Characteristics of intractable conflicts

Intractable conflicts are essentially conflicts that persist because they appear impossible to resolve. Scholars have used labels such as deeply rooted conflict (Burton, 1987), protracted social conflict (Azar, 1990), moral conflict (Pearce and Littlejohn, 1997), and enduring rivalries (Goertz and Diehl, 1993) to depict similar phenomena.

Characteristics: Tractable Versus Intractable

But what makes intractable conflicts persist? Scholars have begun to identify a diverse and complex array of interrelated factors that can help us distinguish between tractable and intractable conflicts. Of course, all conflicts are unique and it may not always be useful to compare, say, moral conflicts with intractable con­flicts over territory or water rights, or conflicts between a husband and wife in the United States with those between a powerful majority group and members of a low-power group in East Asia. However, despite the many differences that arise in such comparisons, I suggest that intractable conflicts, particularly if they have persisted for some time, share to some degree some or all of the following char­acteristics related to their context, core issues, relations, processes, and outcomes.

Context

Legacies of Dominance and Injustice. Intractable conflicts regularly occur in situations where there exists a severe imbalance of power between the parties in which the more powerful exploit, control, or abuse the less powerful. Often,

Table 24.1. Characteristic Differences Between Tractable and Intractable Conflicts.

(Continued)

Table 24.1. Characteristic Differences Between Tractable and Intractable Conflicts. (Continued)

the power holders in such settings will use the existence of salient intergroup distinctions (such as ethnicity or class) as a means of maintaining or strength­ening their power base (Staub, 2001). Many of these conflicts are rooted in a history of colonialism, ethnocentrism, racism, sexism, or human rights abuses in the relations between the disputants (Azar, 1990). These legacies manifest in ideologies and practices at the cultural, structural, and relational levels of these conflicts, which act to maintain hierarchical relations and injustices and thereby perpetuate conflict.

Instability. When circumstances bring about substantial changes, they can rupture a basic sense of stability and cause great disturbances within a system. This is true whether it is the divorce of two parents, the failure of a state, or the collapse of a superpower. Under these conditions, conflict may surface because of shifts in the balance (or imbalance) of power between disputants or because of increased ambiguity about relative power (Pruitt and Kim, 2004). It can also emerge when a sense of relative deprivation arises out of changes in aspirations, expectations, or achievable outcomes of the parties (Gurr, 1970).

Issues

Human and Social Polarities. Tractable conflicts by definition involve resolv­able problems that can be integrated, divided, or otherwise negotiated to the relative satisfaction of a majority of the parties involved. As such, they have a finite beginning, middle, and end. Intractable conflicts often revolve around some of the more central dilemmas of human and social existence that are not resolvable in the traditional sense. These are polarities (structured contradic­tions) based on opposing human needs, tendencies, principles, or processes, which have a paradoxical reaction to most attempts to “solve” them. These can include dilemmas over change and stability, interdependence and security, inclu­sive and efficient decision making, and individual and group rights (Coleman, 2003).

Symbolism and Ideology. Intractable conflicts tend to involve issues with a depth of meaning, centrality, and interconnectedness with other issues that give them a pervasive quality (Rouhana and Bar-Tal, 1998). The tangible issues (land, money, water rights, and so on) that trigger hostilities in these settings are largely important because of the symbolic meaning that they carry or that is constructed and assigned to them. For instance, Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in 2000 was seen as a frivolous gesture to some and as a flagrant attack on Islam to others. Or, in Kashmir, much of the mountain­ous territory in dispute is frozen, uninhabitable wasteland, yet soldiers and civil­ians die each day to secure it.

Relationships

Exclusive and Inescapable. In many intractable conflicts, the relations between the parties develop in settings where exclusive social structures limit intergroup contact and isolate the in-group across family, work, and community domains. This lack of contact facilitates the development of abstract, stereotypical images of the other, autistic hostilities, and intergroup violence (Deutsch, 1973; Varshney, 2002). However, the relationships are also typically experienced as inescapable by the parties, where they see no way of extricating themselves without becom­ing vulnerable to an unacceptable loss. This may be due to a variety of con­straints including geographical, financial, moral, or psychological factors. When destructive conflicts persist under these conditions, they tend to damage or destroy the trust, faith, and cooperative potential necessary for constructive or tolerant relations. In such relationships, the negative aspects remain salient, and any positive encounters are forgotten or viewed with suspicion and miscon­strued as aberrations or attempts at deception.

Oppositional Group Identities. As group conflicts escalate, opposing groups become increasingly polarized through in-group discourse and out-group hos­tilities, resulting in the development of oppositional identities constructed around a negation and disparagement of the out-group (Kelman, 1999). This is particularly likely with collective identities of ascribed statuses (such as family, sex, racial, and national group membership) where there is a long-term emo­tional attachment to the group that is unalterable and significant. When such group identities are subject to discrimination or oppression (and such treatment is viewed as unjust), protracted conflicts are likely to manifest and persist. These group memberships can provide members with an important sense of mutual respect, a meaningful understanding of the social world, and a sense of collec­tive efficacy and agency. However, deep investments in these polarized identities can become a primary obstacle to constructive forms of conflict engagement and sustainable peace.

Intense Internal Dynamics. Conflict is more likely to be resolvable when it concerns (1) conscious needs and motives, (2) between unified groups or between individuals with little ambivalence regarding resolution, (3) over overt issues which can be explicitly detailed and addressed. As such, the conflictual intrapsychic and intragroup dynamics and hidden agendas associated with intractable conflicts contribute to their difficult nature. They typically consist of both implicit and explicit issues, formal and informal agendas, and deliberate and unconscious processes. In addition, the high degree of threat, harm, and anxiety associated with them leads to a felt need for defensiveness and secrecy, which drives many motives, issues, and actions underground.

Processes

Strong Emotionality. Economically rational models of costs and benefits or positions and interests cannot begin to model the fabric of protracted social con­flicts. Typically, these processes have a boiling emotional core, replete with humiliation, frustration, rage, threat, and resentment between groups and deep feelings of pride, esteem, dignity, and identification within groups. In fact, some scholars contend that extreme reactions in conflicts are primarily based in emo­tional responses (Pearce and Littlejohn, 1997). In effect, the overall distinction between emotionality and rationality may be rather dubious when it comes to intractable conflicts, where they are often inseparable. Here, indignation, rage, and righteousness are reasons enough for retributive action. However, it is not merely the type and depth of emotions that distinguishes tractable from intractable conflict, but rather differences in the normative structures and processes that imbue them with meaning. Our feelings of raw emotion (hate, rage, pride) are often labeled, understood, and acted on in ways shaped by rules and norms that define what certain emotions mean, whether they are good or bad, and how people should respond to them. Thus, similar emotions may be constructed and acted upon differently in dissimilar families, communities, and cultures. Com­munities entrenched in an intractable conflict may unwittingly encourage emo­tional experiences and expressions of the most extreme nature, thereby escalating and sustaining the conflict.

Malignant Social Processes. Over time, a variety of cognitive, moral, and behavioral processes combine to bring protracted conflicts to a level of high intensity and perceived intractability. They include such cognitive processes as stereotyping, ethnocentrism, selective perception (like the discovery of con­firming evidence), self-fulfilling prophecies (when negative attitudes and per­ceptions impact the other’s behavior), and cognitive rigidity. These can fuel processes of deindividuation and dehumanization of the enemy, leading to moral disengagement and moral exclusion (Opotow, 1990), that is, the devel­opment of rigid moral boundaries between groups, which exclude out-group members from typical standards of moral treatment. This can result in a vari­ety of antagonistic behaviors such as escalatory spirals (where each aggressive behavior is met with a more aggressive response), autistic hostilities (a cessa­tion of direct communication), and violence. What is unique to intractable conflicts is the pervasiveness and persistence of psychological and physical vio­lence, how it typically leads to counterviolence and some degree of normaliza­tion of violent acts, and the extreme level of destruction it typically inflicts. These escalatory processes culminate in the development of malignant social relations, which Deutsch (1985) described as “a stage (of escalation) which is increasingly dangerous and costly and from which the participants see no way of extricating themselves without becoming vulnerable to an unacceptable loss in a value central to their self-identities or self-esteem” (p. 263).

Pervasiveness, Complexity, and Flux. Tractable conflicts have relatively clear boundaries that delineate what they are and are not about, whom they concern and whom they do not, and when and where it is appropriate to engage in the con­flict. In intractable situations, the experience of threat associated with the conflict is so basic that the effects of the conflict spread and become pervasive, affecting many aspects of a person’s or a community’s social and political life (Rouhana and Bar-Tal, 1998). The existential nature of these conflicts can impact every­thing from policy making, leadership, education, the arts, and scholarly inquiry down to the most mundane decisions such as whether to shop and eat in pub­lic places. The totality of such experiences feels impenetrable. Yet they are sys­tems in a constant state of flux. Thus, the “hot” issues in the conflict, the levels where they manifest, the critical parties involved, the nature of the relationships in the network, the degree of intensity of the conflict, and the level of attention it attracts from bystander communities are all subject to change. This chaotic, mer­curial character contributes to their resistance to resolution.

Outcomes

Protracted Trauma. The experience of prolonged trauma associated with many of these conflicts produces, perhaps, their most troubling consequences. Long­term exposure to atrocities and human suffering, the loss of loved ones, rape, bodily disfigurement, and chronic health problems can destroy people’s spirit and impair their capacity to lead a healthy life. At its core, trauma is a loss of trust in a safe and predictable world. In response, individuals suffer from a variety of symptoms, including recurrent nightmares, suicidal thoughts, demoralization, helplessness, hopelessness, anxiety, depression, somatic illnesses, sleeplessness, and feelings of isolation and meaninglessness. Trauma adversely affects par­enting, marriages, essential life choices, and the manner with which authority figures take up leadership roles. It also impairs communities and can hamper everything from the most mundane merchant-client interactions to voting and governmental functioning (Parakrama, 2001). Thus, the links between trauma and intractability seem to lie in the degree of impairment of individuals and communities and, in particular, in the manner in which trauma is or is not addressed post-conflict.

Normalization of Hostility and Violence. In these settings, destructive processes gradually come to be experienced as normative by the parties involved. The biased construction of history, ongoing violent discourse, and intergenerational perpetuation of the conflict contribute to a sense of reality where the hostilities are as natural as the landscape. For example, Israeli and Palestinian youth in the Middle East were found to accept and justify the use of violence and war in conflict significantly more than youth from European set­tings of nonintractable conflict (Orr, Sagi, and Bar-On, 2000). In addition, they found Israeli and Palestinian youth more reluctant than Europeans to be will­ing to pay a price for peace. Again, what appeared to matter in this study was how the meaning of violence differed for the youth from these different settings. The violence/war discourse in the Middle East, passed down through the dis­tinct parental and community ideologies of the Israeli and Palestinian commu­nities, depicted violence as an act of self-defense and war as a noble cause. This type of ideology has been found to shield youth from the psychological harm typically associated with exposure to violence. Thus, increased levels of vio­lence had become normalized for the Middle-Eastern youth, and were seen as necessary and useful particularly because of the perception that negotiations were impossibly costly (in terms of the nonnegotiable concessions that would need to be made).

To summarize, intractable conflicts are complex, mercurial, exhausting, and rife with misery. Their persistence can be the result of a wide variety of differ­ent causes and processes. Ultimately, however, I suggest that it is the complex interaction of many of these factors across different levels of the conflict (from personal to international) over long periods of time that brings them to an extreme state of hopelessness and intransigence.