A Micro-Level Analysis of Violent Conflict
Synthesis and Reflections
www.microconflict.eu
Twitter: @microconflict
#microconflict
Patricia Justino
Director, MICROCON
IDS, 30 June 2011
Key lessons
 Ordinary people matter
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People are more than victims: the importance of agency
People build resilience in the face of conflict
 It is about understanding the conflict
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Length and structure of conflict
Nature of violence
Institutional change
 Agency and resilience shape conflict processes and outcomes
MICROCON
Main purpose

Advance the field of conflict analysis through micro level approach

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understand individual and group interactions leading to and resulting from
violent conflicts (full conflict cycle)
violent conflicts: systematic breakdown of the social contract resulting from
and/or leading to changes in social norms, which involve mass violence
instigated through collective action
Better informed domestic, regional and international conflict policy –
placing individuals and groups at the centre of interventions
MICROCON Consortium
Europe
Rest of the World
Canada: University
of British Columbia
South Africa:
University of Cape
Town
Colombia:
Universidad de Los
Andes
India: Institute for
Human
Development
Uganda: Makerere
University
Kyrgyzstan: Centre
for Economic and
Social Research
United States: Tufts
University
Yale University
Belgium:
Centre for European
Policy Studies
Université Catholique du
Louvain
Ghent University
Free University of
Brussels (VUB)
Norway:
Fafo Institute for Applied
International Studies
Bulgaria: International
Collaboration Institute
Affiliated to the German
Public Universities
Association – Sofia
Branch
Portugal:
University Nova of Lisboa
France:
University of Rouen
Romania: Institute of
Agricultural Economics
Germany: German
Institute for Economic
Research
United Nations
University, Institute for
Environment and Human
Security
Spain: University of
Alicante
Italy: Institute of
International Affairs
UK: Institute of
Development Studies
Poverty Research Unit,
Sussex
University of Oxford
The Netherlands:
Institute of Social
Studies
Evidence and data
New Data
Existing Data
Facts and motivations

Until recently conflict and violence not mainstreamed in development policy

Concern with state security and state capacity

What about the people?
 1.5 billion people affected by conflict and violence
 One third of those living in extreme poverty
 Over 1/2 of all child mortality in the world
 Over 40% of all out of school children
 No conflict-affected country will achieve the MDGs

Limited knowledge and evidence of how people live in contexts of violent
conflict
Knowledge gaps

At a fundamental level, conflict originates from people’s behaviour
and how they interact with society and their environment
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Who are the people affected by violent conflict?
How do they live?
What do they do to secure lives and livelihoods? What options do they have?
What choices do they make?
Why are they get affected by violence? In what way? How does violence
change options and choices?
Are they part of the conflict? What led them into it?
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What have we learned?
Framework
Conflict
Institutions
Violence
Ordinary people matter

Important macro causes of violent conflict
 military, financial, technological, ideological beliefs, mobilisation capacity,
strength of state presence

Processes of violent conflict also related to:
 what happens to people during violent conflicts
 what people do in areas of violence – adapt to secure lives and livelihoods
 micro foundations of violent conflict
Adaptation affects conflict

Welfare effects:
 Direct: killings, injuries, disability, assets, displacement
 Indirect:
 local institutions: markets, social relations, political institutions
 national economy: economic growth, distribution

But people adapt to survive
 take on available opportunities
 adapt forms of livelihoods to survival needs
 join in informal exchange and employment markets
 form social and political alliances
 negotiate with local actors

Adaptation shapes and is shaped by conflict outcomes and processes
It is about understanding the
conflict
The conflict
 People’s behaviour, choices, attitudes and preferences shape conflict
processes on the ground

Where to fight, with whom, for how long
 Conflict is not a shock

Lasts across generations and people adapt accordingly
 Long-term legacies
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Some negative; some positive
Conflict alters people’s behaviour, choices, attitudes and preferences
 Transformation and change; not short-term effects
The violence
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Contexts where conflict managed through violent means
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People’s behaviour, choices, attitudes and preferences enable (or constrain)
strategic use of violence
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Beyond destruction: violence used to force transformation
 some of it may create more certain and secure environments
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Interactions between types of violence:
 violent riots, organised crime, communal violence, domestic violence
armed fighting
Institutional transformation

People resort to local institutions to protect economic status and lives

Policy focus on the importance of building institutions – but what institutions
and how?

Focus still on solving violent conflict through peace agreements between
selected leaders, followed by the panacea of DDR, SSR, elections

What about the mechanisms that govern the effective implementation of
these policies on the ground?
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Social interactions and local governance structures
Social interactions

Social norms of trust and cooperation
 Development and peace-building focus on community-level
 Support new investments (physical and human capital)
 DDR and reconstruction programmes?

Forms of social organisation
 Management of property rights
 Dispute resolution over land and common resources
 Distribution of public goods and common resources
 Regulation of access to public goods, basic services and markets
Local governance

Close link between violent conflict and the absence of the state

Absence of state does not mean absence of governance –
local order determined by who holds the gun
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These institutions can be persistent and efficient –
provision of basic sense of security
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Long term process: no short answers to peace and state-building
 change behaviour, norms and organisations
From research to policy
How to improve conflict policy
 Defusing mechanisms: entry points to break long-term negative
legacies and build on positive changes
This allows:
 Development policies: incentives to halt use of violence as strategy to
influence allocation of power
 Institution building: what institutions and how?
Defusing mechanisms

Key channels linking interventions and outcomes
 Exercise of agency in conflict settings (not always positive)
 Structure of the conflict
 Close links between people and conflict processes
Which entry points?

Development: focus on supporting resilience
 It is not enough to just look at the ‘poor’; vulnerable to violence
 Violence and conflict as constant factors in people’s lives
 Vulnerability is everywhere; not just among those that we can see

Institutions: engagement with new/emerging power structures
 New development actors? From ordinary people to non-state armed actors
Development policies

Current international policy: (our) security as major goal; development aid as
means to support stability

Beyond ‘hearts and minds’: (re)establish social contract (broken or contested,
sometimes for good reasons)
 It is about helping to provide opportunities and equality

Development should be priority in itself
 Security is priority for people but for whom, how and what the trade-offs
 Health, education and economic security beyond emergency aid
 If states does not provide then someone else will

Not just aid: building structures and guaranteeing equitable access to them
 Humanitarian aid useful but limited to short-term intervention
Building institutions
 Need to get institutions right: Which institutions? How?
 More attention paid to the other side of the story – what do we do about
the institutions that emerge from conflict?
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Violence instrumental role beyond destruction
Emergence of social and political order
 Implications:
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Explaining why conflict persists, mutates, and how peace may emerge
Survival and security of ordinary people
Negotiate with, engage and understand complex distributions of power within
populations in conflict-affected contexts
Looking ahead
Ongoing/Recent Conflicts
Recent Revolts /
Major Protests
Recent Internal
Conflicts / Uprisings
Ongoing Internal
Conflicts
Intergroup
Violence
Drug Related /
Gang Violence