Conflict and Context

Abstract

Peace and conflict researchers in the behaviouralist tradition deliberately stripped conflict of its context in order to analyse its generic features. By doing so they came up with rich dynamic models of conflict processes. But real conflicts are shaped by setting as well as by process. We have to consider not only the process-level dynamics, but also the contextual factors which exacerbate conflicts or mitigate them. We need to put the context back into conflict theory, while retaining a theoretical approach to the relationship between conflict dynamics and the conflict’s environment. In this chapter I consider how the context shapes the conflict and vice versa. The aim is to understand how contextual factors condition the prospects for emergent conflicts and influence whether they escalate into violence, are peacefully resolved, or lead to other outcomes.