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At the turn of the 21st century, truth commissions arose as a new possibility to address the violence and trauma of removing Indigenous children from their families and nations in what is now known as North America. The creation of two truth and reconciliation commissions in Canada and Maine marked an important step in addressing Indigenous demands for justice and the end of harm, alongside Indigenous calls for truth-telling. Holding Indigenous conceptions of justice at its core, this dissertation offers a comparative tracing of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2009-2015) and the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2013-2015) as they investigated state practices of removing Indigenous children from their homes and nations. More specifically, this dissertation examines the ways these truth commissions have intersected with Indigenous stories and how Indigenous stories can inform how we understand the work of truth and reconciliation commissions as they move to provide a form of justice for our communities. Within both commission processes, stories of Indigenous experiences in residential schools and the child welfare system were drawn from the perceived margins of settler colonial society in an effort to move towards truth, healing, reconciliation and justice. Despite this attempted inclusion of stories of Indigenous life experiences, I argue that deeply listening to Indigenous stories ¬¬in their various forms—life/ experiential stories, and traditional stories—illuminates the ways that the practice of reconciliation has become disconnected from Indigenous understandings of justice. As such, I argue that listening to Indigenous stories, not just hearing the words but instead taking them to heart, engaging with them and allowing them to guide us, moves toward more informed understandings of what justice looks like for Indigenous communities. / Graduate / 2022-09-12

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.

This thesis seeks to contribute to the understanding of conflict intervention in protracted violent conflicts by studying the activities of civil society actors in regard to the conflicts in what was Yugoslavia until 1991. A very broad understanding of ‘intervention’ is used for this purpose that includes all kinds of activities that relate to the conflicts. Based on a survey of activities in the period between 1990 and 2002, a framework for categorising and describing these interventions is applied according to basic functions in four ‘grand strategies’ of ‘peace-making’, ‘peace-keeping’, ‘peacebuilding’, and ‘information, support, protest and advocacy’, with a total list of about 230 instruments of conflict intervention identified. The study concludes that civil society actors played three different basic roles: They complemented the work of state actors, they were the avant-garde for approaches, strategies and methods that later became ‘mainstream’ in conflict intervention, and in some cases, they were able to control or correct actions by governments through advocacy or direct action. The development of instruments of civil conflict transformation received a massive boost through this engagement in the 1990s. The study supports the position taken recently by some researchers making comparative studies of cases of conflict intervention regarding the limited role played by dialogue and reconciliation work in regard to dealing with the overall conflicts: In spite of ‘reconciliation’ and inter-ethnic cooperation being at the core of the vast majority of all projects and programmes undertaken in the area, indicators of real impact regarding an overall positive change in society and prevention of future violence seem to be rather weak. The study further observes that there was a social movement developed relating to former Yugoslavia in many Western countries that in a hitherto unknown way combined traditional methods of protest and advocacy with concrete work in the field.

On a daily basis we hear or read about new atrocious and violent conflicts that are emerging in countless countries around the world. At the same time, some of the previous conflicts are winding down and leading to negotiations and peaceful resolutions. In either of the cases, peacebuilding initiatives are put into place to establish relationships between the divided population which is and/or was at war. There are countless reconciliation methods which are used to reconcile the adult population which is and/or was in conflict with each other. Nonetheless, how and which reconciliation approaches are used when it comes to reconciling the children that have been directly or indirectly affected by the conflict in their country is not discussed to the same extend.  Thus the objective of this study is to analyse the available literature in order to gain a greater understanding of the methods which children partake in in order to foster reconciliation in a post-conflict environment. In total, 18 cases which pertain to children and reconciliation were analysed in order to find patterns, gaps and commonalities in the texts through the textual content analysis method. Furthermore, the findings were analysed in accordance to Galtung´s 12 reconciliation approaches.     Based on the analysis, it became clear how limited and scarce the literature is on reporting on the ways in which children reconcile. Furthermore, all of the texts present children as innocent victims who are not to blame for what had occurred. Despite the fact that children were victims as well as perpetrators in the conflict. Additionally, there is a clear distinction in the methods which are used to reconcile child soldiers versus children that were not directly involved in the conflict. In other words, many of the findings can aid in branching out the research to explore further the differences between child soldiers and non-child soldiers, as well as the general perception of children as victims. In addition, the concept of childhood and when one is considered a child should be explored, especially in non-western cultures, where an individual is considered a child under the age of 18, yet in other cultures “children” under 18 are married, have their own children, are responsible for their parents and very much live “adult” lives.

The theology of reconciliation, as it applies to God’s relationship with humanity, has been studied extensively throughout ecclesial history. Currently, theologians are expanding this research to include the “horizontal” element of reconciliation, or the implications of God’s relationship with humanity on human to human relations. This dissertation further examines the development of the horizontal understanding of the theology of reconciliation in the context of two Christian reconciliation communities in Northern Ireland, the Corrymeela and Cornerstone Communities. This is attempted by exploring the use of the concepts most commonly associated with the theology of reconciliation, truth, justice, repentance and forgiveness, as interpreted through past publications of Cornerstone and Corrymeela and in interviews with current members. This study illustrates, through the use of a theology of reconciliation model, how the social context moves one’s theological beliefs between a focus on liberating tendencies (justice and truth) and reconciling tendencies (repentance and forgiveness). The result of this analysis show that within both Communities, throughout the years of the Troubles to now, it has been possible to map a movement between a focus on reconciling and liberating tendencies that correlates to the stability of the social context. Implications for further study include: creating a clearer definition of the theology of reconciliation, exploring the theology of reconciliation within other conflict-ridden areas, and working to establish the theology of reconciliation as existing under the umbrella of traditionally understood local theology.

When remembering violence in their collective past, Cypriot individual and collective perspectives are often based on a representation of violence. Popular thinking within communities and rhetoric of elites can intertwine and conflict. Individuals may in fact remember privately events that do not fit easily within the nationalist narratives forwarded by the community leaderships. In the case of Cyprus and other violent events of the past, we are often not discussing violence at all but the memories of respondents. Research has been conducted on the community memories but not necessarily on the 1963-4 period of inter-communal violence and the international intervention/invasion of 1974. Nor has research assessed the effect such memories have on the reconciliation of communities in the present. Through questionnaires and interviews, this research examines the response of Cypriots regarding political relations and attitudes and how these were perceived to have been affected by violence. This thesis argues that there appear to be two types of violent memories; one that may create divisions between communities, while another may encourage a sense of collective victimhood. Through recollection and transmission, such memories could drive communities apart or together, intentionally or otherwise. Often reconciliation needs to take place before a political solution can be found, although these processes exist in tandem. This thesis illustrates that these foundations may have been laid for reconciliation between Cypriot communities at the grass-roots, which would need to be built upon. For this to result in reconciliation, Cypriot elites need to change their policies in a number of areas for this groundwork to constitute a sound progression towards a sustainable solution.

This thesis investigates the politics of memory in the Austrian province of Carinthia between 1945 and 2002.  The thesis seeks to determine the extent to which a common collective memory was articulated in the political sphere in Carinthia and attempts to identify whether and in what ways this collective memory was distinctively Carinthian as opposed to generically Austrian. Drawing on sources including party newspapers, parliamentary speeches and speeches given at war veterans’ meetings, a series of chapters detail each of the three main Carinthian parties’ discourses on the Nazi era, the 1920 <i>Volksabstimmung</i> and the Austrian Civil War, and consider the extent to which the parties’ discourses differ from one another.  Each chapter looks at the ways in which memory can be thought of as having been instrumentalised by Carinthia’s political parties, focuses on the impact of generational change on memory in Carinthia, analyses the interaction between the parties’ discourses and considers the prominent role the province’s history of border conflict played in each party’s narrative of the past.

Reconciliation is generally studied from the perspective of how the process affects the individual. This study on the contrary, seeks to explain how the individual expectation of the process affects its outcome by investigating the relationship between motives to participate and the outcome of acceptance for your former adversary. A research gap has been identified in studying individual motives for participating in reconciliation processes between social factors as a facilitator for reconciliation and the actual joining of a process. Studying this gap has resulted in support for the hypothesis that individuals with the motive to tell the truth in a process experience high levels of acceptance towards their former adversaries, compared to individuals who participate in a process with the motive of holding the other party accountable for past sufferings. Using the method of in-depth interviews in Cambodia and thematic analysis reveals the main finding that acceptance is facilitated by the mechanisms of acknowledgment and understanding of the other party in combination with active interaction between the parties. This study presents three main recommendations for future ideas and reconciling establishments.

Class of 2007 Abstract / Objectives: Medication reconciliation is a formal process of obtaining a complete and accurate list of each patient’s current home medications. This process is done to prevent errors of omission, therapeutic duplication, dosing/frequency errors, or drug-drug/drug-disease interactions. As of January 1, 2006, University Medical Center (UMC) implemented a new, comprehensive medication reconciliation form which was intended to prevent medication-related discrepancies upon admission. The purpose of this study was to compare the percent of missing required prescription information upon hospital admission before and after the implementation of the medication reconciliation form. Methods: This study was an inferential retrospective chart review of patients admitted to UMC in Tucson, Arizona, between January 1, 2005 and August 1, 2006. While the overall goal was to measure the impact of a new medication reconciliation form on the completeness of a patient's medication history, the specific study objectives were to: (1) evaluate medication reconciliation form utilization and compliance and (2) compare the completeness of medication information upon hospital admission before and after the implementation of the comprehensive medication reconciliation form. Patients were included in the study if they were over 18 years of age and admitted to UMC at least once in 2005, and at least once between January 1, 2006 and August 1, 2006. The following patients were excluded: patients that were institutionalized in an assisted living facility or nursing home, admitted to the emergency room, intubated, transferred to the hospital from a nursing home or a long term care facility, and discharged from the hospital within 24 hours of admit. Two hundred and thirty-four patients, who met the inclusion criteria, were randomly selected from a UMC hospital census. The researchers reviewed each medical chart and recorded the physician-reported medication history, reason for admit, length of stay, and demographic information. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was completed using SPSS Version 11.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL). After collecting the data, counts were taken on missing prescription information, such as missing medication names, dose, route, and frequencies. If the collected data were normally distributed and were interval/ratio level data, a paired t- test was used for analysis. If the data were not normally distributed or were of nominal/ordinal level, a McNemar test was used. An a priori alpha level of 0.05 was used for all statistical tests. Results: A total of 234 patients were included in both the pre and post analysis. Approximately 53.8% of the sample was male. Fifty-one percent of the population was categorized as white in the patient’s chart. The average age at time of first admit was 50.3 years. Fifty-three percent of the population had a past medical history that included cardiovascular disease. Over 28% of the patients in the sample had diabetes and over 18% had pulmonary disease. The most common admit diagnoses for the population included shortness of breath, chest pain, and abdominal pain. Medication reconciliation forms were found in the chart 71.4% of the time. Of the 71.4% of the forms present in the patient’s medical chart, the form was utilized 66.6% of the time. The percentage of allergies recorded in the patient’s chart decreased from 89.3% before implementation of the form to 65.9% after implementation. This movement repeated itself with the recording of social history, which fell from 92.3% recorded before the form to 52.6% after implementation. Introduction of the new medication reconciliation form at UMC resulted in significantly fewer drug names missing, incorrect, or illegible from the patient’s medication history between pre and post (p=0.034), as well as a greater amount of medications recorded in the patient’s medication history (p=0.006). However, the use of the form did not result in significant differences between pre and post in the route, frequency, and dosing information being recorded. It also did not result in a significantly greater amount of non- prescription drugs recorded. Conclusions: The results of this study indicate the need for a systematic approach to ensure the process of obtaining accurate medication histories at the time of hospital admission. Utilization of a new comprehensive medication reconciliation form in this academic institution is far from optimal, and could have significant healthcare implications. Better methods of ensuring medication reconciliation at the time of hospital admission are needed.