EVALUATION AND FUTURE CONFLICT RESOLUTION RESEARCH AGENDA
The central limitation of the constructivist approach is that, unlike critical theory or peace studies, it does not furnish an ethical-normative foundation for peaceful conflict resolution and transformation - it is has no in-built commitment to any specific notion of emancipation, for example.
It does not offer a method for choosing between different interpretations or visions of political reality; it is not a theory of politics as such (Adler, 1997: 323). Thus, in its analysis of war and conflict, it does not provide any a priori normative-political basis for privileging peaceful over violent conflict resolution, although it is often a subtext of constructivist research and there are some studies on issues related to conflict resolution, such as studies on arms control (Adler, 1992; Price, 1995, 1997) and liberal peace-building (Paris, 2004). It is in this sense that it remains firmly a social theory - a method of social inquiry - rather than a substantive theory of international politics. Moreover, it remains an explanatory rather than a predictive approach to the study of social action; rooted in a ‘logic of understanding' rather than a ‘logic of causality', it aims to build contingent generalizations rather than to generate specific predications - although prediction based on the past patterns of behaviour and normative structures of a particular case is certainly possible. In addition, it is a framework designed primarily for the study of international conflict; most of its core concepts and analytical tools are oriented to the world of international politics. In this sense, it is an IR- based approach that does not easily speak to other social levels and domains. Finally, as noted, a major weakness of constructivism is that it simply has not yet produced a significant body of research into conflict and conflict resolution.Nevertheless, constructivism provides an insightful approach to the study of war and conflict, particularly in comparison to other IR approaches and to neo-realist and neoliberal-based forms of international conflict management.
In particular, the constructivist insistence on holism and the co-constitution of agents and structures, the importance of agency, the centrality of identity as constitutive of interests and the key role of ideational and discursive factors in international politics, has the potential to open up alternative kinds of questions, suggest new avenues of research and enrich current research on war.Constructivism is also important for the way it challenges dominant models and understandings of conflict itself, the central phenomenological focus of the field. In the first instance, dominant positivistic conceptions see conflict as largely external to daily life and political activity, as abnormal, irrational and pathological - as essentially the breakdown in normally peaceful social systems (David, 1997). In contrast, constructivist ontology suggests that conflict is integral to society and political life, and that
[i]f we wish to examine conflict we must begin by analysing what is normal. Or at least, those longterm and embedded social processes that define the conditionsof everyday life. The purpose and reasons for conflict are located in these processes. From this perspective, political violence is not different, apart or irrational in relation to the way we live: it is an expression of its inner logic. (Duffield, 1998: 67)
This view of conflict not only opens up new space for research into the causes of conflict (within everyday discourse and individual lifestyles, for example), but also presages an ethical engagement with those elements of society which construct and reproduce the conditions for conflict and war, such as militarism, imperialism, just-war narratives, cultural stereotyping, national myths, exclusionary identities and such like. Constructivism also challenges dominant models which view conflict and conflict resolution processes as developing in linear, observable and sequenced patterns or stages, a view seemingly inherent to positivist approaches.
Instead, constructivist approaches would highlight the unique context-specific human agency at the heart of conflict processes, and draw attention to the malleable nature of the ideational and discursive structures which make conflict possible.Related to this, constructivism is important for drawing attention to the role of the conflict resolution field itself as a constitutive agent. Not only are a great many conflict resolution scholars also practitioners, but the knowledge produced by the field also impacts on actual political practice in a number of ways (see Duffield, 2001; Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall, 2005). From this perspective, conflict resolution functions as an important discursive structure that co-constitutes the practices of conflict management and resolution - in the same way that IR as a knowledge-producing field is implicated in the actual practices of international politics (Smith, 2004). Apart from opening up new kinds of research questions, this observation calls for a critical reflexivity on the part of conflict resolution scholars and a sensitivity to the uses to which the knowledge it produces is put. In particular, it should sensitize scholars to the danger that in some cases, conflict resolution can function as a tool of hegemonic control by insisting that oppressed groups pursue non-violent strategies in the face of violent oppression by stronger parties (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall, 2005).
A future research agenda
Notwithstanding the obvious strengths of constructivist scholarship, there is clearly a great deal more work to be done before a constructivist theory of war, conflict and conflict resolution with its own a priori content can be articulated. An assessment of existing research suggests that there are a number of areas where further research would be beneficial. Of course, new research will always throw up other questions and issues that will in turn require its own research.
First, there is an urgent need for further case studies of specific conflicts, both to strengthen initial findings about the social and political construction of war and to provide thebasis for much needed comparative analysis (Fearon and Laitin, 2000).
To date, constructivist studies of war have generally tended to cluster around conflicts from the 1990s, such as the Balkans conflict, Rwanda, the former Soviet republics and Sierra Leone. Constructivist studies of earlier conflicts like the Korean and Vietnam wars, the FalklandsZMalvinas conflict and the Iran-Iraq war, as well as more recent conflicts like the USA-Iraq war, are needed to provide the basis for comparison and the eventual construction of a middle range constructivist theory of conflict.Further research also needs to focus on different kinds of conflict, social levels, types of actors and conflict processes. At the most fundamental level, further constructivist research is needed comparing the social construction of war within and between states, and the ways in which the normative and material structures of the international system impinge on conflict processes in ways different to the social construction of intrastate conflict. Added to this, further studies on the social construction of different kinds of conflict, such as terrorism, communal conflict, industrial conflict, organizational conflict and the like, are needed to provide other points of comparison.
Questions of identity in conflict are particularly salient to constructivist approaches and further research is required in this important area. Greater empirical research and more case studies are needed to explain a number of puzzles: how exactly are identities constructed, maintained and mobilized for conflict as a particular kind of political project? In what ways exactly does conflict alter, reinforce, undermine or change identities in more antagonistic and rigid ways? How do both material and ideational factors construct hostile identities? In addition, there is the highly sensitive question of cultural factors in the construction of hostile identities and war (Fearon and Laitin, 2000: 864). Key questions include: are particular cultures, such as martial cultures, more prone to conflict construction due to the kinds of narratives, myths, identities and histories they contain? What kinds of cultural materials and linguistic resources work in constructing conflict discourses? Clearly, such research needs to be handled sensitively and with an appreciation of the symbolic and representational structures within Western culture that reproduce war (Jabri, 1996).
Further research is also needed on the micro-physics of the processes of conflict construction, in particular, what might be termed ‘the cognitive microfoundations’ of the social construction of reality (Checkel, 1998: 344; see also Fearon and Laitin, 2000: 850). A number of questions would seem critical here: what exact discursive strategies do conflict entrepreneurs and norm entrepreneurs employ in the construction of conflict, and do they do so fully conscious of the likely effects of their interventions? How do conflict entrepreneurs choose particular strategies, and how do they identify the kinds of discursive opportunity structures needed to construct conflict? Are the discursive strategies of conflict entrepreneurs generic across geographical and temporal contexts, or are they always context-specific? By what micro-processes do individuals come to accept and inculcate the discourses and norms of entrepreneurs? Why do publics follow leaders down paths that clearly serve elite interests rather than public interests?
Finally, and perhaps most crucially, further research is needed to understand how violent conflicts end or evolve into less destructive forms. There are to date very few studies which map out in a systematic way exactly how conflict discourses collapse, evolve and lose their power to construct violence. In part, there are interesting possibilities for exploring the well-known concept of conflict ‘ripeness’ (see Zartman in this volume) from within a discursive framework: how exactly are violent discourses de-legitimized during war, and how do ideas of dialogue and conflict resolution come to be seen as possible or desirable at a given moment? How do ideas and discourses evolve and change during war, and who are the key agents in change processes and what kinds of action do they engage in? This last question points to the critical role played by ‘peace entrepreneurs’ (Goodhand and Hulme, 1999). Further research is needed to capture the dynamics and functions of such actors.