyer: “Coming Together or Staying Apart: Implications of the Green Line for Negotiations in Cyprus”

11:15–11:30           Coffee break

End of events

Attendance is open to all.