Peace has finally come to Aceh. The Indonesian province has suffered for over 30 years through conflict with the Indonesian army. Instrumental in having achieved this peaceful outcome has been the role of the European Union (EU). Its crucial monitoring role and long term commitment had a profound impact on the province, helping to end the hostilities and to rebuild Aceh. The EU-led Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM) is the central feature of this thesis. Like Aceh, Europe has experienced wars. However, since the beginnings of Western European institution building, peace and cooperation in the region transpired. This phenomenon has spread across the continent. The progressive structure enabled the EU to flourish as a cooperative institution, especially in the aftermath of the Cold War east-west division. This period also gave the EU an opportunity to expand its peaceful legacy by exporting its values abroad. The development of the EU's external capability to deliver such aspirations is a central part of this thesis. The thesis seeks to draw a connection with the EU's quest to bring peace to Aceh with international relations (IR) theory. As such, it assesses the EU's motives and interests in the Aceh peace process to discover what they were based on. After assessing both realist and liberalist IR viewpoints, the thesis’ central findings confirm the liberal motives of the EU. The EU has predominantly acted in the interests of Aceh. It helped bring many liberal based values to the province and experienced constructive relations with Indonesia and other powers in the region. Whilst realist orientated EU power motives are outlined, the EU's liberal agenda based on mediation, peace and security, multilateralism, democracy and human rights - as core liberal elements - are more convincing explanations as this thesis argues.

Countries that have experienced civil war suffer a greater risk for new conflict than countries with no prior history of civil war. This empirical finding has been called a conflict trap where the legacy of previous war - unsolved issues, indecisive outcomes, and destruction – leads to renewed fighting. Yet, countries like Cambodia, El Salvador, Indonesia, and Mozambique have managed to overcome decade-long conflicts without relapse. This dissertation addresses this empirical puzzle by seeking to dismantle the conflict trap and look at microlevel explanations for civil war resolution and relapse. It adds to existing scholarship in three ways: first, by using disaggregated empirics on war termination and how fighting resumes; second, by exploring government agency in conflict processes; and third, by disaggregating rebel organizations. Essay I present original data on the start and end dates and means of termination for all armed conflicts, 1946-2005. Contrary to previous work, this data reveal that wars does not always end through victory or peace agreement, but commonly end under unclear circumstances. Essay II addresses how developments exogenous to the conflict influence governments’ decision to engage in a peace process. The results show that after natural disasters when state resources need to be allocated towards disaster relief, governments are more willing to negotiate and conclude ceasefires with insurgents. Essay III focuses on the post-conflict society, and posits that security concerns among former war participants will push them towards remobilizing into rebellion. The findings indicate that if ex-belligerent elite’s security is compromised, the parties of the previous war will resume fighting, while insecurity among former rank-and-file leads to the formation of violent splinter rebel groups. Finally, Essay IV seeks to explain why governments sometimes launch offensives on former rebels in post-conflict countries. The results show that internal power struggles provide leaders with incentives to use force against domestic third parties to strengthen their position against intra-government rivals. Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates that there is analytical leverage to be had by disaggregating the processes of violence in civil war and post-conflict societies, as well as the actors involved – both the government and rebel sides.

Till sjöss är den hierarkiska organisationsstrukturen den vanligast förekommande. Detta sträcker sig från befälhavaren till den individuella sjömannen. Överstyrman, nummer två i däcksbefälsordningen, har flera olika ansvarsområden. Några vanliga exempel är bland annat att prioritera underhåll av fartyget, övervaka och leda arbetet på däck samt att ha huvudansvar för lastning och lossning. Med detta i åtanke är det inte svårt att tänka sig att man i denna roll upplever konflikter ombord, både arbetsrelaterade och privata. Syftet med denna studie är att försöka besvara vilka konflikter som är vanligast utifrån en överstyrmans perspektiv samt utreda om överstyrmän i sin roll använder några definierade metoder för att hantera de konflikter som uppstår. Avslutningsvis besvaras också frågan hur benägna överstyrmän är att deltaga i kurser kring utveckling av sin egen konflikthantering. Genom djupintervjuer med aktiva överstyrmän så har slutsatsen dragits att de mest vanliga konflikterna är de som uppstår från små irritationer i vardagen. Dessa mindre konflikter, om de lämnas utan åtgärd, har en tendens att växa och eskalera till större tvister som kräver konflikthantering. Ur ett konflikthanteringsperspektiv så visar undersökningen på att alla överstyrmän använder sig av en fördefinierad konflikthanteringsstrategi. Alla som har deltagit i undersökningen anser att vidare utbildning inom området konflikthantering skulle gynna dem både i deras roll som överstyrman och samtidigt ha en positiv inverkan på ombordkulturen. / At sea, a strict hierarchy is the natural chain of command. This ranges from the captain to the individual sailor. The Chief Officer, second in command on deck, has many areas of responsibility. For instance, he or she is commonly in charge of prioritizing aspects of ship maintenance, supervise and manage crew work-orders and the main responsibility for loading and discharging cargo. With this in mind, it is not hard to imagine that a mustered chief officer will experience a variety of conflicts on-board, both work related and personal. The purpose of this study is to answer what conflicts are the most common from a chief officers perspective on-board a merchant vessel. Also it will gauge if there are any specific conflict management methods that are used by chief officers to advert or intervene in the conflict situations that can arise. The concluding section of this study will look at the possibility and interest for chief officers to attend a course in conflict management to further develop their tools within this area. Through in-depth interviews with active chief officer the result showed that the most common conflicts were perceived as the ones that arose from everyday problems on-board. These minor issues, if left to their own accord, tend to escalate. From a conflict management perspective, all findings indicate that chief officers tend to use a predefined strategy in regards to solving or manage conflicts on-board. However, all respondents agree that further education within the field would surely benefit them as individuals and also the on-board culture as a whole.

Focusing on communication as an important means besides other efforts for conflict resolution in an asymmetric armed conflict in Afghanistan, this study looked for a rhetorical communication approach appropriate to Pashtun tribal setting in South-eastern (Loya Paktya region) Afghanistan. The study explored and found some perceived essentials of such persuasive communication by conducting face-to-face semi-structured in depth interviews with 17 participants. Thematic analysis was used to code and categorize data. Aristotle’s rhetorical theory provided a framework for this qualitative study by narrowing down the focus to exploring credibility of the communicator (ethos), the rationality of the message (logos), and the emotional appeals (pathos), particular for the south-eastern Pashtun tribal setting, during communication. In addition, considering the relation between rhetorical and soft power theories in influencing the choice of an audience, this project also asked participants if and how communication in their tribal setting could be framed as an influencing power by attraction rather than by coercion. Therefore, soft power of which persuasive communication is a crucial part was also used as a theoretical framework for this study. The findings show the significance of persuasive communication in future conflict resolution efforts in Afghanistan.

The complexity of the strategic decision making environments, in which busi- nesses and governments live in, makes such decisions more and more difficult to make. People and organizations with access to the best known decision support modelling and analysis tools and methods cannot seem to benefit from such re- sources. We argue that the reason behind the failure of most current decision and game theoretic methods is that these methods are made to deal with operational and tactical decisions, not strategic decisions. While operational and tactical decisions are clear and concise with limited scope and short-term implications, allowing them to be easily formalized and reasoned about, strategic decisions tend to be more gen- eral, ill-structured, complex, with broader scope and long-term implications. This research work starts with a review of the current dominant modelling and analysis approaches, their strengths and shortcomings, and a look at how pioneers in the field criticize these approaches as restrictive and unpractical. Then, the work goes on to propose a new paradigm shift in how strategic decisions and conflicts should be modelled and analyzed. Constrained Rationality is a formal qualitative framework, with a robust method- ological approach, to model and analyze ill-structured strategic single and multi- agent decision making situations and conflicts. The framework brings back the strategic decision making problem to its roots, from being an optimization/efficiency problem about evaluating predetermined alternatives to satisfy predetermined pref- erences or utility functions, as most current decision and game theoretic approaches treats it, to being an effectiveness problem of: 1) identifying and modelling explic- itly the strategic and conflicting goals of the involved agents (also called players and decision makers in our work), and the decision making context (the external and internal constraints including the agents priorities, emotions and attitudes); 2) finding, uncovering and/or creating the right set of alternatives to consider; and then 3) reasoning about the ability of each of these alternatives to satisfy the stated strategic goals the agents have, given their constraints. Instead of assuming that the agents’ alternatives and preferences are well-known, as most current decision and game theoretic approaches do, the Constrained Rationality framework start by capturing and modelling clearly the context of the strategic decision making situation, and then use this contextual knowledge to guide the process of finding the agents’ alternatives, analyzing them, and choosing the most effective one. The Constrained Rationality framework, at its heart, provides a novel set of modelling facilities to capture the contextual knowledge of the decision making sit- uations. These modelling facilities are based on the Viewpoint-based Value-Driven - Enterprise Knowledge Management (ViVD-EKM) conceptual modelling frame- work proposed by Al-Shawa (2006b), and include facilities: to capture and model the goals and constraints of the different involved agents, in the decision making situation, in complex graphs within viewpoint models; and to model the complex cause-effect interrelationships among theses goals and constraints. The framework provides a set of robust, extensible and formal Goal-to-Goal and Constraint-to Goal relationships, through which qualitative linguistic value labels about the goals’ op- erationalization, achievement and prevention propagate these relationships until they are finalized to reflect the state of the goals’ achievement at any single point of time during the situation. The framework provides also sufficient, but extensible, representation facilities to model the agents’ priorities, emotional valences and attitudes as value properties with qualitative linguistic value labels. All of these goals and constraints, and the value labels of their respective value properties (operationalization, achievement, prevention, importance, emotional valence, etc.) are used to evaluate the different alternatives (options, plans, products, product/design features, etc.) agents have, and generate cardinal and ordinal preferences for the agents over their respective alternatives. For analysts, and decision makers alike, these preferences can easily be verified, validates and traced back to how much each of these alternatives con- tribute to each agent’s strategic goals, given his constraints, priorities, emotions and attitudes. The Constrained Rationality framework offers a detailed process to model and analyze decision making situations, with special paths and steps to satisfy the spe- cific needs of: 1) single-agent decision making situations, or multi-agent situations in which agents act in an individualistic manner with no regard to others’ current or future options and decisions; 2) collaborative multi-agent decision making situ- ations, where agents disclose their goals and constraints, and choose from a set of shared alternatives one that best satisfy the collective goals of the group; and 3) adversarial competitive multi-agent decision making situations (called Games, in gamete theory literature, or Conflicts, in the broader management science litera- ture). The framework’s modelling and analysis process covers also three types of con- flicts/games: a) non-cooperative games, where agents can take unilateral moves among the game’s states; b) cooperative games, with no coalitions allowed, where agents still act individually (not as groups/coalitions) taking both unilateral moves and cooperative single-step moves when it benefit them; and c) cooperative games, with coalitions allowed, where the games include, in addition to individual agents, agents who are grouped in formal alliances/coalitions, giving themselves the ability to take multi-step group moves to advance their collective position in the game. ....

With the end of Cold War international order entered into a period that is characterized by continuous crises and instability. Within this order European Union, like the rest of the world, felt the necessity of re-evaluating its policies since they realized that the current policies were not sufficient to meet the challenges of the new world order. As a consequence of this EU has been trying to develop its capabilities to conduct crisis management and conflict resolution. Besides, the EU intends to strengthen its influence in international relations. This thesis analyzes the EU&rsquo / s maturing capacities in managing the international security challenges and the impacts of those capabilities on the resolution of the complicated conflict in Cyprus. Within this framework this study begins with examining the basics of conflict study. Then it explores the role EU intends to play in international politics, the progress of the EU structure in conflict management and the related defence and security issues and the future prospects including the formation of European military capacities. Strategies and instruments of the EU for conflict management are analyzed. Finally it assesses the mediator role of EU in Cyprus. Possible strategies that the EU may apply in Cyprus are evaluated. Furthermore, thinking past experiences of crisis resolution within the EU framework, the study argues about application of the Aland and Belgium models in Cyprus case. The thesis concludes that with its capabilities and the determination for strengthening its role in conflict management, EU has a high chance for resolving Cyprus conflict &ndash / especially in the long-run- by using its creativity and flexibility against conflicted issues.

In 1996 the state of Nepal was challenged by a Maoist insurgency, resulting in a decade-long civil war. During the course of the subsequent peace process the parliamentary parties found themselves agreeing to significant political changes, including a republican constitution. This study approaches the Nepal case on the assumption that the discursive aspect of social relations is one important factor in understanding how specific events unfold and why actors do one thing and not another. Two frames are investigated using frame analysis in terms of their representation of problem, cause and solution: a terrorism frame from the period of conflict and a peace frame from the period of conflict resolution. The terrorism frame is categorised as a negative frame and the peace frame as a positive frame. This overarching difference is found to have implications for the effects of the respective frames. In contrast to traditional frame analysis, which tends to focus on the success of a frame and the effects on a specific audience, this study investigates the effects of frames on the actors involved in the framing process in terms of their perceived manoeuvrability for action. This approach is formalised in a model of four types of logic of actor effects that is applied to the Nepal case. The analysis of frame effects is based on first-hand interviews with key actors, such as former prime ministers and top leaders of political parties and civil society. From this material, the study gives insight into how the two frames influenced the actors’ perceived manoeuvrability. This actor-centred approach shows that the frames affected the actors in both enabling and restrictive ways and thus influenced the outcome in Nepal. For example, it is shown that frames created during the conflict were considered a prerequisite for the legitimate use of military force. The study also shows the unintended effects of framing, captured in the model as the effect of self-entrapment, and highlights the coercive character of ideas in making actors perceive themselves as forced to take a certain action or position.

À venir / The customary regime of NRM in Bhutan faces greater challenges from economic development, rapid transformation of social values, local institutions and traditional perceptions on NR. Although Bhutan is projected rich in water resource for hydropower potentials, water for agriculture and domestic use is fast becoming scarcer and highly contested. As the water becomes scarce the people living in highlands are most severely affected. A detail diagnostic study of two communities, Lingmuteychu depedent of irrigated rice and Kengkhar depedent on dryland farming presents two situations of water resource issues. In Lingmuteychu the conflict of irrigation water sharing for cultivation of rice among seven villages has been inflicting restentment in all aspect of society. In contrary, in Kengkhar has been facing drinking water scarcity as the natural spring ponds dry, which forces people to walk from more than five hours to fetch water from the river. In these two sites Companion Modelling was applied to enhance understanding of water resource management dynamics and improve shared communication and learning to facilitate adaptative management dynamics and improve shared communication and learning to facilitate adaptative management strategies. The study provides as comparison of the process followerd in two sites with analysis of impacts and effects from the process. The research illustrates fow ComMod process help develop trust and and commitment in the conflicting community and pave pathways to develop social capital for adaptive management of water resource. The process was able to foster shared learning and co-construct collective actions which were implementable. The research also revealed the important role of the researchers in furthering and sustaining newly achieved cooperation. The ABMs provided an opportunity to re-create different water resource management strategies which could be used as options for the community. The research also demonstrates the feasibility of applying the ComMod approach in different fields of NRM.

abstract: The purpose of this dissertation is to study not only relations between Latin America and the United States, but also Latin American states with each other. It specifically aims to examine the extent to which the United States, the principal hegemonic power in the Americas, can play a constructive role by providing regional public goods. These goods include conflict resolution and economic progress. Although the United States has the potential to create such goods, it also has the potential to create public bads in the form of regional instability, political terror, and economic stagnation. This raises two fundamental research questions: Under what conditions can Washington play a positive role and if these conditions cannot be met, under what conditions can Latin American nations bypass the United States and create their own economic progress and conflict resolution strategies? Drawing upon qualitative research methods and case studies that have attracted scant academic attention, this dissertation finds that through regional multilateral diplomatic negotiations, the United States can play a positive role. However, due to U.S. parochial economic interests and the marginalization of diplomacy as a foreign policy tool, these conditions rarely occur. This research further finds, however, that through flexible regionalization Latin American nations can bypass the United States and create their own goods. Supported by an alternative regional power, flexible regionalization relies upon supranational institutions that exclude the United States, emphasize permanent political and economic integration, and avoid inflexible monetary unions. Through this type of regionalization, Latin America can decrease U.S. interference, sustain political and economic autonomy, and open space for alternative conflict resolution strategies and economic policies that Washington would otherwise oppose. This dissertation is academically significant and policy relevant. First, it reconsiders diplomacy as an instrumental variable for peace and offers generalizable results that can be applied to additional cases. Moreover, finding that Latin American countries can address their own regional issues, this study recognizes the positive agency of Latin America and counters the negative essentialization commonly found in U.S. academic and policy research. Finally, this research offers policy advice for both the United States and Latin America. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Political Science 2013

Através do Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento, o Brasil passou a receber diversos empreendimentos na área de infraestrutura. São muitos os projetos em fases de planejamento ou já em execução, em sua maioria localizados em regiões historicamente esquecidas pelo poder público. Os conflitos ocasionados por tais empreendimentos, envolvendo empresas e comunidades, caracterizam-se como sendo complexos, revelando desequilíbrios de poder e envolvimento de diversos atores. Tomando o conceito de conflito a partir das contribuições de Simmel, e entendendo que ele se manifesta também em aspecto latente, como na subjetividade e na formação de identidades, o conflito somente pode ser administrado por meio de métodos que consigam atuar em todos os seus níveis. O presente trabalho tem como objetivos centrais o de entender como o método da mediação pode contribuir para administrar os conflitos entre empresas e comunidades e investigar como estes conflitos estão sendo resolvidos, hoje, no Brasil. A metodologia utilizada foi qualitativa, por meio de exaustivas leituras de fontes primárias, secundárias e terciárias. Também foi feito o uso de entrevistas in loco e à distância, com lideranças e especialistas. Estudos e entrevistas in loco também foram utilizadas em dois casos: Usina Hidrelétrica de Belo Monte e Mina de Juruti. Os resultados obtidos versam sobre as possibilidades e resultados do uso da mediação em conflitos complexos envolvendo empresas e comunidades, criando paradigmas e indo além dos casos estudados aqui. Portanto, este trabalho conclui que, apesar do incentivo de uso de métodos alternativos (consensuais), os conflitos ainda são largamente resolvidos apenas pelas formas tradicionais da justiça brasileira. Como consequência, temos soluções de baixa qualidade para todas as partes envolvidas. A mediação, por sua vez, se mostra como um método bastante eficaz, com potencial de reconciliar e prevenir novos conflitos. Logo, ela deve ser institucionalmente incentivada e merece ser muito mais explorada para administrar os tipos de conflitos aqui estudados. / Through the Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (Growth Acceleration Program), Brazil started developing several infrastructure projects. There are many initiatives at the planning stage and many are already implemented, mostly of them in regions historically forgotten by the government. The conflicts caused by these projects, which involves companies and communities, are characterized as being complex, revealing imbalances of power and the involvement of several actors. Considering Simmel\'s concept of conflict, and understanding that it manifests itself also in a latent aspect, such as subjectivity and the formation of identities, conflict can only be managed through methods that can deal with all of its several levels. The main objectives of this work is to understand how the mediation method can contribute to manage conflicts between companies and communities and to investigate how these conflicts are being solved today in Brazil. The methodology used was qualitative, through exhaustive readings of primary, secondary and tertiary sources. It was also used on-site and remotely interviews with leaders and specialists, besides case studies, such as Belo Monte Hydroelectric Plant and Juruti Mine. The results obtained are related to the possibilities and results of the use of mediation in complex conflicts involving companies and communities, creating paradigms and going beyond the examples used here. Therefore, this work concludes that, despite the growing incentive to use alternative (consensual) methods, conflicts are still largely solved only by the traditional system of Brazilian justice. As a consequence, we have low quality solutions for all parties involved. Mediation, in turn, has proven to be a very effective method with the potential to reconcile and prevent further conflicts. Hence, it should be institutionally encouraged and deserves to be much more explored to manage the type of conflicts studied here.