Emergent Conflict and Peaceful Change
Also by Hugh Miall CONTEMPORARY CONFLICT RESOLUTION (co-author with Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse) REDEFINING EUROPE: New Patterns of Conflict and Cooperation (editor) MINORITY RIGHTS IN EUROPE: The Scope for a Transnational Regime (editor) SHAPING THE NEW EUROPE THE PEACEMAKERS: Peaceful Settlement of Conflicts since 1945 BEYOND DETERRENCE: Britain, Germany and the New European Security Debate (co-author with Oliver Ramsbotham) NUCLEAR WEAPONS: Who s in Charge? ENERGY EFFICIENT FUTURES: Opening the Solar Option (co-author with David Olivier, François Nectoux and Mark Operman)
Emergent Conflict and Peaceful Change Hugh Miall Professor of International Relations University of Kent, UK
Hugh Miall 2007 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-0-333-98766-7 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-0-333-98767-4 DOI 10.1057/9780230288492 ISBN 978-0-230-28849-2 (ebook) This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
To Claire and Naomi
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Contents List of Tables List of Figures Preface x xi xii 1 Introduction 1 The Debate over Peaceful Change 4 E.H.Carr and the debate between idealists and realists 5 Karl Deutsch and security communities 7 Heikki Patomäki and the republican approach 9 The Meaning of Peaceful Change 10 Emergent Conflict and Conflict Transformation 13 Social Capacity and Social Context 14 Causes and Preventors of War 15 Conflict Prevention and Peace-building 17 Conclusion 18 2 A Theory of Emergent Conflict 19 Introduction 19 Lords of Milan 20 Theories of Conflict 22 The classical theorists 22 Conflict theorists 26 A Theory of Emergent Conflict 32 Evolutionary interpretation of conflict 32 A cognitive theory of goal formation 46 From conflict of interest to overt conflict 56 From conflict of interest to structural conflict 61 Cultural, identity and belief conflict 63 Conclusion 65 3 Co-operation and Conflict Transformation 66 Co-operation 69 Co-operation and co-ordination 74 Co-operation and public goods 75 Co-operation and specialization 76 vii
viii Contents Conflict Transformation 77 Conclusion 81 Appendix: Co-operation under Externalities 82 4 Conflict and Context 85 How Contexts Shape Conflicts 85 Amplifying and Dampening Conflicts 89 Contextual Changes and Conflict Transformation 91 5 Preventors of War 95 Introduction 95 War Prevention in History 96 Violence and prevention in early human history 98 Bands 98 Tribes and chieftaincies 99 War prevention among early states 100 Wars and war prevention in classical China 101 Political unification in England and Japan 103 European wars and war prevention since Westphalia 104 The Rise of the Liberal Peace 106 The role of regional organizations 109 The end of major power war? 110 Conclusion: Prevention of international wars 110 Structural Prevention of Civil Wars 111 Democracy and democratization 113 Development 115 Political stability and institutions 116 Institutions 116 Quality of governance 117 Human rights 117 Education 118 Conclusion: prevention of civil wars 118 Policy implications 119 6 Land Reforms and Peaceful Change 121 Introduction 121 The Origins of Inequality 122 Land Inequality and Conflict 125 Land Reforms 129 Peaceful Land Reforms 134 The Kerala Case 138 Conclusions 143
Contents ix 7 Emergent Conflict over Climate Change 146 Introduction 146 The Impact of Climate Change 147 Implications for Conflict 148 The North South Conflict 150 Conflict Analysis of the Climate Negotiations 154 The Energy Question 157 The Post-Kyoto Negotiations 159 A Conflict Transformation Approach 164 Conclusion 166 8 Conclusions: Peaceful Change and Political Community 168 Conditions for Peaceful Change 170 Prevention of Wars 173 Notes 175 Bibliography 182 Index 195
List of Tables 5.1 Armed conflicts by regime type, 1989 99 115 5.2 Quality of governance and incidence of violent ethnic conflicts in 113 countries, 1995 98 118 6.1 Logistic regression of agricultural labour on non-family farms and other variables on civil war onset, civil wars under way and revolutionary violence 128 6.2 Significant land reforms, 1945 2000 131 7.1 Estimates for global damage arising from climate change 161 7.2 Efforts to meet carbon abatement targets by region in 2025, expressed as a percentage of GDP 162 x
List of Figures 1.1 Two paths for conflict 4 1.2 Four paths for conflict 13 2.1 Lords of Milan 21 2.2 Payoffs for the war-averse Lords of Milan 28 2.3 The general bargaining situation 29 2.4 Lords of Milan as a prisoner s dilemma 29 2.5 A viability curve 34 2.6 Adaptation to two environments 35 2.7 A double-peaked curve 36 2.8 The social preference curve 36 2.9 Sub-groups with similar interests 36 2.10 Sub-groups with different interests 36 2.11 Conflict of interests 37 2.12 Conflict of interests in utility space 38 2.13 A convex conflict set 38 2.14 A concave conflict set 39 2.15 Complete incompatibility 39 2.16 Viability curves on two variables 43 2.17 Kolb s model of reflective learning 47 2.18 A model of adaptive learning 48 2.19 Goal trees of the ante-bellum North and South 52 2.20 Conflict as striving and frustration 55 3.1 Resolving conflicts by substituting goals 79 3.2 Resolving conflicts by adding shared goals 79 4.1 Conflict and context 88 5.1 Active conflicts 1946 2004 by conflict type 96 6.1 Impact of land reform on income distribution, welfare and poverty 124 6.2 Duration of peace periods in countries with prior land reform (LR 1) compared with those without (LR 0) 133 7.1 Global warming: the one-sided conflict 151 7.2 Global warming: the two-sided conflict 152 xi
Preface My interest in studying peaceful change and emergent conflict dates back to my PhD days, and I would like to acknowledge the inspiration of my then friend and supervisor, Paul Smoker, and of Michael Nicholson, who was also an important influence. I also acknowledge the life-work and inspiration of Adam Curle. Peace and conflict research in Britain is the poorer for the loss of these founding figures. I have incurred many debts in the preparation of this book. I would like to acknowledge the friendship and support of colleagues at the Richardson Institute at Lancaster University, and at the University of Kent where the book was completed. I am very grateful to Duco Hellema and his colleagues Jolle Demers and Chris van der Bergh at the Centre for Conflict Studies at the University of Utrecht, who provided a wonderful setting for a period of sabbatical leave spent working on the book. I am very grateful to John Moolakattu of the School of Gandhian Thought & Development Studies in the Mahatma Gandhi University at Kottayam for his insights into the social transformation of Kerala and the contribution he made through a background paper on this topic. I am grateful to Oliver Ramsbotham for his comments on draft chapters. I would also like to acknowledge discussions with Ian Bellany, Peter Bennett, Michael Dillon, Mark Duffield, Diana Francis, Michael Grubb, Nigel Howard, Preston King, Judith Large, Claire Leggatt, Michael Lipton, Chris Mitchell, Gerd Nonneman, Heikki Patomäki, Roy Prosterman, Tom Woodhouse, Joseph Valadez, Ximena Vengoechea, Andrew Williams and Maurice Yolles. I am also indebted to the scholars on whose work I have drawn, the enthusiasm of students at Lancaster and Kent, my colleagues at the Oxford Research Group and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Conflict Research Society, and the donors who have supported peace and conflict research in Britain. Most of all I would like to thank my wife Claire and daughter Naomi, to whom the book is dedicated. This book was a long time in the gestation but abrupt in its ending. I hope that further publications will appear in due course to expand on the themes developed here. HUGH MIALL Canterbury October 2006 xii