Conflict Prevention and Management

Recommended Prerequisites

Not applicable.

 

Teaching Methods

Teaching methods include participative sessions in class. Sessions will include the presentation of individual essays on the topics discussed, followed by a period of critical discussion of the presentations and the bibliography recommended. The professor coordinates the discussion, complementing and/or introducing relevant issues for the discussion. Students are evaluated based on periodic assessment which includes three individual essays: book review (25%); article review (25%), research essay critically analyzing one of the topics/case-studies defined (50%).

Learning Outcomes

The seminar aims at deepening knowledge on conflict prevention, resolution and reconstruction mechanisms in violence and post-violence settings. It implies analyzing the different views on the nature and causes of violent conflicts, as well as their relation with peacebuilding. Particular relevance will be given to the increased interest on this topic by the international actors and development of techniques aimed at adapting the international system to these new realities. These goals will be linked with the peacebuilding dimension focused on the mechanisms that allow peaceful transformation of violence, debating the causes and consequences of violent conflicts, as well as alternative views on how these can be addressed, prevented and/or managed.

Specific objectives and competencies

- to understand and relate different concepts: peace, violence, security

- to understand and critically analyse global interventionist policies related to conflict prevention, resolution and peacebuilding

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

The seminar includes the discussion of peace and violence concepts as well as their use in global interventionist policies. These policies are discussed in relation to the debate on liberal peace and also on the relation between peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Most topics will also be analyzed in articulation with relevant case-studies (to be defined).

Detailed syllabus:

 I. Conflict prevention, crisis management and peacebuilding: concepts, theories and actors

-Approaches to conflict prevention, crisis management and peacebuilding.

-The role of regional and international organizations in conflict prevention and crisis management (UN; OSCE, EU, AU)

II. Critical perspectives on the ‘liberal peace’ as a conflict prevention and crisis management tool

III. Liberal peace and global interventionism: the ‘UN standard- operational procedure’ dimensions and elements:

-Security

-Politics

-Economics

-Reconciliation/psychosocial dimension

-Gender

-The ‘local’

-Hybridity.

Head Lecturer(s)

Maria Raquel de Sousa Freire

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Review article : 25.0%
Book review: 25.0%
Writing test: 50.0%

Bibliography

Paris, Roland (2004) At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University  Press [BP 32 PAR]
Chandler, David (2006) Empire in Denial: The Politics of Statebuilding. London: Pluto Press. [BP 327 CHA]
Richmond, Oliver; Newman, Edward (eds.) (2006), Challenges to Peacebuilding: managing spoilers during conflict resolution. Tokyo: United Nations University Press [327 CHA]
Pugh, Michael et al (eds.) (2008), Whose Peace? Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding. Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan [327 WHO]
Miall, Hugh; Ramsbotham, Oliver e Woodhouse, Tom (1999) Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The prevention, management and transformation of deadly conflicts. Cambridge: Polity Press. [BP 32 MIA]
Jeong, Ho-Wong (ed.) (1999) Conflict resolution: dynamics, process and structure. Aldershot: Ashgate[ 32 CON].