Resumo de Causes And Management Of Conflicts (2) - Christoph Engel in: Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 159 (2003) 1-15.

In the tradition of Thomas Hobbes, a more radical wayof asking the normative question would be more appropriate: why is the socialcontract incomplete? For this is what his thinking is all about. Violence isthe prime social concern. In this perspective, no justification of conflict isconceivable. At closer sight, even the technical inability to preclude conflictis inconceivable. For the whole normative argument rests on the equation ofsovereign powers and peace.The social needs and preferences are no longer lexicographic.The cost of preventing conflict can become a normative issue. Conflict isassumed to be always bad. The most obvious instance goes to the heart ofeconomic policy. Other advantages of conflict are evolutionary. The systemremains robust to changes in the environment. Put differently, a certain riskof conflict is the price for freedom. Yet another way of making the point is:by banning conflict, politics would be abolished. 8>The proper normative goal is thus not one ofmaximizing, but of optimising peace. One might look out for the efficientdegree of conflict. Type of conflict by type of conflict it has to find out:what is the expected damage? How likely is this damage? Who are going to be thevictims? What is the expected benefit from the conflict risk, or from theactual conflict? A particularly troublesome feature of many conflicts arechance victims. Society may nonetheless want the conflict risk to persist, muchlike it allows cars to kill people in the general interest in mobility. The richinstitutional framework for elections and opposition rights do the same forparty competition. Conflict can be socially beneficial, but it often isnot. The elegance of the Hobbesian approach is that it virtually definesconflict away. Those designing the institution must correctly predict thecharacter of the conflict. The better they are off individually, the more theyfeel the remaining differences, is the claim. If the conflict is about nationalhonour, the willingness to compromise fades away, once face-saving comes out ofreach. Generals close to defeat might be liable to the same mistake.Given the rich variety of potential causes ofconflict, it is impossible to develop here an exhaustive list of institutionsreducing conflict risk. If a conflict is one of interest, conflict risk isreduced, if the aggressor has less to gain or more to lose. If, morespecifically, the conflict originates in strategic interaction, the characterof the game could be changed. This can mean changing the pay-offs, or changingthe amount of common knowledge. The risk of conflict is the product of twoelements: probability and expected damage. Reducing the latter is often mucheasier than reducing the former. Conversely, if society finds the Hobbesianapproach undesirable, reducing the damage potential of conflict is less thanbringing it down to zero. This is precisely what is meant by theinstitutionalisation of conflict<16>. Conflict is<10>"patterned" (Egeberg <2002>). There are many ways of institutionalisingconflict. If the probability measure is the number of conflicts, this would bea way of reducing probability. Likewise, institutions can strive for making theincidents of conflict more predictable (cf. Heiner <1983>).The uncertainty about causes is even more likely toremain pronounced. Outsiders to the conflict will usually only be able toobserve action, not intention. Even if they can speak to the conflictingparties, their explanations and the actual causes of conflict may fall apart.The higher the uncertainty, the more institutions for the management ofconflict will have to resemble those for conflict prevention. The more certainthose handling these institutions feel about the character of the conflict, themore they can customize their reaction however. A second regulatory option ischanging the character of the conflict. Elections are a way of transforming aconflict of ideas into one of interests. The classic strategy is inducing theparties to engage in deliberation, rather than mere bargaining (Joerges andNeyer <1997>; Risse <2000>). The former is done in a package deal. But it getssomething in return that was not part of the conflict at the beginning.Extending the time horizon of the issue is another way of getting to the sameresult. Compensation is the crudest form of extending the conflict space. Oneof the conflicting parties is paid out. In that situation, just taking thedecision may be the solution. Multiparty conflict is particularly difficult tomanage. A change in the character of the conflict is behind what has beencalled "sufficient consensus" in the constitutional negotiations inSouth Africa and in Northern Ireland (Mnookin <2003, p. IV>). This strategycould not work, were not all participants willing to acknowledge the principallegitimacy of the process, and of its potential outcome. Finally, proceduralrules are able to narrow the conflict space down. This is done, if people aretaken to court, although there is no actual conflict. Even if the claimant actsin good faith, the court system can create conflict, rather than manage it.This is the case, if parties no longer shy away from engaging in open conflict,since the potential damage is small enough. This is what revolutions are madeof.The foregoing has demonstrated that different methodologiesare able to generate insights into the causes of conflict. Conversely,constructivist analysis can uncover the ideological roots of what seemingly isa pure conflict of interests. This introduction, as well as the paperscollected in this issue, demonstrate that conflict can fruitfully be analysedwith the rigorous methodology of the social sciences. Being closer to fit thanto parsimony is characteristic for the applied disciplines, and for law inparticular. If it does, the interest in actual conflict becomes the definingfeature of law as a field. The legal system is geared towards the ability toreact to the richness and to the intricacies of the causes of conflict.

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