A major threat in present political climate is identity group conflict as shown in such disparate cases as former Yugoslavia, Rwanda , Northern Ireland and the rise in racism and xenophobia in Europe. Conflict Resolution theory has addressed itself to intervention in existing conflict situations either by third parties or the conflicting parties themselves but conflict prevention has been a relatively neglected area. This thesis takes a case study of relations between the Muslim and white majority communities in Bradford where underlying tensions occasionally erupt into conflicts which have national ramifications and sometimes international dimensions. Within this situation there is scope for conflict resolution work but also conflict prevention work. Reference is made to Northern Ireland where identity group conflict has been longstanding and where community relations approaches have ben tried and tested over a period of fifteen to twenty yeas. The community relations work already being undertaken in Bradford is explored along with where and how this needs to be strengthened. An action research project was undertaken to bring together young members of the Muslims and white majority communities in an attempt to assess the usefulness of workshop based approaches in improving inter-group relations and transmitting skills of conflict handling to the participants.

The aim of the following study was to create a limited framework, based on normative and constructive reflections, of how the UN can work to prevent violent ethnic conflicts. The study was divided into two phases. The first phase originated from Joseph S. Nye’s analytical framework and gave an overview of the theories available on the causes of ethnic conflicts. From these theories three major problems were drawn; poverty, structural inequalities and society in transition. The second phase of the study had a normative and constructive approach, using two overlapping circles of theories. The normative chapter discussed how conflict prevention ought to be in the best of worlds and which moral position the UN should have. The constructive chapter discussed which means and limitations the UN faces considering conflict prevention and how the UN can work to address the major problems outlined in the first phase. The conclusion drawn from the analysis was that the UN has the knowledge, experience and operational capacity to address these issues, but that several problems concerning the UN system and the member states of the UN makes it difficult for the organization to effectively use the potential it has to prevent violent ethnic conflicts.

Social action and communication constitute the building blocks in the organizational structure and the agents of change, as well as shape the relationships among working parties, that can become inconsistent, due to the same desire of two or more people for a similar resource which is in scarcity, introducing the issue of human relations in an organizational context and especially the issue of conflict prevention. In this study we investigate conflict in a group based on different parameters by providing some insights on what is the impact between these different factors when interrelated. The research is carried out by adopting the survey path and performing multivariate statistical analysis techniques where we simultaneously examine the relationship between latent factors in an organizational conflict environment.

<p>C-level Thesis in International Relations Course.</p>

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the strategies Texas superintendents use to both prevent and resolve conflicts between the school board-superintendent leadership team and to examine the effects of gender, age, ethnicity, level of education, experience in education, tenure as a superintendent, leadership style, and type and size of school districts on the strategies used by superintendents in Texas to prevent and resolve conflicts with school boards. This study was limited to superintendents in the state of Texas during the 2007-08 school year (approximately 1,050). The survey methodology involved an electronic questionnaire that allowed this researcher to survey the entire population of public school superintendents in Texas. The data was analyzed using the Social Sciences (SPSS, 2007) Statistical Package descriptive statistics. In order to validate the data, three superintendents from the largest districts in Texas were interviewed using a semi-structured approach to questioning using the results of the electronic survey. Based on the demographic data provided by the respondents, the typical superintendent in Texas is a married, White, non-Hispanic male, age 50 – 54 who serves a rural school district with a student enrollment of 1 – 499. He has a base salary of $85,000 to $99,999 and serves under a three-year contract and holds a master’s degree and majored in education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The typical superintendent has five to nine years of both teaching experience and site-based administrative experience and one to four years of central office administrative experience. More than 70% of the responding superintendents who held more than one superintendency reported that they left their last superintendency because of an opportunity to move to a larger district or for a higher salary. The majority of Texas school superintendents described their leadership/management style as collaborative and that human resources management was their greatest area of conflict with their school board. The factor that they report most inhibits their effectiveness was inadequate financing of schools. The strategy that the of majority Texas superintendents used to prevent and resolve conflict was to discuss the policy role of the school board with board members, participate in annual team-building activities and provide leadership training for board members. There was very little correlation between the demographic factors and strategies used by superintendents to prevent and resolve conflict. Follow-up interviews with large city superintendents provided additional information regarding specific strategies superintendents use to prevent and respond to conflict. Recommendations were made for further research regarding the role of the superintendent versus the role of the school board using qualitative research methods to further explicate the relationship between leadership/management style and strategies superintendents use to prevent and resolve conflict with school boards. / text

This thesis examines community engagement as a form of conflict prevention in order to obtain the social license to operate (SLO) in Alberta’s oil and gas industry. It does this by answering the question: what are the key elements of the Social License to Operate and how can these elements be applied to community engagement/consultation in a way that prevents conflicts in Alberta’s oil and gas industry? The underlying assumption of this thesis is that building good relationships and working collaboratively functions as a form of conflict prevention and that this in turn leads to the SLO. This thesis outlines the key features of both successful community engagement and of the SLO, to provide a guideline for what is needed to obtain the SLO. Data was collected from semi-structured interviews and through a literature review. The data analysis concluded that there are direct parallels between the key elements of effective community engagement and the key elements of the SLO as identified in the interviews. These parallels are: knowing the community, addressing community needs, corporate social responsibility, relationship building, follow through and evidence for what has been done, executive buy-in, excellent communication, and open dialogue, all within a process which is principled (there is trust, understanding, transparency and respect), inclusive, dynamic, flexible, ongoing, and long-term. Moreover, the key elements of effective community engagement and of the SLO identified in the interviews also overlapped with those found in the literature review, with only one exception. The literature review explicitly named early involvement as a key element of both effective community engagement and the SLO, whereas the interview participants only explicitly indicated it as a key factor of community engagement and implied it to be a key element of the SLO. / Graduate

Notwithstanding a broad range of internal and external stresses, Macedonia was the only republic to attain its independence peacefully from the otherwise violent disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Subject of a timely and sustained international response, it was feted as a rare preventive success for the international community. Whilst not necessarily decisive, this mobilisation helped ensure a non-violent transition to independence. Yet, much to the surprise of outside observers, Macedonia would fall into conflict a decade after independence, when self-styled freedom fighters purporting to represent the local Albanian community launched an eight-month insurgency in the name of political and cultural equality. Triggered by a coalescence of political, nationalist, ideological and criminal interests, the insurgency had complex roots, as much an intra-Albanian putsch as a struggle for greater group rights. Regardless of their precise genesis, from the perspective of conflict prevention, the events of 2001 challenge popular assumptions of Macedonia as an international success story. Above all, they reinforce the need for external actors to incorporate short-term strategies of prevention targeting immediate sources of instability within a more comprehensive, long-term framework that addresses structural, underlying conflict causes. Indeed, whilst proximate threats to Macedonian stability were addressed, fundamental risk factors remained, namely social polarisation, a large ethnic minority disenfranchised with the state, economic under-development, high levels of organised crime and corruption, a weak rule-of-law and continuing regional uncertainty. These were partly aggravated by the mistakes of a complacent international community, whose engagement in the country, accordingly, receded over time. In particular, the dissertation is critical of the European Union for its initial failure to articulate a genuine pathway to membership for Macedonia and the broader western Balkans, as well as the handling of NATO's military intervention in neighbouring Kosovo. Of course, in any preventive endeavour, the international community can only do so much; in the first instance, responsibility lay with unresponsive Macedonian institutions, who failed to adequately address legitime Albanian demands dating from independence. Be that as it may, the international community was culpable for its failure to sufficiently apply the formidable soft-power leverage it wields over a weak Macedonian state to implement reforms that, conceivably, could have precluded the outbreak of armed conflict. As a case-study of prevention, Macedonia holds instructive lessons for scholars and policymakers. Yet it remains under-researched. Examining the period 1991-2001, this investigation analyses precisely why and how Macedonia avoided violence during the process of Yugoslav dissolution yet ultimately fell into conflict, and extrapolates broader lessons that may be applied to other at-risk societies. Its purpose is to advance understanding of a poorly understood country, and contribute knowledge to key on-going international security debates. Highlighting the inter-connectedness and trans-national character of contemporary security threats, it posits that the major powers have a practical interest in addressing emerging intra-state crises, even when the putative national interest appears marginal. To facilitate more timely multilateral responses, it calls for the de-nationalisation of security, and its conceptualisation in international - as opposed to strictly national - terms.

Notwithstanding a broad range of internal and external stresses, Macedonia was the only republic to attain its independence peacefully from the otherwise violent disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Subject of a timely and sustained international response, it was feted as a rare preventive success for the international community. Whilst not necessarily decisive, this mobilisation helped ensure a non-violent transition to independence. Yet, much to the surprise of outside observers, Macedonia would fall into conflict a decade after independence, when self-styled freedom fighters purporting to represent the local Albanian community launched an eight-month insurgency in the name of political and cultural equality. Triggered by a coalescence of political, nationalist, ideological and criminal interests, the insurgency had complex roots, as much an intra-Albanian putsch as a struggle for greater group rights. Regardless of their precise genesis, from the perspective of conflict prevention, the events of 2001 challenge popular assumptions of Macedonia as an international success story. Above all, they reinforce the need for external actors to incorporate short-term strategies of prevention targeting immediate sources of instability within a more comprehensive, long-term framework that addresses structural, underlying conflict causes. Indeed, whilst proximate threats to Macedonian stability were addressed, fundamental risk factors remained, namely social polarisation, a large ethnic minority disenfranchised with the state, economic under-development, high levels of organised crime and corruption, a weak rule-of-law and continuing regional uncertainty. These were partly aggravated by the mistakes of a complacent international community, whose engagement in the country, accordingly, receded over time. In particular, the dissertation is critical of the European Union for its initial failure to articulate a genuine pathway to membership for Macedonia and the broader western Balkans, as well as the handling of NATO's military intervention in neighbouring Kosovo. Of course, in any preventive endeavour, the international community can only do so much; in the first instance, responsibility lay with unresponsive Macedonian institutions, who failed to adequately address legitime Albanian demands dating from independence. Be that as it may, the international community was culpable for its failure to sufficiently apply the formidable soft-power leverage it wields over a weak Macedonian state to implement reforms that, conceivably, could have precluded the outbreak of armed conflict. As a case-study of prevention, Macedonia holds instructive lessons for scholars and policymakers. Yet it remains under-researched. Examining the period 1991-2001, this investigation analyses precisely why and how Macedonia avoided violence during the process of Yugoslav dissolution yet ultimately fell into conflict, and extrapolates broader lessons that may be applied to other at-risk societies. Its purpose is to advance understanding of a poorly understood country, and contribute knowledge to key on-going international security debates. Highlighting the inter-connectedness and trans-national character of contemporary security threats, it posits that the major powers have a practical interest in addressing emerging intra-state crises, even when the putative national interest appears marginal. To facilitate more timely multilateral responses, it calls for the de-nationalisation of security, and its conceptualisation in international - as opposed to strictly national - terms.

C-level Thesis in International Relations Course.

Conflict is a complex phenomenon and a major part of sustainability challenges and therefore requires holistic approach for its prevention. This thesis argues that integrating Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD) at the structural level of conflict prevention can provide long term solutions to conflict escalation around the world. SSD provides a holistic approach for addressing the sustainability challenges and complexity of conflict prevention. Sustainability issues (social and ecological) were identified to be at the heart of many conflicts. Both the social (human needs) and ecological (environmental) dimensions are always violated in each conflict. The mechanisms for these violations are embedded in the structures (Political, Economic, Social and environmental) and institutional arrangements that are inherent in conflict-prone societies. Addressing these structural factors has potentials to provide long term solutions to conflict escalation. The connections between conflict and sustainability might not always be easily seen. Using the FSSD as an analytical tool in conjunction with other conflict analysis tools has greater capacity to bring to limelight previously unrecognized risk factors of conflict escalation while at the same time revealing known factors as sustainability challenges. The thesis described the links between conflict,structural conflict prevention, sustainability and Strategic Sustainable Development. Keywords: Conflict, Conflict Prevention, Conflict prone-societies, Structural Prevention, Sustainability, and Strategic Sustainable Development. / <p>+46767485159</p>