Thesis (Ph. D.)--Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 1995. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 339-361).

This thesis presents theoretical work on armed group activity and empirical work on post-conflict recovery. In chapter two, I develop a general equilibrium model of violence to explain observed variation in coercive practices in conflict zones. Armed groups own land in the resource sector and allocate military resources between conflict and coercion, which assign de facto ownership over land and labour respectively. I find that coercion is higher if labour is scare relative to land, production is labour-intensive, or if one group is dominant relative to others. Furthermore, contrary to other studies, I find that coercion could decreases with price if military power is sufficiently decentralised, since conflict draws resources away from coercion. In chapter three, I evaluate a reconciliation program in post-conflict Sierra Leone. The program provides a forum for villagers to air war-time grievances, and also forges institutions designed to improve conflict resolution and build social capital. I find that respondents who received the intervention are more forgiving and are more charitable in their views of ex-combatants. Furthermore, conflict resolution improved and involvement in village groups and activities increased. However, psychological health---depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety---deteriorated. This study has direct implications for the design of transitional justice programs, as well as programs that aim to promote institutional change. In chapter four, I experimentally vary foreigner presence across behavioural games conducted in 60 communities in Sierra Leone, and assess its effect on standard measures of generosity. I find that foreigner presence substantially increases player contributions in dictator games, by an average of 19 per cent. Furthermore, the treatment effect is smaller for players who hold positions of authority; and subjects from villages with greater exposure to development aid give substantially less and are more inclined to believe that the behavioural games were conducted to test them for future aid. In chapter five, I use a model of repeated bargaining with one-sided asymmetric information to investigate the difficulties of reaching and sustaining power sharing agreements. I show that asymmetric information can explain the persistence of conflict, since learning slows down when there are future opportunities for bargaining.

Conflict is an inherent part of human relationships and is ubiquitous within families. These disputes are not in themselves harmful to children. Rather, it is the strategies used to resolve conflict that have a bearing on children’s health and development, notably whether family members employ aggressive or violent tactics. The study examines evidence from a sample of 161 children, selected to be representative of children living in Dublin, Ireland. It explores children’s responses to different methods of conflict resolution in two family relationships and seeks to expand the understanding of how social problems, such as child maltreatment and domestic violence, occur within normative family processes. The study shows that the use of psychological and minor physical aggression to resolve conflict in the parental relationship and the parent-child relationship is typical. It occurs in 90 per cent of families over a twelve-month period. Severe physical force or violence between family members is less common. The study finds that while there is considerable variation in children’s responses to conflict resolution strategies, children who experience aggression in both the inter-parental and parent-child relationship are at elevated risk for behavioural and emotional problems. The frequency and severity of the aggression explains some of the variance in child well-being but not all. The study lends support to Bronfrenbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory by demonstrating empirically how the individual, family, neighbourhood, and potentially societal, contexts moderate the transmission of poor conflict resolution strategies to children's health and development. The findings suggest that while the child's age and gender play a small role, family and neighbourhood contexts are strongly implicated in outcomes for children exposed to risky conflict resolution tactics in the home. In particular, parental mental health problems, low socio-economic status and poor peer relationships increase children’s vulnerability to the effects of aggressive conflict tactics. The relevance of the evidence for policy and practice are drawn out. A distinction can be drawn between responses to pathological behaviour by parents and normative, yet harmful, conflict resolution strategies. Public health approaches to promote reasoning within families as well as prevention and early intervention strategies that support all families, not just economically disadvantaged parents known to child protection and domestic violence agencies, are required. In addition, greater sensitivity to children's gender and stage of development and more attention to policies that reduce stress on families and violence within communities are advocated.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the development of normative understanding and its relation to emotional states. Two samples of late 3- and 5-year-old Turkish pre-school children were studied. We adopted a peer conflict paradigm in which we taught two children conflicting rules for playing a game and asked them to play the game together, later (incompatible condition). Since children had learned different rules we expected them to protest when their partners played the game with a different rule. Results revealed that both 3- and 5-year-old children were competent at understanding the normative force of the rules. Yet, they did this in a context-sensitive manner. While they protested their partner in the incompatible condition, they did not protest when their partner performed the same action in a different game context where both rules had been taught to children as two alternative ways of playing (compatible condition). Moreover, we investigated children&rsquo / s emotional states &ndash / especially annoyance and anger &ndash / throughout their interactions. We found a different pattern between 3- and 5-year-olds: 3-year-olds were more annoyed and angry in the incompatible condition than compatible condition. On the other hand, 5-year-olds&rsquo / emotional state of being annoyed/angry was not found to be different in the compatible and incompatible condition. Summing up the evidence from normative and emotional responses, even though 5-year-olds protested significantly more in the incompatible than compatible condition, they were not more &lsquo / annoyed and angry&rsquo / . Furthermore, to investigate the possible related mechanisms of normative understanding, we conducted theory of mind and executive functioning tests and collected temperamental and emotion regulation characteristics by questionnaires completed by mothers. Yet, none of these variables were found to be related with normative responses of children when age was factored out in a linear regression model.

Šio magistrinio darbo tikslas - išsiaiškinti jaunuolių, besimokančių profesinėje mokykloje, konfliktų raišką ir jų sprendimą. Iškelti uždaviniai: 1) remiantis mokslinės literatūros analize,išsiaiškinti konflikto sampratą, galimus sprendimo būdus; 2)nustatyti vyraujančius konfliktus profesinėje mokykloje, išsiaiškinant konfliktų rūšis, tipus, priežastis, pasekmes, veiksmus stiprinančius konfliktą, sprendimo strategijas. Tyrimo objektas - jaunuolių, besimokančių profesinėje mokykloje, konfliktai su bendraamžiais ir pedagogais; jų sprendimas. Tyrimo metodai: mokslinės pedagoginės, psichologinės bei vadybinės literatūros darbo tema studijavimas ir analizė; stebėjimas; gautų rezultatų kokybinė analizė. Tyrimo metu stebėtos konfliktinės situacijos. Konfliktini��� situacijų stebėjimo trukmė - 2 metai (išskyrus vasaros ir žiemos atostogas). Stebint fiksuota - konfliktinės situacijos, jų dinamika, konfliktų sprendimas. Tyrimo metu užfiksavau 35 konfliktines situacijas - 25 situacijos tarp mokinių ir pedagogų, 10 situacijų - tarp mokinių. Pati buvau 10-ies konfliktinių situacijų dalyve. Kitus konfliktus i��girdau iš kolegų, bendradarbių. Trumpiausiai konfliktas truko (buvo išspręstas) apie 1 parą, ilgiausias konfliktas truko 11 mėnesių. Tyrimo metu nustatyta, kad pedagogas (ai)<-> mokinys (iai) konfliktiniame lygyje išryškėjo šios tendencijos: vyravusi konfliktų rūšis - santykių; dominavo asmenybės ir grupės konfliktų tipas; vyravo slaptų kėslų konflikto ištakos; vyraujanti konfliktų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The objective of the Master's thesis is to ascertain expression of conflicts and their resolution of young people from vocational school. The goals: 1) to ascertain the conception of conflict and possibile ways of resolution referring to scientific literature analysis; 2) to establish prevailing conflics in vocational shool; to to sort out kinds, types, reasons, results of conflict, actions intensifying conflict and strategies of resolution. The subject of the research - vocational school student's conflicts with contemporaries and pedagogues; their resolution. The methods of the research: study and analysis of scientific pedagogical, psychological and management literature on the topic of the thesis; observation: qualitative analysis of the results achieved. In the course of the research conflict situations were observed. The duration of conflict situations observation - 2 years (excluding summer and winter holidays). While observing conflict situations, their dynamics, the ways of conflict resolution have been fixed. In the course of the research I have fixed 35 conflict situations - 25 situations between students and pedagogues, 10 situations among students. I was a participant of 10 conflict situations myself. Other conflicts were told to me by my colleagues and co-workers. The shortest conflic lasted (was resolved) a day, the longest conflict lasted 11 months. It was established during the research that in the conflict level a pedagogue (-s) <-> a student (-s) the... [to full text]

The aim of this dissertation is to provide a critical understanding of a Rural Territorial Development (RTD) intervention in a context of conflict dynamics, by looking at the case of the Programme for Development and Peace in Middle Magdalena (PDPMM) - Colombia. To accomplish this task the research process discussed both theoretical and empirical inputs. Firstly, a theoretical framework was developed to understand the dynamics of the development-conflict nexus in rural territories. Secondly, supported by the examination of a case-study, systematic empirical information was collected, incorporating quantitative and qualitative evidence in order to explore the explicit conflict dynamics, namely the practical and theoretical incommensurability between opposite views of rural development taking place in the Middle Magdalena region. Such analysis was further elaborated in three steps: first, the research characterized the main visions of rural development that are being pursued in Middle Magdalena; second, a comparative analysis was carried out in order to identify incommensurabilities and contradictions among those views of development; and third, the study focused on the PDPMM in order to examine how its rural territorial development strategy influences the course of conflict dynamics. On the basis of this methodology, the study shows that rural territorial interventions should focus on building pragmatic articulations among opposite views of development to establish a common development proposal that overcomes conflict and poverty in rural territories.