IMPLICATIONS FOR UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT

There are several interrelated implications for conflict in this discussion. First of all, as indicated at the beginning of this chapter, perceived injustice is a fre­quent source of conflict.

Injustice as the Source of Conflict

A paradigmatic example of procedural as well as distributive injustice is two people who have to share something to which each is equally entitled (found cash, space, equipment, inherited property) and the one who gets at it first takes what he wants of it and leaves the remainder (a smaller or less valuable por­tion) to the other. Thus, if two children have to share a piece of cake and the one who divides it into two portions takes the larger one, then the other child is likely to get mad. If not afraid of the other, the child may challenge the unfair division and try to restore equality. If afraid, the child may be unwilling to admit the injustice but, if he or she does, will be resentful and try to get even covertly. Thus, conflict continues even though the episode ends.

There is a clear procedural way to avoid this sort of injustice (see also the later section, Inventing Solutions), in which the person who divides the cake (or whatever) does not get first choice with regard to his or her portion of the divi­sion. There is also final-offer arbitration, a form sometimes employed when the parties cannot resolve conflict by themselves.

Suppose two ethnic groups in a country are in conflict over how many rep­resentatives they are each allocated in the national parliament. One group wants to make the allocations in terms of the proportion of each ethnic group in the population; the other group wants to do it in terms of the proportion of the ter­ritory occupied by each ethnic population. Ethnic group A, which has fewer people but more land, makes its final offer a bicameral legislature in which one legislative body would be elected by per capita vote and the other in proportion to the size of the territory. Ethnic group B makes a final offer of a simple legislative body based on per capita vote.

Injustice in the Course of Conflict

Unfair procedures employed in resolving conflict undermine confidence in the institutions that establish and implement the policies and rules regulating con­flict. Thus, people become alienated from political institutions if they feel that elections are not conducted fairly, or that their interests are ignored and they have no voice in affecting social policies and how they are implemented, or that they are discriminated against such that they are apt to be the losers in any political conflict. Similarly, people lose confidence in legal and judicial institu­tions and third-party procedures such as mediation and arbitration if the police, judges, and other third parties are biased, if they are not treated courteously, if competent legal representation is not available to them, or if they have little opportunity to express their concerns.

Trust in organizations and groups as well as in interpersonal relations is also undermined if, when conflict occurs, one is abused, not given opportunity to voice one’s concerns and views, treated as an inferior whose rights and inter­ests have legitimacy only as they are bestowed by others, or otherwise not respected as a person.

Alienation and withdrawal of commitment, of course, are not the only pos­sible forms of response to unjust processes of conflict resolution. Anger, aggres­sion, rebellion, sabotage, and similarly assertive attempts to remove the injustice are some other forms of response. Depending on the perceived possibilities, one may become openly or covertly active in attempting to change the institutions, relations, and situations giving rise to the injustice. Conflict is central in the functioning of all institutions and relations. If the processes involved in conflict resolution are unfair, pressures to bring about change arise; they may take a violent form if there are no socially recognized and available procedures for dealing with grievances.

Conflict About What Is Just

Many conflicts are about which principle of justice should be applied or how a given principle should be implemented. Thus, disputes about affirmative action often center on whether students (or employees) should be selected on the basis of individual relative merit as measured by test scores, academic grades, and prior work experience, or selected so as to reflect racial and ethnic diversity in the population. Each principle, in isolation, can be considered to be just. How­ever, selection by the criterion of relative merit as measured by test scores and grades often means that ethnic diversity is limited. Selection so as to achieve ethnic diversity frequently means that some individuals from the majority group, with higher relative standing on tests, are not selected even as some minority group members with lower standing are. These results are possible even when only well-qualified applicants are chosen.

Conflict over affirmative action may not only be about principles of justice; it also concerns the justness of the procedures for measuring merit. Some claim that the standard measures of merit—tests, grades, prior work experience—are biased against individuals who are not from the dominant culture.

The BTC-SBM conflict described in the Introduction is between two principles of justice. Should teacher representatives on the school council be selected to rep­resent their academic department by vote of the department members? Or should they be selected to represent their academic departments but also chosen to repre­sent the ethnic diversity of the teachers?

In dealing with conflict between reasonable principles of justice, it is well to apply the notions advanced in the previous chapter. Specifically, you want to turn the conflict into a win-win one in which it is perceived to be a mutual problem to be resolved cooperatively. In the illustration of affirmative action, there are many ways in which both claims—for diversity and for merit—can be represented in selection policies. It is better to discuss how these two principles can be combined, so that the claims of each can be adequately realized, than to create a win-lose conflict by denying the claims of one side so that the other’s can be victorious.

“Justifying” as a Negotiation Tactic

“Justice” can be employed as a tactical weapon during negotiations to claim higher moral ground for oneself. Doing so claims greater morality for your posi­tion as compared to the other’s. This form of justifying commonly has several effects. It hardens your position and makes it inflexible as you become morally committed to it as well as increasingly self-righteous. It leads to blaming the other and implicit denigration of the other as morally inferior. It produces a sim­ilar effect in the other and escalates the conflict into a conflict about morality.

As this happens, the conflicting parties often lose sight of the actual interests underlying their respective positions and the conflict becomes a win-lose one that is not likely to advance the interests of either side. It is not the justifying or giving reasons for your interests that is harmful but rather the claim of moral superiority, with its explicit or implicit moral denigration of the other. Whatever justifying takes place, it should be in the context of full recognition of one another’s equal moral status.