Enduring Conflict: Challenging the signature of peace and democracy 9781780937090, 9781780937687, 9781501302152, 9781780936697

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Enduring Conflict

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Enduring Conflict Challenging the signature of peace and democracy

Adrian Little

N E W YOR K • LON DON • N E W DE L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 © Adrian Little, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7809-3709-0 PB: 978-1-7809-3768-7 ePDF: 978-1-7809-3669-7 ePub: 978-1-7809-3650-5

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Contents Acknowledgements  vi

Introduction  1 1 Endurance and the signature of peace  11 2 Democracy, complexity and conflict  29 3 Reconciliation and conflict resolution  51 4 Agonism and the politics of disagreement  71 5 Rhetorics of peace and transition  89 6 Narratives of conflict and the politics of memory  105 7 Conflict and the politics of contingency  121 Conclusion: Enduring conflict  141 Notes  145 Bibliography  147 Index  157

Acknowledgements T

his book is the result of eight years of research. Much of this has been theoretical work but it has also involved research trips to Northern Ireland, Australia, South Africa and Cambodia. Most of these have been funded by the Faculty of Arts and the School of Social and Political Sciences at University of Melbourne, but more recently I have been the beneficiary of research support from the Australian Research Council through a Discovery project entitled ‘Resistance, Recognition and Reconciliation in South Africa and Northern Ireland – Lessons for Australia’ with collaborators including my colleagues at Melbourne, Juliet Rogers and Mark McMillan, and Paul Muldoon from Monash University, Erik Doxtader from the University of South Carolina and Andrew Schaap from Exeter University. I am also grateful to colleagues at the University of Cape Town and the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, and the Institute of Irish Studies at Queens University Belfast for their help in facilitating a number of events and research trips which inform the book. I also want to acknowledge Roger Southall for his assistance in my appointment as a Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at Witwatersrand University and facilitating my travel to Johannesburg. I am grateful for comments along the way from numerous contributors to these events and others including, most notably, Fanie Du Toit, Jaco Barnard-Naude, Youk Chhang, Caitlin Reiger, Henrik Bang, Anders Berg-Sorenson, Sarah Maddison, Rupert Taylor, Michael Crozier, Dominic Bryan and Katy Hayward. The ideas informing the book have been presented at numerous conferences over the last eight years and I am grateful for the multiplicity of comments I have received from these audiences. These include papers and lectures delivered at the Australian Political Studies Association Annual Conference each year since 2004 organized by the universities of Adelaide, Otago, Newcastle, Monash, Queensland, Macquarie, Melbourne, ANU and Tasmania, the New Zealand Political Studies Association conference in Auckland in 2009, the UK Political Studies Association in Edinburgh in 2009, the Institute of Irish Studies at Queens University Belfast in 2009, the Western Political Science Association in San Francisco in 2009, the Department of Political Science at Copenhagen University in 2011, the

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Department of Society and Globalisation at Roskilde University in 2011, the Global Studies conference in Rio De Janeiro in 2011, the International Studies Association conferences in San Diego in 2012 and San Francisco in 2013, and the International Political Science Association congress in Madrid in 2012. The research trips to Northern Ireland in 2006 and 2010, South Africa in 2011 and 2013 and Cambodia in 2011 and 2012 have also informed other publications and some sections of the book have appeared in different forms in earlier publications. These include elements of Chapter 4 in ‘Debating Peace and Conflict in Northern Ireland: Towards a Narrative Approach’, in K. Hayward and C. O’Donnell (eds) Political Discourse and Conflict Resolution: Debating Peace in Northern Ireland, London: Routledge (2010), Chapter 5 in ‘Rhetorics of Reconciliation: Shifting Conflict Paradigms in Northern Ireland’, in A. Hirsch (ed.) Theorizing Post-Conflict Reconciliation: Agonism, Restitution and Repair, London: Routledge (2012), Chapter 6 in ‘Disjunctured Narratives: Rethinking Reconciliation and Conflict Tranformation’, International Political Science Review, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 82–98, (2012) and Chapter 7 in ‘Political Action, Error and Failure: The Epistemological Limits of Complexity’, Political Studies, vol. 60, no. 1, pp. 3–19, (2012). I would also like to acknowledge the support and critical commentary I have received along the way from professional staff and academic colleagues in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. The book is dedicated to Kate and Niamh Macdonald.

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Introduction

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hy does the resolution of conflict play such a significant role in the contemporary politics of complex, pluralistic societies? Why is it assumed that the normative basis on which most ‘ordinary’ societies operate is devoid of the kinds of conflict that permeate societies with a less cohesive foundation? And what are the gymnastics of imagination, language, remembering and forgetting that enable the construction of a normal state of social and political life in which conflict is absent or has been eradicated? This book analyses the assumption that the absence of conflict is a normative good for pluralistic societies and questions why the lack of such conflict is assumed to be the foundation of a stable political environment. In so doing, it investigates the many assumptions that underpin these normative perspectives and the ways in which they have developed within the literature on international politics and on the politics of peace and conflict resolution. The cover photograph of this book encapsulates its key themes in one shot. It was taken by Philip Jones Griffiths in Belfast in 1973 and reflects how, even during the most violent and turbulent part of ‘the Troubles’, everyday life continued and had to endure. The conflict in Northern Ireland permeated every aspect of everyday life – and continues to do so – but, at the same time, ‘normal’ life proceeded in the particularly unusual form in which it had come to be understood in the Northern Irish context. Amid the turbulence, unrest and violence and the corollary pursuit of ‘security’, people mowed lawns, laundered their clothes, cooked their dinners, walked into pubs and staggered out again, went to churches and carried out similar everyday tasks in much the same way as other people did in a wide variety of contexts around the world. The conflict was integral to Northern Ireland and, as much as many people on different sides of the sectarian divide did not like it, the presence of the British Army on the streets of Northern Ireland in the 1970s became part of the new ‘normal’. But at the same time as the rituals of regular life continued, the new ‘normal’ involved living with constant conflict from the threat of paramilitary and/or state violence, to police ‘stop and search’ powers, to the control of entry to Belfast city centre by the security forces, to the interruption of regular television programming to warn of the latest bomb scare. It was not a ‘normal’ environment as many in other contexts could ever imagine it.

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Enduring Conflict

The conditions of the conflict became normality particularly for those who had never known anything else which was pretty much everyone born in the 1960s and afterwards. Arguably, the conflict was the normality in Northern Ireland from its inception through the Government of Ireland Act in  1920, but that condition of normality shifted dramatically at the end of the 1960s. As society descended into a long maelstrom of sectarian division and brutal violence, everyday life went on albeit in new and changing circumstances. And, it is the contention of this book that, despite the remarkable political changes of the 1990s and the end of ‘the Troubles’ as they had hitherto been experienced, the conflict endures today and, for some people at least, everyday life has not changed dramatically – let  alone improved  – in the intervening period since the Good Friday Agreement in  1998. It is this phenomenon that provides the backdrop to the book. Fittingly, in his preamble to the coverage of the 1970s in a collection of the work on Ireland by Magnum photographers (one of the most significant of whom was Griffiths), the social commentator Eamonn McCann captured both the hope and disorderliness of the early 1970s as well as the endurance of those conditions in the subsequent years. In many respects he encapsulates the central thesis of the book: For half a century until the brink of the ‘70s, everything about Northern Ireland seemed static. Then came democracy on the streets and the rushing of crowds. It’s hard to recall now the heady sense of change. It was tailor-made for self-indulgence. Since nobody knew for sure where we were headed, we could argue for any direction without seeming daft . . . By the end of the decade . . . the class which ruled in 1970, despite all, rules still. But people who have envisaged the world for better, for even a moment, are never wholly content. The best we can say of the ‘70s is that they aren’t over yet. (McCann 2005: 84–5)

The argument of the book There are two key themes underpinning the argument of the book. The first is the idea of enduring conflict. This refers to endurance in both senses of the word. On the one hand, it alludes to the enduring nature of political conflicts especially (but not only) in the examples of societies that have been involved in processes of conflict transformation, such as Northern Ireland, Cambodia and South Africa. On this point, the book engages with the ways in which political conflicts are socially and culturally ingrained and protracted to such an

Introduction

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extent that they inevitably undermine the possibility of political agreements in isolation bringing about substantive change. Thus, for example, even where there is a peace agreement in a particular situation, the conflict to which it pertains endures. On the other hand, this theme also refers to endurance as a characteristic of people in conflict-ridden societies. In Northern Ireland, for example, conflict permeates everyday life to the extent that conditions after the peace process still contain many of the same conflictual factors that characterized ‘the Troubles’. This fact was reflected in the social unrest and protests in 2012 and 2013 generated by the decision of Belfast City Council not to fly the Union flag every day (Jarman and Scullion 2013). Not only did the social unrest highlight the enduring nature of the conflict in Northern Ireland, but the disruption caused to the everyday lives of citizens also characterizes how the capacity to endure conflict is a feature of the people in Northern Ireland. In Australia, indigenous communities must endure not only systematic inequality but also state intervention into the fabric of everyday life as governments try to address systemic limitations. Moreover, criticisms of the Australian government’s Northern Territory Intervention are a deeply contentious matter within indigenous political circles (Macoun 2011). These kinds of examples demonstrate the considerable forbearance that is required of the populations of conflictual societies irrespective of whether those societies are overtly violent or not. As we will see, debates around trauma, memory and reconciliation provide a useful reminder of the way in which the endurance of conflicts demands the quality of endurance from the people who live within them. So, in summary, the first key theme of the book is the analysis of enduring conflict and the two main ways in which such endurance needs to be understood. The second major idea in the book is the theoretical notion of the signature (Agamben 2009). This refers to the importance that certain terms and concepts in the social sciences play in the construction of an epistemological order and the differences that exist between the way in which we talk about conceptual issues and their implementation in practice. The notion of the signature is important here as it can confer a degree of authority on social and political processes that are in fact highly inconclusive, ambiguous and indeterminate (Freeden 2009a, 2009b). The signature, then, is a potential source of achieving legitimacy where the finer details of the implementation of a particular concept are less than clear. The book argues that peace and democracy often perform this significant but elliptical role in the course of social and political reproduction. They act as rhetorical devices to drive forth a process of supposed consensus and cohesion where, in fact, conflict and violence may remain as at least partially determining characteristics of a given society. Importantly, the book contends that this rhetorical framing around the

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normality of peace and consensual democratic politics is far from benign; on the contrary, it can serve to blind us to the enduring nature of conflict and its implications for social and political practice. In the light of these two foundational ideas, the book sheds fresh light on our understanding of political conflict and conflict transformation by highlighting the limitations of conflict resolution strategies. By using complexity theory (outlined in Chapter 2), it argues that political processes and more general debates in international relations need to be understood more substantively within the social and cultural contexts in which they are embedded. This suggests that we require deeply contextualized accounts of political conflicts to provide meaningful interpretations of processes of transforming those conflicts in ways specific to that particular situation. As such, this approach suggests a need for deep contextualization and points to the limitations of abstract accounts of conflict resolution. The theoretical backdrop to the book is broadly post-structuralist but this approach is coupled with the intention to articulate the implications of poststructuralist analysis for practical political strategies (Finlayson and Valentine 2002). From this perspective, it focuses in particular on the politics of discourse and the need to shine a critical light on the terms and language in which we construct political debates. This approach is one of uncovering the assumptions and presuppositions which underpin the very terms in which political discourse is conducted (Foucault 2011). As such, it is primarily a critical interpretive exercise in unveiling political issues through analysis of language to identify where the obstacles and impediments to conflict transformation might lie as well as unveiling the opportunities for transitional processes. This critical interpretive approach (Finlayson 2007) necessitates a discursive analysis of key texts in the politics of conflict to identify the conditions under which notions like peace, democracy and conflict resolution can even be conceived (let alone implemented) in a given context. In this sense, the book intends to convey the deep and practical political import that can be (but often isn’t) derived from post-structuralist theoretical analyses. Ultimately, the book attempts to direct the outcomes of this critical discursive analysis towards its implications for practical politics in societies affected by different conflicts albeit without suggesting that the particular cases discussed in the text give rise to definitive generalizable outcomes that can be easily transferred to other contexts. That is to say, the need for deep contextualization pertains to practical political strategies in any given context but this does not mean that we cannot attempt to learn lessons in understanding different conflicts from the ways in which they have emerged and reproduced in relation to political initiatives in other examples. The most frequently cited illustrative examples in this book are those of Northern Ireland,

Introduction

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Australia, Cambodia and South Africa but analysis will often refer to other conflict scenarios both to emphasize the specificity of the main examples employed and to identify where there might be useful cross-over between cases. Where such translation could occur, this does not negate the need for it to be undertaken on the basis that each strategy for dealing with conflict must be applied differently according to the various circumstances that pertain in divergent conflict situations. Importantly, the issues addressed in the book are not just focused on societies that are deeply divided or that have experienced explicit violent conflict (even though these kinds of examples are perhaps easier to use in making some of the key points related to the enduring conflict thesis). On the contrary, the argument developed suggests that the endurance of conflict also applies to less overtly disputatious scenarios and finds its manifestation in less frequent but still disruptive forms of social unrest such as the racial disturbances in Cronulla in Australia in 2005 (Poynting 2006) and the rioting in British cities in the summer of 2011 (Bassel 2012). The enduring conflict thesis suggests that rather than merely pathologizing these forms of social unrest, we need to understand that conflict endures in contemporary democratic societies as part of their everyday operation and that the endurance of conflict has become a background condition under which democratic societies operate. Indeed, in most societies, specific historical conflicts have influenced the contemporary configuration of everyday life and the particular institutional structures that prevail at a given time. As such, I contend that enduring conflict is written into the social and political fabric of all societies even though it may manifest very differently in varying contexts.

The structure of the book Following the introduction, the narrative framework of the book is based on four main sections. In the first (Chapters 1 and 2), I examine the different fashions in which conflicts are structured in complex societies and the ways in which this structuration ensures that conflicts reproduce. In the second section (Chapters 3 and 4), the book turns to the management of these structures of conflict and, in particular, the practical and theoretical techniques through which political actors can address conflictual issues. The third section (Chapters 5 and 6) concentrates on the embeddedness of conflict in the language and political discourses through which conflictual issues are negotiated – this involves not only the language of conflict but also the discursive means available to us in the politics of conflict transformation. In the final section (Chapter 7 and the Conclusion), I return to the issue of

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complexity and its implications for the enduring nature of conflict to argue that the interaction of social structures and the political differences they engender ensure the continuity of conflictual relations. What matters then is how we manage this enduring conflict rather than resorting to techniques of wishful thinking about the eradication or resolution of political conflicts. Within this narrative framework, the argument proceeds as follows: The opening chapter, ‘Endurance and the Signature of Peace’, introduces the key arguments of the book by explaining the dual meaning of enduring conflict. It explains how enduring conflict relates to democracy and how this understanding differs from dominant, ‘common sense’ understandings of their relationship. This chapter also articulates the methodological approach of the book and, in particular, how the argument relates to post-structuralist political theory derived from the work of Foucault and Agamben in particular. This approach casts new light on our approach to questions of social and political conflict and, in particular, the nature of the ‘signature’ and the ways in which certain conceptual norms around peace and democracy can impede our understanding of the complex issue of managing conflict in both more and less divided societies. The second chapter, ‘Democracy, Complexity and Conflict’, builds upon the first by explaining and analysing the relationship between democratic theory and practice in the context of complex social circumstances. It sets out the parameters of complexity theory and its ramifications for how we understand the organization of democratic societies. It discusses key theorists on the theme of social and political complexity, including Connolly (2011), Urry (2002) and Zolo (1992). The chapter contends that contemporary debates underplay the relationship between democracy and conflict and instead try to channel debates about conflict through discourses concerned with security, terrorism and violence. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which the juxtaposition between democracy and conflict is difficult to maintain in complex societies and, thus, argues for a more pluralistic conception of democracy which has political conflict as its ontological foundation, as opposed to normative models which seek to override conflict with democracy. Chapter 3, ‘Reconciliation and Conflict Resolution’, is the first chapter to examine modes of managing conflict in contemporary politics. It focuses on the ways in which conflict resolution processes have been advocated in societies emerging from periods of protracted conflict (e.g. South Africa, Northern Ireland) and those in which conflict continues to characterize everyday life (e.g. the dispute over Gorkhaland in the Darjeeling district of Northern India). It argues that advocacy of reconciliation must always be grounded in deeply contextual understandings of political conflicts and that some of these examples indicate that discourses of reconciliation can be

Introduction

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potentially very harmful to transitional interactions. The chapter challenges the implication that divided societies are pathological and that the absence of overt conflict is a necessarily desirable state. Moreover, it contests the view that consensus is the regular environment of most ‘normal’ societies. Instead, conflict is construed as a much more commonplace aspect of all societies and that those that are more deeply divided and/or violent are just the thin end of this particular wedge. In Chapter 4, ‘Agonism and the Politics of Disagreement’, attention turns to the politics of disagreement and complex social pluralization as well as their implications for political conflict. In particular, it highlights various forms of agonistic political theory that challenge normative contentions of peace (e.g.  Mouffe 2000) and the ways in which they conceive the relationship between democracy and conflict. The chapter argues that the purposive construction of a normative democratic model to either overcome or regulate conflict is counter-intuitive to democracy and potentially leads to the generation of more political conflict (Rancière 2010). While the pursuit of an agonistic politics is a useful technique in the management of social conflict, it should not be seen as a means of resolving or eradicating conflict because the terms under which agonistic relations might be established need to be understood as transient rather than settled. Agonism is a technique for managing conflict rather than a strategy for conflict resolution. It recognizes that the nature of political conflict in complex societies is always fluid and politics needs to be responsive to these shifts rather than imposing a universal model of how to grapple with deep-seated conflicts. The section on ‘Discourses of Conflict’ opens with Chapter 5, ‘Rhetorics of Peace and Transition’. This chapter examines the role of rhetoric in constructing the terms in which conflict is understood and tackled in the world today. It analyses the role of rhetorical arguments expressed by a range of political actors, including politicians, governments, international organizations, pressure groups, civil society organizations and journalists. The argument contends that the aspiration to peace and the absence of conflict as the normal state of affairs is fundamentally at odds with the experience of both divided and seemingly harmonious societies. In this scenario, the chapter asks what the role is for rhetoric in forging the discursive space in which contested matters are discussed. It interrogates how certain arguments come to be seen as common sense while others are discarded as ‘noise’ (Rancière 1999, Little 2007) or ‘litter’ (Connolly 2011) within prevailing power structures. Rather than focusing on the rhetoric of peace, the chapter argues for the importance of transition to a different rhetorical understanding of conflict. This conception is developed further in Chapter 6, ‘Narratives of Conflict and the Politics of Memory’. It examines the continuing role for the expression

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of forms of conflict in contemporary politics when the dominant discourse appears to be the normative desire to overcome disputes and disagreement in the construction of a more consensual order. In particular, it focuses on narrative approaches to social conflict (Moon 2008) and the ways in which conflict transformation processes might enable the continued expression of dissenting and potentially conflicting arguments. Indeed, the chapter investigates the possibility that there may be greater longevity in conflict transformation processes where the continuation of conflict is openly recognized and which enable the expression of conflict especially through potentially traumatic processes of memorialization. Importantly then, processes of conflict transformation should necessitate opportunities for the articulation of continued conflict either through processes of remembering or in the construction of new institutions. The final section of the book returns to themes engendered by the earlier consideration of complexity theory. Chapter 7, ‘Conflict and Contingency’, develops the notion of the continuation of conflict despite transformative processes. It examines the changing nature of conflicts and the way in which conflict transformation processes are never complete. It depicts the dynamic nature of political conflicts and outlines why this demands a clearer recognition of how they can escalate or recede in relation to shifting political contingencies. The chapter addresses the literature on contingency (e.g. Shapiro and Bedi 2007) and highlights how a less determinate approach to conflict transformation strategies might be better placed to deal with the contingencies of specific conflict situations. In particular, it identifies the ways in which error and failure are key ingredients in learning how to deal with conflictual issues in a complex political environment. This central argument of the chapter reminds us that conflict endures and thus that theories and practices of conflict transformation need to be alive to the continuation of conflict even in periods where it seems to have receded or been resolved. The conclusion, ‘Enduring Conflict’, returns to the basic theme of the book: that conflict endures and that conflict must be endured. It reiterates the problematic nature of the ‘conflict resolution’ paradigm and the ways in which its signature can contribute to the continuation of conflict. As such, normative arguments about democratization and transition need to concentrate  on the management of resilient conflict rather than its eradication in the name of the creation of peaceful relations between opposing parties. This section concludes the argument of the book by suggesting that developing forms of political accommodation in complex, pluralistic societies such as consociationalism (Taylor 2009) are more likely to be successful if we adopt

Introduction

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an approach to conflict which focuses on its enduring and changing nature and the potential contribution of conflict to democratizing processes. In this scenario the enduring nature of conflict demands that it must be understood as a key element of diverse, pluralistic societies rather than something to be overcome. The contention of the book is that the pursuit of the signature themes of peace and democracy is a major obstacle to this recognition rather than a panacea to the ‘problem’ of political conflict.

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1 Endurance and the signature of peace

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his opening chapter outlines the key arguments of the book by explaining the dual meaning of the term ‘enduring conflict’, namely, on the one hand, that conflict endures in ‘post-conflict’ societies and, on the other, that the quality of endurance is something that is demanded of the people who live within post-conflict societies. However, rather than attempting to portray this as some kind of pathological feature of post-conflict societies that differentiates them from their ‘normal’ counterparts, I want to suggest that such continuing conflict is actually a resilient feature of most complex, contemporary societies. While it is more overtly expressed and obvious as a structuring factor in deeply divided or post-conflict societies, this does not necessarily make less obviously conflictual societies more cohesive or harmonious. It may merely reflect the existence of a contingent range of historical, cultural and social mechanisms that have enabled more successful management of conflictual tendencies. In these circumstances this does not mean that conflict has been overcome; the contingent nature of the fragile bonds that facilitate the management of conflict are always potentially undermined by the shifting dynamics of social complexity which will be explained in more detail in the next chapter. Before proceeding to the complexity of conflict dynamics, let us first concentrate on the methodological underpinnings of the enduring conflict thesis and the reasons why post-conflict societies usually exhibit variants of the very conflicts that their political processes have been designed to overcome. In so doing, it will become clear how the endurance of conflict (in both its manifestations) relates to the everyday operation of democracy rather than democracy being seen as some sort of antidote to the existence of conflict. Moreover, it will demonstrate how this understanding of their relationship differs from dominant versions of the democracy-conflict nexus. The methodological approach is, therefore, central to the book and, more

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precisely, how the argument relates to a politically engaged form of poststructuralist theory derived from the work of Foucault and Agamben in particular (Agamben 2009, Agamben et al. 2010). This approach casts new light on our approach to questions of social and political conflict and, in particular, the nature of the ‘signature’ and the ways in which certain conceptual norms around peace and democracy can impede our understanding of the complex issue of managing conflict in both more or less divided societies. Often when political scientists come to address issues of conflict, its ramifications and ways of managing or transcending it, they do so on the basis that the thing which they are addressing is an agreed and settled entity. That is, that a particular society exhibits conflictual tendencies because there is a definitive problem or a set of problems that have hitherto appeared irresolvable. Quite often these interpretations are rather reductive of the complexities of political problems but they provide a way of framing issues such that political actors can be seen to be trying to do something about them. So, for example, these explanations may reduce the situation of Gorkhaland in Northern India to a problem or residue of British colonialism, or Northern Ireland to either a religious or ethno-national conflict, or South Africa to the deliberately forged inequalities of the Apartheid era, or Cambodia to the horrors inflicted by the Khmer Rouge, and so on. The role of political scientists on this view is to provide an explanatory framework for how this situation has arisen and potential pathways through which specific conflictual problems can be addressed and, hopefully, resolved. In theory, this then provides political actors with a road map to help them to engage with the many contingencies, ambiguities and compromises that are inevitably part of conflict transformations. This book adopts a different approach: rather than seeing such ambiguity and contingency as part of a practical set of issues around political processes of conflict transformation in a relatively settled context, the argument here suggests that these ambiguities are a product of the dynamic nature of conflict itself as a defining feature of most societies. In other words, the idea that there can be a stable rendition of what a conflict is really about and therefore a firm foundation on which to establish a way of navigating through contingent dynamics is to misread the nature of how political conflicts are reproduced. In most conflict scenarios we can delineate clear narratives of the foundations of disputes and key political and historical events that gave rise to them. However, the nature and meaning of these events are never uncontested from the motivations of key actors through to differing interpretations of the truth of what actually happened. In effect, these narratives are amalgamations of a wide range of partial memories and partial forgettings, rewritings of events, fabrications and the construction of meanings (all of which will contain elements of truth) to enable us to make sense of phenomena that have taken

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place and the ways that political actors have behaved. Disparate details and events tend to get brought together into a single narrative to provide a unified story that pushes contradictions and complexities to one side lest they interrupt the flow of the narrative. But, the reality, as the enduring conflict thesis contends, is that singular narratives of complex conflicts are never universally consensual and lead us to towards an unnecessarily limited range of potential political strategies for managing conflict situations. It is this phenomenon that underpins too many interpretations of the way in which we try to understand conflict in contemporary politics as suggested by the examples above in a range of different conflictual circumstances. And the pre-eminence of what is regarded as ‘the problem’ in a given situation can come to subsume discussion of other forms of social structuration and the divisions and inequities which they might engender. Thus, for example, we can identify narrowing processes whereby discussion of many of the divisions in South African society that were exacerbated by the Apartheid regime tend to be filtered through the paradigm of race (Marais 2011) or, in Northern Ireland, how the ethno-national conflict and discourses explaining ‘the Troubles’ have inhibited proper discussion of other structural divisions around, for example, gender, race and class (Little 2002a; McVeigh and Rolston 2007; Zalewski 2006; Coulter 1999). In other words, the definitive conflict – however that is interpreted in different contexts – comes to subsume all others. In Foucauldian terms, the identified source of conflict is constructed to be a problem in itself – ‘the problem’ – and like most problematizations it establishes a paradigm of potential solutions (Vaughan-Williams 2006). Understanding conflicts in particular ways is not devoid of political influence or ramifications. For example, the understanding of a conflict as a particular kind of problem that is an antithesis to normal conditions of peace and democracy has fundamental political implications. Not least, it engenders political strategies and policies designed to normalize conditions of peace and democracy in such a way as to position conflict as abnormal and always to be overcome, if possible. Not only does this agenda neglect the potentially positive contribution that conflict can make to social and political development, but it also potentially underplays the significance of conflict and its importance to the environment and conditions in the societies it affects overtly as well as the amount of conflict simmering just beneath the surface of less obviously contentious societies. The result of this process is to make us avert our eyes from the continuation of conflict in many contemporary societies – to rewrite our stories to imagine that where conflict may have been a part of what makes us what we are, it is something that we have overcome. Or, where it emerges again – as in the riots in the United Kingdom in 2011 (Bassel 2012), that it is a pathological phenomenon to be overcome through means such as punishing the ‘mindless’ perpetrators.

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Enduring Conflict

On the contrary, the argument in this book suggests that conflict is an ontological condition of contemporary complex societies. That is, that rather than viewing conflict as anomalous in the sense of an unusual condition which blights the regular course of politics, the contention here is that conflict in one form or another is a standard element of the political. It is usually a feature of the contexts in which we must act politically but quite often we fail to take this into account properly as our systems are not established to grapple with the complexity of conflict. In so doing, however, we oversimplify and underestimate the ineradicable nature of social conflict. In effect, we simplify so we can act politically but in so doing, we can misread and misrepresent political conflicts, their origins, their continuity and their reproduction. Of course, there are conflicts and there are conflicts and in no way should this book be construed as reducing all conflicts to the same common denominator. Nevertheless it does suggest that just because the conflicts in some societies are better managed or less violent does not mean that those societies are immune to some of the same dynamics that manifest differently in less restrained conflictual circumstances. The thesis here contends that conflict is not an inherently problematic part of contemporary social relations and that it exists in all political contexts. As such, it would enable us to make better sense of conflict and its implications if we were to take this inevitability seriously. This approach has ramifications both for how we conceive ‘peace’ as a process emanating from a paradigmatic shift away from conflict and for how we might understand conflict as a normal part of social and political relations. From this perspective, the requisite political shift is not from paradigms of conflict towards paradigms of ‘peace’ or ‘democracy’. Rather, it is better to understand conflict as part of the ontology of contemporary politics and something that ebbs and flows in everyday life. This is not to say that paradigm shifts away from violent conflict are not to be pursued but to suggest instead, in a more nuanced fashion, that such changes should not be envisaged as a move from a ‘bad paradigm’ of conflict to a binary opposite of a ‘good paradigm’ of peace. Moreover, we need to get away from the conflation of conflict and violence – while the two often intersect in overt ways, at other times they may not and conflict is not always violent. What matters is the nature of conflict and how its ramifications are socially experienced and politically managed rather than our imaginary being focused on the potential eradication of conflict in some reconfiguration of political institutions and social relations towards a more ‘normal’ (i.e. non-conflictual) state of affairs. The rest of this chapter proceeds with an analysis of the methodological underpinning of the argument focused on the idea of the signature in contemporary political philosophy and its implications for how we go about

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the process of thinking about the politics of conflict. In the following section, two ways in which we need to understand the enduring nature of conflict are delineated: the first focused on the structurally ingrained reproduction of conflict and the second directed towards the implications of this for social actors and the need for the endurance of conflict. The subsequent section of the chapter examines what these twin conceptions of enduring conflict mean for the theoretical notion of paradigm shifts in the context of social and political complexity, while the final section moves on to look at the implications of complexity for how we need to rethink paradigms of conflict and how they might shift. The conclusion draws together these themes to argue that the failure to understand the enduring nature of conflict leads us to think of peaceful or democratic paradigms in problematic ways that do not actually help us to engage seriously with the question of what the management and transformation of conflict might actually look like in practice.

The methodological implications of the signature The underpinning methodological approach in the following argument lies in the theoretical notion of the signature (Agamben 2009). As such, it is grounded in a post-structuralist concern for the use of language and analysis of particular discourses and the ways in which relations of power are established and reproduced in often less than explicit fashion. This points to the importance that certain terms and concepts in the social sciences play in the construction of epistemological orders and the differences that exist between the ways in which we talk about conceptual issues and their implementation in practice. This understanding of the practical import of the post-structuralist deconstruction of language is pivotal to the book as too much of the post-structuralist literature consciously steers clear of moving towards issues of practical political concern in the belief that this will involve the construction of a mere alternative, discursive ordering of knowledge that will be equally susceptible to obfuscation and misrepresentation of prevailing power structures. Although these concerns about political ordering may be genuine, they are nonetheless unavoidable in the conduct of politics. The application of post-structuralist theory to political debates must surely involve some concessions to the need to engage with alternative normative arguments for a reordering of politics. Disregard of the need for political engagement makes post-structuralism unnecessarily impotent, rendering it incapable of

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making a serious contribution to the construction of alternative hegemonic discourses to prevailing orders. This is surely a fundamental part of a poststructuralist politics (Little and Lloyd 2009). Whether this lack of political engagement is conscious or not, this book contends that it is a strategy that promises impotence in the face of prevailing orthodoxies; rather, I suggest it is incumbent on post-structuralist theorists with a concern for political analysis to get their hands dirty in the construction of potentially alternative readings of the organization of the political order in full knowledge that whatever is formulated through this process will be open to exactly the same processes of analysis and deconstruction which will open up new critiques that unveil orderings of power. This is an inevitable feature of political engagement and it implies that post-structuralist political theorists need to recognize that this is the nature of the beast they are grappling with if they want to be politically relevant beyond the realm of deconstructive critique. The notion of the signature outlined by Giorgio Agamben (2009) is pivotal in this process. In discussing the work of Foucault (1973) and Thomas Kuhn (1996), Agamben explains the analogical emergence of paradigms whereby specific instances give rise to particular modes of making sense of social and political events. Kuhn’s contribution to this is his recognition that a paradigm is simply an example, a single case that by its repeatability acquires the capacity to model tacitly the behaviour and research practice of scientists. The empire of the rule, understood as the canon of scientificity, is thus replaced by that of the paradigm; the universal logic of law is replaced by the specific and singular logic of the example. (Agamben 2009: 11–12) The singular event then helps to provide a paradigmatic framing structure through which we are able to filter and interpret other extraneous events. This not only reinforces the paradigm but also makes it easier for us to make sense of sometimes highly complex social and political phenomena. This understanding of paradigms focuses on their propensity for epistemological ordering, their establishment of interpretive boundaries and the ways in which they emerge and prevail. Or, to put it in Agamben’s terms, ‘paradigms establish a broader problematic context that they both constitute and make intelligible’ (Agamben 2009: 17). This differs from more orthodox understandings of paradigms whereby a range of events take place with similar dynamics which are then acted upon by political actors in such a way that we are able to judge ex post that a new paradigm has emerged. This understanding of paradigms sees them as emerging from sometimes unrelated convergences among political actors around particular courses of action which then come together in our

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retrospective analyses to be understood in terms of a particular paradigm. In this approach paradigms are almost evolutionary involving quasi-spontaneous, isolated developments which become structurally ingrained as a paradigm and are then brought together to make sense of the dominant modes of thinking and acting in politics in a given period. Agamben’s approach differs from this insofar as he sees the formation of the paradigm as a means by which we bring together very different phenomena (albeit with some shared characteristics) to facilitate a sense of order to sometimes disparate social and political developments. As such, particular events which might have some shared features (but are substantively different) are brought together under the rubric of a specific interpretive light and become fundamental to the construction of a paradigm. The  paradigm becomes a funnel mechanism through which a range of events are channelled. This funnel contains an interpretive filter which has the primary function of ordering the event to make sense within paradigmatic boundaries. Everything that falls outside of the funnel or gets trapped in the filter is mere ‘noise’ because, due to the extraneous nature of the interpretations they engender, they cannot fall within the boundaries of understandable or acceptable political discourse. This is what Rancière calls the ‘distribution of the sensible’ (Rancière 2010: 36–7). The idea of the signature is important in the sustenance of paradigms because it is through the identification of a particular phenomenon as part of a specific paradigm that it is able to be interpreted within existing epistemologies. In this sense the paradigmatic appellation accords phenomena meaning that might otherwise render them as mere isolated, random or ambiguous events. The signature is a means through which paradigmatic status can be granted or assumed. By taking on or being granted a particular discursive nomenclature as part of a specific paradigm, phenomena can begin to make sense especially as their existence relates to other elements of a political or social order. Thus, for example, to label something – ‘democratic’, ‘neo-liberal’, ‘terrorist’ and ‘egalitarian’ – is not only to ascribe some fundamental characteristics to it but also to position it vis-à-vis other potential appellations that could be ascribed. Positioning something within one paradigm of meaning is, therefore, significant because such an action positions it in relational terms to other paradigmatic framings as well. In politics, of course, the substance of these labels, the meanings of paradigms and where things should be located or not are matters of deep contention. However, the role of the signature in Agamben’s work is important for those with a particular interest in trying to close off some of those debates about specific interpretations. The signature is the imprimatur of authenticity and meaning; it aims to decontest epistemological debate around the meaning of particular discourses.

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The signature is politically significant in the way in which it can confer a degree of authority and legitimacy on social and political ideas and processes that are, in fact, highly inconclusive, ambiguous and indeterminate (Freeden 2005). Michael Freeden, in his work on failure in political theory, goes to great lengths to demonstrate the ways in which political theorists of many varieties have a tendency to seek order, determinacy and certainty where usually there is none (Freeden 2009a, 2009b). Adopting a morphological approach to the development and reproduction of ideas (Freeden 1996), he suggests that all theoretical devices are in a state of flux and development that makes the use of language highly loaded. Because there is always ambiguity about meaning, this automatically invokes the possibility of contestation as soon as one specific term is used rather than another. Moreover, the ‘career’ of a particular discourse or concept is never over according to morphological thinking. On the contrary, a particular term is a part of an epistemological journey whereby it will be adapted, adopted and discarded according to its political utility. As such, political language is inconclusive. To say that something is ‘democratic’ is to differentiate it from things that are ‘nondemocratic’ or to call a particular initiative ‘egalitarian’ is to differentiate it from ‘inegalitarian’ and indeed there is frequently some positional utility in such distinctions in politics. However, once we accept that the substance of these terms themselves is the subject of contestation and dispute – that it is in fact highly ambiguous – then the inconclusive and indeterminate nature of the terminology we use in the discussion of political ideas and concepts becomes more apparent. The acquisition of a particular signature, then, is a potential means of achieving legitimacy where the substantive meaning and the finer details of the implementation of a particular concept are less than clear. It provides a tool with which political theorists and political actors can strip away at a lot of the foliage that surrounds the language that we use in political debate. It can offer certainty and determinacy where there is little (Freeden 2005). The signature can sidestep the contestation that inevitably features in theoretical debate in the name of getting on with the practical business of policymaking. Even where there is acceptance of contestation around the particular meaning of a term or concept, the signature is a way of setting those ambiguities on one side to facilitate political action. For example, where it might be recognized that we disagree on what the substantive meaning of democracy is, to act in the name of democracy is to invoke a particular set of principles and to differentiate what we are trying to do from some other form of political orchestration and management which is considered not to be democratic. The signature of democracy, therefore, has meaning – albeit contested – and is politically useful in delineating the paradigm within which political theorists

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and actors are trying to operate. But the role of political theorists (particularly those of a post-structuralist bent) must be to turn the spotlight on the language that gets used in both scholarly and practical debates in order to highlight constantly the contested nature of the signature term and the ways in which it might be potentially being used in a problematic fashion. The argument in this chapter suggests that peace and democracy often perform the role of simplifying the manner in which we discuss political conflict in potentially very risky ways. In no sense does this mean that there is anything inherently wrong in pursuing peace and democracy but, on the contrary, that it is the specific ways in which these terms are framed with regard to how we address conflict in contemporary politics that is the problem. While the signature term may enhance discursive processes by seeming to strip away ambiguity and indeterminacy, in so doing, it can also inhibit political debate by suggesting more certainty and decontestation than is actually the case. The concepts of peace and democracy often act as rhetorical devices to drive forth processes of supposed consensus and cohesion or narratives of reconciliation where, in fact, conflict and violence may remain as at least partially determining characteristics of a given society. One example of such a rhetorical problem is the way in which the politics of human rights is sometimes translated into the claims and practices that take place in many contemporary conflicts. The conflicts around the marching season in Northern Ireland after 1998 are often cast in the language of human rights, given the specific provisions of the Good Friday Agreement in this area. Therefore, we see claims to the right to march on a particular road expressing traditional sources of cultural identity juxtaposed with the right not to have inflammatory marches coming through communities where they are not welcome. While it could be noted that this merely reflects the fact that claims to human rights often conflict with one another, the use of the particular signature of the language of rights to frame these contradictory claims thereby potentially undermines human rights as a means of cutting through contestatory issues. It could also be argued that the translation of these claims about culture and identity into claims of human rights serves to discredit political arguments around more serious human rights violations (thereby damaging the ‘brand’ of human rights). Whether that is the case or not, the point is that the particular linguistic signature that is used as a shorthand is often employed for perceived strategic advantage and as a technique of reducing political complexity, but ultimately the signature may not be particularly helpful in helping us to manage these conflicting political claims (O’Neill 2000, Newey 2002, Little 2003). For the purposes of political analysis, the key issue at stake is the point at which, in Foucauldian terms, the established (but transient) paradigm gets

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translated into the political phenomenon of a discursive regime – that is the point at which a snapshot of epistemological ‘reality’ takes on the status of a regime or paradigm through which phenomena need to be understood to make sense as part of political debate. As the work of Ernesto Laclau (1996) has made it clear, many of the concepts that are used in these processes of political legitimization are often empty or floating signifiers. This implies that the terminology that we use to conduct political analysis is frequently overdetermined and the signature plays a primary role in that process of overdetermination. However, in order to enable political debate, we push aside the ambiguities of language with their sometimes profound ramifications and, in so doing, lose sight of the contestation at the heart of the establishment of political meaning. From this perspective, what fills out a concept matters less than the power and authority that the appellation brings. In the political understanding of the relationship between democracy and conflict, this is precisely the process whereby the issues that pertain to the existence and resilience of conflict come to be subsumed by the pursuit of democracy. Thus, even when democracy is mainly understood in pluralist terms, it is often regarded as a non-conflictual space for the iteration of differing perspectives. The point here is that the pursuit of the normative objective of what is good and right  – democracy – deflects our attention from the sources of conflict (some of which may be highly legitimate). The normative good then becomes an end in itself, which makes it more difficult for us to engage with and address conflictual issues in a way that takes seriously the complex array of issues that give rise to and reproduce social and political differences. The idea of the signature is fundamental to understanding the enduring nature of conflict and the difficulties political analysts have in incorporating that endurance into the political discourse of policy-making agendas. Because conflict is usually construed in negative terms – at best as an unavoidable by-product of particular social and political configurations – its continued significance gets suppressed beneath a broader agenda to replace it with more peaceful relations, greater reconciliation, democratic systems of accommodation and so forth. The contention in this book is that such an approach, though highly understandable, is putting the cart before the horse. That is, that a deeper understanding of the existence and indeed the need for enduring conflict would require us to configure our approaches to the management and transformation of conflict in different ways than is often seen in contemporary political debates. To add more meat to the bare bones of the ‘enduring conflict’ thesis, let us now turn to the dual meaning of the term in a little more detail.

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Enduring conflict As stated in the introduction, there are two senses in which the idea of enduring conflict permeates the argument of this book and they relate to different meanings of endurance. The first alludes to the idea of the enduring nature of political conflict. This is specially relevant in the examples of societies that have been involved in processes of conflict transformation, societies such as Northern Ireland, Cambodia and South Africa. However, I contend that it also applies to those such as Gorkhaland (and many other such instances) in which sources of conflict have not always been as overtly violent but where serious disputes have not been resolved and continue to characterize social relations. The point here is that the conflicts to which political processes of management or transformation or, more problematically, resolution are applied are extremely resilient and find their expression in many forms, from cultural practices through to the structural configuration of political institutions. This practical resilience of conflictual inscriptions demonstrates the ways in which conflicts are socially and culturally ingrained and protracted in such a way that political agreements or institutional design alone cannot bring about substantive change. This alludes to the difference between elite-level political strategies for the transformation of conflict and the everyday experience of complex conflictual social relations. Even where there are political peace agreements, the conflict to which they pertain endures as has been clear in the politics of Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement. At its simplest, this is evident in the continued operation of dissident paramilitary groups (Currie and Taylor 2011, Sanders 2011) and the ongoing securitization of Northern Irish society. But the nature of political conflicts is not only expressed in overtly political ways or even through social and cultural practices, it also finds its expression in the very political institutions that are developed to manage their existence. Indeed, in many or indeed most cases, the genealogy of political institutions is intimately connected to the conflicts from which they emanated. To use the Northern Ireland example again, the local consociational structures that were established through the 1998 Good Friday Agreement only look the way they do because of the nature of the conflict (Wilford 2001). This implies that our conflicts are written into the very structures that we use to regulate non-conflictual social and political life. In Foucault’s terms, we ‘are always writing the history of the same war, even when we are writing the history of peace and its institutions’ (Foucault 2003: 16; Little 2009c). The point here is that at the same time as institutions (in whatever form) are created to grapple with conflict, they inevitably reinscribe that conflict in their formation. Again the variety of consociational arrangements in the world today

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is a testimony to the resilience of conflicts and their inscription in post-conflict institutions (see, for example, McGarry and O’Leary 2007 on Iraq). And that reinscription of conflict involves a construction of the social division that needs to be addressed through recognition in political institutions. This necessitates a narration or rewriting of particular versions of events or, in Foucauldian terms, problematizations to justify the choice of political institutions to resolve ‘the problem’. In this way, institutions or practices developed to address particular conflict scenarios cannot help but reinscribe those conflicts through their engagement with them. And, in the same way that our interpretation of conflicts may not find favour in a particular institutional manifestation of conflict management, so we must all potentially engage with institutions that encapsulate a particular reading of the conflict. Quite frequently then, these institutions will inscribe what we perceive to be problematic versions of the conflict. This merely adds to the enduring nature of conflicts, given the remote possibility of people actually agreeing in any kind of universal sense on what the precise nature of complex problems is. Moreover, this notion of enduring conflict also helps to identify the existence of sources of dispute (often as potentiality or simmering just beneath the surface or as suppressed) in all societies and the reasons why it is so important to think of the resilience of conflict beyond as well as within overtly conflictual societies. If the first sense of enduring conflict is focused on the temporal resilience of conflict, the second sense is focused on the idea of enduring conflict as a reference to the quality of endurance that people demonstrate in contemporary complex societies. This characteristic is especially applicable to societies where there is overt conflict but it is also a feature of those contexts that have less obviously conflictual underpinnings. In Northern Ireland, for example, as a society with more apparent tensions and divisions than many others, conflict permeates everyday life to the extent that conditions after the peace process still contain many of the same conflictual factors that characterized ‘the Troubles’. This is evident in the fact of the increase in the number of ‘peace lines’, fences and walls in interface areas of Belfast since the Good Friday Agreement than was the case during ‘the Troubles’ (Gormley-Heenan and Byrne 2012, GormleyHeenan et  al. 2014). In Australia, indigenous communities must endure not only the effects on health and education of structural inequality, but also many of those in the Northern Territory experience state ‘intervention’ into the fabric of everyday life as governments try to address systemic limitations in addressing inequality through strict policing of the everyday lives of Aboriginal communities (Macoun 2011). These kinds of examples demonstrate the considerable forbearance that is required of the populations of more and less obviously disputatious societies but which also affect particular groups of people much more acutely

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than others. That is to say, the quality of endurance is not something that is necessarily evenly distributed in any given society and the variations in the amount of conflictual issues that must be endured are considerable when we place these issues in an international context. For this reason, debates around trauma, victimhood and reconciliation are instructive as a way of understanding how the endurance of conflict demands the quality of endurance from the affected people in a specific domain. For example, both South Africa and Northern Ireland exhibit considerable variations between the experiences of working class and middle-class communities in processes of political transition in the last 20 years. Because the dividends of transition have been unevenly distributed, considerably more forbearance in the endurance of conflict is required of those communities that have benefitted least (Gibson 2011). However, in so far as debates on how to deal with the effects of conflict tend to concentrate on the aftermath of violent conflict alone, they only take us so far in making sense of the kinds of endurance of conflict that emanate from structural divisions and inequalities in both nation-states and the broader international domain. There are numerous examples of how these twin notions of endurance pertain in contemporary politics. For instance, in Northern Ireland, the legacy of the past is ingrained in the institutional design of the Northern Ireland Assembly (Wilford 2001) and is revisited in the various reports and investigations into events such as Bloody Sunday and unsolved murders and other crimes during ‘the Troubles’ (such as the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday, the Report of the Consultative Group on the Past and the Historical Enquiries Team). In Cambodia, they are evident in the long-running trials of senior leaders and officials in the Khmer Rouge and in the continued debates as to whether to extend the investigation to lower-ranking Khmer Rouge officials and beyond the domain of the 1975–79 administration (Ciorciari and Heindel 2009, Linton 2004). This reawakens the crimes of the past and brings to attention the impunity with which Khmer Rouge leaders were able to live relatively unaffected lives after the overthrow of the regime in  1979 (Etcheson  2005). The demands for justice for victims sit alongside debates about contemporary political imperatives for social and economic development in a way which ensures that the enduring nature of conflict is continually in view. And, indeed, the need to keep the effects of the Khmer Rouge years in view is a major and definitive motivating force for some organizations devoted to the cause of victims, such as DC-CAM (Ciorciari and Heindel 2009). But, even in less overtly disputatious environments such as Australia and the United Kingdom, conflict simmers beneath the surface of everyday life and is written into the fabric of existence. I have already alluded to the complex, multi-layered combination of issues related to race, inequality and

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law and order that erupted into riots in Tottenham in North London in the summer of 2011 and which then spread to other British cities, each with their own local context of interracial relations, geography and policing problems (Bassel 2012). And, likewise, I draw attention again to the example of Australia and the way in which the Sydney suburb of Cronulla has become etched in the national imagination as a byword for inter-ethnic strife in this supposedly multicultural environment following the riots in 2006 and the conflict between local white communities and the Muslims with whom they share the local beach (Poynting 2006). While, often depicted in the media as the random explosion of violence and conflict, these events, I contend, reflect a continued endurance of conflict which has become an accepted part of the fabric of everyday life and which detonates into more overt, violent dispute less frequently but to hypocritical howls of condemnation and derision from media and political commentators alike. These reactions reflect the way in which conflict is endured but draw attention away from its continued and ongoing existence such that eruptions are castigated as malevolent and pathological rather than merely a different manifestation of the conflict which inheres throughout these various examples. Indeed, the depiction of the Cronulla riot as an aberration from the successful model of Australian multiculturalism was cast in a dark light by the riots in Sydney in September 2012. The notion of enduring conflict, therefore, invokes many different ways in which conflict exists in most societies. It highlights the multiplicity of narratives and interpretations that contribute to established conflicts. Thus, just because there is an obvious conflict does not mean that it is understood in the same way by all of the participants and a wide range of unforeseen circumstances can reignite conflicts which simmer beneath the surface of everyday life. Moreover, conflictual actors can draw on a wide range of explanatory narratives to invoke particular rhetorics in reaction to specific contexts and events. This makes the clear delineation of perpetrators and victims a perilous activity and the selection of particular narrative accounts of a conflict akin to a decision about which truths are more worth telling. Therefore, the endurance of conflicts involves a much broader set of explanatory factors than simple choices between peace or war, violence or democracy, remembering or forgetting, not least because elements of both sides of these binary divisions are inscribed in social, cultural and political institutions and practices. Thus, even where conflicts have supposedly been resolved, in most cases they endure as key dimensions of everyday life. In Derridean terms, social and political conflicts have a spectral dimension whereby they sometimes linger unarticulated at the back of the stage and sometimes find overt expression in the very political institutions and cultural practices

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of a given society (Derrida 2012). Ultimately, conflicts don’t go away or get resolved – they endure even through the best efforts to manage or transform them. And, because they endure, they demand the quality of endurance from the people who have to withstand their various manifestations.

From the signature of peace to the endurance of conflict From the preceding analysis it should be fairly evident that there is a tension between the two themes underpinning the book. On the one hand, the normative pursuit of peace (often accompanied by the aspiration to democracy as some form of institutional manifestation of a peaceful politics) dominates both the literature on conflict and the practice of those charged with bringing about peace, ending violence, resolving conflict, reconciling competing parties and so forth. On the other hand, there is a growing literature – albeit most of it theoretical thus far – that argues for the impossibility of eliminating conflict, the inscription of conflict in  all political institutions and, in some cases, the importance of defending conflict as a means of highlighting problems and ensuring that they are not suppressed through the operation of social and political institutions (whether they are democratic or not). The theme running throughout the book is that if we begin our analyses with the first perspective as the foundational point, then we place ourselves in a methodological bind that makes it difficult to grasp the complexities of conflicts and nigh on impossible to present conflict in a positive light as an important feature of political development. I suggest that this unnecessarily forecloses our capacity to embrace the need for conflict and leads to an unfortunate tendency to try to manage conflict through existing strategies and institutional formations. However, the question remains as to the extent to which the second perspective provides us with a sound foundation for understanding and interpreting the strategic rationalities of alternative courses of political action. Before moving on to examine these themes in greater detail, however, it is worth unpacking some of the ways in which the tension between the two themes of the book – the signature of peace and the endurance of conflict – plays out in contemporary politics. The existence of conflict is one of the primary sources of interest for political science and international relations harnessing considerable media coverage, political activism and policymaking as well as generating substantial levels of academic debate. Once again, it is worth highlighting that there are conflicts and there are conflicts and it is

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undoubtedly the case that violent conflict engenders much more coverage and action than is the case with other forms of dispute. While this may be understandable in terms of media agendas and senses of urgency around political action to quell unrest, it does generate a degree of conflation between the notions of conflict and violence (often in rather unhelpful ways). The focus of political endeavours in the international domain is often to concentrate on dealing with or eradicating forms of violent conflict at the expense of less overtly violent struggles. Moreover, often action only comes when conflictual struggles become violent rather than sufficient attention being given to the potential violence that could emanate from other non-violent but deeply divisive conflicts. Of course, the focus on violence also helps to reinforce the first theme of the book identified above, that is, the precedence of restoring peace where it does not exist. Peace becomes normalized and violence is pathologized in this political discourse. At the same time, there are at least two important corollaries. The first is that democracy is sometimes surreptitiously promoted as an antidote to violence following the ‘logic’ that democracy is inherently more peaceful than violence and that the creation of sound and appropriate democratic institutions will ward off the propensity of aggrieved groups to use violent strategies to achieve their ends. By this account, if their objectives can be incorporated into democratic mechanisms, then we are much more likely to see peaceful outcomes. As with all such truisms, there is undoubtedly some evidence to back up these kinds of claims but, as we shall see in the following chapter, the linearity supposed in this line of argument is often widely divergent from the actuality of grappling with violence, upheaval and unrest in many different social contexts around the world. Not the least of these is the assumption that democracy opposes violence when, in fact, many acts of violence take place in the name of pursuing democracy (such as in the conflict in the Middle East), many democracies have their origins in violence (e.g. the English, French and American Civil Wars) and many acts of violence are perpetrated by democracies (the ‘war on terror’) in the name of democracy promotion or the ‘lesser evil’ (Ignatieff 2006). The second consequence of the concentration on violent unrest over other forms of political conflict is that there is insufficient focus on surreptitious and nascent forms of conflict. Thus, for example, discussions of conflict focus on forms of political violence at the expense of attention to the ways in which everyday social and cultural practices inscribe conflict and, arguably, reinforce violent discourses and behaviours. This can range from messages reproduced through forms of popular culture, the expression of political discourses through symbols and spatial organization (such as fences, walls, partitions and flags

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in the Middle East and Northern Ireland – see Brown 2010), through to the very concrete reality of poorer services, facilities and infrastructure in certain districts and communities (particularly those worst affected by other – more obviously political – forms of violence). Again the social and community infrastructure in Northern Ireland provides an instructive example of the ways in which the conflict (and its violence) are articulated through a multiplicity of means from cultural practice through to the spatial organization of everyday life as well as through the uneven distribution of social resources and facilities (Gormley-Heenan et al. 2014). The other dynamic emerging from approaches to conflict grounded in the normative primacy of peace is the neglect given to the political productiveness of conflict. Of course, we are all well aware of the fact that many democracies emerged through various forms of violence, including the overthrow of non-democratic regimes, violent secession from existing composite states and civil wars (Ross 2004). Moreover, the extent to which forms of violence were used by social movements and elements of the civil rights movement in the process of expanding the franchise in liberal democracies is now well documented. And we have also seen the ways in which many freedom movements and anti-colonial struggles have used violent tactics in the name of achieving democracy through liberation from imperial oppression. Despite the prevalence of these instances of violent conflict as a means of promoting or achieving democracy, the pejorative understandings attached to both violence and conflict articulated above remain dominant. And with that prevailing view of the normative primacy of peace, the potential for violence and conflict as a means of achieving progressive change gets lost from our purview. In this sense, there is a very real risk that the prioritization of peace as a normative objective might depoliticize conflictual strategies that have greater democracy as an objective and provide obstacles to the kinds of challenges that advocates of democracy might need to make against prevailing social and political institutions.

Conclusion In this opening chapter, the two key themes of the book, the endurance of conflict and the problem of the signature of peace, have been identified. The contention is that these two phenomena pull in different directions in subtle ways that have profound ramifications for both our understanding of conflict and the pursuit of peace. This subtlety is at least partially grounded in the complex nature of the national societies and international domain in

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which conflicts and strategies for peace are operationalized as well as the complicated structural dynamics of conflicts which affect the actors engaging with and within them. While the complicated nature of these issues is not in dispute in the relevant literature, there has been less understanding of the dynamics of complexity and their implications for how we go about the politics of managing and transforming conflicts. In the second chapter, we examine these ramifications of complexity theory for our understanding of the enduring nature of conflict.

2 Democracy, complexity and conflict

T

his chapter explains the relationship between democratic theory and practice in the context of complex social circumstances and analyses the implications of the democracy-complexity nexus for our understanding of conflict. It sets out the parameters of complexity theory and its ramifications for how we understand the organization of democratic societies through analysis of the work of some key theorists on the theme of social and political complexity including Connolly (2011), Urry (2002) and Zolo (1992). The implications of complexity theory are quite profound when they are applied to some of the major contemporary trends in the theorization of democracy. Moreover, complexity theory also problematizes the notion of paradigm shifts in ways which make the nature of transition from conditions of conflict to democracy and peace much more difficult to put into practice. In particular, the chapter highlights the ways in which the juxtaposition between democracy and conflict is difficult to maintain in complex societies and, thus, argues for a more pluralistic conception of democracy that has political conflict as its ontological foundation, as opposed to normative models that seek to overcome conflict.

Understanding complexity theory Social scientists are used to the concepts, institutions and other phenomena with which they engage being described as complex. Very few of the difficult questions that social scientists address are not descriptively complex in one way or another. However, this commonplace use of the word ‘complex’ is a very limited part of the theoretical perspective underpinning the argument in

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this book. The common use of ‘complex’ usually refers to complicatedness and it is clear that many social scientific problems are complex in this sense. However, the discourse of complexity employed here refers much more specifically to the emergence of complexity theory in the social sciences in the last 20 years or so and entails a much more distinctive and comprehensive understanding of complexity than is the case with the mere use of the term that implies complicatedness (Little 2008, Geyer and Rihani 2010, Cairney 2012, Urry 2002). As is now well documented, the origins of complexity in the social sciences lie in the appropriation of the theories developed by chemists such as Ilya Prigogine and their application to social scientific problems. As will become clear, there are particular implications of complexity for the theoretical and practical assumptions of the social sciences. Most importantly, it provides a significant methodological challenge for the social sciences as it undermines many of the standard techniques employed in the framing of social scientific debates. For the particular purposes of the debates covered in this book, the essence of the challenge provided by complexity theory lies in the ways in which it invokes elements of dynamism (especially temporal dynamism) and the interaction of numerous elements and variables in such a way as to unsettle the ‘knowability’ of the phenomena we are dealing with. Complexity theory generates an epistemology based on uncertainty and unsettledness, which poses fundamental challenges to the ways in which social scientists have traditionally viewed conflicts, the normative horizons of peace and democracy, and the means of transition from a conflictual paradigm to one that is less disputatious. For the purposes of the discussion here, there are four key elements of complexity theory that have particular resonance to debates on conflict, peace and democracy. These are non-linearity, unforeseen consequences, emergent properties and path dependence, although, as we shall see, these four features also allude to and draw upon other elements of complexity theory such as dissipation, diffusion and adaptive systems.

Non-linearity The notion of non-linearity is fundamental to complexity theory and poses significant challenges for traditional modes of social scientific thinking in general as well as the specific issue of the politics of conflict. Based on the differences between how scientific phenomena work in practice and how some scientific knowledge has been constructed through controlled, experimental settings, non-linearity breaks the link between cause and effect in our understanding

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of the development of social scientific problems and issues (Richards 2000). Rather than there being direct linear pathways between events or the implementation of policies and their effects in practice, complexity theory suggests that, such is the nature of multiple intervening variables (all of which are internally complex phenomena), the establishment of material issues and practices as well as ideas and knowledge is a non-linear process. The challenges that non-linearity raises for the epistemological foundations of politics are significant. It implies that our knowledge at any given point in time is partial on the grounds that we cannot fully comprehend the complex interaction of phenomena that gave rise to particular issues which we need to act upon. Thus, to act politically is always to do so within a climate of uncertainty. Moreover, we can never be sure by following one course of action over another we will get definitive outcomes as a range of other variables will come into play that will also affect the results that emanate from particular actions. This makes policymaking a much more hazardous business as the specific outcomes of a policy can never be predicted in an entirely accurate fashion and the precise nature of how other intersecting issues and policies will affect outcomes can never be ascertained. Obviously, this generates a radical set of challenges for notions such as evidence-based policymaking as well as policy transfer (Sanderson 2009, Little 2012a, May 1992). In terms of the management of conflict, non-linearity unsettles many of the prevailing narratives that inform political processes. Ironically, given the highly unsettled and uncertain nature of most political conflicts, much of the literature is based around much more definitive interpretations of the reasons behind conflicts and therefore the limited range of pathways that might be pursued in seeking to resolve or transform them (Ramsbotham et  al. 2011, Jeong 2010). Of course, a degree of simplification is always required to enable and justify political action – in some respects it is inevitable that some of the complexities have to be stripped away to make particular policies possible. However, there is a risk that we sometimes strip away complexities too easily in seeking to justify and legitimize particular courses of action. And, in line with the themes identified in the previous chapter, this is particularly dangerous when a normative goal of peace is prioritized over conflict. This framing of the debate can blind us to the multiple lineages and forms of conflict and its endurance regardless of political actions to address it. Examples of non-linearity in conflict situations are manifold. For instance, we can draw attention to the unwitting way in which the 1981 Hunger Strikes in Northern Ireland (themselves related to the failure of political initiatives in the 1970s and the new security agenda of the British government) brought about specific political opportunities for the republican movement. As a result, they indirectly gave rise to the increased focus on electoral politics and the

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emergence of Sinn Féin as a major political party. In this case, political events gave rise to unforeseen political openings which led to a fundamental shift in the political strategy of the republican movement (English 2004). In a less overtly political register, we can note how a new phase of Gorkhaland politics in North-East India was engendered in 2007 by the fact of a Darjeeling-based Gorkha winning the television series Indian Idol. The subsequent ridiculing of the winner and the Gorkha people by a Delhi DJ reinvigorated the Gorkhaland separatist movement (Middleton 2013).The point here is that political processes and especially those in fraught conflictual situations are often animated by tangential events and issues which intersect with the trajectories of conflicts in non-linear and unpredictable ways.

Unforeseen consequences Predictability is a common dimension in many social scientific discourses and practical political initiatives. Typically we will take one course of action over another because of the predicted outcomes that an action will generate and the preference of those outcomes over another set that would emanate from a different decision. Often, public policymaking is focused on predicting the outcomes of different policy options and choosing those that correlate best with the particular values or objectives that we wish to generate. So, predicting practical outcomes is a pivotal dimension of the practice of the social sciences. And the same can be said in many of the key theoretical paradigms in the social sciences. For example, a developed debate in analytical political philosophy is focused on feasibility as the grounds for choosing one particular course of action over another. This frequently involves a means of selecting between different non-ideal options and often invokes an explicitly consequentialist methodology (Goodin 1982, Gilabert 2011, Gilabert and Lawford-Smith 2012, Raikka 1998). That is, it adjudicates between theoretical options on the grounds of being able to identify or predict what the consequences of a given course of action will be. It should be clear then that the capacity to predict outcomes and consequences is strongly ingrained in social and political theory and practice. Complexity theory provides a challenge to this mode of thinking because it identifies the ways in which the consequences of our actions are unpredictable and far from definitive. Central to this claim are at least two key elements of complexity. One is the complicated interaction of a number of actors who are all acting in ways that affect a particular phenomenon simultaneously but unbeknownst to each other. In other words, each of the phenomena, problems and issues that we try to address in our public policies and political strategies

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are dynamic entities. They are in processes of development as a multiplicity of different actors engage with them at the same time but are ignorant of the consequences and change being brought about by the actions of others. A second element of the complexity theory of unforeseen consequences is temporal and highlights that the consequences of a particular action or set of actions may not actually be discernible until long after a decision has taken place. This is particularly resonant in conflict scenarios where many of the contemporary features of a particular problem are at least partially consequences of actions with a deep, lengthy and non-linear historical context. Examples of unforeseen consequences in some of the conflictual circumstances examined in this book include the way in which the criminalization of prisoners in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland gave rise to the Hunger Strikes in  1980–81 which subsequently propelled Sinn Féin into electoral politics from which point they grew in strength to become the primary nationalist party in the Northern Ireland Assembly (Little 2004). On a much more general level, very few would have predicted that, despite the significant changes in the racial profile of the South African political system since the demise of Apartheid, unemployment and inequality would have grown in the  intervening years and that the education system would be beset by difficulties The Economist 2012: 11). Unforeseen consequences are not inherently positive or negative. There can be beneficial spin-offs from seemingly unrelated political actions or there can be detrimental outcomes. Whether changes are positive or negative, the key point is that often highly significant outcomes from political actions are unpredictable because of the complex intersection of multiple variables. This makes it very difficult to predict and pursue the good or minimize the risk of the bad.

Emergent properties The third dimension of complexity which is particularly important for the study of enduring conflicts is the idea of emergent properties. This refers to the propensity of complex systems to not only reproduce self-referentially but also to the way in which systems generate new dimensions (Little 2008, Urry 2002). This concept of emergent properties refers to the fact that systems and entities are much more than the sum of their parts. On the contrary, it is the quality of the interaction between those parts which constitutes the outcome of their engagement with each other. And, in systems that are a mixture of elements of order and disorder, the quality of that interaction is unpredictable. When we take into account that the various ‘parts’ which constitute the social

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are internally complex, variable and partially disorderly, then it is not surprising that the interaction of the various parts of a system does not always yield predictable results. Instead, it is part of the evolution of a dynamic, complex system that new properties of the system are always emerging. And, of course, this disorderly emergence of new systemic properties is coupled in complexity theory with elements of continuity and order: It is not that the sum is greater than the size of its parts – but that there are system effects that are somehow different from its parts. Complexity examines how the components of a system through their interaction “spontaneously” develop collective properties or patterns, even simple properties such as colour, that do not seem implicit within, or at least not implicit in the same way, without individual components. (Urry 2002: 24–5) This paradoxical combination of order and disorder – or in the terms of complexity theory, the simultaneous existence of emergent properties with path dependence – is neatly encapsulated in the often-cited example of the development of the QWERTY keyboard as a means of increasing the speed of typing on traditional typewriters. This gave rise to a keyboard system that has withstood the emergence of information technology and computers. Contemporary keyboards no longer face the practical technical problems of typewriters where the mechanical levers attached to the keys on the keyboard would jam if operators typed too quickly. The limited speeds of typing on traditional typewriters gave rise to the QWERTY system which organized keys in such a way that they would not jam but over the course of time has come to dominate keyboard technology long after it was actually required by printing systems (Wallop 2013). The fact that people have come to learn how to type at high speed on QWERTY keyboards reflects not only path dependence but also the unforeseen element of having to develop a system without an understanding of how technological change – an emergent property – would ultimately undermine it. Therefore, the key to understanding the reproduction of complex systems is to grasp the means through which they generate not only emergent properties but also their capacity to make sense of these evolving phenomena within their own terms. That is, there is a need to comprehend the ability of complex systems to filter emerging entities through their logics, epistemologies and structures. This relates in particular to the paradigmatic capacities of complex systems referred to in the previous chapter and below. What makes complex systems so resilient (but also potentially resistant to change) is this ability to make sense of new issues and problems through their systemic logics. This requires the capacity to change and in turn this means that systemic logics

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and institutions must be malleable to some extent to enable them to make sense of and incorporate emergent properties (Luhmann 2012). Complex systems are then characterized by their capacity for adaptation. In terms of the politics of conflict, emergent properties are particularly important because they signify the ways in which conflicts are always evolving, incorporating new dimensions and reframing existing logics and epistemologies. This includes the indelible imprint that conflicts leave on social configurations even when they enter into ‘post-conflict’ phases and transformations. In this sense, conflicts are never ‘terminated’ by peace initiatives. On the contrary, they re-emerge with different manifestations that are still inscribed with many of the traditional structural features and problems and are populated by similar actors, beliefs, identities and so forth. For example, in South Africa we can note the way that after the 1994 transition, there has been a political reordering (especially at elite levels) but that many of the structural elements which comprised the Apartheid era remain in place (Gibson 2011). Even now, nearly 20 years on, political actors are still debating what it means to develop ‘non-racialism’ in South Africa and governments have struggled to deliver the requisite levels of structural and cultural change that might enable a ‘non-racialist’ society to emerge (Booysen 2011, Marais 2011). So, just because a particular manifestation of a conflict may be addressed in more or less satisfactory ways, this does not mean that new facets of the conflict do not emerge simultaneously to pose fresh problems and reinscribe the conflict all over again. The point here is that emergent properties are often accommodated within complex systems and the resilience and reproduction of those systems is at least partially due to their capacity to incorporate new elements of conflict within the prevailing material and discursive structures. However, this capacity is always contingent on a range of other complex factors so that the process of managing institutions in this environment is difficult. So, while complex systems are highly capable of reproducing and incorporating emerging issues, it is much more difficult for political actors and, in particular, governments which have to formulate policies on this shifting terrain. Part of the reason for this difficulty is the final dimension of complexity theory that I want to highlight here – the problem of path dependence.

Path dependence The concept of path dependence is commonplace in the social sciences but it plays a highly specific role in understanding how complexity theory makes sense of social and political development. Path dependence alludes to the

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way in which social and political practices and ideas emerge from a valueladen, historical trajectory. As such, when we debate political ideas in any given context and their implications for political action, we always do so within a pre-established set of parameters which frame debates and limit the possibilities of how we might define ‘rational’ or ‘practicable’ actions or ‘attainable’ outcomes. Path dependence helps us to understand the shifting ways in which ideas and practices develop and the genealogy of the tools we have at our disposal for addressing social and political conflicts. In some respects, this helps to provide order and predictability in contra-distinction to the disorderly dimensions of complexity outlined above. Part of the problem with complex systems is that, while they are characterized by the generation of new dimensions of old problems and fresh challenges, their means of understanding and addressing them is often constrained by existing structures and traditional institutions. In terms of the politics of conflict, the issue with path dependence is that it can enshrine and reify particular accounts or practices which constrain the possibilities of conflict transformation. Indeed, as the history of Northern Ireland exemplifies, in most conflict scenarios at their most intractable, it is the ingraining of particular ideas and their institutionalization in the political architecture that serves to preclude obvious political progress. By definition, complexity has enormous transformative potential because it is dynamic and evolutionary, but at the same time our means of making sense of issues as they emerge in a complex fashion is radically limited. Political actors, faced with elements of disorder and uncertainty in complex systems, often have only a limited vocabulary to articulate this radical uncertainty and will often use established institutional structures and historical narratives as filtering mechanisms in the process of explaining the meaning of new challenges. This continual reference to what we already ‘know’ inhibits the capacity to use fresh thinking and to innovate to meet new challenges. Moreover, it often leads to a lack of functionality within existing institutions and dissatisfaction with the social and political actors who operate within them (Crozier and Little 2012). Path dependence is particularly pertinent in making sense of how conflict endures in contemporary societies. Although transformative thinking and processes may develop through the emergence of new sets of issues (e.g. shifting social and economic conditions, or migration), changing structural configurations (e.g. in other societies or in international organizations) or new political actors (e.g. through generational or ideological change within political parties and movements), older ideas, material practices and institutional structures typically remain resilient and resist transformative impulses. This highlights the dangers of attempting to instigate political change without addressing the broader social and cultural context in which political relations

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are located. Thus, while the context in which a conflict exists may be continually shifting therefore changing the nature of the conflict itself, this does not necessarily mean that ideational or material structures evolve at the same pace. Quite often we use the language and discourses we have acquired and the institutional systems that we have inherited as the filters through which we make sense of, and formulate policies around, emerging problems. This indicates that political conflicts and the modes of their transformation (e.g. peace processes) do not proceed in isolation. Every conflict is constantly changing, although that transformation can both further reify and amplify conflict or lead to some mode of better management of the issues at stake. In the example of somewhere like Northern Ireland, the peace process of the 1990s involved a re-articulation of pre-established theories of conflict resolution while, simultaneously, the institutions that were created through the 1998 Good Friday Agreement arguably strengthened some of the ethnonational identifications that gave rise to the conflict in the first place (Little 2004, 2009c, see also Ruane and Todd 2007). That said, the consociational strategy developed around the idea of power-sharing that had prevailed in some political circles since the early 1970s was considered by many to be the only game in town (Taylor 2009, Little 2009b, Wilford 2001). While this was understandable and perhaps consociational structures were the only viable option in the attempt to shift Northern Ireland away from the stranglehold of political violence, it was also apparent that consociationalism involved a consolidation of the deep divisions in Northern Irish society, albeit with a view to their eventual dissipation. It is also fair to say that Northern Ireland had changed significantly since the 1970s and that some of the flaws of the consociational model were addressed in the negotiations leading up to the settlement in 1998, but this does not mean that path dependence was not at work and that some other institutional innovations could not have been deployed. Moreover, as we have seen in the intervening period since the Good Friday Agreement, the provisions have needed to be amended in significant ways, which highlights the need for institutional flexibility and the fact that the mechanics embodied in the Agreement were not sufficient to endure in the changing climate. Most significant here was the follow-up St  Andrews Agreement in  2006 with its renewed negotiation of some of the policing, justice and security questions that were left unanswered in the implementation of the 1998 Agreement (BBC 2006). What is even more significant, however, given that the pursuit and advocacy of consociational arrangements has prevailed in Northern Ireland over the last 15 years has been the distance between the political structures that have been set in place and the much more ingrained and resilient

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forms of social and cultural division characterized by the protests over the flying of the Union flag at Belfast City Hall in 2012–13 (Jarman and Scullion 2013). Indeed, much of the reason for the longevity of these protests has not merely been the issue of the flying of flags but the opportunities that the protests have provided for people on all sides to criticize political elites and their distance from the everyday concerns of many citizens. And, of course, the protests have also provided space for the re-articulation of older forms of sectarianism that have not been defeated through the elite political developments facilitated by the Good Friday Agreement. Just as the political transformation in South Africa has not been able to defeat racialism in South African society, so sectarianism remains prevalent and pervasive in Northern Ireland despite the elite-level political developments. So, path dependence can lead to multi-speed transformative processes, with some parts of the social, cultural and political system moving and changing much more rapidly than others do. This happens simultaneously though so even path dependent ideas and structures are reactive to the changes around them. In this light, complex systems are characterized by both reactive and adaptive dimensions.

The implications of complexity In many respects, the idea of complexity in the social sciences is increasingly significant because it identifies the Janus-faced nature of contemporary politics. It simultaneously alludes to the generative aspect as well as to the regressive tendencies of complex systems. That is, complex systems do not only emerge from particular historical trajectories, but also contribute to the reproduction of those systems in innovative and unforeseen ways. Complex systems are neither static nor linear. Instead, they are in a constant process of redevelopment that, given the complicated interaction of a multiplicity of variables, often generates unpredictable, non-linear outcomes. So, complex systems are dynamic and the manner in which they deal with path-dependent, historical trajectories does not merely reproduce or replicate those trajectories but instead reform them in fresh, innovative ways. Complex systems are then a chaotic mix of orderly and disorderly phenomena – a blend of path dependence (and a degree of predictability) combined with newly emerging features that recast that path dependence in unforeseen ways. Coupled together, path dependence and emergent properties highlight the elements of continuity and discontinuity (or order and disorder) that complexity invokes. The paradoxical or contradictory nature of these tendencies is manageable precisely because complex societies are

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based on adaptive systems (though some systems are much more flexible and adaptive than others). This highlights the ways in which the institutions and structures of a complex political system must be able to adapt to the changing nature of their constituent parts. Thus, just as the elements within a system react to the emerging challenges to their path-dependent trajectory, so too must the system embody a dynamic of change. Complex systems cannot survive if they are so tightly wedded to one particular aspect of their social and political formulation that a shift in that aspect draws the system into crisis. Instead, complexity requires adaptive capacity precisely because of the inherently disorderly nature of complex systems and the unpredictable, internally complex nature of their elements in interaction with one another. This account demonstrates that social and political complexity has ramifications that go far beyond the language of complicatedness which is commonplace in contemporary social and political discourse. Complexity refers to a range of intersecting and dynamic phenomena which generate possibilities for political transformation as well as obstacles to their realization. It creates conditions which undermine much of the traditional linear thinking that characterizes the social sciences. And, with regard to the politics of conflict, it ensures that, irrespective of attempts to resolve disputatious situations, conflict endures. This necessitates a rethinking of conflictual politics in both ideational and institutional terms so that we are better able to come to terms with these conditions in both our discursive understandings of the politics of conflict and the structural transformations that they might engender.

Paradigm shifts in complex societies: Language and institutions The concept of paradigm shift has become prominent in the social sciences mainly through the work of Thomas Kuhn as a means of explaining the ways in which the framing of social phenomena can change over the course of time as the epistemological foundations of what we know develops (Kuhn 1996; Nickles 2002). As noted in the previous chapter, since the original thesis was expounded by Kuhn, the notion of paradigm shift has become a focus of debate for a number of theorists, including (obliquely) Michel Foucault (2007), Alain Touraine (2007) and, most recently, Giorgio Agamben (2009). Paradigms are not merely descriptive ways of explaining a particular kind of social or political configuration; they also refer to an established mode of communicating about politics. In this section, I focus on the relationship between the idea of paradigmatic shifts and the conditions of social complexity outlined above.

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In the social sciences, the idea of paradigms draws attention not only to institutional structures but also to the discursive modes through which we make sense of social and political phenomena around us. This implies that paradigms have an important rhetorical dimension in which the key question is the extent to which they can influence shifting interpretive frameworks (Finlayson and Martin 2008). This issue relates to the discursive possibilities of a linguistic reframing of social phenomena and whether such a process is only marginally capable of generating significant paradigmatic change in the face of the ingrained structural practices of existing institutional paradigms. More specifically, given the highly adaptive nature of complex social and political systems, to what extent can shifts in the use of political language engender  significant substantive change? And at which point in this transformative dynamic, based on the relationship between institutional frameworks and linguistic constructions of politics, can a paradigmatic shift be said to have taken place? If a shift in paradigms involves the emergence of a ‘new and more rigid definition of the field’ (Kuhn 1996: 19), what is the role of rhetoric in the hegemonic establishment of paradigms? These accounts of paradigms and the manner in which they reproduce and change also need to be placed in the context of social and political complexity. We saw above that there are growing arguments around the influence of complexity theory in the social sciences (Cilliers 1998, 2005, Urry 2002, Harrison 2006, Richards 2000, Geyer and Rihani 2010 among others) and its application to both conceptual debates and specific conflict scenarios (Little 2008, 2009b, 2012a, 2012c). These debates suggest that fuller attention to complexity in the social sciences can help us to make better sense of what is at stake in talking about paradigm shifts in complex, conflict-ridden societies. This is particularly significant if we return to our theme of paradigms and the ways in which they might be said to shift. Insofar as complex systems are always in a stage of renewal and redevelopment to accommodate their inherent disorderliness, then so too must the prevailing paradigms within those systems be adaptive. That is, paradigms in complex societies must be capable of being differentially identified by a variety of actors to accommodate the changing nature of the phenomena they refer to and of which they are comprised. In other words, if it were the case that paradigms disintegrated when one of their constitutive elements changed, then we would be in a process of permanent change and collapse. Instead, what we can see is that paradigms are adaptive – or, more precisely, can be read as adaptive – in such a way that they have longevity despite the changing phenomena through which they are understood to exist. To come back to the issue of political rhetoric then, the language and concepts we employ often help to reproduce paradigmatic understandings even when quite dramatic changes may be afoot.

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Language is a particularly important tool in the armoury of reproductive agents and institutions and certain concepts in the social sciences are pivotal to the signature of established paradigms. ‘Peace’ and ‘democracy’ are especially significant in this respect in the contemporary world. As we saw in the first chapter, however, in the recent work of Agamben the structural conditions in which social paradigms emerge are made clear by the use of a line of interpretation derived from Foucault and Kuhn. Using the latter’s formation of the paradigm in particular, Agamben advances the view that a paradigm is simply an example, a single case that by its repeatability acquires the capacity to model tacitly the behavior and research practices of scientists. The empire of the rule, understood as the canon of scientificity, is thus replaced by that of the paradigm; the universal logic of the law is replaced by the specific and singular logic of the example. And when an old paradigm is replaced by a new paradigm that is no longer compatible with the previous one, what Kuhn calls a scientific revolution occurs. (Agamben 2009: 11–12) This relates to Foucauldian theories insofar as it is not so much the precise rules of scientific conduct that are most relevant in Kuhn’s thesis but the ways in which the paradigmatic structures of scientific conduct affect the interpretation of those rules. As Judith Butler has made it clear in her theory of performativity, the issue of repeatability is fundamental to the construction of specific epistemic practices (Butler 1995). Moreover, Foucault ‘questioned the traditional primacy of juridical models of the theory of power in order to bring to the fore multiple disciplines and political techniques through which the state integrates the care of the life of individuals within its confines’ (Agamben 2009: 12). Here, Agamben highlights the parallels between Foucault’s notion of disciplinary power and Kuhn’s interpretation of the epistemological foundations of what he saw as ‘normal science’. This helps to explain why the propensity for error in the construction of scientific knowledge is not an impediment to the formation of particular paradigms and the perpetration of errors need not lead to fundamental shifts in political or scientific paradigmatic structures (Little 2012a). From Agamben’s perspective then, the emergence of paradigms is an analogue process whereby key social and political events form the basis of the construction of paradigms and surrounding contemporaneous developments come to be interpreted within the same paradigmatic structure. As such, the paradigm is not settled, pre-given and superimposed on social and political events. Instead, it emerges as a way of interpreting and making sense of

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phenomena. The paradigm is populated by events which both regenerate and develop the paradigm into new formations. Or, as Agamben puts it in his analysis of Victor Goldschmidt’s work on Plato, the paradigm is never already given, but is generated and produced .  .  . by “placing alongside,” “conjoining together,” and above all by “showing” and “exposing”. . . . The paradigmatic relation does not merely occur between sensible objects or between these objects and a general rule; it occurs instead between a singularity (which thus becomes a paradigm) and its exposition (its intelligibility). (Agamben 2009: 23) Clearly, language is central to the ways in which paradigmatic structures develop, are maintained and are reproduced but, without archetypal events to make sense of linguistic framing, we risk losing sight of the practical and institutional dimensions of creating and shifting paradigms. Rhetorical constructions are pivotal to the maintenance of certain institutional structures and their adaptive capacity but this needs to be understood as analytically distinct from the notion of rhetoric as instigating paradigmatic change. If, following Agamben, we accept that all phenomena are an instantiation of a paradigm and that the paradigm can only be reproduced through these instantiations, then there is no definitive origin to the paradigm – it is not a singular event that creates the paradigm archetypically but rather the paradigm is embodied (differently) in different phenomena and events. Thus, the paradigm ‘is a form of knowledge that is neither inductive nor deductive but analogical. It moves from singularity to singularity’ (Agamben 2009: 31). In terms of rhetoric then, paradigms develop and reproduce through the use of language in ways that both reinforce existing structures and – due to elements of semiotic and semantic dissonance – potentially disrupt established elements of the paradigm. In complex systems, paradigms reproduce at least partially through their adaptive capacity which means that the process of achieving a ‘paradigm shift’ can be difficult and laborious. What emerges for theories of rhetoric is the very clear role that language can play in the maintenance and reproduction of paradigmatic structures insofar as the repetition of particular language and rhetorical devices can serve to reinforce ‘signature’ concepts like democracy. These ‘signature’ concepts cannot be sustained without rhetorical reinforcement, given both the dissonance between their theoretical elements or foundations and the actual practices or institutions they give rise to on the one hand, and the dissonance between the multiplicity of interpretations of the signified and its relation to the signifier on the other (Agamben 2009: Chapter 2). Rhetoric, then, is vital to the reproduction of paradigmatic concepts and their institutions. What is less

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clear is the extent to which rhetoric can, of itself, help to enact paradigmatic change in the way that some commentators claim rhetorics of reconciliation provided a key part of the profound shift in South African politics in the 1990s for example (Doxtader 2009). This is a point we return to in Chapter 5. What is evident in terms of making sense of political conflict, however, is that shifting from a conflictual paradigm to something else is arduous and multidimensional. These difficulties include the inability to leave behind conflict in a transition to ‘peace’ or ‘democracy’ and the problems engendered by linguistic ambiguity which affect our rhetorics and interpretations of conflict transformation. This relates to the ways in which the rhetorics of conflictual transition that political actors employ are extremely loaded and the fact that they can generate new conflicts, given their indeterminate nature (Freeden 2005). All of this has profound ramifications for political conflicts as we try to adjudicate whether a shift to a new paradigm has actually taken place or if we remain locked into a prevailing conflictual order. This condition generates real problems in making sense of shifts from conflictual paradigms but arguably the way we address them tends to misread the nub of the issue. These issues tend to get locked into a mode of analysis which assumes that we actually have definitive understanding of the sources of conflict, the ways in which conflict is sustained and reproduced, and the political implications of modes of transforming conflict. The argument here is that political analysts just do not have a sufficiently firm grasp of each of these issues to initiate simple, linear, mechanistic forms of conflict transformation. Rather, the nature of conflict in complex societies is that it is continually being reproduced and redefined through social, cultural and political practices. The point then is not to work out the recipe for enacting change from a conflictual paradigm into one of peace or democracy but to understand that the recipe itself is being formulated on the move as complex dynamics impact on the conflict as we live with it. And just as one particular set of ingredients and their amalgamation may prove partially successful in one specific context, there will need to be other ingredients that need to be mixed together in different ways in working out transitional politics in other societies.

Complexity, democracy and the signature of peace The question that remains in establishing the theoretical foundation of the enduring conflict thesis concerns the relation between these conditions of complexity and the kinds of democratic and peaceful relationships that may

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provide some kind of normative aspiration. In other words, if the features of complexity provide such a challenge for how we understand politics, what are the normative horizons within which we can develop theories of democratic organization? If conflict cannot be eradicated in contemporary complex societies, how are we to imagine peace as a set of relationships underpinning social interaction? While it is true that many commentators adopting the kinds of theoretical perspectives outlined here have traditionally been circumspect about the construction of normative arguments, in the first chapter I alluded to the need for post-structuralist theorists to be more specific about the political implications of their critique. In this vein, what does a post-structuralist theory focused on the endurance of conflict offer in terms of rethinking the institutional mechanics of democratic politics? The first point to make in addressing this set of questions is that the normative horizons of democracy must be envisaged in terms of the constitutive role of conflict in democratic politics (Little 2008). That is, if conflict endures, then we cannot merely imagine democracy as a byword for peace that can be juxtaposed with conflictual relations. Instead, we need to understand that conflict is integral to complex politics and that a normative model of democracy will need to be capable of operating within the dynamic and contingent conditions which complexity engenders. The reality is that most theories of liberal democracy will contend that they are designed to function within ‘normalised’ pluralistic conditions of conflict and indeed that they function to overcome such conflict in the process of decision-making. However, the contention here is that the full implications of complexity and conflict are rarely imagined in the design of democratic institutions, let alone those institutions being capable of containing or overcoming the conflictual tendencies of complex societies. The second preliminary point to make is that it is not particularly helpful to think of the theory of democracy in terms of specific institutional design. While, of course, in any particular society the theorization of democracy will require some degree of specification of the appropriate democratic mechanisms required to manage the particular complex dynamics that pertain, this does not mean that there can be a generalizable theory of democratic institutions that is applicable to complex societies across the board. Of course, given the historical origins of democracy, there are likely to be varying forms of certain kinds of institutions such as the franchise, parliaments, the separation of powers and so forth. But the contention here is that it is quite appropriate that the precise nature of these institutions does not need to be specified in an ideal fashion and that the exact dynamics of the mechanics of democracy will vary considerably depending on the specific context in which they are developed. Thus, for instance, even within a specific branch of democratic

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theory such as consociationalism, there tends to be considerable variations in the ways in which consociations are conceived and implemented in different contexts (Lijphart 1977). Complexity, therefore, encourages institutional variation and flexibility and recognizes the need for institutions to develop over the course of time as complex dynamics kick in and shift the context. A complex model of democracy is always a work in progress as different processes emerge and evolve to complement or counteract established institutional structures. For example, it is questionable whether any nation-based democratic system in international politics can adequately capture the dynamic implications of globalized social, political and economic relations and the ways in which many people are affected by decisions far beyond the specific democratic, nation-based institutions in which decisions are made (Little and Macdonald 2013). Rather than concentrating on the grand architecture of a new global democratic order in addressing this question, it might be more beneficial to think of the variety of ways in which the existing institutions of nation-state-based democracy can be complemented by numerous other structures, processes and institutions to make the situation more rather than less democratic (Scholte 2013). The example of the affectedness of people by decisions taken beyond the jurisdiction where they might be thought to have a democratic claim is reflective of the limitations of traditional nation-state-based, representative systems. While there is no contention that these institutions should not be part of the democratic equation, there is a growing sense that they are insufficiently comprehensive to encapsulate democratic values or imperatives in a complex, international environment. Moreover, there is a growing literature within liberal democratic regimes in particular, identifying elements of disaffection and dissatisfaction with politics which highlights just how difficult it is for liberal democratic institutions to fulfil the imperatives on which they are based (Hay 2007). The contention here is that there is an increased distance between political elites and ordinary citizens. This is a distance that may always have existed in one form or another but it becomes more problematic in a complex environment in which traditional modes of affiliation with political parties are breaking down. Where once there may have been a sense that political elites were acting in the interests of their supporters because of the relationship between parties and particular cleavages in society, in more complex, diverse and pluralistic social conditions this kind of simple alignment between structural divisions and the constituency of particular political parties is more difficult to maintain (Crozier and Little 2012). Complexity undermines these kinds of alignments because of the impact of elements such as non-linearity and emergent properties. The settled nature of social structures upon which representative democratic systems

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were established is much more difficult to sustain in a complex environment (Mair  2005). The constituencies of parties are much more fluid and the structural divisions within society are more complicated (Crozier and Little 2012). Moreover, in the context of non-linearity, it is not always clear that particular actions or policies will be beneficial for specific constituencies of supporters. At the same time, issues are emerging in non-linear ways which means that political parties have to be much more flexible in their approach to policy debates, given the uncertain, dynamic environment within which they have to operate and the unpredictable nature of the outcomes of political action. All of this makes the political party within representative democratic systems a much more cumbersome beast than was once the case in more predictable, determined political environments. In democratic theory, a number of approaches have emerged in recent years in response to this shifting terrain, including deliberative, republican and agonistic models of democracy. While these approaches are not entirely distinct from one another, they do invoke differing sets of values and provide a useful snapshot of the ways in which contemporary democrats envisage the challenges they face and the kinds of solutions that might be available. Following from the discussion above, it seems that there are no specific institutional configurations that fit perfectly with the conditions of complexity. Such is their inherent dynamism and contingency. If institutional mechanisms are likely to differ in distinct contextual circumstances, it is perhaps more useful then to think of the kinds of values that different models of democracy invoke and try to operationalize. This concentration on the values underpinning democracies provides a more useful foundation for the broader normative discussion of how to consider the relationship between democracy and conflict in complex conditions. Theories of deliberative democracy have been increasingly popular in political theory in the last 20  years or so (Gutmann and Thompson 2009). Deliberative democracy is something of an umbrella term to cover a range of approaches but most of these have emanated from some engagement with the liberal theories of John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas (Rawls 2001, Habermas 1994). The underpinning ethos of theories of deliberative democracy is to imagine or enable conditions in which political actors can engage across difference. So, rather than simpler aggregative understandings of the nature of representation in democratic institutions, deliberative democrats pay much greater attention to the quality of the debating process and the creation of the appropriate conditions to enable participation in decision-making on a fair or equal basis. For deliberative democrats, the pursuit of a better standard of decisionmaking should form the basis of a qualitative improvement in decision-making

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and a more consensual end product. Indeed, in their different ways, both Rawls and Habermas advocated more consensual forms of decision-making in a way that looks suspiciously incompatible with the basic tenets of the enduring conflict thesis (Rawls 1987). Certainly, both Rawls and Habermas allow for quite substantive disagreement in their respective theories but, ultimately, their institutional modes of dealing with such disagreement either allow it to be aired but then set aside in the name of an overlapping consensus or filter it out of the decision-making process at an early stage to allow policy decisions to be built on more common ground (Honig 2007, Little 2009a, Mouffe 1999). Where some theorists in this tradition such as Dryzek (2001) allow for considerably more disagreement than is usually the case, Rawls and Habermas ultimately see conflict as something that needs to be identified with a view to its minimization through the deployment of appropriate procedural mechanisms. If conflictual parties are not able to reach some kind of agreement through deliberative processes which establish the margins of appropriate political discourse, then their views will be filtered out as noise on the periphery of more consensual forms of decision-making (Little 2007, Rancière 1999). It is this consensual impulse which makes deliberative democracy and complex conflict an incompatible mix. Certainly, deliberative democrats recognize the likelihood of conflict and disagreement in pluralist societies but believe that such disagreement needs to be expressed through appropriate procedural mechanisms. The problem here is the normative underpinning which suggests that, regardless of the precise nature of deliberative institutions, conflict is something that has to be dealt with through processes of deliberation to enable a fair and reasonably consensual outcome to emerge. The value of conflict and its central role in highlighting the ways in which established institutional mechanisms can deflect our view from structural divisions in society is placed within a broader normative agenda that seeks agreement as an overarching objective. It is this impulse which underestimates both the amount of conflict that can be generated in complex societies and the important role it plays in the composition of social and political relations. Republicanism is another older tradition in the history of political thought that has seen a resurgence in recent years (Skinner 1998, Hazareesingh and Nabulsi 2008). Republicanism has been a tradition in political theory which has emphasized the importance of the common good and civic collectivism as a means of enshrining goals of autonomy and equality (Laborde and Maynor 2009).These ideas have been developed in the work of influential commentators such as Philip Pettit (1997) who have argued for a form of republicanism that embodies key conceptual goals of contestability (our primary focus) and

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non-domination which he equates with ‘a conception of freedom as nonmastery’ (Pettit 1997: 22). For the purposes of the argument here, the idea of contestability is significant, for it relates clearly to the endurance of conflict. Ultimately, the notion of contestability is pivotal to discussions of the enduring conflict thesis because it invokes the idea that the ideas and concepts that cement civic goods must always be open to criticism and dispute. That is, the substance of the collective good is not specified, settled and unchanging but must instead be decided on the basis of the engagement of competing understandings of what it looks like. Or in Pettit’s words: it must always be possible for people in the society, no matter what corner they occupy, to contest the assumption that the guiding interests and ideas really are shared and, if the challenge proves sustainable, to alter the pattern of state activity. Unless such contestability is assured, the state may easily represent a dominating presence for those of a certain marginalized ethnicity or culture or gender. (Pettit 1997: 63) Like deliberative democracy then, republicanism attempts to enshrine conflict and dispute within its processes and Pettit acknowledges the role of the politics of difference in the construction of his argument. This version of republicanism focuses on the capacity for effective contestation of decisions rather than assumptions about consent to decisions. But, ultimately, Pettit too ends up advocating a deliberative democratic process as the means of ensuring contestation. However, this republican model of deliberative democracy is promoted with one proviso that separates it from some of the more orthodox accounts of deliberation: The value of such democracy is not contingent on the possibility that people will generally achieve a high degree of consensus about the matters that have to be decided in parliament, in the executive, or in the judiciary. Even if there is no imminent consensus on offer in such areas, it remains the case that effective contestability requires that the decisions should be made on the basis of reasoned deliberation. (Pettit 1997: 190) This promotion of contestation for its own stake rather than merely as a means to reach agreement is a small step forward. But, just as deliberative democracy has an overarching normative goal of consensus around an agreed set of principles, thereby reducing the place of conflict in politics, so republicanism prioritizes the collective good of citizens in whatever form is agreed without sufficient recognition of the constitutive and ongoing role of conflict. In other words, as long as what constitutes the collective good is substantively up for

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grabs through processes of contestation, then republicanism has no problem with the eventual vision of the civic good overriding conflict in the longer term. It does not attempt to use proceduralism to filter out conflict in the ways that appear in some variants of deliberative democracy, but it ultimately reverts to a majoritarian process of deciding what constitutes the collective good. This might indeed be inevitable but it is not particularly helpful for minorities or those disadvantaged by structural conditions in a given society that they are able to contest the prevailing notion of the common good if they keep losing out in the process of deciding what it is. While the explicit recognition of contestability is a useful addition to republican thought in its more recent manifestations, it does not really go far enough in explaining why it is that the existence of conflict is so important to the constitution of structurally divided societies. The imposition of the pursuit of a common collective good as the foundation of society runs precisely the risk of underplaying the significance of conflict in complex societies. A third approach in political theory to have gained increased traction in recent years is agonism. Agonistic theory places conflict at the heart of its understanding of politics and recognizes the important constitutive role that conflict plays in the construction of social and political relations (Mouffe 1999). As we shall see in the following chapter, however, agonism, despite the centrality of conflict and disagreement to its understanding of democracy, is not sufficiently attuned to the dynamics of complexity and the difficulty of building a theory of political change around perpetually shifting social conflicts and divisions. Too often, following the influence of Carl Schmitt’s friendenemy distinction (2008), the schism in a particular context in agonistic theory is construed in a rather settled, linear fashion. In a complex society, on the other hand, the challenge is not only to deal with the existence of conflict (though many theories struggle to cope with even this basic element), but, also more specifically, it is the dynamic and contingent nature of the conflict with shifting parameters and participants that is difficult for agonistic theorists to grapple with. What is clear is that three of the most important trends in the theorization of democracy in the last 20  years have had such difficulty in dealing with the endurance of conflict. This suggests that a rethinking of the relationship between democracy and conflict is overdue and, in particular, that such a project involves a clear understanding of the implications of complexity for democratic political mechanisms. Moreover, all three perspectives allude to some of the significant challenges brought about by the transnational and international dimensions of many of the major issues in contemporary politics (especially around conflict) but arguably none of them have placed the international dimension of conflict in a suitably prominent place in these

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debates. For this reason, the remainder of the book concentrates on, first, the conflict resolution and transformation literature, and, secondly, other innovative attempts to grapple with conflictual issues that go beyond the dominant traditions in contemporary political theory.

Conclusion: Complexity and conflict In the first two chapters, I have set out the ways in which the current discursive constructions of politics and, in particular, the theorization of democracy and conflict pay insufficient attention to the very real constraints imposed by the conditions of complexity. I have pointed to two different tendencies, both of which are problematic from the perspective of a complex view of social and political conflict. The first is the tendency to juxtapose democracy and peace with conflict with a view to normalizing non-conflictual conditions and promoting democracy as the antidote to conflict where it exists. The ­second tendency is to accept that conflict is an inevitable part of democratic politics but to design institutions or values in such a way as to suggest that this conflict can be overcome in the construction of an overarching consensus or a majoritarian view of the common good. However, arguably neither of these approaches to the relationship between democracy and conflict is capable of containing complex conflicts and the dynamic contingencies that they embody. The intricacies of complexity theory undermine the tendencies outlined above and, when linked to post-structuralist discussions of paradigm shifts, highlight the difficulties in moving away from conflictual conditions towards an environment of a normalized peaceful democracy. In the light of this, the book now moves on from the theoretical framework invoking the inevitability of conflict in contemporary politics to examine theories of conflict management and transformation as alternative ways of coping with the enduring nature of conflict and its constitutive role within democratic politics.

3 Reconciliation and conflict resolution

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n this chapter, attention turns to societies that are widely regarded as explicitly conflictual and the ways in which conflict resolution processes have been advocated as a means of transition to peace and democracy. In line with the approach to social and political complexity outlined thus far in the book, the chapter suggests that the advocacy of reconciliation that has been evident in much of the conflict resolution literature must always be grounded in deeply contextual understandings of political conflicts. This implies that we might need to take a slightly more nuanced approach to conflicts in recognition of the ways in which attempts to reconcile parties to the conflict may or may not assist processes of transition. Indeed, as shall become clear, some of the examples that are referred to throughout the book indicate that discourses of reconciliation can be potentially very harmful to transitional interactions. The chapter challenges the implication that can be drawn from some of the conflict resolution literature which suggests that divided, conflictual societies are pathological because the absence of overt conflict is a necessarily desirable  state of affairs. Moreover, the argument contests the view that ‘peace’ is the regular environment of most ‘normal’ societies. Instead, conflict is construed as a much more commonplace aspect of all societies and that those that are more deeply divided are merely the thin end of the wedge. An alternative way of viewing the prevalence of conflict in contemporary politics is the much more orthodox approach to peacebuilding and conflict resolution which has characterized the international political domain since the end of the Cold War. This approach has manifested in various ways in the shifting agendas and operations of international political actors like the United Nations (UN) and is the dominant perspective in the literature on political conflict. It constructs a model of peacebuilding focused on ‘democratization, the rule of

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law, human rights, free and globalised markets, and neo-liberal development’ (Richmond 2006: 292). Frequently this approach, often construed as the ‘liberal peace thesis’, differs markedly from the kinds of assumptions that have been identified in the first two chapters as the hallmarks of conflict in contemporary complex societies. The first section of the chapter traces the ways in which the ‘liberal peace thesis’ relates to (and sometimes translates into) the literature on conflict resolution and reconciliation. In the second section, the chapter focuses directly on the concept of reconciliation and the ways in which it has been operationalized in relation to a number of different conflict situations in global politics in recent years. The third section concentrates on a particular problem with this approach to complex conflicts, that is, the understanding of the temporal dimension of conflicts that it employs. And then, in conclusion, the chapter plots the limitations of the nexus of peacebuilding, conflict resolution and reconciliation and identifies how some alternative approaches might be better placed to provide meaningful strategies to conflict in the world through recognition of complexity as an inevitable feature of contemporary social and political life.

Understanding peacebuilding, reconciliation and conflict resolution: Beyond the ‘liberal peace thesis’? There has been an expanding literature in the area of conflict resolution in the last 20 years (Jeong 2010, Ramsbotham et al. 2011). Many accounts identify this with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a global order in which processes of political change were no longer played out as clearly against a backdrop of superpower rivalry and political influence. Within this paradigm, the dominant approach to dealing with conflict became what is known as the ‘liberal peace thesis’ incorporating various elements focused on the development of Western-style political, economic and, potentially, social institutions. For Doyle, this liberal peace agenda is centred around republican forms of representation, a commitment to human rights and transnational interdependence (Doyle 2005). In this sense, the path to peacebuilding in conflict-torn parts of the world was seen to be the development of liberal democratic mechanisms such as competitive elections, representative assemblies of various kinds and political enfranchisement of citizens within this interdependent international context. This was usually coupled with the promotion of market-based systems which were seen to support economic development to a greater extent than more state-oriented regimes did

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(Richmond 2006). The key aspiration here was that the combination of liberal democratic political mechanisms with market-based economic expansion would help to draw conflicting parties away from the path of violent conflict towards less oppositional modes of coexistence. On this more peaceful basis, democracy and, hopefully, market economic regimes would flourish, thereby reducing the propensity of these societies to relapse into older forms of conflict and/or violence. This model of peacebuilding has run into a number of difficulties. First, the very terminology which is used in relation to both democracy and markets tends to rely upon a rather one-dimensional, black-and-white account of the kinds of transitions that have taken place across the world. So, a more nuanced account would recognize that there is a wide variation in the kinds of transitional processes that have taken place in different countries and regions and the many errors that have taken place in the provision of aid to less developed countries (Carothers 2011). Secondly, we need to recognize that these transitions have not necessarily followed the linear pathway of the model from authoritarianism to democracy or from state intervention to free markets. So, for example, we can identify countries such as India which have developed democratic systems but where, despite the rhetoric to the contrary, large parts of the domestic economy in particular are still heavily regulated in ways associated with more interventionist economic regimes (Ruparelia et  al. 2011, Sharma 1999). Moreover, not surprisingly, there remain in India substantial pockets of regional and political conflict (Bagchi 2012). These kinds of patterns are prominent in many post-colonial societies, not least many of those in subSaharan Africa. And, similarly, in some countries there has been considerable opening out of economic systems to the forces of global markets without concomitant political shifts towards liberal democratic models. Countries such as Singapore and Pinochet’s Chile are frequently cited examples of this  phenomenon (Leong 2000, Drake and Jaksic´ 1995). So, on the face it, there is a considerable empirical evidence to suggest that processes of transition in a variety of different examples need not be based on any kind of inextricable link between economic and political forms of development and there is little reason why these should pertain, in particular, to countries undergoing conflict transformation. Thirdly, the progressive nature of the liberal peace model whereby political and economic development and the successful management of conflict are mutually reinforcing can also be refuted in empirical examples where conflict has continued despite other forms of development. The continuity of the conflict in Northern Ireland and the continuing problems in post-Apartheid South Africa are obvious examples of this. Moreover, both of these cases

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also exemplify the ways in which initial reductions in overtly violent conflict are not necessarily indicators of conflict resolution and where conflict has reemerged in contexts in which various liberal democratic political and marketbased economic systems have been established (Marais 2011, Plaut and Holden 2012). So, the notion of progressive development that is part of the liberal peace narrative has struggled in the face of the practice of empirical examples where change has not always been of a linear, ‘progressive’ kind. Fourthly, the liberal peace model operates on the basis of a rather static understanding of conflicts and what is required over time to resolve them. Typically this takes the form of singular explanations behind conflicts and a somewhat one-size-fits-all approach to the means of resolution or transformation. This doesn’t take enough account of the dynamic nature of most conflicts and pays insufficient attention to the ways in which the kinds of changes brought about by orthodox forms of economic development can give rise to new dimensions of conflicts. Thus, for example, market-based economics can give rise to growing social inequality at the same time as political systems may be ill-equipped to provide appropriate social security or welfare structures. In contexts like this, the expansion of market-based economic structures can give rise to new inequalities. These shifts can generate new forms of conflict as societies respond to changing socioeconomic conditions or they can result in new and potentially very damaging dimensions of existing conflicts. Economic upheaval in South Africa in the last few years is a good example of continued inequalities and the ways in which the attendant social unrest reflects and reinforces some of the older dynamics of division characteristic of the Apartheid era (Gibson 2011). So, for these reasons, while elements of the ‘liberal peace thesis’ are promoted by the UN among others (Hirst 2012: 15), the attendant forms of international pressure to follow this linear pathway towards political, social and economic development in conflict-ridden societies have come under a much sharper analytical focus in more recent years (Richmond 2010, Mac Ginty 2008). Darweish and Rank (2012: 4) point to a range of approaches focused much less on the broader state-level political and economic systems that they term ‘a more emancipatory, civil society-led approach . . . with a focus on local capacity building and . . . “indigenous empowerment”’. However, there is a real risk in such an approach that civil society is being placed on a pedestal without recognition of the ways in which civil society can be equally embroiled in and reflective of social and political conflicts (Chambers and Kopstein 2001). Thus, various articulations of the benefits of civil society as opposed to the state do not seem to appreciate the nuances of civil society activities and the ways in which they relate to and intersect with the operations of state mechanisms and institutions (Hall 2013).

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Undoubtedly, there have been significant attempts to recognize that a centralized imposition of peace through broad political, economic and social systems is unlikely to be successful without greater cultivation of the grass roots of different societies. However, while there is recognition of the need to tailor new systems to the social contexts in which they are being developed, this is certainly not to say that efforts directed towards local empowerment are unproblematic even for those critical of the ‘Western’ focus of the liberal peace agenda. For example, attempts to be sensitive to local culture involve recognition that civil society varies widely between societies and, even in the West, it is problematic to understand civil society merely as the more benevolent counterpart of the state (Walzer 1992). In most societies, the state and civil society are deeply entwined and their overlap makes analytical separation incredibly difficult on the ground (Little 2002b). Moreover, there is a very real risk in eulogizing either liberal models of civil society or local ‘indigenous’ culture as the space of peace and thereby demonizing the state. Both approaches involve a degree of liberal conceit. They pay insufficient attention to the fact that much violent conflict is perpetrated at the level of civil society and many of the activities that ground and develop conflict contributing to its reproduction and continuity are deeply grounded in civil society relationships (Chambers and Kopstein 2001). To put it bluntly, civil society relations are frequently uncivil and, in many examples such as Northern Ireland, it is clear that separated forms of civil society can flourish in deeply divided, conflictual societies (Cochrane 2005). Castigating these kinds of relationships as if they do not reflect the proper characteristics of civil society or imposing a singular harmonious model of what civil society should look like is profoundly counterproductive for political actors grappling with conflict. Similarly, to take a blanket approach suggesting that all indigenous practices must be promoted simply because they are part of indigenous culture runs the risk of protecting from critique a range of practices that emanate from conflictual situations and which may be detrimental to some of the people they affect. Given the emergence of civil society in recent years as a key component in many versions of liberal democratic theory, it is problematic to suggest that it is somehow separable from liberal political doctrines. Where it does vary from the liberal peace is as a political strategy in its focus on empowering the grass roots and promoting bottom-up models of development at the expense  of the more hubristic nature of the ‘liberal peace thesis’. Even here, however, we need to recognize how much of the practice of local empowerment in post-conflict societies such as Cambodia is led by Western NGOs which are – perhaps unavoidably – following agendas which are driven by values and practices which emanate from Western liberal and democratic beliefs

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and practices (Mayhew 2005). These often include assumptions about  the inherent negativity of conflict and the importance of liberal social and economic development in the process of helping to smooth troubled political waters.

Conflict and reconciliation Within the literature on peacebuilding and conflict resolution (and feeding out of concern for the need for grass roots involvement in transitional processes), there has been considerable focus in recent years on the concept of reconciliation as a mode of addressing violence and harms in the past and forging new modes of social engagement (Schaap 2005, Hamber and Van Der Merwe 1998, Daly and Sarkin  2007). The impetus here is derived from the supposed inability of political and economic institutional processes to generate sufficiently peaceful conditions in isolation without addressing social divisions and their underlying foundations. From this perspective, there needs to be an open reckoning with the past of a given conflictual society in order to lay fresh ground for coexistence in the future. It is not satisfactory to merely brush the past aside in the establishment of new institutional formations. Moreover, it is important to recognize that frequently conflict transformation is not just a matter of bringing conflicting groups together in a new social formation. Often, the institutions of the state will have been a party to the conflict either through reflecting the interests or views of one group or another in a divided society or through directly participating in conflicts. Architects of peace must never start from a blank sheet but must act within a context that is laden with problematic historical events and behaviours which may make the transformation of conflict extremely difficult to achieve. So, for advocates of reconciliation, this provides a backdrop against which there need to be much broader and transparent processes of reckoning with the past and its wrongs if a more positive and progressive model of social relations is to be created in the present (Ben-Josef Hirsch 2013). As is now very well documented, the case of South Africa and the transition from Apartheid was fundamental to the emergence of the global agenda around reconciliation (Hayner 2001). Following the political upheaval that led to the demise of the Apartheid regime, there was an important movement inspired by various religious leaders that South Africa needed to heal itself of the wounds inflicted by the Apartheid state and the violent repercussions that it engendered in South African society. For commentators such as Desmond Tutu, it was important to bring the people of the new state

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together through appropriate recognition of the harms caused in the previous regime (Tutu  2000). To engender this process, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established with a view to providing a forum in which the events of the Apartheid era could be viewed afresh and the truth which had so frequently been covered up or misrepresented could be aired. As part of this process there would be engagement between victims and perpetrators, with the latter admitting to their wrongdoing and victims proceeding in a spirit of forgiveness towards the establishment of a more harmonious set of social relations on which to build the new South Africa (Gready 2011). This approach suggests that there is a form of ‘truth’ which must be revealed to enable appropriate reconciliatory processes to progress. From this perspective, Mould (2012: 63) contends that ‘truth commissions are one way of revealing this truth, providing a victim-centred approach that enables wrongs to be identified and acknowledged, and giving victims some form of compensation for the harm caused to them’. In the late 1990s considerable attention was paid to this emerging phenomenon and there was a certain degree of celebration of this approach (especially overseas and in the emerging peace studies ‘discipline’) as a way forward for other societies attempting to transition from violence and conflict towards a new beginning. However, in the new century this optimism dissipated somewhat as a number of more critical works on the operation of the TRC were published and the misgivings of many victims of the Apartheid era with the process came to light (Moon 2008). Moreover, further attention was paid to transitional processes in societies where the process of conflict transformation was felt not to require truth and reconciliation processes (Bar-Simon-Tov 2004). This more critical stance varied between societies. In Northern Ireland, for example, reconciliation was highly contentious and its pursuit could have jeopardized the peace process (Little 2012b). And, indeed it is only now that some of the crimes and wrongdoings of ‘the Troubles’ are being reviewed (Lundy 2011) and it took nearly 40  years before the Saville Report and the British government’s apology for Bloody Sunday eventually appeared in 2010. In societies such as Argentina the focus was more on truth than on a demand for forgiveness (Skaar 2005), while in Northern Ireland it was felt important to reach some kind of elite accommodation without pursuing truth. In others still such as post-Franco Spain, the past was to some extent swept under the carpet (Lind 2008). All of these empirical examples have been brought to bear in challenging the early optimism that characterized a lot of external readings of the South African TRC process. Where some societies were deemed by policymakers to be unsuited to the process of truth and reconciliation, peacebuilding in others such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were characterized by attempts to

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parachute in a South African-style TRC to their transitional circumstances. The process in the DRC was widely regarded as a failure (Darweish and Rank 2012: 5–6) in meeting the objectives of identifying victims and perpetrators and building national unity through a reconciliatory process. It is interesting to note that one of the key reasons used to explain the failure of the TRC in the DRC was the fact that it included an amnesty for perpetrators of violence, including those who had been responsible for a range of atrocities and many recent crimes such as the 2001 murder of President Laurent Kabila. However opinion on these matters is divided with Mould (2012: 65), for example, noting that, in the face of these criticisms, defenders of the TRC in the DRC suggested that ‘the amnesty clause was actually fundamental in advancing the transition process, arguing that the most important goal for the transitional government was the protection and promotion of the fragile peace rather than the more aggressive pursuit of justice’. According to this perspective, the TRC process was just as much about maintaining conditions for peace as it was focused on developing substantive forms of reconciliation. This also mirrors some of the less bloody conflicts we might look at such as Northern Ireland. In this case, the pursuit of reconciliation was felt to be a step too far in the peace process of the 1990s and thus, the contentious paramilitary prisoner release scheme of the Good Friday Agreement was about creating the conditions for the emergence of political institutions rather than one of engaging and interacting with victims or accounting for misdemeanours in the past (McEvoy 1999). Thus, there is an interesting comparison to be made between a supposedly failed TRC in the DRC which provided amnesty for wrongdoing and the absence of a TRC in Northern Ireland but an agreement which also allowed for the release of prisoners who had participated in the events of ‘the Troubles’. In both cases it seems that the contingencies of making political progress and the pragmatic approach that this necessitated outweighed the needs for perpetrators and victims to reconcile with one another. Or, to put it another way, the enduring nature of the conflicts in these instances ensured that reconciliation was ultimately (following the failure of Congo’s TRC) deemed to be too distant a goal for societies faced with the very pressing need to make political progress and to manage conflictual tendencies. Indeed, Mould (2012: 68) contends that most of the important reconciliatory work in terms of dealing with the traumatic events of the war in the DRC is performed by civil society organizations in the field rather than through state-sponsored formal political mechanisms of reconciliation. On the contrary, in Sierra Leone, Kaindaneh (2012: 73, 84) argues that this kind of reconciliatory work is most effectively carried out by local indigenous groups rather than the state or NGOs.

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Importantly, as part of the development of this critical stance towards agendas of forgiveness and reconciliation, a view has emerged among some authors that these requirements are just too demanding for many people (Little 2012b). After all, given the extreme violence that many in conflictual societies have had to endure, to ask them all to deal with wrongdoings in a magnanimous and selfless fashion sometimes appears to be asking too much. This is not just a matter of dealing with specific violent events such as murders, rapes, mutilations and so forth – it is also a recognition that quite often the beliefs and practices that give rise to extreme acts of violence are actually written into the social and cultural fabric of a given society. Even if victims were forgiving of the direct perpetrators of violence against them for whatever reason, this is not to say that they should be forgiving of a culture and society that was thought to vindicate such behaviours. In other words, just because there may be moves away from violent wrongdoing and an acceptance of their damaging nature in a given society, this does not mean that the values and beliefs that were utilized in inspiring those acts of violence go away. Violence then can be intrinsic and yet covert, integral to social practices but not in overtly physical or bloody manifestations. It is the complexity of this scenario which sometimes makes demands for reconciliation and forgiveness a very blunt instrument. A further factor that should be taken into account is the way that many perpetrators of extreme acts of violence have lived with impunity in the societies in which they carried out these acts long after conflicts have ended. Thus, even where there have not necessarily been official amnesties, the path of some post-conflict societies has been to seek peace without attempting to achieve reconciliation between victims and perpetrators of violence. This has been noticeable, for example, in Cambodia where former high-ranking members of the Khmer Rouge lived with impunity, especially in the NorthWest of the country bordering Thailand until the decision was taken to try the Khmer Rouge leadership for crimes carried out under their regime between 1975 and 1979 in 2004. For many reconciliation and civil society activists in Cambodia such as Youk Chhang of DC-CAM, this was a necessary step in the process of achieving justice for the wrongdoing of the Khmer Rouge era (Linton 2004, Ciorciari and Heindel 2009). In 2012 then, there was much relief for advocates of a full reckoning with the Khmer Rouge era when Kang Kek Iew (also known as Duch), the head of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison (also known as S-21) in Phnom Penh, lost his appeal against his guilty conviction and was committed to life imprisonment. Meanwhile, the trial of the other members of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy continues at great expense as the long drawn-out process continues. The establishment of the tribunal was regarded as a pivotal point in the

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advancement of justice in Cambodia and the model used has varied in some very important  respects from other institutional processes in the world which have sought similar objectives in terms of justice or reconciliation. That said, the capacity of the tribunal to continue without significant injections of international funding is questionable and the longer-term commitment of all involved to procure justice beyond the leadership cadre of the Khmer Rouge is unclear. In the contemporary process, those being tried are now elderly people and some have failing health which is hindering the work of the tribunal. In this scenario, the utility of continuing to pursue others through the tribunal process is likely to come under increased scrutiny as budgets contract and convictions take a very long time to procure. Of course, the demise of the tribunal when it has served its purpose in the first set of trials would not be the death knell of the justice and reconciliation process in Cambodia as other processes directed towards accountability and recompense could be developed. Nonetheless, considerable time, energy and money have been invested in the tribunal process; it has enormous symbolic significance in the politics of transitional justice in Cambodia such that a shift to new institutional arrangements would be far from simple. At the same time, however, the issue of perpetrators living with impunity among potential victims raises a number of questions. For example, in Cambodia, there is a sense within organizations such as DC-CAM that only dealing with the limited number of Khmer Rouge leaders who are capable of standing trial is insufficient to achieve proper justice for victims. The suggestion is that the net should be cast wider to implicate lower-level cadre  but this raises all sorts of political questions, given the involvement at one level or another of many members of Cambodia’s contemporary political class in the Khmer Rouge (Etcheson 2005: 13). Moreover, questions can also be asked about the limited time scale that has been placed on the investigation of wrongdoing and the trials. As heinous as Khmer Rouge activities were, there were many more issues that might be subject to investigation from the Civil War in the 1980s. And, lastly, there is the claim that as terrible as the crimes of the past were, Cambodia’s most pressing needs are social and economic development to the extent that spending resources on the criminal cases against the Khmer Rouge is not going to bring about reconciliation in any case but a more pyrrhic (albeit symbolically significant) victory in punitive terms. Given the impunity with which perpetrators of crimes have been able to live among their victims in some contexts, mechanisms for accountability and redress are undoubtedly necessary. However, the ways in which these institutional provisions are developed will vary considerably between

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different conflictual contexts such that generalizable claims about which mechanisms should prevail over others are not very helpful. For example, the widespread recruitment of child soldiers in some wars raises important questions of the age of criminal accountability (Kaindaneh 2012: 68) and, in contexts where atrocities have been attributable to both sides of a conflict, it becomes very difficult to avoid zero-sum comparisons in the treatment of some versus others. As unpalatable as amnesties may be for many (especially victims), sometimes they are the only serious option, given the prevailing political demands and opportunity costs of not granting them. On the other hand, perpetrators of heinous acts living with impunity within a particular context may serve to prolong the conflict and the injustice felt by victims. In both of the ways outlined above, the endurance of conflict in the two senses referred to in this book is evident. On the one hand, attempts to pursue institutional mechanisms for redress involve a reliving of the issues and events of the past. Whether developed in punitive terms or with a view to granting amnesties, these provisions deliberately try to uncloak the past and suggest that social wounds cannot be healed by brushing events under the carpet. They require an open accounting for activities in the past and, hypothetically at least, processes involving elements of truth, reconciliation, forgiveness, peacebuilding and so forth. In so doing, in the process of dealing with conflict, these mechanisms revisit the past and reopen it to scrutiny in the name of building a surer foundation for non-violent social relations in the future. On the other hand, the failure to develop institutional provisions for peace and justice is equally fraught with risks. By allowing perpetrators to avoid justice and by failing to deal with the claims of victims and their need for public accountability for the events that have befallen them, political transitions run the risk of merely storing up harms that will come to the fore eventually anyway. The failure to openly account for the suffering of victims arguably belittles their experiences and their claims for truth or punishment or recompense. It can foreclose possibilities of truth and forgiveness because they are seen as too difficult to achieve. In so doing, the absence of truth and reconciliation processes can ensure the endurance of conflict, especially for victims who may have to witness the impunity of perpetrators living openly in society from the ranks of high political office through to having to face their oppressors in everyday life. In either way, and in any combination of these two approaches, conflict endures rather than being erased or terminated by processes of conflict transformation. Conflict may change through processes of reconciliation and transition but it does not necessarily dissipate.

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The temporal dimension The enduring conflict thesis also contains a significant temporal dimension that, while implicit in some of the more sophisticated discussions of conflict transformation, is often sadly lacking in much of the peace and reconciliation literature. In too many of these accounts, transitional processes are presented in a rather linear fashion which fails to take seriously the ramifications of social and political complexity for the endurance of conflict. Of course, while historical narratives of political conflict often appear in a somewhat linear fashion, the reality of how conflicts emerge, dissipate, reproduce and take on new facets and dimensions is much less mechanical and predictable. Temporality is then pivotal to how we imagine conflict and needs to play a much more prominent role in the literature than is often the case within debates about peacebuilding, reconciliation and forms of transitional justice. There are many ways in which such proper accounting for this key element of complexity needs to inform these debates but here I point to at least five ways in which temporal complexity and non-linearity need more serious treatment. First, there is the tendency to view the forms of wrongdoing that need to be accounted for as historical artefacts (Chakrabarty 2000). This emerges in many post-colonial contexts and also in scenarios where there is understood to be a clear transition from a less than glorious past characterized by injustice to a more settled or normal situation in the present and future. This implies that where the past was identified with events and practices that need to be rectified, the institutions of the present can somehow draw a line under those events through processes involving government acknowledgement of wrongdoing, acts of truth and apology, and processes of reconciliation as the foundation of a shared, harmonious and more consensual future. This kind of approach can be identified in many political initiatives around the world such as the 2008 Apology to the ‘stolen generations’ by the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd (Moses 2011). As welcome as this initiative was as recognition of a shameful chapter in Australian history, there was never any sense within indigenous political movements that the experience or treatment of indigenous Australians could be ameliorated by such an initiative. It was perhaps a significant symbolic starting point but should only be construed as a punctuation mark in the reconstruction of indigenous-settler relations in Australia rather than an end point of any kind (Auguste 2010). The apology may have paved the way for the next stage of indigenous political recognition in Australia such as the growing prominence of debates around constitutional recognition of Aboriginal peoples or indigenous nation-building projects but it did not signify any more determinate or substantive resolution of the issues that animate indigenous politics.

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Similarly, UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s apology for Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972, while to be applauded, should be viewed as a starting point for further discussion of how to understand the claims for victims rather than the end of such a process (Rolston 2010). To be clear, such apologies may be extremely welcome and beneficial but they should not be regarded as any kind of conclusive step in grappling with the temporality of conflict. Events or issues cannot merely be consigned to history and accounted for in backwardlooking terms, for their ramifications resonate through conflicts in the present. In the case of Bloody Sunday, the issue in terms of transitional justice is not just one of apologizing to victims who lost family members in the Army attack on unarmed anti-internment protesters (highly important though that is), but the intangible impact that these kinds of events had on a generation of young people in Northern Ireland on both sides of the ethno-national divide. In situations of ingrained social and political division with a long historical trajectory, conflict cannot be merely isolated to events in historical terms not least because history is constantly being written and rewritten and its ramifications are being experienced and negotiated in the present. The second element of temporal continuity follows naturally from the first. It concerns the way in which historical events not only affect emotions and human responses to conflict, but also affect the ways in which the conflicts of the past help to establish and reproduce practices and institutions in the present. This corresponds with the ways in which theorists of complexity use the concept of path dependence. Thus, it is not only that issues of wrongdoing are events that need to be accounted for, but also that decisions taken in the past help to generate particular forms of institutions and with them a specific range of processes and ways of thinking about problems. In some respects then, the past helps to foreclose policy options in the present and this can take place in often complicated and unpredictable ways. Once particular pathways have been taken, it becomes all the more difficult to imagine alternative possibilities that could have been taken and to free oneself from established courses and accepted alternatives (McCann 2005). Importantly, in many political systems, the institutional manifestations of past decisions can reinforce particular epistemic readings and reproduce them through further institutional inscriptions even where their capacity to deal with emerging properties of conflicts may be highly sub-optimal. An example of such institutional reproduction of conflict scenarios (and their capacity to reproduce conflictual relations despite their remit) has been the work of the Parades Commission in Northern Ireland which has become an increasingly contentious actor in the province since the Good Friday Agreement and one that is frequently criticized by both sides of debates over disputed parades (Bryan 2006).

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This feeds into the third element of temporal complexity that requires greater attention in the transitional justice and reconciliation literature. This relates to the often well-meaning attempts by governments and international actors to deal with historical wrongdoings. Frequently, in contemporary political practices (and especially in post-colonial contexts), there is a degree of acceptance of the indirect culpability of those in positions of greater power in structurally divided societies. However, this is often accompanied by a less critical understanding of the kinds of practices that might be needed to either account for or rectify past behaviours (Darweish and Rank 2012). The most notable issue here is the imposition of models of truth or reconciliation which are sometimes oblivious to local, indigenous practices and alternative ways of dealing with the past. It has often been noted that the agenda behind reconciliation and forgiveness is laden with Christian assumptions that may not be appropriate in many contexts (see Elgersma 2012 on the example of Canadian residential schools). This perception was reinforced by the very strong role that Archbishop Desmond Tutu played in the South African transition and the importance of his faith that Tutu brought to bear on developments there. However, this approach should not be regarded as potentially universal, given that it employs a rather Christian perspective on temporality and an advocacy of the need to account for our past and admit guilt for our wrongdoing (which reflects Catholic thinking on confession to our guilt in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven). This runs contrary to a wide range of perspectives on being and time in different religious and cultural traditions, not least in those that profess some mode of reincarnation. Similarly, Mac Ginty has pointed to the limitations of models of liberal peace when it comes to imposing solutions in conflictual societies which may be at odds with indigenous or traditional practices (Mac Ginty 2008). The fourth issue arising from complex temporality emanates from nonlinearity and the development of conflicts. As opposed to explanatory narratives that trace conflicts to historical events in straightforward, onedirectional terms, conflicts rarely emerge and develop in simple, escalatory fashion. Similarly, in general, they do not summarily end with elite political agreements or get brought to a close by ‘peace processes’ culminating in the formation of reconciliatory institutions. From this perspective, the peacebuilding and reconciliation literature needs to be a lot more circumspect in the way in which it deals with the non-linear, and transient development of conflicts. This should involve recognition that formal elite agreements and so forth are a part of ongoing processes of conflict management rather than instances of resolution. For example, this book often refers to the Northern Ireland peace process of the 1990s. This should not be construed as a peace

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process that culminated in the 1998 Belfast Agreement. On the contrary, that was part of an ongoing conflict transformation process that continues today. It was, if anything, a stepping stone in the process of transforming the Northern Ireland conflict rather than an end point (or a starting point for that matter). Instead, it required continual negotiation over the next few years after it was signed and then needed further legislation and renegotiation to ensure its continuity, such as the St Andrews Agreement in 2006. In the ensuing years, the conflict in Northern Ireland has ebbed and flowed with the rise and fall from prominence of many dissident groups which at different times have posed a much larger threat than others have and which continue to oppose the new institutional formations in Northern Ireland to this day (Horgan and Morrison 2011). These groups have formed, reformed, disbanded and merged in nonlinear ways, which makes a straightforward historical narrative of Northern Ireland’s settlement and their role within Northern Irish society a much more complicated story. The complicated, evolutionary nature of conflicts is also highlighted by events in the DRC in late 2012 where the fragile bonds that held the DRC in a relatively ‘peaceful’ state evaporated as the social, political and cultural conflicts simmering underneath the surface returned to the fore in a violent uprising in Eastern Congo against the incumbent Kabila regime in Kinshasa (Nicoll and Delaney 2013). These events highlighted not only the extremely fragile nature of many peace settlements around the world, but also the complicated array of factors that can conspire and overlap to make violent forms of conflict resurgent. Importantly, in the Congolese example, it is not just the cultural divisions within the DRC and how they interact with land claims and the economic benefits of rich mineral resources, but also the ways in which the conflict was affected and allegedly exacerbated by actors external to the country. During the course of the uprising, rumours abounded that the insurrectionary M23 force was resourced and armed by the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame, demonstrating the attendant complexity that internal ‘settlements’ are always susceptible to the impacts of the actions of extraneous actors who may well have vested interests in reigniting conflicts or in trying to undermine particular regimes or institutions (McGreal 2013). In this climate, temporal understandings of conflict resolution or reconciliation framed in linear terms can always fall foul of the capacity of some actors to reopen conflictual situations. This can take place for a range of reasons over which domestic political actors may have limited control. Some external actors may have an inherent interest in unrest within other countries and can cause an equal amount of upheaval as those within countries who have fundamental objections to regimes and/or their institutions. To be clear, this may be for perfectly acceptable or justifiable

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reasons, but the point here is that any narrative of conflict as closed or resolved fails to understand the enduring nature of conflicts and the possibilities for reopening conflicts in more or less violent ways. Fifthly, narratives of conflict resolution and peacebuilding often fall into the trap of eliding peace or the end of conflict with the emergence of social relationships that are not as overtly violent as once was the case. Here we see the concentration in many peace processes on ending violence so that more ‘normal’ political relations can be established. The intention here is often to contain violence and to channel political conflict into other forms of political expression, most notably party or pressure group politics. There are two key objections to make here. The first, quite obviously, is that cessations of violence are quite often temporary. Sometimes they may be agreed to by parties in bad faith with little intention of following through on promises but with every intention of opportunistically taking advantage of short-term political gains. In other instances though, parties that have committed to nonviolent expressions of conflictual politics may find themselves drawn back into violence for a range of reasons, including, but not limited to, the failure of more traditional political strategies, bad faith on the part of other negotiating parties, responses to attacks from groups maintaining violent tactics and so forth. To be clear, it is historically naïve to view groups resorting to violence as inherently in the wrong, given the range of valuable political gains that have been made by groups using violent means as part of their overall strategy (Ross 2004). This is not to validate political violence per se but just to highlight that it is erroneous to judge it selectively based on a particular set of principles about what is and isn’t appropriate in the contemporary era. The second objection to approaches that see the end of violence as the paramount objective is that such approaches can focus too intensely on overly violent forms of political expression at the expense of other ways in which conflict can be articulated. These articulations may not necessarily appear objectively harmful and this is why they sometimes fly under the radar but they are expressions of conflict nonetheless and therefore are always potentially part of the recipe of factors which can either reinforce violent practice or instigate fresh forms of violence. In particular here, it is useful to consider the range of everyday social and cultural practices which can reinforce conflict and therefore are potentially contributory factors in outbreaks of violence or a return to more violent forms of expression in supposedly peaceful or reconciled societies. Differing social and cultural practices can be more or less benevolent depending on the context within which they are expressed. That context is constantly evolving so that the political import of these social and cultural practices varies and with that so does their propensity to generate forms of violence.

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For this reason, the expression of identity, for example, has political implications in many divided societies that it may not have in other social contexts. One need only highlight the different political ramifications of traditional Irish music and the Gaelic language depending on the situation in which these cultural expressions are articulated. Frequently these will be uncontentious but this is not to say that their use is not potentially loaded with political import and in some instances that could facilitate conflict. As philosophers such as Iris Marion Young have noted, it is important to recognize the importance of cultural traditions as media for the expression of political messages (Young 2002). Equally, in the Northern Ireland example, it is important to highlight the extent to which the expression of ethno-national identity through cultural practice can inflame those on the other side of the sectarian divide and can thus lead to or reinforce conflict. This is not to take aim at expressions of social and cultural identity as harmful because they have profound political implications; rather, much more modestly, it is merely to point out the everyday nature of the potential sources of conflict and how deeply they are imbued within cultural practices and identities, especially in divided societies. It is this ‘everydayness’ of social and political conflict and its endurance over time that does not feature strongly enough in the peace and reconciliation literature. Significantly, in post-conflict societies, conflicts live on in everyday forms of behaviour and expression. This highlights the deeply ingrained nature of political conflict and the reasons why the peacebuilding literature and efforts at conflict resolution cannot solely focus on political elites. While elite agreements are fundamental to most attempts to grapple with enduring conflicts, they are, by themselves, unable to deliver forms of reconciliation, given that the sources of conflict endure in everyday life for ordinary people. Again, to take the Northern Ireland example, we see in ‘post-conflict’ Belfast now the emergence of ‘Troubles tourism’ (Wiedenhoft Murphy 2010) as a phenomenon in which visitors are able to take tours through the city, in some cases accompanied by former participants in the conflict, viewing sites of violence, paramilitary murals and peace lines. From the perspective of the enduring conflict thesis, this spectacle of open-topped buses moving through some of the most impoverished parts of the city is something to behold not least because it reinforces the significance of the conflict to both the past and present of everyday life in Northern Ireland. And, of course, ‘Troubles tourism’ can shift attention from the real meaning of peace lines – they are not preserved as artefacts of the historical conflict to entertain tourists but are instead deemed necessary by the Northern Ireland office in order to keep ethno-national communities apart. Though consumed by tourists, they exist because they are thought to be

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fundamentally necessary by governmental and security agencies to prevent sectarian violence. Moreover, as is now well documented (Gormley-Heenan and Byrne 2012, Gormley-Heenan et  al. 2014), the number of peace lines in Northern Ireland increased after the Belfast Agreement. In other words, ‘post-conflict Northern Ireland’ is deemed by government and the security forces to require more partitions to maintain peace than during the preceding period of violent conflict. It should also be said that these edifices are not merely symbolic – they are often thought of as necessary evils by those who must live alongside them. Children are born into communities divided from their neighbours, many of whom share similar levels of social and economic neglect despite their ethno-national differences. These are not just symbols of violence and conflict; in their own way they violently interject in the upbringing of generations of children. Likewise, the demarcation of territory through national or paramilitary flags, the painting of kerbstones, murals and other symbolic representations (such as flags referring to one side or another of other conflicts such as the Middle East) ensures that one cannot avoid the conflict in Northern Ireland. The conflict is a living, breathing entity enacted through the everyday practices of inhabitants just as much as the formal political institutions of Northern Ireland. In summary then, the literature on reconciliation and peacebuilding is largely ill-equipped to deal with the implications of complex temporality. This is largely because the approach to conflict within that literature concentrates on how to resolve conflict rather than the more difficult question of how to live with it, how societies can forge broadly acceptable social and political relations in the presence of sometimes extremely contested and conflictual ideas and social and cultural practices. The temporal dimension of this is fundamental because of the residual nature of conflict in ‘post-conflict’ societies. On the one hand, at its most banal, conflict provides a backdrop to social relations which can always be reawakened by the sheer unpredictability of events as the flag protests in Northern Ireland in  2012–13 demonstrate (Jarman and Scullion 2013). Conflicts can re-emerge in response to very small changes or events within a society or, even more unpredictably, other societies which are somehow related to a particular conflict. Conflicts can also reignite depending on the changing capacity and resources of organizations to wage campaigns of violence or in response to the failings of more orthodox political strategies, the limitations of particular institutions or, quite simply, events in other countries. On the other hand, complex temporality is a residual factor in conflictual societies because the full ramifications of a conflict are never wholly played out. There isn’t an end point at which we can say that historical events or practices have run their course and no longer influence evolving social and political relations. Because conflicts are alive, they are constantly being

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reiterated, renegotiated and reconstituted and thus their impact on social and political structures is continual. The spectre of complexity is the ghost in the machine of post-conflictual societies rather than conflict itself (Little 2013). It is the complexity of conflict that haunts the process rather than conflict merely being an historical artefact that can be reawakened. The complex dimension of conflict is a constant spectral presence in the very nature of the social structures in which everyday life takes place. In this context, the idea that a problem can be resolved or reconciliation achieved in any kind of definitive fashion is highly problematic. Complex temporality militates against these kinds of political discourses and undermines their applicability to the ongoing management and transformation of social and political conflicts.

Conclusion This chapter has set out the extent to which the prevailing perspectives in the conflict resolution literature and political practice take proper account of the conditions of social and political complexity and their ramifications for political conflict. Although the peacebuilding, reconciliation and conflict resolution literatures have devoted considerable attention to a wide range of conflict situations in global politics, there are major flaws in the ways in which conflict is conceived and this has unduly narrowed the range of potential strategies available for international actors in addressing enduring conflicts. Thus, while conflict resolution approaches take seriously the need to engage with international questions, the ways in which they employ discourses of conflict tend to reflect the signature of peace and democracy outlined at the outset of the book. On this account, the nature of conflict is quite often misrepresented and the importance of the ramifications of its enduring qualities for how international actors understand their intervention in conflicts is underestimated. Therefore, this chapter contends that the reconciliation and conflict resolution literature tackles the international dimension of conflict more seriously than many of the other theories addressed in the book, but it does so in ways which provide an inadequate account of the complexity rather than the mere complicatedness of conflicts. The very difficult conflicts that the peacebuilding and reconciliation literature addresses are, of course, highly complicated but recognition of this fact does not mean that these perspectives are well equipped to deal with the particular problems highlighted by complexity theory: non-linearity, unforeseen consequences, emergent properties and path dependence. In particular, I have highlighted the very severe limitations of the reconciliation and conflict resolution literature when it comes to dealing with issues of complex

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temporality. There is a marked failure in this field to understand the nature of adaptive systems and the ways in which they are able to reproduce and reinvent conflicts after attempts to resolve them or reconcile their participants have taken place. While peacebuilding has a clear temporal dimension whereby it is accepted that peace takes time to cultivate and that the extent to which policies can be judged successful or failing in terms of resolving conflicts is always contingent, the ways in which that temporal dimension is really directed towards the substance of conflicts in any kind of substantive way is much more limited. Too often, the nature of conflict is represented as historically given and settled where the reality of managing it is a much more fluid and dynamic art. Given these misgivings and flaws, it is worth turning to three further strategies for understanding the role of conflict in politics and techniques that might be employed for managing and transforming conflict: agonistic, rhetorical and narrative approaches. Here we concentrate on both the structural and discursive practices of conflict to try to develop a more agential and ideational understanding of conflictual issues to accompany the structural features of conflict that were identified in the first section of the book.

4 Agonism and the politics of disagreement

‘Your memory is a monster; you forget – it doesn’t. It simply files things away; it keeps things for you, or hides things from you. Your memory summons things to your recall with a will of its own. You imagine you have a memory, but your memory has you!’ (JOHN IRVING, IN ONE PERSON)

T

he enduring conflict thesis suggests that political theorists and practitioners need to take the politics of disagreement, social pluralization and political conflict more seriously. This is particularly the case where these phenomena intersect in conditions of social and political complexity. Probably the most significant strand of contemporary political thought attempting to grapple with these issues is agonism. From an agonistic perspective, political theorists challenge the normative advocacy of peace and its implications for understanding the relationship between democracy and conflict (Brown 2005, Connolly 1995, Honig 2007, Little 2010, Mouffe 2000, Norval 2007). The first section of this chapter outlines the key tenets of agonism with reference to some of the most important theorists in the field. It examines the argument that the purposive construction of a normative democratic model to overcome conflict is counter-intuitive to democracy as well as the claim that it potentially leads to the generation of more political conflict (Agamben et  al. 2010, Rancière 2006, Rosanvallon 2007, 2008). However, it also identifies some of the problematic ways in which an agonistic politics might merely relocate the enduring conflict at the constitutive heart of politics. The second section of the chapter analyses agonism in the light of the critique of peacebuilding, reconciliation and conflict resolution developed

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in the  previous chapter. While the pursuit of an agonistic politics is a useful technique in the management and/or regulation of social conflict, it should not be seen as a means of resolving or eradicating conflict. Instead, the terms under which agonistic relations might be established need to be understood as disorderly and transient rather than settled (especially in a complex environment). In the third section, the chapter identifies how some agonistic theorists have been quicker than others to recognize the dynamic nature of political divisions and their implications for a politics of complexity. Agonism is identified as a philosophical foundation for the management of conflict rather than a strategy for conflict resolution. This is because the nature of political conflict in complex societies is always fluid and an agonistic politics needs to be responsive to these shifts. This has profound implications for the limited capacity of an agonistic mindset to provide normative guidance on conflict management processes. Moreover, as the fourth section demonstrates, this strategic impediment can be exacerbated when we try to apply agonistic theories within the domain of the international politics of conflict and disagreement. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of agonistic theory with a view to its capacity vis-à-vis normative models of conflict management and transformation in a complex, international environment.

Explaining agonism Agonism has become a significant perspective in political theory over the last 20 years. Of course, the arguments that agonistic theory develops have a much longer historical trajectory, but the approach has made much greater inroads into mainstream political debates more recently (Kalyvas 2009, Chakravarti 2012). Much of this resurgence of interest in agonism can be traced to the recent work of post-structuralist theorists including Chantal Mouffe: While antagonism is a we/they relation in which the two sides are enemies who do not share any common ground, agonism is a we/they relation where the conflicting parties, although acknowledging that there is no rational solution to their conflict, nevertheless recognize the legitimacy of their opponents. They are “adversaries” not enemies. This means that, while in conflict, they see themselves as belonging to the same political association, as sharing a common symbolic space within which the conflict takes place. We could say that the task of democracy is to transform antagonism into agonism. (Mouffe 2005: 20) This account of agonism is intended to counteract the narrowing of the political that many agonists identify in most contemporary forms of liberalism.

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It opposes the prioritization of consensus that often appears in liberal political theories and the variety of procedural techniques that would be potentially employed to manufacture agreement where none exists. Agonism embraces conflict as a constitutive element of political life and welcomes greater pluralization of the constituency of political debate (Connolly 1995). Thomson (2009: 109) identifies three elements of agonism that differentiate it from more mainstream liberal, deliberative or communicative accounts of democracy. First, agonists recognize the inevitability of conflict – it is not an inconvenience in political life. Secondly, conflict is not an entity that politics is designed to overcome – on the contrary, it is in fact constitutive of politics. And, thirdly, because of the epistemological constraints of the environment in which political discussion takes place, agonism invokes the need to reorient and reground political discussion to take account of the conditions under one and two above: agonists aim to redefine the relationship between democracy and politics. They share with many other critical analyses on both left and right a sense that modern democracy is not living up to its name. What makes their position distinctive is that it calls for a revitalization of modern democratic culture not in terms of the articulation of public goods which exceed partisan interests, but through a celebration of the continuous conflict of these interests. (Thomson 2009: 107) However, there are some important variations within this depiction of agonistic theory that require further exposition. For example, theorists such as William Connolly have approached the advocacy of agonistic politics from a foundation of pluralization (Connolly 1995) and more recently have engaged explicitly with complexity theory (Connolly 2011). From this perspective, the agonistic conflicts that constitute the political do not reflect unchanging social fractures or reified categories of divided social actors. Others such as Mouffe, who have arrived at agonistic conclusions via a critical engagement with the work of Carl Schmitt, see particular societies as structured by inherited social divisions that enable the friend-enemy calculus to operate. Schmitt’s work has seemed particularly pertinent in reference to deeply divided contexts where fundamental schisms characterize the social fabric. But, even in these contexts, there is perhaps too much focus on agonistic accounts of established divisions and insufficient grasp of the morphologies of agonistic conflicts. From the perspective of the enduring conflict thesis articulated here, we need to ­understand that conflicts mutate; indeed, in a complex and highly pluralized environment, conflicts have to mutate to survive. This means that the constituents of a conflict shift in views or political strategy over the course of time and the boundaries around the conflict are permeable by alternative perspectives.

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This reflects some of the concerns of Aletta Norval (2007) who notes the way in which Mouffe’s agonism tries to recreate acceptable boundaries of conflict. She questions whether this account of agonism allows enough space for discussion of the boundaries of contestation, given that the agonistic relation takes place within a shared symbolic order: There is a question as to whether this portrayal is sufficiently open to contestation and, hence, sufficiently democratic. Given that it is a relation that is specified as being established within an already shared symbolic order, it seems to rule out contestation about the boundaries and formation of the space itself at the same time as Mouffe affirms the importance of confrontation and questioning of power relations. (Norval 2007: 158) Furthermore, building on this critique of the setting of boundaries around agonistic relations, Norval questions the potential change that takes place in the shift from antagonistic to agonistic relations. If, following the earlier work of Laclau and Mouffe (1985) politics is constituted by antagonisms, what becomes of this constitutive dimension if antagonism is replaced by agonism and the boundaries of the agonistic relationship are seen to be established? In other words, the risk is that the creation of a stable agonistic order will domesticate some forms of conflict as acceptable and construe others as beyond the pale. But the key space of politics should be understood as that interface where agonistic spaces and antagonistic relations come up against each other. Thus, there is a danger of displacing politics in an agonistic political order to a new frontier where constitutive conflict takes place. Mouffe is probably correct in identifying this transition into acceptability in an agonistic order as a key radical democratic concern, but it can really only contribute to an understanding of enduring conflict if we keep the establishment of new boundaries in clear focus. These boundaries cannot be seen as established and impermeable; the foundation of an agonistic order cannot close the door on contestation in a context where conflict endures. As the previous chapter made it clear, in a complex environment this contestation of boundaries should be considered as an ontological fact of political life.

Disagreement and the management of social conflict For analytical purposes, it is useful to separate some of the critical approaches to questions of the politics of conflict into three main groups: agonistic theories of the inevitability of conflict, rhetorical political theories of conflict

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transformation and narrative accounts of the continuity of conflict. While arguably these approaches overlap and intersect with one another, they will be dealt with, in turn, in Chapters 4–6 as each of the approaches has a different understanding of the nature of the relationship between conflict and reconciliation and thus varying implications for the politics and policy of conflict transformation. In this chapter then, the focus falls on the claim from agonistic theorists that it is important that we develop a more sophisticated account of conflict and its intrinsic role in political organization. Agonistic accounts of conflict are based on the need to foreground divisive issues and the political disputes they engender. Moreover, they also imply a need to seek a more inclusive polity that is not constrained by the narrowing pursuit of consensus. So, to the extent that any kind of consensus is considered to be necessary, for agonists it can at best be a ‘conflictual consensus’ (Mouffe 2000). For agonistic theories, the normative pursuit of a more substantive or comprehensive consensus is little more than a technique for glossing over the complexities of social and political conflict. This is often accomplished by particular discursive framings of political issues in such a way as to position alternative perspectives to the dominant configuration as ‘noise’ or ‘litter’. Clearly, then, there is a revelatory aspect to agonism insofar as it attempts to unveil the assumptions, tropes and presuppositions that underpin particular discourses and the ways in which they affect our understanding of the conflicts to which they pertain. However, agonism is also characterized by a normative dimension, although some of its advocates can sometimes be reluctant to admit it. This element focuses on the attempts of agonistic theorists like Mouffe to ‘domesticate’ the political structure of conflict to some extent by broadening the spectrum of acceptability in the analytical framing of particular issues. Moreover, Mouffe is also concerned with the possibility of changing the nature of the relations between conflictual actors so that a shift can be facilitated enabling antagonists to see their opponents as legitimate adversaries rather than enemies. So, even though agonistic theorists are not concerned with manufacturing consensus where there is none, they do tend to believe that politics can be structured both in material and in discursive terms to be more accommodating of difference and that the nature of the interaction between opposing parties is central to that process. Where agonists want to forge common ground then, it is only in the basic framework of political engagement across difference; they do not want to delegitimize disagreement in this process of changing the way conflictual actors are able to interact with each other. Agonistic approaches are inherently critical of the normative outlook of peacebuilding and conflict resolution because of their reliance on underpinning rationales which preference peace and harmony over conflict

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and disagreement (Schaap 2008). In descriptive terms, agonists point to the much greater likelihood of disagreement as an ontological feature of political systems and therefore contend that the major political challenge we face is how to live with and manage conflict rather than how to eradicate it. Thus, although disagreement is a much more prevalent and ingrained characteristic of contemporary politics than normative peace builders might have us believe, for agonists, it is not impossible or futile to pursue more harmonious social relations. However, the pursuit of these more harmonious relations needs to be facilitated by more explicit recognition of the inevitability of conflict rather than the construction of peace or harmony as its binary opposite. In this sense, it is quite possible to envisage more or less consensual agonistic polities. While the enduring conflict thesis implies that it is always difficult to construct a shared ‘political community’ in conditions of complex conflict, some commentators sympathetic to agonistic approaches, such as Paul Muldoon, want to retain the possibility of a dialogic process of reinvention to renegotiate the terms of ‘political association’ as part of a ‘new liberal political formation’ (Muldoon 2003: 196). So, it is clear that, while there may be common themes and a recognition of the inevitability of conflict in agonistic theories, the understanding of the precise implications of this may vary quite considerably, with some theorists focusing more on the depth of conflict and division while others concentrating on the reconfiguration of political relations in the light of particular conflicts. The agonistic approach does not necessarily lead to prescribed normative outcomes or a specific view of a requisite political architecture to underpin the agonistic mindset. However, the difficulties that emanate from this lack of specificity within agonistic theory become clearer when we examine particular problematic issues that exemplify complexity, such as the politics of reconciliation processes as a form of conflict transformation. Even within particular societies, conflicts are rarely so settled that the process of reconciliation is a definitive one in terms of making sense of who are the people who need to reconcile and what are the precise issues around which the process should focus. In circumstances of complexity, the relevant actors in a conflict are changeable, their political tactics vary and thus, the ways in which they engage with particular issues are imprecise and fluid over the course of time. This becomes even more complicated when these complex dynamics are understood within an international context where issues and the actors that affect them are not contained within jurisdictions (e.g. see the alleged support for M23 rebels in DRC from Rwanda and Uganda identified in the previous chapter). In these conditions, the difficulty of establishing a founding order of reconciliation which can act as an agreed basis on which to conduct a more inclusive but conflictual form of political engagement is apparent. The

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establishment of a political strategy of reconciliation as a mode of conflict transformation is much more challenging if we understand the indeterminacy of who the relevant actors might be that need to reconcile and the multiplicity of ways in which the key issues might be defined. So, when commentators like Schaap attempt to construct a ‘noncontroversial’ definition of reconciliation as ‘a public reckoning with a history of political violence and oppression and their legacy in order to enable people divided by that past to coexist within one political community and to recognize the legitimacy of its law’ (Schaap 2008: 250), they invoke as many questions as they answer. The application of this definition to particular complex contexts reveals a wide range of difficulties. For example, Schaap’s ‘noncontroversial’ definition potentially becomes a rather contentious perspective (and therefore one that might exacerbate conflict) in societies as diverse as Northern Ireland and Australia where reconciliation has been articulated but where we can identify (a) substantial opposition to such public reckoning of violence, (b) divided communities rather than a singular political community and (c) suspicion of – if not outright opposition to – the system of law inflicted as part of a particular jurisdiction. Thus, there is always a danger that in attempting to outline the terms of agonistic engagement, theorists can overdetermine the construction of an agonistic modus vivendi in which they replicate the limitations of more harmonious normative approaches, albeit with a wider constituency and greater scope for disagreement. To be clear, replicating the foundations of liberal consensus is not Schaap’s intention but the applicability of his ‘noncontroversial’ definition does exemplify the problems which can emanate when we try to translate agonistic theories into political practice. These issues emerge in particular if theorists adopt a static view of who the major actors in a conflict are and/or a linear perspective on how this constitutive question translates into particular political stances on the issues at stake. It is, therefore, vital that agonistic theorists understand the variability in these core elements of political conflicts and, in particular, how these elements mutate over the course of time and in relation to shifting and complex contextual circumstances.

The problem of complexity As we saw in the previous chapter, complexity theory provides considerable challenges that some of the more influential theories of conflict resolution struggle to cope with. While agonism is potentially better placed to engage with these challenges due to its embrace of the inevitability of conflict, this does not mean that agonistic theorists have shown sufficient willingness to

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carry out this task. Indeed, the literature on agonism has surprisingly little explicit engagement with debates on social and political complexity, although if one scratches the surface, clear commonalities are discernible. In what follows, I highlight the particular implications that complexity has for agonistic theories and I conclude the section by identifying what a complexity-oriented version of agonism might start to look like. Ultimately, the issue at hand is to resist notions of political conflict as determinate, unambiguous and settled and to rethink the inevitability of conflict in more disorderly terms. For the purposes of the argument here, it is worth examining agonism in the light of the main relevant criteria of complexity outlined in the second chapter: non-linearity, unforeseen consequences, emergent properties and path dependence. While agonism is a perspective that rightly highlights the need to understand politics to be organized around the propensity for conflict rather than the likelihood of consensus, it is not always clear that the dynamics of complexity are properly understood (despite a potentially high degree of compatibility between the two approaches). The identification of the inevitability of conflict that characterizes agonistic thought always runs the risk of reifying particular conflicts and divisions in particular contexts. Thus, for example, an agonistic approach to conflict in Northern Ireland might suggest – again quite logically – that social relations in Northern Ireland are permeated by conflictual foundations such that trying to imagine the process of policymaking as working on common ground is misguided. However, this should not mean that we understand the conflict in Northern Ireland as a settled entity. On the contrary, what the conflict means, how it evolves and how social agents relate to it are shifting questions (Ruane and Todd 1996). In other words, agonists would be right to see the conflict as ever-present but that does not mean that it should be construed as orderly or settled even where it might be subsumed under a blanket term such as sectarianism. Similarly, in post-Apartheid South Africa, social divisions and inequalities run deep and racial inequality is inscribed in the very structures of society in obvious ways. While this might be explained through a label such as racialism, what that means to different actors and the ways in which it permeates social and political structures in South Africa are complex, fluid and dynamic (MacDonald 2006). So, in relation to non-linearity, it would be erroneous to suggest that a particular course of action will have definitive outcomes in terms of how different conflictual actors will respond to proposals or that there are determinate, settled implications for a particular section of a conflictual society. Even where societies are deeply divided between two groups (as was traditionally the case in Northern Ireland), that does not mean that these groups are not internally diverse and indeed divided vis-a-vis other structuring

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factors in society. In this instance, while it might be tempting to imagine a simple cause-and-effect model of deciding how things might play out in a linear fashion due to static interpretations of a conflict and its actors, in practice, outcomes do not always follow from actions in straightforward ways and different groups within a particular section of a divided society may interpret the relation between an action and a specific outcome differently. In Northern Ireland, the invisibility of minority ethnic groups in many discussions of social inequalities and the lower level of participation of women in formal politics both within and between the two main ethno-national communities are good examples of how the hegemony of one dominant reading of a conflictual society can gloss over other structural divisions (Little 2002a, Coulter 1999, 2007). It is also useful to bear in mind regional differences in conflictual societies such that it would be erroneous to see the Northern Ireland conflict as played out in the same ways in urban centres like Belfast when compared with the border country (Anderson 1998). Similarly, the dynamics of conflict in South Africa are very different in Johannesburg and Cape Town or between the various provinces for example (Plaut and Holden 2012). These neglected and sometimes invisible differences in the way in which conflict is perceived and played out in the theoretical literature can have quite dramatic ramifications for linear depictions of political conflicts. The dangers of agonism propagating a view of social divisions and conflicts as too orderly are also evident when we examine the idea of unforeseen consequences. An inevitable by-product of non-linearity is the unpredictability of the outcomes of actions, given the multitude of actors engaging with an issue and the shifting terrain and context in which actions and policies are enacted. In such circumstances, the consequences of actions are not completely foreseeable and this has direct ramifications for the ways in which agonists think about specific conflicts. Once again it is not the existence of conflict alone that is solely important but we also need a clearer understanding of the unsettled and disorderly dimensions of conflicts. So, while there may be knee-jerk responses from particular social groupings towards a specific policy initiative, that does not mean that political analysts should be drawn into a determinist mode of understanding the consequences of any given course of action. Such a course overdetermines the orderliness of social and political processes in complex environments and underestimates the amount of speculation that goes into the predictions of outcomes in disorderly situations. To some extent then, the progress of conflicts can be somewhat haphazard as relations ebb and flow in relation to sometimes quite random events. The Cronulla Riots in Australia in  2005 may have reflected long-standing animosity in certain parts of Sydney between Muslims (many of Lebanese

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descent) and local white populations but the turn of events that sparked off the actual riots was highly contingent. The incident was sparked by a variety of rumours propagated through social media regarding an altercation between young Muslims and a surf lifesaver on Cronulla beach (Evers 2008). This then sparked a mass protest, attacks on random individuals of Middle Eastern appearance  and increased social unrest. The catalysts for the riot were already in place and well established but the actual events which caused the riot to ignite were much more contingent. Conflict may be ever present and simmering beneath the surface of a society but it is often quite random and unpredictable events which spark off heightened tensions and more violent manifestations of the conflict (Hartley and Green 2006). In such an environment, dealing with conflict is often a reactive process of dealing with unforeseen consequences rather than a pre-emptively linear one where we merely instigate political action and generate specific outcomes. Similarly, the idea of emergent properties highlights the significance and problems of overly settled or static accounts of social and political conflicts. The agonist embrace of the centrality of conflict must be suitably dynamic to ensure that understandings of the intrinsic nature of conflict to social and political interactions do not underplay the fact that these conflicts are constantly evolving. While these changes may be intrinsically linked to older structures and more traditional accounts of the essence of a particular conflictual division, the nature of a conflict is in a process of flux responding to a wide range of contributing factors at any one point in time. So, while conflict may be inherent to how politics is organized in a given setting, this does not mean that this conflict is predictable or orderly even if the discursive means of understanding it are not ostensibly shifting. Following Agamben’s (2010) work on paradigms discussed earlier, what matters in the reproduction of a particular discursive structure is the capacity of the explanatory framing of a political conflict to incorporate disparate events. In this sense, it is less the case that aspects of conflicts are sufficiently similar to fit into a particular paradigm of explanation – the more significant point is that disparate events can be filtered through a singular paradigmatic narrative. One interesting example of this process that highlights the international dimension is the way in which events in one country can serve to escalate tensions in another. The drawing of parallels between Northern Ireland and other countries is a manifestation of this tendency with murals and flags displayed in Belfast which not only depict and symbolize the local conflict but which also, frequently, allude to the Middle East. For instance, it is commonplace to see Israeli flags flying in unionist areas of Northern Ireland with the Palestinian flag in evidence in nationalist areas. Parallels get drawn between these disparate conflicts in ways that cast the struggles in a similar

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light and conflicts can be escalated by the ways in which local communities respond to their counterparts overseas. It was also not unusual to see murals, particularly in nationalist areas of Belfast, depicting the similarities between Irish republicanism and the anti-Apartheid struggle of black South Africans. Whether these kinds of analogies are sustainable or not, the fact that they are perceived to be relevant helps to provide an unpredictable, emergent element to conflicts as they respond to events and actions far beyond the immediate boundaries of a conflict. This points to the final problem that agonism needs to address in coming to terms with complexity theory – the issue of path dependence. Just as political actors from politicians to bureaucrats to civil society activists may be locked into specific inherited modes of understanding a particular dispute and with that a defined set of possibilities as to how conflicts might be managed or changed, so agonistic theorists need to be careful not to reify the nature of conflict and with that the impossibility of change. While it is important that agonists recognize the inevitability of conflict, it is vital that they do not become subsumed by the established boundaries of a particular interpretation of what the parameters of that conflict are. In other words, the agreed existence of a conflict should not lead to the assumption that there is an agreement as to the precise nature of the conflict and therefore the best means of managing or transforming it. Complexity demands that agonistic theorists of conflict take more serious account of the changing nature of conflict and the dynamics involved in the multiple interpretations of what constitutes the source of conflict and its reproduction. For those who have to deal with the practical implications of conflicts, it is important not to become beholden to path-dependent sources of knowledge but rather to understand the nature of path dependence and the importance of embracing potentially more creative and innovative strategies that may be divergent from the accepted modes of approaching a problem. An agonistic perspective on the complexity of conflicts should be conscious of path dependence as a constraint on possible courses of action as well as the opportunities that are opened up by awareness of and attention to the trajectories of the contemporary problems that need to be addressed. Complexity theory generates challenges for all modes of political and social theory and practice that have not hitherto been examined through a complexity filter. While complexity’s implications vary widely depending on the strategic and epistemological assumptions underpinning the issue or context to which it is applied, it is also clear that no one perspective in social and political theory or one particular approach to policymaking is inherently attuned to the ramifications of complexity. Agonism is no different in this respect despite there being clear reasons why it might be more closely aligned with

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complexity than with some other perspectives. To date though, an agonistic approach to conflict and the realities of social and political complexity have not been brought together sufficiently well, although the recent work of William Connolly (2011) is perhaps the clearest step in this direction. Moreover, there are two further aspects of the relationship between complexity and agonism that need to be addressed in assessing how well agonism performs as a means of making sense of enduring conflict: its capacity to incorporate the international dynamics of conflict and the willingness of agonistic theorists to entertain normative arguments.

Agonism and the international domain If one weakness of agonism in specific contexts is that it potentially overplays the settled nature of political divisions, another – and sometimes allied – concern is the extent to which agonism can be translated from domestic political areas into the broader international domain. There are numerous ways in which the agonistic friend-enemy distinction can be applied to international politics (Schmitt 2008, Chandler 2008). For example, it can apply to relations between different countries and whether they are seen as allies or opponents, it can help to explain the propensity of certain countries to behave in specific ways vis-à-vis international decision-making bodies, and it can contribute to our understanding of the hegemonic nature of certain ideas and actors in global political spheres (Edkins and Vaughan-Williams 2009). That said, these connections are often implied rather than well developed and the strategic foundation of each of these applications remains located within a somewhat state-centred imaginary (Little and Macdonald 2013). This is an important dimension of international relations of course, but one might expect a broader application of agonism to international politics to go beyond state-based concerns. Thus, for example, it could be argued that agonism should also be expected to add its explanatory power to discussions of sub-national issues and movements (e.g. social movements as opposed to strategic direction of states) and transnational links between sub-state actors (e.g. crossnational secessionist movements or international trade unions) in a complex international domain. As Connolly puts it, ‘agonistic democracy challenges the confinement of democracy to the governmental institutions of the territorial state’ (Connolly 1991: xi). Despite the growth of analyses of agonism within political debates over the last 20 years, its appearance in the international relations literature has been more sporadic. Certainly, Mouffe (2009) has addressed some of the major themes in the international application of agonism herself. And others such

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as Archibugi (citing Mouffe), while not subscribing necessarily to an agonistic perspective, have argued that their projects – in his case cosmopolitan democracy – have an ambition of ‘turning international politics from the realm of antagonism into the realm of agonism’ (Archibugi 2004: 453). However, Mouffe is sceptical of cosmopolitan models because they renounce the centrality of sovereignty and the effects that sovereign power can have on the imagination of alternative forms of government (Mouffe 2009: 552; Thaler 2010). Moreover, ultimately, she argues that, because they do not challenge established hegemonic forms, cosmopolitan models reproduce similar structures and problems as existing forms of statist liberal democracy (Little and Macdonald 2013). So, in making sense of a multipolar world, Mouffe argues that democracy ‘could take a variety of forms, according to the different modes of inscription of the democratic ideal in a variety of contexts’ (Mouffe 2009: 256). This approach correlates with the implications of complexity for a conflictual world. There is no universal model to encapsulate the agonistic approach to international relations and, as such, it challenges both constructivist approaches and understandings of the international domain as driven by mere strategic interest. In so doing, however, agonism encourages a much more critical approach to the prevailing tropes in international relations about the means of managing conflict (Tambakaki 2009). There is, then, scope for considerable traction for agonism in international political debates if its message of the residual and constitutive existence of conflict in  all political situations is kept in mind. For example, Richmond (2010) draws attention to the importance for international relations of paying fuller attention to the role of the local and the everyday in an environment where the macro-level of the ‘liberal peace thesis’ has come in for so much critical attention. This attention to the localized nature of much conflict is also prevalent in a variety of perspectives that Mac Ginty terms ‘indigenous peacemaking’ (Mac Ginty 2008). Moreover, scholars attuned to the sentiments of John Dewey’s pragmatism (Bray 2011) have also been applying aspects of agonistic thinking to the international domain. Owen (2002), for example, argues explicitly that there is much to be gained for international relations if pragmatism and agonism are brought closer together: the agonism of rival positions is critical to sharpening our fallibilistic knowledge of such-and-such an issue, and to our awareness of the interests and values at stake in seeking to address this issue, that is, to co-ordinate action. Hence, insofar as IR re-orients itself around this understanding, its antagonisms are transformed into an agonism in the service of growth  – and this surely is an appropriate ethos for contemporary IR to adopt’. (Owen 2002: 673)

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While all of the attempts to apply agonism to international relations are useful in challenging theories which either privilege the possibility of using alternative liberal or democratic mechanisms to overcome conflict or see international politics as the domain of rational, strategic actors, there is still a risk that agonism works from an acceptance of established divisions and a state-based focus on the agon of international politics. While Mouffe’s discussion of a multipolar world leaves open the possibility of a multiplicity of agonistic interfaces, there is still a tendency in the international relations literature to view conflict in terms of inter-state disputes or intra-state contests with insufficient attention to new and emergent forms of conflict which may manifest on the state level or within particular societies but actually have roots in broader social, economic or political issues. Agonistic approaches to international politics should draw attention to the multiple ways in which the increased penetration of state boundaries opens new interfaces of engagement which require agonistic management. Moreover, in an environment characterized by complex global dynamics (Urry 2002), these interfaces are potentially multiplying and changing. In this situation, an agonistic perspective on international relations cannot imagine conflicts as settled disputes between competing state actors or as static sub-national disputes which lend themselves to international interventions to resolve. In short, engagement with agonistic theory has profound ramifications for the ways in which scholars of international relations might address questions of peace, conflict and violence (Shinko 2008).

The normative implications of agonism Agonistic theories are usually articulated at a critical distance from normative theories of either domestic or international politics. This emanates from the  scepticism of agonistic theorists towards normative perspectives that quite often do not view political issues through the lens of the power relations which are always at work in circumstances of political conflict and which help to reproduce these conflicts. As such, agonism has traditionally avoided the terrain of normative justification of particular alternatives to how things could be because the notion of the political that agonistic theory employs tends to lead in more strategic rather than normative directions in terms of decision-making. However, normative implications do emanate from agonistic approaches not least because any decisions that are to be taken between different normative alternatives are likely to be informed by the strategic interests linked to prevailing social conflicts. In this sense, normativity itself is filtered through the prism of existent political conflicts and the particular

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objectives that one side or the other wants to pursue. For a political actor to make a choice between normative alternatives in an agonistic context is a highly loaded exercise precisely because the choice that is made is likely to be interpreted – by some people at least – as being of benefit to one side of a conflictual order over another. In terms of political action then, agonism cannot merely wash its hands of normative issues just because it has a firm grasp of the deep-seated nature of political conflicts. All political choices involve normative dimensions and this pertains irrespective of whether theorists or practitioners embrace an agonistic approach. Agonism is also connected to normativity because the conflicts that agonists focus on develop in specific ways due to the impact of normative ideas and actors on them. We noted above the propensity of some agonistic thinkers to see conflicts in somewhat static terms whereby the idea of the friend-enemy distinction subsumes more nuanced accounts of the ways in which historical enmities change over the course of time and at varying speeds for different individuals and groups. Thus, engaging with normative ideas encourages agonists to take part in more qualitative discussions of the potential benefits and harm that a particular course of action might generate. This helps to identify the ways in which the actual nature of conflicts is not static even if the claims and perceptions upon which conflicts are based may not always appear to be particularly dynamic. That is, in a complex environment, for a conflict to reproduce over time, it must be capable of incorporating various changing elements of its context within the overarching conflictual framework. Decisions that are taken tend to be passed through the conflictual paradigm to enable political actors to position themselves. In other words, in a conflictual scenario, the fact that a decision may not favour one side or the other tends to be passed through a decision-making process about whether it favours one side or the other. In this way, the conflictual paradigm invades even those decisions that do not have an explicit impact on the conflict in terms of preferencing the demands of one side or the other. A good example of this tendency is economic decision-making in Northern Ireland. Economic and political decisions about whether there will be more or less investment in particular industries are highly loaded depending on the historical composition of the particular industry and where it is located. Particular industries have quite often been populated by one side or the other of the ethno-national divide. Sometimes this was down to the sheer geography of a factory location in such a divided society or, on the contrary, historically, some of the decisions taken by economic actors or the state were explicitly designed to favour a particular community. For example, notoriously, in 1933 future Unionist Prime Minister Basil Brooke urged loyalists where possible to employ ‘good Protestant lads and lassies’ (Brewer and Higgins 1998). In this

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kind of context, the decision about what to invest in or which factories should close is incredibly loaded and these decisions often get translated through the conflictual paradigm. And, even, where there might be a downturn in a particular sector that is not explicitly as segregated – say tourism, for example – this does not mean that the downturn does not impact more in some areas than in others (which may reflect the ethno-national conflict). Moreover, blame for the impact of an economic downturn is often directed at one side or another in the conflict (for instance, paramilitary dissidents from one side causing unrest and undermining economic confidence). Agonism is highly pertinent in helping us to understand the ways in which conflicts are always present in the everyday encounters of a particular society but we need to remain vigilant that we do not see such conflicts as set in stone. In the Northern Ireland example, cross-border co-operation on tourism may transcend the ethno-national divide to some extent but that divide is not so settled that we can simply read off this fact. The changing nature of the conflict and its divisions means that we are constantly assessing decisions about economic development through the lens of the conflict. This example helps to make it clear how agonism relates to normative concerns. Conflictual social and political relations provide a paradigmatic structure within which normative decisions are made. They help to shape those decisions but, in turn, those decisions help to shape the conflict. The conflict should not be seen as an external edifice – a settled but conflictual clearing house through which all decisions must pass – but as a living, dynamic entity which is reproduced and changed in intangible but significant ways through the normative decisions that are taken and implemented. Thus, it is erroneous to regard agonism and normative perspectives as completely distinct. They coexist in a complex relationship in which the conflict structures action but is also structured, in turn, by the actions we take, and many of them are informed by a variety of normative perspectives. So, seeing agonism and normativity as inherently separate leads us into an unnecessary cul-de-sac which limits the applicability of agonistic theory to the analysis of political action.

Conclusion: Complex agonism? In this chapter, we have seen the many ways in which agonistic political theory can be linked to the concerns of the enduring conflict thesis. Not the least of these is the centrality of conflict as a dominant motif in agonism. However, we have also identified three significant areas of concern in terms of how agonism relates to enduring conflict. First, agonism risks reifying conflicts

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and thereby paying insufficient attention to the changing, dynamic nature of conflict in a complex society. Secondly, agonism, though clearly related to the international domain, cannot help us explain all of the actions and motivations that take place in international political circles (especially those that do not fit within a state-based strategic structure). And thirdly, the aspiration of agonists to steer clear of normative political theories does not always help us to understand the complex relationship between agonism and normativity in conflictual environments. Ultimately, bearing these three criticisms in mind, agonism performs better against one side of the enduring conflict thesis than the other. It is a useful explanatory tool in making sense of the way in which the structural inscriptions of conflict endure and have quite profound effects on the frameworks and boundaries in which political decisions are made. This helps to explain how conflict endures (even if agonists are not always as cognizant as they might be of the disorderly effects of complexity on these structural features of conflict). However, agonism is less persuasive in explaining the agential nature of conflict. This is because, although agonism sheds clear light on how structures frame the possibilities of action and how actions get translated through structural framings, it has less to say on the ways in which actions alter the nature of conflicts and the possibilities of subversive or transgressive actions which might undermine conflicts and take them in new directions. In this sense, agonism offers more in terms of explaining the lasting nature of conflict but makes a lesser contribution in helping us to understand the quality of endurance demanded of social actors in a conflictual environment. To try to balance the structural emphasis that agonism brings to our consideration of these issues, the next section turns to the more discursive aspects of the enduring conflict thesis by analysing the implications of rhetorical and narrative approaches to conflictual politics.

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5 Rhetorics of peace and transition

‘What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed’. (JULIAN BARNES, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING)

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n the first two sections of the book, we have identified some of the structural constraints that influence the conduct of politics in  all complex societies and, in particular, the ways in which these structural factors impact upon contemporary discussions of the role of conflict. In this section, the argument continues through an analysis of the discursive manifestation of these structural constraints in the political conduct of conflictual societies. Following a post-structuralist logic, we need to grapple with not only how particular interests are inscribed in institutional formations but also how these interests get translated into the very language we use to discuss matters of conflict, peace and democracy. This suggests that power is operational not only in the work of political institutions but also in the language we use to conduct social and political debates. This necessitates a greater understanding of the discursive power of particular modes of analysis and the ways in which they can inhibit political debates and the forms of political action which may ensue from them. Specifically, this chapter examines the role of rhetoric in constructing the terms in which conflict is understood and tackled in the world today. It analyses the powerful role of rhetoric and its expression by a range of political actors, including politicians, governments, international organizations, pressure groups, civil society organizations and journalists. The argument contends that the aspiration to peace and the absence of conflict as the normal state of affairs are fundamentally at odds with the experience of both divided and

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seemingly harmonious societies. In this scenario, the chapter asks what the role is for rhetoric in forging the discursive space in which contested matters are discussed. It interrogates how certain arguments come to be seen as common sense while others are discarded as ‘noise’ (Rancière 2010) or ‘litter’ (Connolly 2011) within prevailing power structures. Rather than focusing on the articulation of the rhetoric of peace or reconciliation, the chapter argues for the importance to transition of a different rhetorical understanding of conflict.

Understanding political rhetoric and rhetorical political analysis Although the study of rhetoric is a classical part of philosophy and has a very long history, it has been largely neglected in political science and international relations until a resurgence in recent years (Finlayson and Martin 2008). Too frequently it has been used as a pejorative term to portray the instrumental use of language by political actors, which is seen to be in some key way at odds with their actual practices and policies. So, rhetoric comes to be associated with the manipulation of language to gain political popularity and to divert attention from what is really taking place. However, this ‘common sense’ understanding of rhetoric makes the mistake of seeing rhetoric either as devoid of substantive content or as reflective of purely instrumental (but often unstated) objectives (Finlayson 2007). This mistake neglects the long history of rhetoric and its broader contribution as a fundamental and positive part of the art of political argument. Moreover, it underestimates the central impact of rhetoric on the production of all political arguments: political science is transacted through argument. In turn, argument is rhetorical, not in the cynical sense of empty or manipulative words but in the artistic and political sense of styles or patterns of speech. Yet political scientists have been no more inclined than other scholars to recognize their own strategies of rhetoric. They sometimes act as though adherence to standard forms for reporting research enables them to avoid rhetoric altogether, and they often assume that their modes of argument do not affect their conduct of inquiry. (Nelson 1998: 9) This makes the point that rhetoric is inherent to the conduct of practical politics and should not be merely discarded as a subject unfit for serious political analysis as the ‘common sense’ view might have us believe (Finlayson 2012). On the contrary, if political scientists want to understand

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practical phenomena in a complex environment and their attendant debates and conflicts, they need to grapple more effectively with the ways in which they are articulated, justified and criticized in political argument. Moreover, attention also needs to be paid to the ways in which forms of rhetorical argument position particular issues in relation to other debates that are taking place in a given society. In this sense, rhetoric is never isolated from the broader institutional and discursive context in which it is employed. In the terms of the enduring conflict thesis then, at the outset it is important to recognize that rhetorical approaches to contemporary conflicts do tend to focus on the primacy of more desirable alternatives such as peace, democracy and reconciliation. However, this is not to say that they ignore conflictual matters. On the contrary, most theorists of reconciliation, for example, have to recognize the existence (and in some cases, the inevitability) of conflict but their focus instead is on the potential of rhetorical devices to provide a conceptual backdrop against which groups can engage across their conflictual differences. As with agonistic theories of conflict, rhetorical approaches can be viewed as an attempt to domesticate political conflict but they concentrate on the use of rhetorical mechanisms rather than specific political structures or institutions as a means of facilitating engagement across conflictual political differences. The advantage of rhetorical approaches in the light of complexity is that rather than trying to specify linear pathways as a means of navigating through conflict to peace, they tend to focus on the broader discursive framing of politics. So, for example, this would potentially enable a rhetoric of relatively peaceful coexistence to play a primary political role in dealing with a given situation rather than relying on a definitive rhetoric of peace that gets juxtaposed with conflict. The value of this approach is that it enables debate on contested notions of success or failure within a general rhetorical rubric rather than focusing on deterministic, unambiguous claims about whether something like reconciliation has been achieved. A rhetorical approach potentially allows for a much more gradualist approach to questions of how to deal with conflict because it could allow political actors to be less focused on reaching the end point of non-conflict and more focused on facilitating contributory processes. This view of the uses to which rhetoric can be put in understanding the dynamics of continuing conflict correlates with some of the arguments that have been put forward by Alan Finlayson in his advocacy of rhetorical political analysis (RPA) as a methodological tool for politics: RPA foregrounds the inter-subjective, dynamic, formation and reformation of arguments and the elements of which they are composed. It observes

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the dissemination of concepts, words and ideas showing how they pass through institutions, getting promoted, destroyed, redefined and redeployed; examines “genealogies” of the way in which the “common sense” is constituted and altered and identifies replicated patterns of political argument. (Finlayson 2007: 560) This points to the utility of thinking about rhetoric in much broader terms than the mere utterances or sophistry of political actors. Finlayson highlights the institutional nature of much political rhetoric and the way in which it disseminates through a number of advertent and inadvertent channels. And it suggests that rhetoric is articulated and reproduced inter-subjectively rather than being a linear communicative model between the deliverer and receiver of rhetorical argument. Lastly, Finlayson’s approach also suggests that we need to expand our understanding of the venues in which political rhetoric is articulated and generated. He states that ‘RPA broadens our horizons as to the “rationalities” on which politics is based, extending them into areas that involve the affective, the traditional, the figurative and the poetic and which require us to examine the multiple influences on styles and strategies of political argument’ (Finlayson 2007: 560). So, the contention here is that political rhetoric is much more than a form of argument that shrouds the reality of what is actually taking place. Rhetoric is not just concerned with what is said or written, it relates just as much to the structuring role of the spaces and contexts in which political communication takes place. It is a methodological tool which can reveal much more than the basic study of political language in demonstrating the dynamism and complexity of how such language can be used. Bearing this argument in mind, the next section looks in more detail at how the rhetoric of reconciliation has been used in a number of contexts around the world focusing, in particular, on its ascendancy in the political debates around South Africa’s transition from the Apartheid regime.

Rhetorics of reconciliation in South Africa and beyond The concept of reconciliation has endured a chequered development in the last 20 years. Not surprisingly, given its prominence in conflict transformation processes in South Africa in the 1990s, the primary usage of the concept of reconciliation was as a normative good (Hamber and van der Merwe 1998; Lederach 1997). Buoyed by the ostensible success of the South African

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example, pressure groups, NGOs and peace activists in a variety of political settings commandeered the idea of reconciliation to bolster their arguments (Bar-Siman-Tov 2004, Verdeja 2009). However, as events unfolded in South Africa, and as the difficulties in establishing shared understandings of reconciliation emerged in combination with the problematic translation of theoretical aspirations into meaningful political institutions, a more critical perspective on reconciliation has become a central part of social and political debates on conflict transformation in recent years (Little 2012b, Moon 2008). These critical accounts are often still receptive to the idea that reconciliation may be a worthwhile vision to aspire to but are less forthright in the pursuit of a normative vision of reconciliation per se. One of the most prominent accounts of the promise of rhetoric in the critical reconciliation literature focuses on South Africa and can be found in the work of Erik Doxtader (2001, 2009). His work focuses on the rhetorical use of reconciliation as a means of creating a space for dialogue even where the actual process and the events and issues it seeks to make sense of are highly contested. For Doxtader, ‘reconciliation is a mode of rhetorical historymaking’ (Doxtader 2001: 225); it generates further impetus for reconciliation as well as constitutes a discursive space in which the contested events of the past can be addressed directly. Importantly, this argument does not presuppose consensus on what reconciliation is or what its impact should be. It does not seek to prescribe either the nature of reconciliation or its policy ramifications. On the contrary, reconciliation is construed as a contested notion but one that is ‘rhetorically constituted [as] a referent for interaction, a bridge between incommensurable views of South Africa’s past and future’ (Doxtader 2001: 244). This account emphasizes the utility of reconciliation as a ‘dialogic event’ rather than as a settled or definitive institutional political process which would reach particular outcomes within a specific timeline. Reconciliation became almost an umbrella term in South Africa – it framed a space for continued political contestation over the terms of settlement but in a less overtly antagonistic fashion. However, for many of its advocates, it informed a process imbued with hope and a vision of a shared South Africa (Villa-Vicencio and Du Toit 2006). Twenty years on from their negotiated settlement, there is a palpable sense of disappointment with the ways in which the promise of reconciliation and the related narrative of ‘Rainbow Nation’ has played out and recognition of the need for a new rhetorical framing of the process of transformation in South African society (Marais 2011). It is significant that Doxtader frames his argument in a way that is very specifically directed towards South Africa. His argument does not entail that reconciliation would necessarily generate the same transformative impetus

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in other conflictual contexts. On the contrary, as indicated in Chapter 3, the functional utility of reconciliation in providing a rhetorical device for engagement in South Africa has sometimes been replicated elsewhere where similar institutional processes have been enacted but with very difficult results. On the other hand, other societies have not pursued the path of reconciliation so vigorously. Indeed, in the case of societies as divergent as Cambodia and Northern Ireland, reconciliation has not been seriously pursued in institutional or rhetorical terms as transition was dominated by agendas around peace, non-violence, justice or development (Linton 2004, Little 2012b). In other contexts such as the DRC there were attempts to replicate some elements of the South African experience but without any great success. Importantly, this is not to say that some form of reconciliation is impossible in societies that have not overtly followed a reconciliatory agenda or institutionalized the same kind of political mechanisms as the South African TRC. What it does recognize, however, is that, in societies like Northern Ireland, reconciliation was likely to close down spaces for engagement or generate significant additional political conflict. In different contexts then, a variety of rhetorical devices may be required to perform the same kind of role as reconciliation played in South Africa (Little 2012b) just as South Africa may need new rhetorical structures for engagement 20 years after its settlement. The particular rhetorical device that is appropriate will vary depending on the context but this is a more sophisticated point than merely repackaging the same rhetorical concept for different contexts. It is not just a matter of filling the same rhetorical device with different content. On the contrary, the rhetoric itself may be radically different in varying conflictual contexts and, as the South African example suggests, will vary over the course of time within those contexts. So, rhetorical accounts need to be  malleable over time to ensure continued political relevance and the passage of time may well make rhetorics redundant, thereby necessitating new rhetorical formations. The rhetorical approach is a subtle move beyond agonistic accounts insofar as rhetoric is potentially less reliant on preconceived ways of performing politics or definitive notions of how a conflict manifests and how participants in a conflict must relate to one another. Instead, rhetorical arguments provide an ‘oppositional view of reconciliation [that] unsettles its dialectical aspirations towards the transcendent’ (Doxtader 2003: 268). From this perspective, reconciliation need not be viewed in contra-distinction to conflict but, in the South African example at least, as a fundamental part of the management and gradual transformation of the conflict. The implication of this argument is that reconciliation in South Africa should be viewed as a

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framing device which established the paradigm within which the competing sides could work through their differences. This stands in stark contrast to views of reconciliation as the endpoint of political engagement across differences. However, from the perspective of the enduring conflict thesis, there is still insufficient attention in the rhetorical approach on the opportunities for the articulation of non-reconciliatory arguments. Indeed, it is not even clear how exactly we might discern which arguments are for or against reconciliation. Although, for commentators such as Doxtader, the overarching rhetorical framing is more significant than the precise arguments under that rubric, the predominance of a particular rhetoric can close off political discussion as much as open it up. And this is where it is less than clear that there was sufficient space in South Africa for approaches that were critical of the dominant narrative of reconciliation (Farred 2004). There is a risk then that the rhetorical approach in South Africa privileged conciliation over other more critical and disputatious accounts of the events of the past. And, in other contexts, different rhetorical devices could play a similar role in filtering out oppositional noise in the establishment of an acceptable discursive framing in which politics can take place. This is perhaps inevitable in conflictual political circumstances but we need to keep in mind constantly that this process is taking place and that over the course of time the boundaries of the acceptable can be permeated by alternative readings, discourses and perspectives on the nature of a particular conflict. The questions remain then as to which concepts we should use to frame these kinds of engagements in different contexts, where they come from and who it is that decides that they are fit for purpose. In Foucauldian terms, the particular favoured rhetorical term may problematize alternative accounts such that they become marginalized from contributing to the political process of managing conflict. In terms of the empirical evidence of the endurance of conflict, it is important not to prioritize reconciliatory perspectives over more explicitly conflictual arguments just because, in rhetorical terms, they promise more peaceful or consensual outcomes. The key point here is that rather than trying to either domesticate or override disputatious standpoints, we need to stay focused on the centrality and inevitability of conflict to politics. If, following agonism, conflict is seen to be an ineradicable part of the ontological condition of political life, the politics of reconciliation needs to take account of not only those perspectives that are overtly conciliatory but also – and more significantly – those that are non-reconciled and continue to articulate a disruptive, disagreeable political message (Little 2007).

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Alternative rhetorics? Discourses of reconciliation in Northern Ireland The question remains as to what rhetorical approaches offer the enduring conflict thesis if the main way in which rhetoric has been employed in debates on political conflict has been through the concept of reconciliation or similar rhetorical devices focused on the need to eliminate or ameliorate conflict where possible. As we saw in Chapter 3, discourses of reconciliation have been problematic in relation to the ways in which we conceptualize the management of political conflict. Moreover, as will become clear in this section, rhetorics of reconciliation have not been employed in other settings for a variety of reasons, including the elasticity of the term reconciliation and its propensity to engender further violent conflict if used in specific ways. In what follows, I bring out these general issues in relation to the theoretical rhetoric of reconciliation through a deeper consideration of how this rhetoric has been conceived in Northern Ireland. Unsurprisingly, given the temporal proximity of the South African transition, the early stages of the Northern Ireland peace process in the 1990s gave rise to some discussion of reconciliation as an important factor in the nascent process of conflict transformation. The South African transition was always an important source of impetus for the Northern Irish process not least because some of the key divisions in Northern Ireland were understood – rightly or wrongly – by some of the participants to resemble those in South Africa. The tendential nature of this particular element of the comparison aside (McGarry 1998), it is useful to examine the way the discourse of reconciliation was so pivotal to the South Africa transition and yet virtually absent from the Northern Ireland peace process and how this rhetorical difference has impacted on political development since the 1990s. Interestingly though, this is not to say that there have not been attempts to transplant some of the South African experience onto Northern Ireland. Indeed, some key analysts of the social and political transition in South Africa came together to highlight potential lessons that Northern Ireland could learn from reconciliation processes in South Africa (Hamber and Kelly 2004). This effort had limited impact though – at least in terms of employing the discourse of reconciliation – for a variety of reasons. What became clear was that, in the context of Northern Ireland, reconciliation was a highly contentious concept that was likely to generate as much dissent as it was to inspire peaceful transition. For many unionists in Northern Ireland in particular, the discourses of reconciliation that emerged in the early stages of the peace process amounted to little more than a rather poorly concealed republican Trojan

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Horse (Little 2012b). Whether or not this was true, it is also worth highlighting that many republicans in Northern Ireland were also deeply sceptical of reconciliatory rhetoric particularly as it was being invoked in terms of ‘shaking hands and moving on’ rather than actually attending to the events of the past and the violence that had taken place during ‘the Troubles’. Indeed, such is the significance of historical narratives to different interpretations of the Northern Ireland conflict that this sense that reconciliation might lead to the past being brushed under the carpet was one of the few issues around which opposing political actors were able to agree on as problematic.1 It is clear, even from the most cursory analysis, that reconciliation has not played the same kind of role in conflict transformation in Northern Ireland as it has done in other transitional processes elsewhere in the world. Goodman (2009) documents the numerous initiatives in global politics where transitional processes have taken place in recent decades. Some of these have been animated by concerns for peace or non-violence, while others have sought forms of historical accounting and a range of forms of recompense through the pursuit of truth and/or justice. Among these reconciliation has been a theme of transition in examples as diverse as South Africa, Chile, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Canada, Liberia, Morocco, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Serbia and Montenegro, Ghana and the Central African Republic with varying degrees of impact. Given the unevenness with which the rhetoric of reconciliation has been employed in various ‘post-conflict’ scenarios around the world and the differential impact its deployment has had, it is more useful to think of rhetoric in more abstract terms rather than trying to understand its role through the more specific example of discourses of reconciliation before and after South Africa. Quite simply, the evidence suggests that there may well be rhetorical tools that might facilitate political change within different scenarios but that it is more difficult to identify a particular concept such as reconciliation that can play a transformative role across varying complex contexts. In Northern Ireland, during the 1990s peace process, the concept of reconciliation was so laden with specific – and, for some people, pejorative – undertones that it was hard to operationalize it in such a way that it might lead to less rather than more political conflict. While, of course, all political language is laden with certain assumptions and presuppositions, this problem is at its most acute when we are trying to deal with the tensions and conflicts of deeply divided societies. Indeed, the presuppositions that particular terminologies invoke may be precisely those ideas and practices that animate and reproduce the conflict. In deeply divided societies, there are many sensitivities which have profound implications for the language we use and the effect that discourses

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have on the politics of everyday life. For example, to suggest that processes of peace and reconciliation in ‘post-conflict’ societies should be focused on some form of redress for victims might seem a straightforward statement but, in practice, they are heavily loaded when they are placed in specific contexts. This is because there may be no agreement as to who the real victims are and contestation around the means by which some people may qualify for the status conferred by victimhood and others do not. Or, as one political actor in Northern Ireland neatly encapsulated it, this implies that there is ‘a hierarchy of victimhood’ (Little 2012b: 90). Quite simply, the kinds of definition one employs may accentuate the conflict from which a society is trying to emerge. If the narratives that explain a conflict in a given context vary radically, then any strategy for grappling with the conflict must invoke a particular story of what took place in the past and why (including a rationale for the ascription of the status of victimhood to some rather than others). In this scenario of contested interpretations of a conflict, to argue for reconciliation without reaching some kind of agreement on the source of conflict – even if that is as little as agreeing to disagree – is inherently problematic. To take the example of Northern Ireland again, the conflict has often been construed as a zero-sum game whereby ceding ground on one’s interpretation of the conflict and its history is often thought to be tantamount to shoring up alternative readings of events (Ruane and Todd 1996, Little 2009c). It is never a simple matter of changing one’s perspective in the spirit of reconciliation because the act of relinquishing part of the narrative is often thought to strengthen the views of one’s opponents. In this sense, Northern Ireland typifies agonistic readings of the nature of political conflicts and it should not be surprising then that the precondition of a degree of prior understanding and consensus on which to base reconciliatory processes is a difficult obstacle to overcome. Specifically, in the Northern Irish context, there is a substantive disagreement about who the ‘real’ victims of the conflict were in a way that was not such a factor in the South African transition (even though, obviously, disagreements existed there too). In particular, many unionists in Northern Ireland are deeply opposed to the idea that there might be some kind of moral equivalence between the different people who died or were injured during ‘the Troubles’. The risk of this moral equivalence for unionists is that it upsets their narrative of what actually took place during the Northern Irish conflict – that is, of a relatively just and fair society that was undermined by the actions of terrorists who sought to bring about radical social change through violent tactics to achieve their vision of a united Ireland. To further paraphrase this unionist perspective, certain groups – mainly republican paramilitaries – were to blame for ‘the Troubles’ and their victims

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are the authentic and legitimate claimants of the status of victimhood. By this account, the security forces were merely trying to maintain peace and order while the loyalist paramilitaries, although not regarded as blameless, were reactionaries against the republican campaign without which they would not have needed to exist. From many unionist perspectives then, any argument that required all victims of ‘the Troubles’ (including members of paramilitary organizations alongside innocent civilians and members of the security forces) to be regarded as holding the same status is deeply problematic, if not completely unjustifiable. This is part of the reason why, in the context of Northern Ireland, the notion of reconciliation was nowhere near as effective in acting as a rhetorical device encapsulating processes of social transformation as was the case in South Africa. The very terms in which Northern Ireland was constructed and the narratives employed to make sense of that reality were at odds with a reconciliatory agenda which regarded all those who suffered during ‘the Troubles’ as having the same status. Put simply, reconciliation did not have the same rhetorical power in Northern Ireland as it had in South Africa because there was even less sense of a shared narrative of the conflict itself, let alone how it might be addressed and rectified in a ‘post-conflict’ scenario. What this reading of the status of reconciliation in Northern Ireland points to is the difficulty of applying the concept as a transitional device in  all scenarios. Different societies have moved towards peace without an explicit focus on reconciliation (see for example Peru, Paraguay and Panama) and others have been much more explicit in articulating a reconciliatory agenda as a way of facilitating peace (e.g. East Timor and Indonesia, and Liberia) (Goodman 2009). In other words, in some conflict transformation processes it has proved productive to try to address the past head on, to be clear about wrongdoing, to seek truth and, in some instances, to attribute blame. In other situations, however, it is precisely the process of such raking through the coals of the past that might give rise to further conflict and act against some kind of transitional or transformative process. The point of the argument here is not to suggest that there is an appropriate normative model that can be applied to different conflict settings and their modes of transition but to recognize, instead, the deeply contextual nature of understanding conflict in different complex societies. If this is the case, then rhetorical approaches to political conflicts need to recognize the fluidity in the ways in which rhetoric can affect political conflicts and the various political practices and institutions which have emerged from their historical trajectory. In the case of an example like Northern Ireland, the problem is that the narrative accounts of the past, although by no means reducible to a ‘two traditions’ paradigm (Little 2004), are set up in contradiction to one another. That is, many of the narratives of

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the past in Northern Ireland only make sense if there is an alternative narrative proclaiming the alternative position. I refer to this situation as a ‘disjunctured synthesis’ (Little 2012b) whereby alternative and incommensurable accounts of the past actually rely upon each other as a buttress to provide meaning and a perspectival location. In this situation, conflict transformation is not so much about finding ‘truth’ as a matter of seeking accommodation between conflicting accounts in such a way as to make a conflict more liveable rather than something that is to be transcended through political processes such as reconciliation. This notion of ‘disjunctured synthesis’, however, focuses on the continuation of conflict in transitional settings rather than conflict being something that can ever be resolved conclusively. Undoubtedly, reconciliation can have a role in either of these approaches but it is a much more difficult concept to operationalize where the sources of the conflict remain a matter of considerable disagreement and dispute.

Towards rhetorics of conflict as a mode of transformation The implications of this account for the enduring conflict thesis are that rather than concentrating all our rhetorical attention on how we conceptualize peace or processes of conflict resolution, we need to focus more on rhetorical conceptualizations of the conflict. This is not just about overcoming these rhetorics but, on the contrary, recognizing how they will survive and reproduce in the context of transformative processes. In other words, forms of conflict transformation do not overcome discourses of conflict, they merely change the context in which such discourses are articulated. In so doing, they ensure that discourses of conflict have to change if they are to endure and remain relevant over the course of time. And, in keeping with the argument of the book, most discourses of conflict are highly adaptive to the changing social and political environment around them. This demands that we think more about rhetorical articulations of conflict as a fundamental part of transformation rather than getting ahead of ourselves in imagining pathways to a conflict-free environment. In this vein, this chapter leads towards a conclusion that there is a need to recognize the power of rhetoric and its profound influence on the parameters within which political debate can take place. Rhetorics focused on conflict resolution will remain powerful political tools and are likely to have very direct ramifications on the ways in which future debates on conflict can take place.

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However, the account here suggests that the hegemony that conflict resolution discourses have established in the peace and conflict studies literature needs to be challenged and not just by approaches which offer a more, pragmatic transformative stance towards conflict. While conflict transformation is an advance on the resolutionary paradigm, it still remains firmly lodged in the understanding of conflict in pejorative terms. Conflict is something to be reduced and minimized even if it can’t be eradicated altogether. The advantage of a transformative rhetoric is that it at least maintains a focus on the continuity of conflict after political action, even if it remains wedded to the notion of conflict as a problem. However, in order to keep conflict much more firmly in view as a counterbalance to the resolutionary paradigm, a rhetoric of conflict that emphasizes its continuity, endurance and political potency is vital. Moreover, in keeping with the discussion of the impact of complexity throughout this book and the earlier critique of agonism, we need to understand that there will be rhetorics of conflict. There is not a single narrative of conflict that merely needs to be kept in view. Rather, there are many competing interpretations of conflict and there needs to be sufficient space for their articulation to disrupt the established position of resolutionary perspectives which tend to focus on singular narratives of conflict to facilitate political strategies for their resolution.

Rhetoric, paradigms and contingency In the argument thus far, we have noted the role that rhetoric could potentially play in conflict transformation processes and, in particular, the substantive role of the rhetoric of reconciliation in the transitional process in South Africa vis-à-vis its relative absence in Northern Ireland. At the same time, however, and from a more theoretical standpoint, it is equally clear that there are substantive structural obstacles to fundamental shifts in social and political paradigms such that the potential of rhetoric as a transitional tool may be limited. In particular, in terms of reconciliation, there is a substantial risk that rhetorical devices act as filters that enable some perspectives to be aired and to attain public credence while others languish on the margins, having been policed out of the space of acceptable discourse (Rancière 1999). Questions remain, then, as to how conflict transformation processes driven by particular rhetorical foundations such as reconciliation are capable of including and engaging with non-reconciled perspectives. This is particularly important in complex societies emerging from a trajectory of conflict because the foundations of conflict are not something that can merely be packaged away as ‘history’. Instead, these conflicts are generated

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afresh in the ways in which we seek to transform them either discursively or institutionally. In this instance, non-reconciled perspectives are likely to play a significant role in the political discourse of a conflict-ridden society. Perhaps it is fair to say that the conditions in South Africa in the early 1990s were more conducive to the creation of a process where non-reconciled perspectives had little political cachet. This is not to say that all those involved in the TRC were completely reconciled but that those people may have seen instrumental value in participating in reconciliatory processes in a way that was less evident in Northern Ireland (or Australia for that matter). What this suggests is that the capacity of rhetoric to influence change is highly dependent on the structural context in which it is promoted – it is never likely to have the power to bring about paradigmatic shifts in its own right and is, to some extent, dependent on political contingency. Therefore, rhetoric can potentially play a major part in paradigmatic shifts but it is highly dependent on structural conditions. An obvious example of this would be the way in which religion played such a pivotal role in the development of the South African model of reconciliation (Doxtader 2009). It is not just a matter of what is said but who is saying it. In South Africa some religious figures like Desmond Tutu were able to play the role of the honest broker in a way that is fairly unimaginable in Northern Ireland, for example, despite the prominent role that the clergy played in representing the different sides of the conflict. Thus, in one context such as South Africa, reconciliation, based on religious thinking, might be a means of opening up transformative discourse, while in another like Northern Ireland, it might be a way in which traditional divisions and conflicts are brought back to the fore of political discussion. This exemplifies the rhetorical potential of reconciliation as a tool for discussion and perhaps a better understanding of historical issues, but it is less clear that it is as capable of providing a rhetorical device for dealing with manifestations of the conflict in the present. If, following a Foucauldian analysis (Little 2009c), we understand that even the way in which we address the past rewrites narratives about conflict for the present, then the capacity of any rhetorical device (and reconciliation in particular) to fundamentally shift the terms in which political debate is conducted should be treated with considerable caution. To be clear, it is obvious that the rhetoric of reconciliation was a powerful contributor to conflict transformation in the South African context (although the degree to which the conflict has been transformed is a matter of some contention and considerable contemporary disappointment). However, the role of rhetoric is closely tied to (and therefore hard to separate from) the shift in social and political paradigms that took place through the interaction of a wider range of domestic and international pressures.

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In conclusion, the structural conditions in situations such as Northern Ireland are much less conducive to the seductions of rhetorical devices such as reconciliation. This is not to say that particular rhetorical devices do not have a role to play in conflict transformation but that, even in Northern Ireland 15  years after the Belfast Agreement, relative peace seems much more important to many people than the chance to reconcile and face up to the conflicts of the past and their resonance in the present. Put simply, the structural context of Northern Ireland was less conducive to reconciliation as a key contribution to conflict transformation than might have been the case in situations like South Africa which had a different set of structural constraints. So, the key point is that the power of rhetoric in any specific social and political context is dependent on the structural environment and this is particularly the case where we are dealing with issues of deeply divided societies and forms of conflict transformation. Moreover, those structural contexts are not static but, in complex societies, are highly dependent on the shifting terrain of politics and the contingent emergence of new structural constraints that emanate from changing political events (Schedler 2007). From this perspective, the elevation of any particular rhetorical device such as reconciliation as something with applicability across different conflict scenarios is fraught with danger. Rhetoric is a powerful political tool in any political environment but its impact is always constrained by the structural context and its progress is continually at the behest of social and political contingencies.

Conclusion In terms of the enduring conflict thesis, rhetoric is an important tool in shaping the ways in which conflicts develop and reproduce. The risk of particular rhetorical devices is that they exclude other narrative expressions of the conflict that may either reproduce the conflict or seek other rhetorical means of transforming it. While rhetorical framings may be fluid, this does not necessarily mean that they are capable of incorporating alternative readings (especially those that are potentially oppositional). Moreover, there is a significant problem in complex circumstances where the terrain in which particular rhetorics are operating is fluid and dynamic. As such, a suitably flexible rhetorical device must be capable of adapting to changing complex and contingent circumstances. The rhetorical pathway is particularly fraught if it identifies a singular or linear path towards resolution.

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Perhaps then, as this chapter has implied, the enduring conflict thesis requires a more systematic rhetoric of conflict more than it requires a rhetoric designed to resolve conflicts. Indeed, following the logic of the argument in this chapter, a rhetoric of resolution through whatever means is virtually impossible to operationalize without a rhetoric of the conflict that needs to be addressed. In order to manage a conflict, there needs to be a clearer understanding of the different conflicting narratives and how they relate to one another. Thus, to rush too quickly to seek the resolutionary rhetoric is to put the cart before the horse. For this reason, we need to concentrate on the constitutive narratives of political conflicts before trying to resolve them through potential rhetorics of reconciliation.

6 Narratives of conflict and the politics of memory

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ollowing the argument in the previous chapter about rhetorics of conflict, this chapter examines the continuing role for the expression of forms of conflict in contemporary politics. In particular, it focuses on the difficulties of this approach when the dominant discourse appears to be the normative desire to overcome disputes and disagreement in the construction of a more consensual order. In particular, it focuses on narrative approaches to social conflict and the ways in which conflict transformation processes might enable the continued expression of dissenting and potentially conflicting arguments. Indeed, the chapter investigates the possibility that there may be greater longevity in conflict transformation processes where the continued existence of conflict is openly recognized and which enable the expression of conflict especially through potentially traumatic processes such as memorialization. Importantly then, the chapter contends that processes of conflict transformation necessitate opportunities for the articulation of continued conflict either through processes of remembering or in the construction of new institutions. Like agonistic political theory, narrative approaches tend to highlight the inevitability of political conflict. However, where agonism focuses on the possibility of turning antagonism into more domesticated, agonistic relations and rhetorical approaches seek to create a discursive space in which political advances towards conflict resolution can be made, narrative approaches are less oriented towards forging political common ground. Narrative accounts do not prioritize reconciliatory perspectives over conflictual arguments to quite the same extent that might be the case when agonistic or rhetorical approaches are operationalized. Thus, rather than trying to either domesticate or override disputatious standpoints, narrative approaches to debates on reconciliation are based upon the centrality and inevitability of conflict to politics. From this perspective, conflict is part of the ontological condition of political life and,

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however much we try to overcome it, it can never be eradicated. Therefore, the politics of conflict management and transformation needs to take account of not only those perspectives that are overtly conciliatory but also – and more significantly – those that are non-reconciled and continue to articulate a disruptive, disagreeable political message.

Rethinking the ‘problem’ of conflict? The normative idea of conflict resolution invokes particular pejorative understandings of conflict as a political ‘problem’ and, as with most problematizations in politics, it sets boundaries around the possibilities of action to address the problem (Vaughan-Williams 2006). In other words, the ways in which we conceive ‘problems’, establishes certain horizons about how they can be dealt with. By this logic, if we framed problems in different ways, we might open up different possibilities for action. This chapter examines the ways in which the problematization of conflict affects political narratives; it also critiques the relationship between the ensuing discourses and the political realities of complex societies. All of this implies that there is greater utility in conceiving conflict as a phenomenon to be managed and transformed rather than resolved. While this correlates with agonistic conceptions attuned to conflict management, the chapter contends that even these agonistic models still involve normative assumptions about the ‘problem’ of conflict and the settled nature of particular conflicts that structure political discourse accordingly. This structuring of political discourse can encourage closure and decontestation around conflictual narratives, putting them at risk of marginalization even where their articulation remains pivotal to the social and political dynamics of complex conflictual societies. As we have seen in the preceding chapters, much of the literature on conflict resolution abounds with pejorative understandings of the nature of conflict (Lederach 1997; Bar-Siman-Tov 2004). According to such thinking, conflict can be viewed as pathological insofar as ‘normal’ societies do not appear to be compromised by overt conflict or else they have functional mechanisms in place that can contain conflicts. These mechanisms may include vibrant civil societies which channel conflict along Habermasian lines into arguments that form the basis for acceptable political dialogue (Little 2003, 2009a). Or they may take the form of consociational political institutions that enable powersharing and investment in common forms of government (Lijphart 1977). Or it may just be that, for a range of contingent reasons (Shapiro and Bedi 2007), the composition of a society is not particularly conflictual, thereby requiring less creative forms of institutional architecture to uphold peace and stability.

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In each of these political understandings, however, the undesirability of conflict in a given society is assumed. In other words, much of the literature on conflict resolution takes as its normative starting point the view that conflict is socially harmful and therefore needs to be overcome to enable normal political and social life to continue. As we have seen, this interpretation of conflict is difficult to sustain in the empirical cases of many different conflictual societies. Indeed, in line with agonistic theory, I have contended that conflict is an inevitable feature of all complex societies and is constitutive of political engagement within them. Thus, rather than addressing conflict as a problem to be resolved, the enduring conflict thesis suggests that conflict scenarios can – at best – be managed and potentially transformed. In this environment we also need to be cognizant of the capacity of complex societies to generate new conflicts which may unsettle and disrupt any established order or temporary political ‘settlement’. In the light of the conceptualization of complexity underpinning the enduring conflict thesis, it is worth focusing more specifically on the issue of the generative nature of complex systems and societies. This idea entails that our actions, in interaction with those of others and the machinations of social and political institutions, are constantly generating new problems or reconfiguring older issues in fresh and challenging ways. This is part and parcel of the fluidity and dynamism of complex societies. In this kind of environment characterized by the interaction of orderly and disorderly elements, conflict becomes an inevitable feature of social and political life – it helps to constitute the nature of politics in any given society. At the same time, the attempt to grapple with conflict generates new problems and issues which need to be addressed. This is why a theory of complexity must see conflict as both constitutive and generative; these are inevitable and unavoidable features of complex societies. Viewed from this perspective, there is an inherent problem with the idea that conflict is pathological. Even if complexity theorists could accept that a lack of conflict was normatively desirable, it is a leap into the unknown to draw from this that it was ontologically possible. Complexity theory, therefore, questions the very possibility of conflict resolution as if we could ever be at a definitive end point of a process whereby a conclusive statement could be made that there was no remaining conflict over a particular issue. Thus, the contention of the enduring conflict thesis is that conflict resolution may not be possible; this marks a fundamental schism between analyses of conflict informed by complexity theory and those that are not. The enduring conflict thesis suggests that not only is conflict resolution a distant and unobtainable normative model but also that there are actually attendant perils that may arise through its pursuit. The risk of pathologizing

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conflict lies in the danger of construing a variety of reasonable forms of conflict as somehow inappropriate forms of political engagement. The normative pursuit of peace tends to draw in those with a disposition towards conflict resolution and marginalize discourses that are less conciliatory. For resolution to be achievable, boundaries have to be established as to what is and is not acceptable in the expression of conflicting opinions. The paradigm within those boundaries tends to be one that presupposes that a process of conflict resolution is the right and reasonable path. Moreover, the rationality underpinning this paradigm implies that those who want to continue to express conflictual discourses that are at odds with the ordained process must be kept on the outer (Rancière 1999). The danger here is that the pursuit of normative finality neglects the constantly shifting foundation upon which complex politics take place and the need to engage with those expressing conflicting views about the particular process that is under way. The transformation of conflict is not assisted by pulling up the drawbridge around institutional processes or the particular discursive modes of expressing conflict that have become established. This is why conflict transformation is more useful terminology than conflict resolution for thinking about the way in which we grapple with the issues that divide us. Transformation does not imply the same degree of finality and conclusiveness in addressing a conflict as that embodied in the idea of resolution and is more open to the way in which complex societies can generate new conflicts through addressing the old. This engenders a much greater capacity for recognizing that, in many ways, old conflicts get rewritten and are reinscribed in the means by which we address the new problems that inevitably arise in complex circumstances. In this section, I have identified the ways in which standard approaches to the problem of conflict and conflict resolution not only fail to grasp the enduring nature of conflict but also the complex ways in which conflict regenerates when we act upon it. Therefore, this suggests that a different conceptualization of conflict is required which is likely to have a fundamental impact on the ways in which political actors might address conflictual scenarios. In keeping with the focus on discourses of conflict in this section of the book, the chapter now turns to analyse the narrative approach in greater detail with a view to explaining both its potential value and political implications.

Narratives of conflict At the outset, it is worth outlining the meaning of narratives in politics (Bevir 2006) to get a stronger sense of how narratives of conflict may appear and

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how they can contribute to the endurance and transformation of conflict. In a scenario of conflict, Moon contends that typically narrative ‘imposes a trajectory on its subjects – victims and perpetrators – and makes sense of its objects – gross violations of human rights – because it arranges actions and events in a sequential and connected relationship and embeds them within a tripartite temporal structure which consists of a well-marked beginning, middle and end’ (Moon 2008: 58). Patterson and Monroe suggest that narrative refers to the ways in which we construct disparate facts in our own worlds and weave them together cognitively in order to make sense of our reality. Since these narratives help us understand ourselves as political beings, narrative becomes an invaluable tool in navigating the myriad of sensations that bombard us daily. Insofar as narratives affect our perceptions of political reality, which in turn affect our actions in response to or in anticipation of political events, narrative plays a critical role in the construction of political behavior. In this sense, we create and use narratives to interpret and understand the political realities around us. We do this as individuals and we do it as collective units, as nations or groups. (Patterson and Monroe 1998: 315–6) On this account, learning from linguistics and anthropology, when we talk about narratives in politics, we are not talking about mere stories (although stories are part of political narratives). Patterson and Monroe (1998: 316) highlight the ways in which narrative invokes a notion of agency in political discourses, the presumed authenticity of what is and isn’t included as a part of the story, a sequential ordering of events (real or otherwise) and the narrator’s perspective on the story that is being told. The implications of these considerations for conflictual scenarios are clear. Conflicts are often characterized by disputes about all of these issues which constitute a narrative. In some cases such as South Africa there are disagreements about who are the rightful agents in a narrative, while in others there is dispute over who is authorized to tell the tale of events (e.g. who is authorized to speak on indigenous issues in Australia). Insofar as narratives rely on a sequence of events there is much scope in examples like Northern Ireland to unravel narratives by interrupting sequential orderings of contested events and the sense that the narrator’s position will affect his or her capacity to speak of events authentically. So, the centrality of narratives to politics is in perpetually providing scope for contestation as most of them contain a strong normative dimension (hidden or overt). As such, on a number of fronts, political narratives animate rather than resolve conflicts.

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Politics is driven by a Foucauldian process of problematization in the sense that there are certain things that are identified as requiring rectification and therefore prioritized as in need of political action. For something to be regarded as a problem requires a narrative articulating the particular concerns. And like other narratives, it requires agents, sequences and decisions about the elements that are part of the story and those that are not. While narratives vary enormously, they are part and parcel of the terms in which all political debates are constructed and this extends to how we conceive of conflict and political transitions. Moon, for example, talks about the South African transition in terms of producing the nation as a subject: a subject that evolves as if in a linear and developmental trajectory from past violence to future reconciliation, and each stage of this process – truth-telling, confession, remorse, forgiveness, healing and reconciliation – is made to appear as if each were the natural and inevitable consequence of the stage or process preceding it. That is to say, for example, that forgiveness is the inevitable outcome of truth, that trauma will be laid to rest and healing occur as a consequence of making testimonial, and that reconciliation will follow confession. (Moon 2008: 7) This refers, of course, to the formal narratives that govern a particular political process. But this institutionalization of conflict narratives is also accompanied by the narratives that constitute the everyday life of societies. These are not necessarily ‘political’ but contribute to the overarching narrative of a conflictual society insofar as they keep alive and retell the story of conflicts. They may involve memories which reconstitute a particular individual or collective identity. They may help to tell the sequential tale of how specific events feed into the broader narrative of a society. They may help to authenticate the narrator as a contributor to a wider social narrative of how things came to be as they are. All of these forms are ways of retelling the story in a complex environment. The story may remain the same structurally but how it feeds into the narrative structure of a society evolves as that society changes. In this way, the narration and retelling of traumatic events helps to maintain conflictual narratives as they inflect the way in which we keep social narratives alive by taking the present into account and using the past to inform the story of how we came to be as we are. Conflict is fundamental to this as it informs the processes that punctuate the narrative. This suggests that conflict should not be marginalized in the pursuit of peace or conflict resolution because it underplays the centrality of conflict in the narrative of the society we are trying to address.

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Towards a narrative approach to conflict and reconciliation In outlining the narrative approach to conflict and reconciliation, it is perhaps useful to begin with a definition. For the purposes of the enduring conflict thesis, a narrative is viewed as a basic cultural means of making sense of experience through synthesizing perceptions, emotions and meanings. Narrative comes out of experience as well as shapes experience and what is generated as a narrative is as much a product of forgetting as remembering. (Humphrey 2000: 10) This view of narrative is much less normative than the agonistic or rhetorical approaches discussed in the last two chapters insofar as it recognizes that reconciliation narratives can be just as divisive and misleading as they are transformative, unifying and illuminating. Furthermore, the focus on narratives of reconciliation allows wide scope for the continuation of contestatory discourses insofar as more conciliatory approaches are not privileged over those that are more disputatious and unsettling of the traditional order. Thus, the generative function of reconciliation narratives is not just about building greater accord. Narratives of reconciliation will also generate critiques of reconciliatory processes and greater or lesser degrees of non-reconciliation. If reconciliation is part of a process of storytelling about contentious events, the issues that engender the call for reconciliation may be the very same ones that produce new forms of conflict; new forms of disagreement may emerge, for example, as traumatic events are narrated (Humphrey 2000: 11). Thus, as Moon (2008: 246) contends, talking about reconciliation needs to involve discourses which are not reconciled, which are not forgiving, which do not apologize, which call for punishment. From this perspective, we cannot assume that narratives of reconciliation will perform the transformative role imagined in agonistic accounts or even open up rhetorical spaces to enable thinking about the future in a way that does not engender further upheaval. In a complex environment characterized by disorder as much as by order, even the most well-intentioned approach to reconciliation has the potential to generate unease and dispute. If, for example, there is no agreement on the nature of the conflict that a discourse is trying to reconcile, then there is enormous potential for conflict to be inflamed. For one thing, processes of reconciliation may not be seen as politically neutral and advocates of reconciliation may be seen as pursuing a certain political agenda (Little 2012b). So, to articulate a narrative of reconciliation does not mean that the speaker

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is able to engage without historical, cultural or political baggage; just because a particular argument or policy may be presented in reconciliatory terms does not mean that it will be received as such by all. Importantly then, a narrative approach to issues of conflict and reconciliation must remain open to both the intentions of those articulating a particular discourse and the multiplicity of interpretations that other actors may apply to that discourse. Proponents of reconciliation should not assume that their best intentions are understood in the same terms by their opponents. The broadly post-structuralist account provided by Moon (2008) identifies a framework through which the language of reconciliation can be deconstructed and the various meanings that underpin different discursive constructions can be identified. It is an approach that accepts the view that there is no consensus on the meaning of reconciliation and sees the conflict around the meaning of such concepts as symptomatic of the ambiguity of political language (Derrida 1993, Freeden 2005). Given this undecidable foundation for political ideas including reconciliation, discursive analysis suggests that subjects do not independently produce, but are constituted by, discourse, and they in turn reproduce the particular assumptions of the discourse within which they are constituted, thus ensuring its hegemony and continuity and also, crucially, the invisibility of its reproduction. (Moon 2008: 261) The reproduction of discourses does not mean that they are static, however. In articulating arguments in different ways and in interaction with others who also employ the same discursive modes, we often alter the meanings and potential interpretations of a discourse in subtle ways. Ostensibly, discourses which appear to fit within an orthodox understanding of a political order and are, therefore, reproducing hegemonic interpretations, may be introducing a new dimension of interpretation, by virtue of the shifting, complex political order they are addressing. Discourses then should not be seen as settled or static; for discourses to reproduce in a complex environment, they require the same adaptive capacities as those of systems. Simultaneously, systems are reliant on the flexibility of discourses to facilitate their adaptiveness. As an example of these kinds of discursive shifts, it is worth examining the point in the light of developments in Northern Irish politics in the last 20  years. While the conflicts that have characterized Northern Ireland since its inception continue to punctuate everyday life, the peace process of the 1990s established a mode of conducting formal politics that domesticated some of the key issues and drew key activists away from violence and into a more traditionally acceptable form of political action. What is important to remember in these developments is that what Northern Ireland witnessed

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was not necessarily a change in political beliefs or a fundamental revision of established ideologies, but rather a shift in political strategy that, in the case of the republican movement at least, had been taking place over the course of at least 15 years. This strategic development required a shift within republican discourse – it could not have been palatable to so many republicans if it had attempted to break away from its political roots entirely. While some authors have argued that the strategy of military engagement was fundamental to the ideological character of republicanism (MacIntyre 2001), developments over the last 20 years have shown that the objectives of republicanism can be pursued without recourse to violent means (although, of course, this is not to say that some republicans would concur). Similarly, the goals of unionist ideology may have been transformed through the changes in the political environment in the last 20 years but the fundamental aims have remained within the same paradigm. What this example shows is that the constitutive elements of a particular political discourse are always a matter of some dispute and that they are always being reformulated in political practice. In the case of Irish republicanism, the strategic shift that took place in the 1990s could not have carried political weight if it had not been articulated within a traditional republican language and to pursue orthodox republican goals. The point here is that changing political strategies demand discursive adaptiveness to meet the conditions of complexity in which strategies are operationalized. What becomes clear is that sometimes very subtle discursive shifts take place in conflictual societies but that it is erroneous to regard these shifts as fundamental breaks with previous logics and ideological positions. Instead, ideologies progress and survive in an iterative fashion with new discursive positions emerging in reaction to the shifting terrain of complex societies. In other words, political actors do not merely read off an ideological song-sheet in response to the changing circumstances and new problems that complexity engenders (although we could be forgiven for thinking that that is sometimes the case). Instead, what we see is a recursive process whereby new issues and problems are filtered back through established (though fluid) ideological positions in such a way as to develop these perspectives to accommodate that changing context (Crozier 2007). This is why path dependence is such an important feature of complexity arguments – the ways in which we grapple with the issues of today are imbued with the ideas, strategies, lessons and mistakes of the past. We do not merely change tack when we engage with new issues. Instead, we bring all of our past to bear on the way we think about the problems at hand. In doing so, we partially rewrite that inheritance as well as forge new discursive forms. Thus, political discourse reflects an iterative engagement with existing epistemes as well as a recursive

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redefinition of the logics and rationalities that characterize existing systems of thought and action. Returning to the terms of conflict resolution discourses then, it is problematic to consider that conflict can be resolved when there is so much fluidity in the ways that the constitutive arguments can be articulated. Discourses are altered by the sociopolitical processes and structural contexts within which they are articulated and the resulting discursive constructs are never settled or complete. In conflict scenarios, particular bones of contention may appear to be addressed through specific actions but that does not mean that conflict has been resolved. The terms of the conflict are always being reformed and rearticulated afresh in response to the shifting political context. So, the general issues which animate a conflict can be easily resurrected, meaning that there is never a determinate end point at which the resolution of a conflict can be definitively stated. Again, this implies that the language of conflict transformation and/or conflict management is more appropriate for describing the way in which discursive engagement between different actors can lead to more or less violent ways of conducting politics. In theoretical terms, the notion of resolution is ‘undecidable’ and the assertion of resolution is bound to a notion of conclusiveness which is difficult to sustain in societies where the social and cultural inheritance is structured around, and through, conflict (Freeden 2009b). In many complex societies, politics has been constituted by conflict, and political activity continues to generate new conflictual issues through which we evolve our discourse and reconstitute and partially restate the discourses of the past.

Discourses of enduring conflict: Agonism, rhetoric, narrative ‘Post-conflict’ societies such as South Africa and Northern Ireland come closer to mind as agonistic polities than is probably the case with many societies that are not comprised of such overt conflict. In these societies conflict is more evident than in many others and often this is reflected in the nature of their political systems. Despite continued conflicts, South Africa and Northern Ireland appear to be examples of societies where former enemies have moved towards being legitimate adversaries. Thus, in both of these examples, despite the very clear differences and disputes in the social fabric – indeed the fundamentally opposed worldviews of major participants – there is an acceptance of the existence of opponents holding alternative views.

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This was certainly not the case for much of Northern Ireland’s history where opposition to the Northern state was regarded as suspicious at best and subversive at worst. Now, through the peace process, there has been emerging recognition that it is not inconsistent to want to participate in the governance of Northern Ireland while at the same time maintaining an overarching objective of Irish reunification. Importantly, the polity that has emerged is one in which the differences and conflicts between the major groupings are very clear to see. At the same time though, lines have been drawn that continue to locate some groups, their beliefs and strategies outside of the legitimate political sphere. In this way, we can see that agonistic polities still exclude; what advocates of agonism should recognize and make clear is that it is a political decision as to where the line is drawn between the acceptable and the unacceptable. As the gradual admission of Sinn Féin into the political domain over the last 30 years has shown, the boundary between what and who is acceptable and unacceptable is not set in stone – a point reiterated throughout this volume in relation to a spectrum of actors in conflict environments. As complex politics evolve, so too do the lines of legitimacy and inclusion. Although the nature of conflict and the processes of transition were very different in South Africa, we can see some similarities on a more general level about the restructuring of the political system. Obviously, since the demise of the Apartheid system, the African National Congress (ANC) has moved from its roots as a liberation movement to play a dominant role in South African politics. Despite the enormous power of the ANC, this has exposed many of the contradictions and paradoxes that it has had to conjure with, not least questions around appropriate political strategy, to achieve its objectives in government (Booysen 2011). Simultaneously, in recent years especially after the replacement of Thabo Mbeki with Jacob Zuma as president, many questions have been raised around corruption and a deteriorating and fractious economic climate (Marais 2011). However, the notable point to make here is that these are the ‘normal’ concerns of politics. A movement that was once seen to be beyond the pale has transitioned into the party of government and, as a result, must deal with many of the same practical problems that affect governing parties elsewhere in the world. Without wishing to underplay the significant challenges that the ANC must face, its acceptance as a legitimate political actor in South African democracy reflects the sometimes arbitrary and contingent fashion in which lines of legitimacy can be drawn, especially in conflictual, deeply divided societies. The danger of conflict resolution discourses is that they can reify existing orders in establishing blueprints for what peace and democracy should look like rather than understanding that any particular drawing of the boundaries

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of the political is transient and fluid. What is unacceptable today may become acceptable tomorrow as the broader environment develops in a complex society. Actors that are deemed legitimate in the current state of affairs may revert to older forms of enmity or regenerate older strategies to attain their objectives. In so doing then, political actors may choose to re-enter the ranks of the unacceptable or they may be deemed unacceptable through a shift in tactics or the redrawing of the boundaries of the dominant paradigm. This is not necessarily as a result of a decision by a single powerful actor but rather it may be a reflection of a shift in the political and social landscape due to a range of actors responding to and regenerating the constitutive terrain of political action. This does not take place in isolation, as if in a chemical experiment, but instead reflects a number of predictable and unpredictable variables interacting in a contingent fashion (Schedler 2007). In this scenario even the degree of conflict resolution that might be articulated in an agonistic polity is contingent and subject to change and development. Relations that may appear relatively harmonious at any given point in time can revert towards greater antagonism depending on a range of external variables. And as the example of Northern Ireland demonstrates, the development of a much more inclusive polity does not necessarily make society less conflictual – arguably Northern Ireland has become even more conflictual (though in some respects less violent) as the polity has become more inclusive (Little 2009c). What it may mean, however, is that the manifestation and expression of that conflict has changed. This is something to be encouraged, but it means relinquishing some of the key assumptions in conflict resolution discourses. Not the least of the assumptions that we need to jettison is that the rhetorical tools we need to move forward must be borrowed from the toolkit of conflict resolution. Thus, rather than framing political processes as peacebuilding or reconciliation, we need to employ different kinds of rhetorics of conflict that are more complementary to the ontology of complex societies. Significantly, we must be prepared for the transience of particular narratives that may work for a period of time but are sometimes overtaken by events. What we need to realize is that conflict is not just something that can be overturned by a form of political rhetoric; instead, there needs to be conducive social and cultural conditions to allow a particular rhetoric to flourish. And over the course of time that rhetoric may need to be supplanted by a different discursive construction to capture different contextual circumstances. Indeed, in contemporary South Africa, there is some evidence to suggest that the rhetoric of reconciliation might have run its course, although there is still much work to do in addressing the social and economic inequalities that still blight the country and that affect the most deprived communities most pervasively. From this perspective, a new phase of politics that seeks to continue transitional processes may

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require a different rhetorical motif to provide the discursive space in which political change can be articulated.1 So, although political rhetoric is an important part of the opening up of opportunities for conflict transformation, it is important to remember that the prevailing rhetorical space in any given example is not settled but transient. In the case of Northern Ireland, the shift that enabled the peace process in the 1990s was the entrance into talks of groups that had hitherto been excluded from formal political engagement and a new willingness to negotiate among those who previously excluded them. Undoubtedly, there was a strong rhetorical process that enabled this change, but the fact that it involved a gradual paradigm shift needs to be recognized. The rhetorical approach is valuable insofar as it alerts us to the importance of the use of language and discourse for the context in which political debates in a conflict scenario take place. Nonetheless, it is also the case that the particular rhetoric that drives a political process at a given time will eventually be superseded by something else. It is here that we can begin to delineate more clearly the value of a narrative model of enduring conflict. Political processes can find it hard to keep pace with the discursive shifts taking place in broader social and cultural interactions. This is why narrative approaches are concerned with the shifting nature of political discourse and the manner in which arguments may move from being ‘beyond the pale’ to become central to mainstream political debate. For this reason, narrative approaches can encourage us to think about discourses which may be beyond the boundaries of acceptability and the views of people who, for highly understandable reasons, may reject the dominant push towards conflict resolution. It is not difficult to understand why many victims of conflicts find it difficult to reconcile with those that they oppose or blame for their loss. It seems inappropriate to marginalize these views just because those that hold them do not concur with a dominant paradigm that regards such conflicting views as in need of ‘resolution’. It is for this reason that the establishment of an agonistic polity or a rhetorical backdrop needs to be understood in terms of continuing exclusions and the fact that what is the acceptable discursive environment at a given point of time is a snapshot, rather a definitive articulation, of what is or is not acceptable for a society in the process of conflict transformation. And, following from this, we need to understand that the margins of the acceptable are constantly challenged through a range of articulations of oppositional positions from those beyond the boundary. It is in the light of the limitations of these approaches that a narrative model appears to be a more fitting way of understanding the discursive expression of conflict and the ways in which it might be managed and transformed. It

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understands the potentially fleeting ways in which the discursive environment can change and thus the importance of voices from the margins in shifting the established paradigm. Too much of the conflict resolution literature relies on a much more determinate understanding of the discursive paradigm and, therefore, can only see the margins as boundaries that need to be reinforced rather than challenged (see, for example, Moon [2008: 129–33] on the drawing of boundaries in the South African reconciliation process around those subscribed to therapeutic goals, as opposed to people who wanted to pursue revenge). The narrative approach does not merely seek to establish a new agonistic paradigm or find a rhetorical device through which political progress can be made. On the contrary, it attempts to understand the multiplicity of narratives that can be constructed and the manifold ways in which they can be interpreted in social and political debates. It is an approach that helps us to understand that boundaries are always drawn around political acceptability, but it also implies that where those boundaries are drawn is contingent on numerous predictable and unpredictable variables. In this sense, narrative approaches to conflict are more complementary to the contingencies of the political than theories that seek a more fixed and determinate basis on which to conduct political debate.

Conclusion: Recontesting conflict Discourses of conflict resolution abound in contemporary divided societies. The argument constructed in this chapter suggests that most attempts to resolve social and political conflicts will fail because of the void between the linguistic constructions through which conflict resolution is expressed and the complex political terrain to which these discourses apply. Moreover, notions of political and social complexity invoke a range of epistemological claims about the indeterminacy and inconclusiveness of the assumptions underpinning political language, such that the concepts we employ in conflict resolution discourses appear too static and overdetermined (Freeden 2009b). It seems inevitable that conflict resolution discourses end up simplifying the irreducible complexity of the very conflicts that they seek to address. However, this is not to say that we should just give up on attempts to grapple with conflict regardless of the many failures that we are likely to encounter in the process. Indeed, one could argue that it is only in our failures that we learn to do things differently for better or for worse (Little 2012a). The implication of this argument is that conflict is something that needs to be permanently managed rather than resolved precisely because conflict

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is an ontological feature of social and political complexity. In our attempts to act on conflict, we are constantly transforming and rewriting discourses such that new narratives emerge in each iteration. However, this implies that it is impossible to resolve conflicts because, as we act on what we think we know, we mutate the conflict itself. There is, then, never a conclusion to conflict transformation, as disagreements evolve and develop in sometimes predictable and sometimes unforeseen ways over the course of time. This is the very reason why a rhetoric of conflict that is not beholden to the imagination of a politics not characterized by conflictual narratives is vital to the enduring conflict thesis. A narrative approach to political conflict recognizes that there are multiple discourses at work in every conflictual context and that they interact with the past and present in complex ways. Within the ethno-national traditions in Northern Ireland, for example, different narratives exist such that each of these traditions is a dynamic blend of ideas and practices which is constantly acting upon itself by reiterating and rewriting the stories that establish it. These narratives also vary insofar as some of them are attuned to conflict resolution, while others still articulate either old or unfolding elements of conflict. A narrative approach understands each discourse as unsettled and fluid; at one and the same time, they are building upon and rearticulating older discourses to provide the foundation upon which future discourses will engage iteratively. However, this is never a smooth process as these narratives contradict one another, such that a discursive paradigm is never wholly coherent and consistent. Instead, there is considerable fraying at the margins as competing narratives and broader discursive formations rub up against each other, thereby influencing each other in frequently unpredictable ways. The contention in this chapter then, is that an understanding of conflict as complex, and politics as both constituted by and generative of conflict, leads towards a narrative model of analysis and interpretation. Unlike liberal, agonistic or rhetorical models of interpretation, a narrative model is one that envisages the space of politics as inevitably unsettled and comprised of conflicting arguments and discourses. While the centre of paradigms of understanding may appear relatively settled in any snapshot of the state of affairs, there is always friction at the margins which can ultimately permeate the centre and unsettle the consensual basis upon which theorists of conflict resolution (to a large extent) and agonists (to a lesser extent) rely as the cornerstone of political engagement. The narrative approach sees conflict as inevitable in divided societies and seeks ways to manage and transform conflicts without relying upon a normative model where the eradication of conflict is paramount. As such, it calls forth a messy, unsettled polity; but this is arguably a model

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more conducive to the realities of complex and divided societies than other approaches to conflict that tend to dominate contemporary political analysis. This brings us to the final section of the book where the implications of the enduring conflict thesis for the conduct of politics are examined. The first consideration that impacts on the application of enduring conflict to practical politics is the way in which complex dynamics generate a highly contingent political environment. The second issue that needs to be addressed is the implications of this contingent environment for policymaking and the likelihood of error and failure. Building on this, there is a need to consider the particular issue of grappling with problems of political conflict where the errors and failures of decision-making in a contingent environment play out but with much higher stakes. From the perspective of the enduring conflict thesis, the propensity for error and failure is ever present. Therefore, this condition ensures that we must maintain a keen focus on the ways in which political contingency affects efforts to deal with conflict and the possibility of delivering on the signature themes which animate conflict resolution: peace and democracy.

7 Conflict and the politics of contingency

What we, or at any rate I, refer to confidently as memory – meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subject to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion – is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw. (WILLIAM MAXWELL, SO LONG, SEE YOU TOMORROW)

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his final chapter develops the notion of the continuation of conflict despite transformative processes and analyses the implications of this for political practice. It examines the changing nature of political conflicts and the ways in which the inevitably incomplete nature of conflict transformation processes affects policymaking. Importantly, this dynamic depiction of political conflicts demands clearer recognition of how they can escalate or recede in relation to shifting political contingencies. The chapter addresses the literature on contingency (e.g. Shapiro and Bedi 2007) to demonstrate the ways in which theories of conflict need to address the changing relationship between political dispute and contingent social and political events. The argument of the chapter is that this temporal dimension ensures that conflict endures and thus that theories and practices of conflict transformation need to be alive to the continuation of conflict even in periods where it seems to have receded

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or been resolved. At the same time, the chapter points to the difficulties of policymaking in  all political environments and implies that the tendency to ‘pathologise’ conflict masks a deeper-seated problem with respect to our capacity to achieve normative objectives in complex situations whether they are overtly conflictual or not.

The contingency of language and the politics of complexity The impact of contingency on the political science literature has tended to focus on its implications in terms of organization theory or on specific issues around, for example, disaster management, but less has been said about the place of contingency in the ontology of the political. For instance, in organization theory contingency tends to be seen as an approach that is not focused on establishing positivistic laws, but concentrates instead on unveiling ‘circumstances and factors that increase or decrease possibilities for specific forms of organizational structures and processes to take place’ (Jacobsen 2006: 304). This is an account which continues to emphasize contingency as a range of extraneous factors which affect the capacity of institutions to achieve their goals. However, this book argues that contingency has much more profound implications for the foundations on which political arguments take place and focuses on the conceptual and linguistic elements of complex political debates. Elements of contingency appear in many classical texts in the history of political thought from Hobbes (Strong 2003) through to Dewey (1927) and Oakeshott (Mapel 1990) and have featured in the work of influential contemporary theorists (Rorty 1989, Connolly 1991). Moreover, the role of contingency in the very understanding and historical development of political concepts has also been identified in recent years, especially in relation to the work of Skinner (Palonen 1999: 44). The role of contingency in the enduring conflict thesis is not just concerned with how the continuity of conflict is ensured by reactions to contingent events. While it is true that events contribute to the inevitable incompletion of conflict and the propensity for it to be reignited at any stage, this book is more focused on the contingency of language and thus on the ways in which this contributes to the reproduction of conflict without necessarily the occurrence of contentious events. Similarly, in a Foucauldian vein, Rose argues that programmes and technologies of government . . . are assemblages which may have a single rationality, but this is not one of a coherence of origin or singular essence. . . . To analyse, then, is not to seek for a hidden

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unity behind this complex diversity. Quite the reverse. It is to reveal the historicity and the contingency of the truths that have come to define the limits of our contemporary ways of understanding ourselves, individually and collectively, and the programmes and procedures assembled to govern ourselves. (Rose 1999: 276–7) These kinds of arguments are advanced in a more philosophical register in Butler, Laclau and Žižek (2000), but I focus here on their significant import for our political understanding of conflict. The argument implies that contingency refers to much more than the mere impact of extraneous events (although that might be part of how we understand it). Instead, the point is that contingency is at the heart of the very terms in which political debate is conducted. This indeterminacy sits at the core of all political debate and provides scope for conflict in every political situation. Or, as depicted in the work of Richard Rorty, recognition of the contingency of language ‘leads to a recognition of the contingency of conscience, and how both recognitions lead to a picture of intellectual and moral progress as a history of increasingly useful metaphors rather than of increasing understanding of how things really are’ (Rorty 1989: 9). This perspective speaks to a constitutive ambiguity in political language and practice which does not invalidate normative or analytical approaches to politics but suggests that particular advantages accrue when critical analyses are underpinned by identification of linguistic contingency. It also suggests, however, that there should be greater modesty in political theory to ensure that debates are not conducted on a foundation of presumed certainty about the language of politics where none exists. This account of contingency, therefore, challenges normative and analytical approaches to take greater account of the uncertainty that inheres in the language and concepts they use. At the same time, linguistic contingency cannot be a recipe for political inaction. Politics still needs to be conducted and issues have to be acted upon even if the linguistic tools for doing so are ambiguous. So, while this approach to contingency is a challenge for normative and analytical theories, it also implies that less foundational modes of political thought should not be able to avoid practical engagement just because they contest the terms in which political debates take place. The highlighting of contingency in political debates is particularly important because of the tendency of governments to use contingency as a tool of government. That is, the existence of the risk of unforeseen events has become a key part of contemporary security and technology discourse. From this perspective, contingency becomes part of a discourse about managing risk and can be used to justify what might otherwise be seen as

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draconian interventions in everyday life. In a situation of political conflict and, in particular, threats of international unrest and contingency (Lebow 2000), these tendencies are often exacerbated. Viewed from a Foucauldian light, this can be seen as a key part of biopolitical governmentality whereby government comes to govern life itself. And, according to Dillon, ‘life, especially the life of populations, is characterised by contingency. Contingency is not arbitrary chance. It represents a complex discourse – set of truth-telling practices – about the knowledge of uncertainty’ (Dillon 2007: 45, emphasis added). This dimension of the security paradigm has an acute impact in conditions of overt political conflict or the threat of violence from unknown sources. Dillon contends that this amounts to a government of the contingent, by the contingent, for the contingent: government of population (in its very contingency) by the burgeoning new sciences of contingency (statistics and probability) for the contingent (effects-based) promotion of life. The institution of this novel biopolitical dispositif de sécurité continues to ramify throughout the evolution of the complex security processes of liberal governmentality today. Arguably, the contingent has now become the primary strategic principle of formation for the generic securing of life which liberal governmental rule now pursues globally. (Dillon 2007: 46) In a domain characterized by plurality and complexity where there are numerous emergent properties and unforeseen consequences of social and political actions, the possibility of contingency to have an impact on political outcomes is significantly enhanced. Dillon’s argument highlights the way in which the prevalence of contingency is actually an opportunity for government. It provides an environment in which policy is required to mitigate the propensity for contingent events and, in the context of conflict and security, this can lead to increasingly draconian responses. The next section goes on to investigate the extent to which this management of contingency in complex circumstances can be justified.

Complexity and policy in conflict management The recognition of a complex relationship between the enduring nature of conflicts, normative aspirations for conflict transformation and the contingencies of everyday politics has profound ramifications for our understanding of policymaking in these complex contexts. These necessitate a critical evaluation of the trend in government and public policy towards ‘evidence-based

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policy making’ (Sanderson 2009). However, given the tenor of the argument thus far, rather than merely seeking to replicate the alternative pragmatic, deliberative model espoused by commentators like Sanderson, the chapter suggests that the epistemological obstacles that complexity science identifies necessitate an approach that is much more adaptive to the propensity for failure and error in policymaking. This suggests that when we address measures to manage or transform political conflict, we need to dispense with the kind of normativity and epistemological certainty that is promoted by the peace building, reconciliation and conflict resolution literature to enable practitioners in complex environments to think more creatively about the terrain they must navigate. This would facilitate a climate in which they were better equipped to develop more innovative and less risk-averse forms of political action. Rather than approaching these questions with epistemological certainty about the conflicts we address, this chapter suggests that there may be more value in appropriating Foucault’s dictum that ‘error is the permanent contingency [aléa] around which the history of life and the development of human beings are coiled’ (Foucault 1998: 477). This suggests that it is only through thinking about conflict in a way where the likelihood of failure is understood (and embraced to some extent) that we can develop more innovative means of managing and transforming conflicts. The dominance of peace on the normative horizon impedes this capacity. Not only does such an approach potentially liberate policymakers in conflictual environments from the demands of epistemological certainty in terms of the outcomes of political action, but it also helps navigate the waters of the ‘what works’ mentality that has become so prevalent in contemporary political circles. It is dubious whether that mentality actually contributes much in highly complex and context-dependent policy environments (Sanderson 2009, Little 2012a), and it is potentially a very hazardous way of trying to negotiate the contingencies of specific political conflicts (not least those with a propensity to generate violent upheaval). Quite simply, in many conflictual environments, the argument for evidence-based policymaking is virtually unworkable on the basis that what constitutes ‘evidence’ is highly contested and variable dependent on a number of contingent factors. Moreover, the standing of this ‘evidence’ is often closely intertwined with the sources of the conflict it might be used to address. Issues such as the structure of power, the politics of influence and judgements about the extent of contextual constraints are potentially controversial in any policy environment and have a significantly greater bearing the more overtly conflictual a society is. These issues can have a direct bearing on whether policies that are actually pursued are grounded in evidence or whether the

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evidence is manufactured to suit specific policy agendas. When these issues are located within the epistemological uncertainty that complexity engenders, following Sanderson (2009), it is perhaps more applicable to regard the policy proposals that emanate from them as at best ‘evidence-informed’ rather than ‘evidence-based’. For this reason, Sanderson promotes a blend of Deweyan pragmatism and deliberative democracy that comprehends the difficulties of implementing normative objectives and that seeks legitimation through inclusive deliberation between advocates of different conceptions of the good. While pragmatism is perhaps an inevitable feature of any serious engagement with complexity theory (Festenstein  1997), the limitations of deliberative democracy as a means of negotiating social and political complexity were highlighted in Chapter 2. This emanates from an underestimation in the deliberative democracy literature of the kinds of epistemological uncertainties that complexity invokes. In terms of dealing with conflict scenarios, it is likely that many unforeseen impediments may arise during the course of developing policy and then implementing it. In this situation, the policy environment in conditions of complex conflict needs to locate deliberation as only an initial phase in policy development – many obstacles to implementing a particular course of action arrived at through deliberation are likely to arise in a changing conflictual scenario. The epistemological foundations of contemporary liberal democratic political organization are well enshrined in the conduct and language of political institutions and in the mindsets of political actors, policymakers and everyday citizens. In this environment we assume that political actions take place because we can identify that certain proposed or desirable outcomes will ensue from a particular course of action. If these outcomes do not materialize, then we either blame the constraints imposed by other unforeseen variables (such as the global financial crisis) or we deem the actors and/or the ideas and policies they advocate to have failed. However, as Sanderson intimates, this rather linear approach to success and failure is problematic due to the epistemological framework it employs and the potentially damaging ramifications for how we conduct politics. The enduring conflict thesis exposes the problem that ‘because political failure is ubiquitous and salient, one would expect its conceptualisation to be developed and complex. That expectation is confounded by the paucity of systematic reflection on the possible interstices between political thinking and failure’ (Freeden 2009a: 144). The epistemological constraints that Freeden identifies are exacerbated when we try to apply this contested ‘knowledge’ in complex conflictual situations. Epistemological uncertainty is likely to be emphasized for political ends to further one side or another of a particular conflict. So, uncertainty becomes much more loaded in contested

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political spaces where some of the basic assumptions underpinning standard approaches to liberal democracy may not be operational. The implications of the epistemological shortcomings emanating from social and political complexity have quite profound ramifications for policymaking in conflictual circumstances. These contested environments are particularly susceptible to political dispute because they reflect the condition that in ­‘dynamic, non-linear systems, change, instability and disequilibrium are the norm, not the stability and equilibrium assumed in traditional mechanistic models’ (Sanderson 2009: 705). In this environment, as we have already intimated, traditional ‘cause-effect assumptions cease to be valid’ (Sanderson 2009: 705). The shifting blend of orderly and disorderly elements that constitutes complex societies is also exacerbated in conflictual societies where there are always potential sources of political gain to be made from uncertainty and any sense of chaos. Part of the reason for this is that, despite what awareness we may have of the ontological condition of complexity in contemporary politics, the absence of epistemological certainty has not prevented us from conducting most of our normative debates on policymaking in conflictual societies as if there were uncontested certainties on which to ground our decisions. If these conditions of complexity contribute to an accurate depiction of the terrain of political action, how has this affected the way in which political theorists think about ideas and practice? I have already noted how complexity theory is growing in influence within political and social thought, but it is fair to say that much of this analysis has been focused on the way in which oversimplified and metaphorical imaginings of political engagement or potential alternatives seem out of step with the practicalities of operationalizing ideas in complex practical scenarios. Valid as these criticisms may be, they reflect a concern for the condition of ‘complicatedness’ rather than a developed grasp of the full import of complexity theory. In other words, they accept that the terrain of contemporary politics makes decision-making complicated but assume that this environment is ultimately explicable. Complexity, on the other hand, implies that the social and political world is more than complicated – it is, in fact, indeterminate and ambiguous (Freeden 2005). This is an environment in which all decisions will be contestable and the extent of success and failure will be a source of constant contestation. Jessop explains how the ‘proliferation of scales’ and ‘tangled hierarchies’ of complex societies simultaneously gives rise to new discourses of governance and to the propensity for failure: Given the growing structural complexity and opacity of the social world . . . failure becomes the most likely outcome of most attempts to govern it

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with reference to multiple objectives over extended spatial and temporal horizons – whether through markets, states, partnerships, or some other mechanism. (Jessop 1998: 43) Following this, however, if forms of failure are likely outcomes from political practice in complex societies, how is this propensity for failure reflected in political theory itself? How do political theorists talk about failure? The short answer is that they rarely do and, when they do, it often involves rather simplistic, pejorative understandings of failure. The point here is not only to highlight the undoubted governance issues that emerge from social complexity but also, more seriously, the epistemological constraints which limit our capacity to govern ‘successfully’ in whatever form governance takes and thus to deal with conflict effectively.

Conflict and the politics of failure Although commentators such as Sanderson are alive to the ‘contingent and fallible nature’ of policymaking and the contestability of the ideas and outcomes that respectively inspire and supposedly result from implementing particular policies (Sanderson 2009: 713), he neglects the full implications of complexity theory for the likelihood of policies achieving the normative objectives which are used to justify them. The argument thus far suggests that we need to be more direct in embracing failure as an ontological feature of policymaking in a complex environment. Thus, where complexity suggests that we are likely to err in many of our policy decisions on the basis of the incomprehensibility of all relevant political phenomena, I would contend that the complex terrain of contemporary democratic politics is not only characterized by, but also constituted by, failure (Little 2008). Indeed, this implies that there is a ‘constitutive failure’ at the very heart of democratic politics in complex societies. To explain why this is the case, the chapter now turns its attention to the work of Michael Freeden who has provided the most sophisticated analysis of failure in political theory (Freeden 2009a, 2009b). While the language of failure is used quite frequently in other areas of the social sciences (e.g. the notion of ‘state failure’ in international relations and comparative politics or the idea of ‘market failure’ in political economy), it has very rarely been applied as a significant theoretical or methodological issue more generally. Even where it is used, failure tends to be articulated as a pejorative term in politics. It refers to something which is to be rejected as erroneous or addressed with a more successful strategy. On the contrary, this section of the chapter suggests that we need to embrace failure as an

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inevitable feature of democratic political life and as a key part of the dynamic of learning, especially in societies characterized by conflict. Instead of retreating into a world of purely normative philosophical argument about the constitution of the good society, or trying to manufacture a rational consensus through deliberative political procedures, the approach here suggests that there is inevitability about failure due to the very operation of complex democratic politics. This necessitates a different mode of thinking about social and political problems. On this account, there is a much more significant rhetorical space for normative arguments and for the emancipation of dialogic engagement if they are not tied to ‘accurate’ or ‘truthful’ analysis or to ‘rational and consensual outcomes’. This is a major step for a rhetoric of conflict – if conflict is the background concept against which policies are framed and enacted, then we need to grasp the propensity for failure that conflict engenders. This rhetoric of conflict takes us beyond the mere identification of sub-optimality, which is a well-known concept in the public policy literature (Simon 1947, 1957, Lindblom 1959, Browne and Wildavsky 1984), because it also incorporates the generative dimension of every action we take in further complexifying already complicated issues and introducing new potential for failure. The policy decisions that are made with the aspiration of reducing conflict need to be understood as decisions and forms of political action that will not necessarily resolve conflict but, on the contrary, could open up new dimensions of dispute. Indeed, such are the epistemological limitations identified by complexity theory and the limitations of path dependence that decision-makers in complex conflicts are often ill-equipped in attempting to change the political structures of conflicts. In these complex circumstances there is much greater propensity for political action to lead to failure rather than mere sub-optimality in policy outcomes (given the combined effects of the epistemological and structural constraints that political actors face). Sub-optimality may well be a common dimension of debates in the policy environment but the inevitability of failure and its pivotal constitutive function in complex political environments is not. This is where we can see a distinctive contribution to these debates that the enduring conflict thesis can make. In order to identify the specifics of this particular model of ‘constitutive failure’, it is worth examining the work of Freeden on political ideologies in a little more detail because it highlights the contingencies of the ideational foundations upon which political decisions must be taken. In his analysis of the constitution of political ideologies, Freeden contends that ideologies are contingent entities in continual morphological transition based on three ineradicable features: ambiguity, inconclusiveness and indeterminacy

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(Freeden 1996, 2005). Taken together, these features mean that the ideas which constitute ideologies are transient and dynamic to the extent that they are incapable of providing a fixed basis for a settled, coherent ideological formation. Ideologies, then, are constantly changing phenomena which elude firm definition due to the ambiguous and indeterminate nature of the ideas which comprise them and which are linked together through a number of chains of meaning which are in a state of continuing evolution. For this reason, in the morphology of political ideologies, there is never an initial or final anchoring point which can be deciphered to elucidate the ‘true’ meaning of a set of ideological beliefs (Freeden 1996). On the contrary, in complex societies, ‘unintended consequences, ineffective intentions and misinterpretations of the message are equally valuable insights into political language, because they are part of the continuous metamorphoses that ideologies experience’ (Freeden 2009b: 6). How does this morphological understanding of ideology relate to questions of political failure? The answer to this question lies partially in the rhetorical and sometimes dogmatic nature of ideological argument which, although not necessarily inherently problematic, becomes more questionable when placed in the context of the dominance of the pursuit of truth, determinacy and finality in much that characterizes political argument today (Freeden 2009b: 3). In more dogmatic formations then, ideologies can close off the possibilities (and opportunities) of failure by combining ideological aspirations with prophecy as a way of trying to control the contested terrain of political argument. The assumption that conflict resolution is normatively desirable over and above the endurance of conflict is just this kind of dogmatic formation with its imagined end-state of resolved conflict as a consensual foundation on which to conduct ‘normal’ politics. For Freeden (2009b: 8), this characterizes the ‘arrogance of the political, in that [ideologies] tend to occupy the hard end of decontestation, to introduce certainty and to assert that finality is within reach’. This immodesty is particularly acute in conflictual contexts where the assertion of the normative horizons of acceptable debate is always likely to be contentious. Alternative approaches are much more likely to appear to ‘fail’ if we merely try to map them onto a prevailing state of affairs, thereby making them seem unlikely. This misunderstands that ‘there is no one clear indicator of failure. Failure itself is polysemic and distributed unequally across the range of ideological performance from case to case’ (Freeden 2009b: 8). The full ramification of this argument is that all political decisions will be questionable in terms of success and failure. A complex, contingent environment is one in which every political action may be construed as a failure depending on the criteria we apply to the disorderly political terrain. And, of course, this problem is accentuated the more conflictual a society is.

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In examining the implications of these limitations of normative theory to political theory more generally, Freeden identifies three main problems: temporality, indeterminacy and inconclusiveness. Once again, the import of each of these features is particularly pertinent in conflictual societies. First, the problem of temporality lies in the general failure of political theory to deliver what it promises to in a given timescale: expectations ‘cannot be met because of the nature of the argument – its atemporality, its perfectionism or the postulation of a hypothetical and unrealisable model’ (Freeden 2009a: 147). The management of ‘temporal trajectories’ often falls down in the face of political complexity and, in particular, the non-linearity of outcomes in relation to actions. This suggests that the way in which political theories are constructed can be problematic because there is no way to act on propositions that are removed from the actual spaces and possibilities for political action. The second problem Freeden identifies is indeterminacy. In terms of epistemology, indeterminacy is an issue because in order to frame any argument we have to do so through the use of terms in which we invoke determinacy where there is little. This applies equally to many of the terms employed in the peace building and reconciliation literature, such as conflict, democracy, violence and peace. Thus, in establishing the terms of an argument we tend to overdetermine concepts which, because they are actually indeterminate, ensure ‘a priori contestation of what might constitute success’ (Freeden 2009a: 152). In other words, there will always be disagreement about the degree of success or failure of a particular measure, given the fact that the concepts we are analysing are contested even before they are applied to specific examples. To illustrate this point, Freeden uses the political aspirations in the West in the last decade to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq which ultimately foundered on the fact that success could never be ascertained because freedom and democracy are contested concepts: ‘the complexity of the search for success overlooks the infinite mutations of its conceptual components’ (Freeden 2009a: 153). Thus, Freeden’s point about indeterminacy is that we need to be acutely aware of the contestability of concepts and the impact of the fact that other commentators understand different things by the same concepts we employ. As Freeden points out, ‘decontestation obscures a world of synchronic multiple options that further mutate over time and across cultures’ (Freeden 2009a: 155). The third element of Freeden’s conceptualization of failure as a challenge to political theory is the issue of inconclusiveness which is clearly linked to the notion of temporal complexity invoked in Chapter 3. In order to make judgements about ultimate success or failure, it is necessary to have a sense of completeness whereby a judgement can be made. But when can we say

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definitively that there is peace? When can we say that a conflict has been resolved? This is a problem for political actors because it implies that the point at which judgements can be made is contestable and this problem of judgement undermines the basis upon which normative or prescriptive theories (and practices) are assessed: ‘failure relates to comprehensiveness and completeness, to tying up the innumerable loose ends a complex argument produces; in short, it is a failure of argumentational exhaustiveness and conclusiveness’ (Freeden 2009a: 155). While Freeden does not discuss complexity theory per se, he does demonstrate an understanding of the generative capacity of ‘intractable complexity’. While the promotion of regulative ideals is designed to introduce  simplicity in politics and the positing of ideological visions circumvents the problem of how to achieve them, Freeden’s theory helps us to understand why, more often than not, political theory and political action fail. To develop the argument about failure further in the context of the politics of complex conflicts, we now turn to Foucault’s work on error to help explain how the theoretical ‘inevitability’ of failure can be translated into practical considerations of policy design and implementation in complex societies.

Foucault’s concept of error Where Freeden’s work on failure enables a better understanding of the flawed epistemological foundations of political decision-making, Michel Foucault’s theory of error facilitates a constructive interpretation of how failure is necessary in the development of alternative policy positions. In Foucault’s essay ‘Life: Experience and Science’, he grapples with epistemology and the history and philosophy of science (see also Gutting 1989, 2002, 2005). Following the features of complexity, this suggests that greater awareness of the limitations imposed by the unknowability of all pertinent issues has direct ramifications for how we think about political actions and the expectations that we can have about outcomes of policymaking. Using Foucault, we can build upon this by recognizing that it is through error that we learn about the phenomena we are addressing and it is in the recognition that we have erred that we create space to conceive differing ways of making sense of the issues we address. In Foucault’s words, ‘Error is eliminated not by the blunt force of a truth that would gradually emerge from the shadows but by the formation of a new way of “truth-telling.”’ (Foucault 1998: 471). In conflictual societies the contestability of epistemological assumptions is ever present which means that the main assumptions that underpin normative theories and the policy proposals which emanate from them

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are likely to be the subject of intense disagreement. While the reason for this disagreement is often ideological as indicated above, it also emanates from the essential contestability of the conceptual foundations upon which normative theories are established and the differing interpretations that these contested foundations lend themselves to. In this environment, deliberation and communicative rationality is undermined by the epistemological limits of complexity. Processes of disagreement amount to more than interaction between different normative arguments which merely offer alternative but opposed readings of a policy issue to one another (Rancière 1999, Little 2007). This interpretation fails to comprehend the ambiguous and indeterminate nature of these normative arguments and therefore the likelihood of failure whatever course of action is decided upon. In conditions of complexity, the epistemological limitations of normative arguments are all the more pertinent and this increases the likelihood that, whatever pragmatic course of action is agreed through deliberation on a particular issue, policymaking to deal with a problem will often lead to mistakes and accusations of failure. Foucault’s work correlates with complexity theory in pointing to themes such as openness, indeterminacy, non-linearity, unpredictability, disorder and uncertainty. Olssen suggests that Foucault’s work points to ‘an infinite relational order’ which relates to ‘an opening towards a nonlinear system of dynamics and change’ (Olssen 2008: 99). The parallel with the language and conceptual terrain of complexity theory is obvious here. Clearly, Foucault sought to question deterministic trajectories and explanations of causality and, in a similar fashion, complexity theorists emphasize inconclusiveness and indeterminacy in their articulation of non-linearity. To put it in Olsson’s words, these approaches understand the world as an ‘infinitely open, complex whole, characterised by unpredictability, uncertainty and change . . . Complex systems, moreover, are contingent and dynamic – the structure of the system is continuously transformed through the interaction of the elements – and are not explainable by reference to any external principle, origin, or foundation’ (Olssen 2008: 106–7). This innovative way to interpret Foucault’s work can make a substantial contribution to politics and policy debates in complex, conflictual societies because it provides a potential means to understand the implications of complexity for political action in uncertain and contested circumstances. The key point here is that knowledge is not to be understood as emanating solely from the experiences and interpretations of individual actors, but there is also a need to identify and highlight the constraints and opportunities made possible by the structural conditions (including institutions and cultural practices) in which individuals become conscious of their experiences and interpret

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them. In line with complexity theory, experience needs to be understood as something that takes place within structures that have been established prior to subjective events but that can also be altered by new subjective experiences. In other words, there is a network of concepts and institutions that structures a particular social and political environment. This structure is not fixed and static but instead evolves and develops through interaction with the experiences and actions of individual subjects. Experience then is structured but our actions can potentially change structures (Giddens 1984). A Foucauldian approach is not particularly concerned with whether, scientifically speaking, things are true or false but rather the manner in which discursive structures relate to action ‘insofar as discourse defines the space within which one must situate oneself in order to be “within the bounds of truth”’ (Delaporte 1998). In other words, in order for certain courses of action to be considered relevant, applicable, useful or desirable, they must pass through a discursively mediated structural environment in which there are already prevalent formulations of what is and is not appropriate. In a conflictual environment, these discursive formulations will be highly significant in navigating through the varying structures used to mediate disputes. This suggests that we need to move beyond the mere fact of contestation in understanding obstacles to policymaking and recognize the more serious epistemological blockages that complexity engenders. This is not a purely negative position where all claims to truth are simply rejected. Instead, Foucault uses recursive methods to reconsider such obstacles as ‘conditions of possibility’. In terms of political and social action, this implies that error needs to be embraced; it is through the making of mistakes that we establish new foundations to think and behave in different ways. In Foucault’s words, ‘error is the root of what produces human thought and its history . . . . If the history of the sciences is discontinuous  .  . . the reason, again, is that “error” constitutes not a neglect or delay of the promised fulfilment but the dimension peculiar to the life of human beings and indispensable to the duration [temps] of the species’ (Foucault 1998: 476). This is a fundamental development insofar as it challenges the way in which truth and authenticity become sacrosanct in both rationalist and non-rationalist accounts of politics and society. On the rationalist account what is ‘true’ actually reflects the established frameworks of conceptual meaning that pre-exist experience, a position which militates against the kind of originality and creativity that can be deemed valuable in grappling with new issues and problems. On the non-rationalist account what is true is what is authentic to one’s individual experiences and interpretations unmediated by structural constraints and preordained systems of meaning. For Foucault, however, it is error which is the main

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challenge to established frameworks of rationality and knowledge rather than non-rationalist attempts to transcend these very conceptual structures in which we make sense of and interpret our experiences. This is significant because it enables us to move beyond Foucault’s archaeological method (Foucault 1972) in seeking to explain complex changes  that are taking place in the present and suggests that conceptual structures that help provide meaning in interpretation are not locked in place but are instead part of dynamic and evolutionary change in response to subjects in the present as well as in the past. Again, this implies that Foucault’s notion of error provides us with a means of understanding how complex societies change and develop in sometimes unpredictable and disorderly directions and the role that human action plays in these developments. While, for Foucault, error plays a primarily philosophical role in understanding subjective experience and the construction of knowledge, there are broader ramifications from the concept of error when it is applied to notions of social and political complexity. While Bevir (1999) argues that we should focus on the impact of individual actions on others to assess their value, complexity implies that individuals act without full knowledge or understanding of the impact of their actions. This provides a different way of viewing action – particularly errors – precisely because they represent ‘a specific deviation from particular norms, rather than an unfocused revolt against the very idea of normativity, error effects a practical change in the world we live in, not an aesthetic escape from it’ (Gutting 2002: 80). In other words, there are practical applications of the concept of error through which we can understand the shifting dynamics of the conceptual terrain in which we make sense of the world and the ways in which the environment is structured when we come to the ideation and implementation of policy. Thus, while the philosophical notion of error is significant in its own right, it becomes even more pertinent when we place it in the context of the actual operation of contemporary social and political life, especially in the context of political conflict. The value of Foucault’s concept of error is that it enables us to understand processes of change ‘in an always open system where unexpected outcomes and novel features are contingent inevitabilities of the process of history. Such an approach makes it possible to explain how individuals are on the one hand the outcome of social and historical processes and yet how, on the other, novelty, uniqueness and creativity are possible’ (Olssen 2008: 111). In suggesting that we need to engage with the ideas of error and failure, this chapter argues that we should relinquish the epistemological certainties that have tended to inform our modes of normative argument around conflict resolution and concentrate instead on thinking about the unknowability of

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outcomes. Not only does this potentially free political argument from being a hostage to fortune – successful outcomes – which discredits the whole of democratic politics, but arguably it also provides a stronger foundation to think creatively, to innovate and to take risks in attempting to grapple with conflictual social and political issues. Freed from the constraints to always succeed, we are in a much healthier position to move away from path dependence in policy design and more attuned to the opportunities that may arise in addressing emerging political questions unshackled by the epistemological certainties and procedural institutions that have characterized previous engagements (Geuss 2008). In addressing political conflict, we need to be less squeamish about failure. It would be more beneficial to engage in a critical reconstruction of the way in which we think about what we know, how that knowledge was created and how it applies to the present and future. This could help in trying to establish new ways of addressing the emerging social and political issues that emanate from conflicts. When we think about success it has a clear future orientation – advocates of a particular course of action will couch their proposals in terms of the benefits derived in the future. Failure, on the other hand, tends to be a retrospective judgement applied to policies or strategies which have not met their intended outcomes. In other words, failure is a pejorative term applied to measures that were originally formulated with an intended successful outcome in mind. This chapter argues that perhaps failure should be embraced as a future oriented rather than retrospective judgement, thereby enabling the generative capacity of unintended consequences to come to the fore and, in turn, facilitating new forms of political action. This may be more productive in the longer term in encouraging newer, less path-dependent policy options for the future. In this vein it is also important to challenge the view that the embrace of failure and complexity slides into forms of conservative fatalism. The view expounded here is clear that rather than using a lack of comprehensive knowledge as the philosophical basis for reverting to the tried and tested (and failed), it should instead encourage us to take risks, to investigate innovative ways of grappling with old problems, and to do so in the full knowledge that what we do is likely to fail in one way or another. This is part of the dynamic of imperfect governance, that is, that what we do now creates the problems and issues of the future. Rather than our actions leading us down a choice of predetermined paths to different settled outcomes, they are generating the unknown and incalculable outcomes that will require us to recalibrate our strategies again in the future. Arguments for complexity are instinctively opposed to the conservative pursuit of order because they are based upon the continual existence of orderly and disorderly elements in any system.

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Importantly, as Freeden reminds us, we are not dealing with absolutes here: ‘modest failure and temporary success may not be that distinct from one another’ (Freeden 2009a: 162). The likelihood of failure and the opportunities for policy learning generated by error, coupled with the generative nature of social complexity, requires a different mindset in policymakers in conflictual settings. Too often, the identification of failure and error is coupled with even more assertive renditions of particular existing, dogmatic dispositions. The argument in this chapter suggests that we need to take the conditions for complexity and the likelihood of failure more seriously. In order to do this, we need to build in the recognition that errors can make a positive contribution to policy learning and that we need to embrace error and risks if we propose to develop innovative approaches to old and new problems alike. A more developed model of complexity and failure which addresses the epistemological insights of Foucault’s work on error provides a platform that goes beyond institutional shortcomings to enable us to think about political action in new ways. Here, the lesson learnt from Foucauldian analysis is one that moves beyond the failings of contemporary practice to provide a space in which agents can use failure as a basis upon which to take risks and investigate creative, innovative ways to address problems. Simultaneously, this helps us to understand the dynamic nature of the politics of complex societies and repudiate the tendency to rely on path-determined strategies for tackling social issues and problems. The main contention here then is that such a view of the inevitability of error and failure in conditions of complex conflict can act as a circuit breaker against the recycling of older conflictual perspectives. However, this requires an approach to policy that retains recognition of a rhetoric of conflict as the political backdrop.

Conclusion: Contingency, pragmatism and conflict transformation The approach set out in this chapter suggests a much more modest and pragmatic approach to policymaking to deal with conflictual issues. This is not to say that there should not be high normative aspirations in particular processes focused on grappling with difficult conflictual issues but that there should be more realistic understandings of the outcomes of particular normative pursuits. That is, approaches to conflictual issues should be much more receptive to the contingent factors that can have a fundamental impact on the capacity of particular policy initiatives to meet specific outcomes.

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Moreover, there needs to be a much more nuanced understanding of the ways in which potential conflict simmers beneath the surface of seemingly non-conflictual societies. It is for this reason that the enduring conflict thesis is applicable to a wide range of societies whether overtly conflictual or not and whether conflict is expressed in violent terms or not. It is precisely the orchestrated self-interpretation of societies as non-conflictual that manufactures the understanding of conflict as abnormal, especially where it takes on violent manifestations. However, many of the issues identified in the previous section are just as applicable to societies that are not as overtly conflictual as some of the contexts examined in more detail in this book (albeit in a more diluted, ameliorated form). This final chapter of the book has focused on the practical implications of the enduring conflict thesis for the politics of conflict. It has brought together recognition of both the structural impositions that emanate from social and political complexity as well as highlighting the limitations of the discursive frames in which conflict is usually construed. As a result, it suggests that analysts need to begin their approach to the management of conflict with a rejection of the signature of peace, that is, that any approach to conflict transformation and the practical problems of managing conflictual relations is fatally flawed if it assumes peace is the main or only norm to aspire to. The argument in this book is that the more realistic normative environment in which the management of conflict takes place is one where there is a disorderly mixture of peace and conflict and where democratic politics coexists with other forms of political expression. This starting point is the key to understanding the enduring conflict thesis. Normative analysis of political options must then be located within this highly non-ideal framework rather than imagining alternative social and political relationships to those that prevail in most societies. This is not to say that we must relinquish normative discussion but it must be placed within a political framework that understands that the pursuit of normative goals – including peace or conflict resolution – takes place within a sub-optimal environment in which conflict endures and characterizes the everyday life of a given society. Part of the reason for these sub-optimal conditions is a general problem of policymaking in complex environments. Given the complex conditions of simultaneous order and disorder within which policy is developed and implemented, there is always likely to be some slippage from optimal levels of outcome and effectiveness in any political system. While more adaptive systems are better placed to deal with the phenomena of non-linearity, emergent properties, path dependence, unforeseen consequences and the like, they are still unable to establish perfectly orderly conditions in which linear and predictable outcomes can be achieved. For this reason, complex

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environments necessitate a degree of flexibility and modesty when it comes to policy outcomes. There needs to be a greater understanding of the reasons behind this situation and the benefits that can come from errors and failure in different policy contexts. The politics of conflict is no different in this regard. It is only through attempts to innovate in thinking through policy conundrums that conflicts can be transformed and more effective forms of managing them can be developed. This requires a degree of risk-taking and an embrace of the propensity for things to work imperfectly. This is the nature of complex environments and it requires an approach to policymaking that understands both the contingencies of conflict and its enduring nature. Approaches to conflict management which rely too heavily on a normative alternative of peace are unlikely to be sufficiently adaptive to cope with a complex policy environment and the dynamic and contingent nature of the conflicts they try to address.

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T

he conclusion returns to the basic theme of the book: that conflict endures and that conflict must be endured. It reiterates the problematic nature of the ‘conflict resolution’ paradigm and the ways in which it can contribute to the continuation of conflict. As such, normative arguments about democratization and transition need to concentrate on the management of resilient conflict rather than its eradication in the name of the creation of peaceful relations between opposing parties. This section concludes the argument of the book by suggesting that developing forms of political accommodation in complex, pluralistic societies are more likely to be successful if we adopt an approach to conflict which focuses on its enduring and changing nature and the potential contribution of conflict to democratizing processes. In this scenario, the enduring nature of conflict demands that it must be understood as a key element of diverse, pluralistic societies rather than something to be overcome. Through the course of the book, I have used some insights from contemporary literature to highlight the ways in which the constrained and overly sterile nature of political debate sometimes distances us from the way in which conflict is imbued in the everyday lives of many people in sometimes quite ordinary ways. The recent novels of Julian Barnes have been particularly resonant in the ways in which they deal with issues of how we remember and construct narratives. Part of the argument here has been that these issues of remembering and the role they play in how we engage across conflict are much more significant than sometimes appears to be the case in sterile models of politics of which I take the conflict resolution paradigm to be an exemplar. In the novel Nothing to be Frightened Of, Barnes states: ‘We talk about our memories, but should perhaps talk more about our forgettings, even if that is a more difficult – or logically impossible – feat.’ I have suggested in the enduring conflict thesis that, while it seems logically impossible to remember our forgettings, it is in fact perfectly practical insofar as the institutional structures in which politics takes place and the paradigmatic inscriptions through which debates are framed encapsulate the conflicts from which they emerged. As such, the possibility of actually forgetting one’s forgettings is in some ways

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the logical impossibility – the process of forgetting is a political filtering through which we forge our narratives into meaningfulness by sidelining and denying that which unsettles the logic of our narrative. At the same time, this alternative logic is all around us – for the weak or defeated it is in the formation of institutions and ways of writing history that reflect the dominant paradigm. For the strong or successful, it lies in the persistent attempts of the weak to subvert and rewrite the dominant historical narratives upon which social power is established and reproduced. Just as structural features endure and agents must endure the structural manifestations of conflict, so we need to understand that paradigmatic shifts in conflictual societies are incredibly difficult to identify and enact. In this context, the employment of floating signifiers such as democracy to frame debates around the politics of conflict is not particularly helpful (Laclau 1996). It deflects attention away from the enduring nature of conflict and the ways in which shifts towards greater peace or democracy take place alongside rather than instead of political and social conflict. And there is no definitive end point at which the conflict is superseded by a different paradigmatic order. Conflicts change and adapt to emerging phenomena in the societies to which they pertain. Therefore, enduring conflict needs to be understood as ever present, though often latent and relatively benign. In this light, the politics of conflict transformation needs to be more attuned to the continuity of conflict and the importance of managing conflictual issues rather than attempting to manufacture some kind of illusory resolution. In the middle sections of the book, some of the most prominent techniques in the politics of managing conflict were identified. In the mainstream, these range from the ‘liberal peace thesis’ through to the current predominance of the conflict resolution paradigm. These approaches largely focus on enacting structural changes such that the power of conflict is subdued and political actors will have less reason to pursue their objectives through violent means. But, as we saw, the normative prioritization of relations of peace and the advocacy of liberal democratic systems as a way of achieving them seriously underplay the extent of conflict in many societies and its residual nature in those systems that are usually thought of as the paragons of peace and liberal democracy. Moreover, the book has also suggested that these approaches to the primacy of peace and democracy fail to take adequate account of the linguistic and discursive ambiguities that play a prominent role in the continuity of conflict. These uncertainties also need to be given greater visibility in the way in which we might imagine and articulate what transition might look like in conditions of complexity and enduring conflict. In this vein, the enduring conflict thesis suggests that the continuing narratives of conflict are

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unavoidable features of political life such that it is problematic to consider these narratives as beyond the pale of acceptable political discourse. While boundaries are always established around the acceptable in contemporary politics, the enduring conflict thesis reminds us that these boundaries are permeable and that they shift over the course of time in reaction to a range of contingencies, from unforeseen events through to the sheer fact of continual linguistic ambiguity. In this way, the enduring conflict thesis has direct ramifications for those seeking to reduce conflict or merely to formulate policy in a conflictual environment. Whether in domestic or international political domains, the structures of political action are not settled or determined, and the language in which debates about what to do are framed is highly contingent. This generates a propensity for political action to fail in meeting its objectives and a greater likelihood of error. However, rather than viewing this as a negative proposition, the enduring conflict thesis suggests that, if we have to act in an environment where failure and error are always possible (and sometimes probable), then we should embrace this condition and develop more risky and innovative initiatives. Where complex conditions generate scenarios where path dependence and the resort to what we think we know are always tempting for policymakers, the likelihood of not meeting objectives through our limited capacity to actually know ‘what works’ should enable political actors to think more creatively about modes of managing conflictual situations. Where established modes of conflict resolution tend to lean towards path-dependent modes of understanding conflicts, an approach focused on the enduring nature of conflict and the propensity to fail in complex, contingent circumstances potentially frees our mind in seeking new ways to approach the politics of conflict and peace. Ultimately, the idea of enduring conflict asks us to rethink the ways in which the signature terms of peace and democracy have come to predominate in contemporary domestic and international politics. It highlights the fallacies underpinning the promotion of these legitimating terms in a complex environment and the ways in which they obscure the two ways in which  conflict endures. That is, they lead us down political pathways that cannot comprehend that conflict must endure and that this condition, along with the contingent and ambiguous environment in which it is experienced, demands endurance of the people affected by it. In this sense, the enduring conflict thesis continues to invoke the need for political action to address the issues in which conflict manifests but it does so with full recognition that the conflict will endure. Political action in this context can always transform conflict but it can never resolve it.

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Notes Chapter 5 1 Chapters 4–6 are underpinned by a series of interviews which were conducted with representatives of political parties and NGOs/pressure groups during research visits to Northern Ireland in 2006 and 2010.

Chapter 6 1 This sentiment was frequently expressed at a workshop involving various reconciliation advocates co-hosted by the Cape Town Law School and the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation on 19 April 2013. This was part of the project ‘Resistance, recognition and reconciliation in South Africa and Northern Ireland – lessons for Australia’ funded by the Australian Research Council.

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Index Achibugi, D.  83 African National Congress (ANC)  115 Agamben, Giorgio  12 on analogical emergence of ­paradigms  16–17, 39, 41–2 notion of the signature  16–17, 42 agonism differences from mainstream ­democratic theory  73 disagreement and management of social conflict  74–7 as discourse of enduring ­conflict  114–16 friend-enemy distinction  49, 73, 82 and international domain  82–4 key tenets  72–4 normative dimension  75–6 normative implications  84–6 and problem of complexity  77–82 strengths and weaknesses  86–7 understanding of conflict  49, 73, 76 agonist polities  114–15 ANC see African National Congress Apology to ‘stolen generations’  62 Australia Cronulla riots  24, 79–80 endurance of indigenous ­communities  3, 22 national apology to indigenous Australians  62 Northern Territory Intervention  3, 22 policing of everyday lives of ­indigenous people  22 Barnes, Julian  89, 141 Belfast Agreement  65, 68 Bevir, M.  135 Bloody Sunday  23, 57, 63

Brooke, Basil  85 Butler, Judith  41, 123 Cambodia D-CAM  23, 59–60 trials of Khmer Rouge  23, 59–60 Cameron, David  63 child soldiers  61 civil society, and the state  54–6 complex societies conflict as ontological ­condition  14, 105–7, 118–19 generative nature  107 paradigm shifts  39–43 quality of endurance of people  2, 22–3 complex systems nature  38–9, 107 reproduction  34–5 complexity theory and agonism  78–82 emergent properties  33–5, 80–1 and Foucault’s concept of error  133–4 implications of complexity  38–9, 133 influence in social sciences  40, 127 key elements  30 non-linearity  30–2, 78–9 path dependence  35–8, 81, 113 unforeseen consequences  32–3, 79–80 conflict see political conflict; violent conflict conflict management agonism as philosophical ­foundation for  74–7 complexity and policy  124–8 and non-linearity  31

158

Index

conflict narratives institutionalisation  110 role  110 conflict resolution desirability as normative ­assumption  130 ending of violence as key ­objective  66–7 liberal peace model  52–6 limitations  4, 114 possibility of  107 conflict resolution discourses dangers  107–8, 115–16 terms  114, 118 conflict transformation accommodating conflicting ­accounts  100 advantages over conflict ­resolution  108, 114 ambiguity and contingency  12 civil society-led approach  54 liberal peace model  53–6 ongoing nature  119 and reconciliation  56–61, 99–100 rhetorics  43 temporal dimension  62–9 and transformative rhetoric  100–1 conflict-ridden societies, endurance of people  3 Connolly, William  73, 82 consociational arrangements and path dependence  37–8 and resilience of conflicts  21–2 consociationalism  45 constitutive failure, model  129–32 contingency impact on political science ­literature  122 in political debates  123–4 role in enduring conflict ­thesis  122–3 cosmopolitan democracy  83 critical discursive analysis  4–5 Cronulla riots  24, 79–80 D-CAM (Cambodia)  23, 59–60 deliberative democracy  46–7, 126

democracy as antidote to violence  26 aspirations for  25 complex model  43–6 cosmopolitan models  83 normative horizons  44 and peace  25 relationship with conflict  14, 20 as ‘signature’ concept  42, 142–3 use of concept as rhetorical ­device  19 violent pursuit  26 democratic institutions nature  44–5 variation and flexibility  45 democratic politics, constitutive role of conflict  44 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) nature of political conflict  65 reconciliation process  57–8, 94 democratic theory agonism  49 consociationalism  45 deliberative democracy  46–7, 126 republicanism  47–9 Dewey, John  83, 122 Dillon, M.  124 ‘disjunctured synthesis’  100 Doxtader, Erik  93–5 Doyle, M. W.  52 DRC see Democratic Republic of Congo Dryzek, J. S.  47 emergent properties and agonism  80–1 and complexity theory  33–4 and political conflict  35 enduring conflict discourses  114–18 dual meaning  2–5, 11, 21–5 narrative model  117–18 epistemological uncertainty  124–8 ethno-national identity, conflict ­inflamed by expression  67 failure as challenge to political ­theory  131–2

Index Foucault’s concept of error  132–7 inevitability  128–9 model of constitutive failure  129–32 politics of  128–32 as polysemic  130 Finlayson, Alan  91–2 forgetting  141–2 Foucault, Michel  12, 16, 21 on endurance of conflict  21 on error  125, 132–7 on paradigm shift  39, 41 theory of power  41 Freeden, Michael  18, 126, 128–32, 137 friend-enemy distinction  49, 73, 82 Goldschmidt, Victor  42 Good Friday Agreement (Northern Ireland)  2, 19, 37 Gorkhaland  21, 32 Government of Ireland Act 1920 (UK)  2 Habermas, Jurgen  46–7 historical wrongdoing government attempts to rectify  64 as historical artefact  62–3 Hobbes, Thomas  122 human rights, use of concept as ­rhetorical device  19 inconclusiveness  131–2 indeterminacy  131 India, regulation of economy  53 ‘indigenous peacemaking’  83 international politics of conflict, ­application of agonism  82–4 Irving, John  71 Jessop, B.  127–8 Jones Griffiths, Philip  1 Kabila, Laurent  58 Kagame, Paul  65 Kang Kek Iew  59 Khmer Rouge, trials  23, 59–60 Kuhn, Thomas  16, 39, 41

159

Laclau, Ernesto  20, 74, 123 language contingency of  122–4 and paradigm shifts  42 liberal peace thesis approach to dealing with ­conflict  52–3 authoritarianism to democracy  53 difficulties with  53–6 on-size-fits all approach  54 progressive development  53–4 state intervention to free ­markets  53 terminology  53 local empowerment  55–6 McCann, Eamonn  2 Mac Ginty, R.  64, 83 Magnum photographers  2 Maxwell, William  121 Mbeki, Thabo  115 Monroe, K. R.  109 Moon, C.  109, 111–12, 118 Mouffe, Chantal  72–5, 82–3 Mould, V.  58 Muldoon, Paul  76 narrative model of enduring ­conflict  117–18 narratives of conflict  109–10 definition  111 meaning in politics  108–9 of reconciliation  111–14 non-linearity and agonism  78–80 and complexity theory  30–2 in conflict situations  31–2 and epistemological foundations of politics  31 and wrongdoing as historical ­artefact  62–3 Northern Ireland as agonistic polity  114–15 Belfast Agreement  65, 68 Bloody Sunday  23, 57, 63 consociational arrangements  21, 37–8

160

Index

criminalization of political ­prisoners  33 disagreement over who are real victims  98–9 discourses of reconciliation  96–100 economic decision making  85–6 endurance of conflict  3, 21–2, 27, 37, 112 endurance of people  1–2, 22–3 ethno-national conflict and ­structural divisions  13, 79 Good Friday Agreement  2, 19, 21–2, 37–8, 63 Hunger Strikes  31, 33 marching season  19 Parades Commission  63 parallels with other countries  80–1, 96 paramilitary groups  21, 98–9 peace lines  67–8 peace process  64–5, 96, 112, 115, 117 political developments  112–16 political institutions and legacy of conflict  21, 23, 37–8 protests over flying of Union flag  3, 38, 68 reconciliation  57–8, 94, 103 republicanism  113 St Andrews Agreement  37, 65 sectarianism  38 securitization of society  21 Sinn Féin  32–3, 115 ‘The Troubles’  1–2, 22–3, 57–8, 98–9 ‘Troubles’ tourism  67 Northern Ireland Assembly  23, 33 Northern Territory Intervention  3, 22 Norval, Aletta  74 Oakeshott, Michael  122 Olssen, M.  133 Owen, D.  83 paradigm shifts in complex societies  39–43 in conflictual societies  142 and language  42

paradigms emergence  16–17, 41–2 sustenance of  17 path dependence and agonism  81 and complexity theory  35–8, 113 and endurance of conflict  36–7, 63 Patterson, M.  109 peace and democracy  25 normative primacy  25–7 relationship with conflict  14, 20, 25–7 as signature term  143 use of concept as rhetorical ­device  19 peacebuilding see liberal peace thesis performativity  41 Pettit, Philip  47–8 policymaking in complex environments  138–9, 143 complexity and conflict ­management  124–8 evidence-based  124–5 evidence-informed  126 learning generated by error  137 potential to generate new ­dimensions of dispute  129 ramifications of enduring ­conflict  143 sub-optimal conditions  129, 138 political conflict constitutive role in democratic politics  44 contested interpretations  98 enduring nature  2–3, 5, 15, 21–5 inscription in everyday social and cultural practices  26–7 narrative approach  111–14, 117–20 nature  65 as ontological condition of complex societies  14, 105–6, 118–19 as pathological  106–8 and political development  25, 27, 111–14 pre-eminence of the ‘problem’  13

Index re-inscription in political ­institutions  21–2 relationship with democracy  14, 20, 142 relationship with peace  14, 20, 25–7, 142 rethinking the ‘problem’  106–8 rhetorical approach  100–4 political development, role of ­conflict  25, 27, 111–14 political discourse, structuring  106 political ideologies, constitution of  129–30 political institutions, re-inscription of conflict  21–2, 37–8 political language and practice, ­constitutive ambiguity  123 political legitimacy evolving boundaries  115 role of the signature  18–20 political narratives, impact of problematization of conflict  106 political rhetoric analysis  90–2 discourses of reconciliation in Northern Ireland  96–100 rhetorics of reconciliation in South Africa  92–6 political theory, challenge of ­failure  131–2 politics challenge to epistemological ­foundations  31 and process of problematization  110 politics of complexity, and contingency of language  122–4 politics of failure, and conflict  128–32 post-conflict societies endurance of conflict  11, 67–8 rhetoric of reconciliation  97 transitional processes  97 post-structuralist approach  4, 12, 15–21, 44 pragmatism  83, 126 predictability, and complexity ­theory  32–3 QWERTY keyboard system  34

161

Rancière, J.  17 Rawls, John  46–7 reconciliation and agonistic theory  76–7 Christian assumptions  64 and conflict transformation  56–61 critical stance towards  59–61, 93 in Democratic Republic of ­Congo  57–8 as ‘dialogic event’  93 difficulty of applying in all ­scenarios  99–100, 103 narratives  111–14 national apologies  62–3 in Northern Ireland  57–8, 94, 96–100, 103 potential to generate further ­conflict  97–8, 111 rhetorics of  92–5 Schaap’s definition  77 in Sierra Leone  58 in South Africa  56–7, 102 temporal dimension  62–9 truth commissions  57 remembering and forgetting  141–2 republicanism  47–9 rhetoric see also political rhetoric common sense understanding  90 paradigms and contingency  101–3 role in conduct of practical ­politics  90–1 Rhetorical Political Analysis (RPA)  91–2 rhetorics of conflict and inevitability of failure  129 as mode of transformation  100–1, 116–17 rhetorics of reconciliation, in South Africa  92–5, 116 Richmond, O.  83 riots in Cronulla  24, 79–80 and endurance of conflict  13, 24 in United Kingdom  13, 23–4 Rorty, Richard  123 Rose, N.  122–3 Rudd, Kevin  62

162

Index

St Andrews Agreement  37, 65 Sanderson, I.  125–6, 128 Saville Inquiry (UK)  23 Saville Report (UK)  57 Schaap, A.  77 Schmitt, Carl  49, 73 Sierra Leone  58 ‘signature’ concepts, rhetorical ­reinforcement  42 signature of peace, tension with ­endurance of conflict  25–7 signature, the methodological implications  15–20 political significance  18–19 and sustenance of paradigms  17 theoretical notion  3–4 Sinn Féin  32–3, 115 Skinner, Q.  122 social sciences complexity in 29–30 influence of complexity theory  40 language of failure  128 South Africa as agonistic polity  114 education  33 inequality  33, 54 model of reconciliation  102 racialism  78 as ‘Rainbow Nation’  93 reconciliation movement  56 restructuring of political ­system  115 rhetorics of reconciliation  43, 92–5, 116 role of African National ­Congress  115 social divisions and race  13, 35

Truth and Reconciliation ­Commission (TRC)  57, 102 unemployment  33 ‘stolen generations’, apology to  62 temporality  131 Thomson, A.  73 Touraine, Alain  39 tourism  67 transformative rhetoric  100–1 ‘Troubles’ tourism  67 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)  57, 102 Tutu, Desmond (Archbishop)  56, 64, 102 unforeseen consequences and agonism  79–80 and complexity theory  32 United Kingdom, riots in 2011  13, 23–4 United Nations, promotion of liberal peace thesis  51, 54 victimhood ascription of status  98–9 hierarchy  98 violent conflict concentration upon  26–7 democracy as antidote  26 and pursuit of democracy  26 resolution and peacebuilding  66–7 Youk Chhang  59 Young, Iris Marion  67 Žižek, S.  123 Zuma, Jacob  115

163

164

165

166

167

168