Resolving conflict in bipolar societies: The fate of political settlements in Fiji and Northern Ireland

Ethnically divided societies that might be described as ‘balanced bicommunal’ (where there are two communities, each of which comes close to representing half of the population) pose a particular challenge to conventional principles of collective decision-making, and commonly threaten political stability. This article analyses the experience of two such societies – Northern Ireland and Fiji – with a view to exploring whether there are common processes in the route by which political stability has been pursued. We assess the manner in which a distinctive relationship with Great Britain and its political culture has interacted with local conditions to produce a highly competitive, bipolar party system. This leads to consideration of the devices that have been adopted in an effort to bridge the gap between the communities: the Fiji constitution as amended in 1997, and Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement of 1998. We focus, in particular, on the use of unusual (preferential voting) formulas for the election of parliamentarians and of an inclusive principle in the selection of ministers, and consider the contribution of these institutional devices to the attainment of political stability. We find that, in both cases, the intervention of forces from outside the political system had a decisive impact, though in very different ways. In addition to being underpinned by solid institutional design, for political settlements to work effectively, some minimal level of trust between rival elites is required.

God and War: the Church of England and Armed Conflict in the Twentieth Century

Despite narratives of secularization, it appears that the British public persistently pay attention to clerical opinion and continually resort to popular expressions of religious faith, not least in time of war. From the throngs of men who gathered to hear the Bishop of London preach recruiting sermons during the First World War, to the attention paid to Archbishop Williams' words of conscience on Iraq, clerical rhetoric remains resonant. For the countless numbers who attended National Days of Prayer during the Second World War, and for the many who continue to find the Remembrance Day service a meaningful ritual, civil religious events provide a source of meaningful ceremony and a focus of national unity. War and religion have been linked throughout the twentieth century and this book explores these links: taking the perspective of the 'home front' rather than the battlefield. Exploring the views and accounts of Anglican clerics on the issue of warfare and international conflict across the century, the authors explore the church's stance on the causes, morality and conduct of warfare; issues of pacifism, obliteration bombing, nuclear possession and deterrence, retribution, forgiveness and reconciliation, and the spiritual opportunities presented by conflict. This book offers invaluable insights into how far the Church influenced public appraisal of war whilst illuminating the changing role of the Church across the twentieth century.

Incomplete information games of conflict and collective action

My thesis consists of three essays that investigate strategic interactions between individuals engaging in risky collective action in uncertain environments. The first essay analyzes a broad class of incomplete information coordination games with a wide range of applications in economics and politics. The second essay draws from the general model developed in the first essay to study decisions by individuals of whether to engage in protest/revolution/coup/strike. The final essay explicitly integrates state response to the analysis. The first essay, Coordination Games with Strategic Delegation of Pivotality, exhaustively analyzes a class of binary action, two-player coordination games in which players receive stochastic payoffs only if both players take a ``stochastic-coordination action''. Players receive conditionally-independent noisy private signals about the normally distributed stochastic payoffs. With this structure, each player can exploit the information contained in the other player's action only when he takes the “pivotalizing action”. This feature has two consequences: (1) When the fear of miscoordination is not too large, in order to utilize the other player's information, each player takes the “pivotalizing action” more often than he would based solely on his private information, and (2) best responses feature both strategic complementarities and strategic substitutes, implying that the game is not supermodular nor a typical global game. This class of games has applications in a wide range of economic and political phenomena, including war and peace, protest/revolution/coup/ strike, interest groups lobbying, international trade, and adoption of a new technology. My second essay, Collective Action with Uncertain Payoffs, studies the decision problem of citizens who must decide whether to submit to the status quo or mount a revolution. If they coordinate, they can overthrow the status quo. Otherwise, the status quo is preserved and participants in a failed revolution are punished. Citizens face two types of uncertainty. (a) non-strategic: they are uncertain about the relative payoffs of the status quo and revolution, (b) strategic: they are uncertain about each other's assessments of the relative payoff. I draw on the existing literature and historical evidence to argue that the uncertainty in the payoffs of status quo and revolution is intrinsic in politics. Several counter-intuitive findings emerge: (1) Better communication between citizens can lower the likelihood of revolution. In fact, when the punishment for failed protest is not too harsh and citizens' private knowledge is accurate, then further communication reduces incentives to revolt. (2) Increasing strategic uncertainty can increase the likelihood of revolution attempts, and even the likelihood of successful revolution. In particular, revolt may be more likely when citizens privately obtain information than when they receive information from a common media source. (3) Two dilemmas arise concerning the intensity and frequency of punishment (repression), and the frequency of protest. Punishment Dilemma 1: harsher punishments may increase the probability that punishment is materialized. That is, as the state increases the punishment for dissent, it might also have to punish more dissidents. It is only when the punishment is sufficiently harsh, that harsher punishment reduces the frequency of its application. Punishment Dilemma 1 leads to Punishment Dilemma 2: the frequencies of repression and protest can be positively or negatively correlated depending on the intensity of repression. My third essay, The Repression Puzzle, investigates the relationship between the intensity of grievances and the likelihood of repression. First, I make the observation that the occurrence of state repression is a puzzle. If repression is to succeed, dissidents should not rebel. If it is to fail, the state should concede in order to save the costs of unsuccessful repression. I then propose an explanation for the “repression puzzle” that hinges on information asymmetries between the state and dissidents about the costs of repression to the state, and hence the likelihood of its application by the state. I present a formal model that combines the insights of grievance-based and political process theories to investigate the consequences of this information asymmetry for the dissidents' contentious actions and for the relationship between the magnitude of grievances (formulated here as the extent of inequality) and the likelihood of repression. The main contribution of the paper is to show that this relationship is non-monotone. That is, as the magnitude of grievances increases, the likelihood of repression might decrease. I investigate the relationship between inequality and the likelihood of repression in all country-years from 1981 to 1999. To mitigate specification problem, I estimate the probability of repression using a generalized additive model with thin-plate splines (GAM-TPS). This technique allows for flexible relationship between inequality, the proxy for the costs of repression and revolutions (income per capita), and the likelihood of repression. The empirical evidence support my prediction that the relationship between the magnitude of grievances and the likelihood of repression is non-monotone.

Experimentally Testing the Effect of Parent-Adolescent Conflict on HIV Risk, and Investigation of a Neurobiological Moderator of This Effect

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a condition in which immune cells become destroyed such that the body may become unable to fight off infections. Engaging in risk-taking behaviors (e.g., substance use) puts people at heightened risk for HIV infection, with mid-to-late adolescents at increasing risk (Leigh & Stall, 1993). Environmental and neurological reasons have been suggested for increased risk-taking among adolescents. First, family-level precursors such as parent-adolescent conflict have been significantly associated with and may pose risk for engaging in substance use and risk-taking (Duncan, Duncan, Biglan, & Ary, 1998). Thus, parent-adolescent conflict may be an important proximal influence on HIV risk behaviors (Lester et al., 2010; Rowe, Wang, Greenbaum, & Liddle, 2008). Yet, the temporal relation between parent-adolescent conflict and adolescent HIV risk-taking behaviors is still unknown. Second, at-risk adolescents may carry a neurobiological predisposition for engaging in trait-like expressions of disinhibited behavior and other risk-taking behaviors (Iacono, Malone, & McGue, 2008). When exposed to interpersonally stressful situations, their likelihood of engagement in HIV risk behaviors may increase. To investigate the role of parent-adolescent conflict in adolescent HIV risk-taking behaviors, 49 adolescents ages 14-17 and their parent were randomly assigned to complete a standardized discussion task to discuss a control topic or a conflict topic. Immediately after the discussion, adolescents completed a laboratory risk-taking measure. In a follow-up visit, eligible adolescents underwent electrophysiological (EEG) recording while completing a task designed to assess the presence of a neurobiological marker for behavioral disinhibition which I hypothesized would moderate the links between conflict and risk-taking. First, findings indicated that during the discussion task, adolescents in the conflict condition evidenced a significantly greater psychophysiological stress response relative to adolescents in the control condition. Second, a neurobiological marker of behavioral disinhibition moderated the relation between discussion condition and adolescent risk-taking, such that adolescents evidencing relatively high levels of a neurobiological marker related to sensation-seeking evidenced greater levels of risk-taking following the conflict condition, relative to the control condition. Lastly, I observed no significant relation between parent-adolescent conflict, the neurobiological marker of behavioral disinhibition and adolescent engagement in real-world risk-taking behavior.

Analytic and heuristic processes in the detection and resolution of conflict

Previous research with the ratio-bias task found larger response latencies for conflict trials where the heuristic- and analytic-based responses are assumed to be in opposition (e.g., choosing between 1/10 and 9/100 ratios of success) when compared to no-conflict trials where both processes converge on the same response (e.g., choosing between 1/10 and 11/100). This pattern is consistent with parallel dualprocess models, which assume that there is effective, rather than lax, monitoring of the output of heuristic processing. It is, however, unclear why conflict resolution sometimes fails. Ratio-biased choices may increase because of a decline in analytical reasoning (leaving heuristic-based responses unopposed) or to a rise in heuristic processing (making it more difficult for analytic processes to override the heuristic preferences). Using the process-dissociation procedure, we found that instructions to respond logically and response speed affected analytic (controlled) processing (C), leaving heuristic processing (H) unchanged, whereas the intuitive preference for large nominators (as assessed by responses to equal ratio trials) affected H but not C. These findings create new challenges to the debate between dual-process and singleprocess accounts, which are discussed.

Conflict resolution strategies : influence of organizational and professional commitment nurses

Introduction: The changes in the health area and the set of structural changes in the nursing profession and career interfere in the dynamics and stability of the future of the nurses. Objectives: To study the influence of organizational and professional commitment of the nurses in the strategies of conflict resolution. Methods: This is a quantitative, transversal and non-experimental research, following a descriptive-correlational way. Data were obtained by applying a questionnaire to nurses that work on different types of Primary Health Care Units. As measuring instruments we used three scales that grouped a total of nine subscales used to evaluate: the organizational commitment, the professional commitment and the strategies of conflict resolution. Results: The majority of nurses present moderate scores of organizational and Professional commitment with higher affective commitment to the normative commitment or instrumental commitment and feel that nursing is an interesting and challenging profession, but personal and social perception of nursing relevance is moderately weak. Nurses adopt the domination conflict resolution strategies and accommodation over the head and less integrative strategies and commitment. With subordinates more nurses adopt the avoidance strategy. When the conflictual situation arises with colleagues more endow the integrative strategies and commitment and less domination strategy. The organizational and professional commitment is significantly associated with some solving strategies conflict adopted by nurses as the conflictual situation arises with the boss, with subordinates or colleagues. Some dimensions of organizational commitment and professional foretell to significantly shape the adoption of conflict resolution strategy adopted.

Genetic architecture and sexual conflict in the life history of Drosophila

Because males and females of a species express many homologous traits, sex-specific selection on these traits can shift the opposite sex away from its phenotypic optimum. This mode of sexually antagonistic selection, known as intralocus sexual conflict (IaSC), arises when the evolution of sexual dimorphism is constrained by the two sexes sharing a common gene pool. As IaSC has been historically overlooked, many outstanding questions remain. For example, what is its contribution in maintaining genetic variation for fitness in populations? What characters underlie this variation in fitness? How does the selection history of the population influence the standing genetic variation? I used the model organism Drosophila melanogaster to attempt to resolve some of these questions. The first part of my Master’s project involved assessing the detectability of sexually antagonistic alleles in populations at different stages of adaptation to the laboratory. For the second part of my Master’s project, I looked for evidence of conflict during the development of body size, a well-known sexually dimorphic trait. While the first part of my thesis proved inconclusive, the second part revealed a surprising source of sexual conflict in pre-adult stages of D. melanogaster.

Work, class and conflict: a comparative study of three Cork factories, incorporating oral testimony

This dissertation presents a comparative study of three factories in Cork Harbour area, Sunbeam Wolsey (1927-90), Irish Steel (1939-2001) and the Ford Marina Plant (1917-84). All three factories were significant industrial employers in both a domestic (Irish) and a local (Cork) context and are broadly representative of the Irish manufacturing industry that was developed under the policies of tariff protection introduced in the 1930s and gradually phased out between the late 1950s and the mid-1980s. Sunbeam Wolsey was a textile and clothing concern located on the north side of Cork City that possessed a borderline monopoly within its economic sector and was among the largest private employers of female labour in twentieth century Ireland. Irish Steel was the country’s only steel mill, located on Haulbowline island, a brief ferry-ride from the seaside town of Cobh, and was unusual in being one of the few manufacturing concerns operated as a nationalised industry under the auspices of the state. The Ford Marina plant predated the introduction of protectionism by more than a decade and began as the centre of the Ford empire’s tractor manufacturing business, before switching to the production of private motor vehicles for the Irish market in 1932. All three industries were closed or sold off when the state withdrew support, either in the form of tariff protection (Ford, Sunbeam) or direct funding (Irish Steel). While devoting much attention to the three firms, the central concern of this dissertation is not the companies themselves (though the economic history portion of the dissertation is substantial), but the workers they employed, examining the lives of these individuals both as members of the Irish working class, and, more specifically, as employees of the three factories under consideration. The project can be best described as a comparative factory study, comparing and contrasting the three workforces, focusing primarily on industrial relation and the experience of work. This dissertation utilises both documentary evidence and a significant quantity of oral testimony, breaking new ground by making the workplace the central focus of its investigation. The principal aims of the study are: 1. To document the lives of those who worked in these factories, capturing through oral testimony their subjective experiences of social class and factory life, as well as differences among narrators in terms of gender and status. In achieving this aim, the study will provide a broader social context for its detailed analysis of work and industrial relations in each firm. 2. To analyse the three workplaces and determine how and why each developed such distinct systems of industrial relations at the factory level, as well as to compare and contrast these systems. 3. To examine the nature of work in each factory and to determine how work and industrial relations in each firm developed over time, relating these changes both to internal and external factors. Additionally, the project will provide a comparative analysis of these changes.

Validation of the School Conflict Negotiation Effectiveness Questionnaire

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Turning conflict into coexistence: cross-cutting ties and institutions in the agro-pastoral borderlands of Lake Naivasha basin, Kenya

The Maasai/Kikuyu agro-pastoral borderlands of Maiella and Enoosupukia, located in the hinterlands of Lake Naivasha’s agro-industrial hub, are particularly notorious in the history of ethnicised violence in the Kenya’s Rift Valley. In October 1993, an organised assault perpetrated by hundreds of Maasai vigilantes, with the assistance of game wardens and administration police, killed more than 20 farmers of Kikuyu descent. Consequently, thousands of migrant farmers were violently evicted from Enoosupukia at the instigation of leading local politicians. Nowadays, however, intercommunity relations are surprisingly peaceful and the cooperative use of natural resources is the rule rather than the exception. There seems to be a form of reorganization. Violence seems to be contained and the local economy has since recovered. This does not mean that there is no conflict, but people seem to have the facility to solve them peacefully. How did formerly violent conflicts develop into peaceful relations? How did competition turn into cooperation, facilitating changing land use? This dissertation explores the value of cross-cutting ties and local institutions in peaceful relationships and the non-violent resolution of conflicts across previously violently contested community boundaries. It mainly relies on ethnographic data collected between 2014 and 2015. The discussion therefore builds on several theoretical approaches in anthropology and the social sciences – that is, violent conflicts, cross-cutting ties and conflicting loyalties, joking relationships, peace and nonviolence, and institutions, in order to understand shared spaces that are experiencing fairly rapid social and economic changes, and characterised by conflict and coexistence. In the researched communities, cross-cutting ties and the split allegiances associated with them result from intermarriages, land transactions, trade, and friendship. By institutions, I refer to local peace committees, an attempt to standardise an aspect of customary law, and Nyumba Kumi, a strategy of anchoring community policing at the household level. In 2010, the state “implanted” these grassroots-level institutions and conferred on them the rights to handle specific conflicts and to prevent crime. I argue that the studied groups utilise diverse networks of relationships as adaptive responses to landlessness, poverty, and socio-political dynamics at the local level. Material and non-material exchanges and transfers accompany these social and economic ties and networks. In addition to being instrumental in nurturing a cohesive social fabric, I argue that such alliances could be thought of as strategies of appropriation of resources in the frontiers – areas that are considered to have immense agricultural potential and to be conducive to economic enterprise. Consequently, these areas are continuously changed and shaped through immigration, population growth, and agricultural intensification. However, cross-cutting ties and intergroup alliances may not necessarily prevent the occurrence or escalation of conflicts. Nevertheless, disputes and conflicts, which form part of the social order in the studied area, create the opportunities for locally contextualised systems of peace and non-violence that inculcate the values of cooperation, coexistence, and restraint from violence. Although the neo-traditional institutions (local peace committees and Nyumba Kumi) face massive complexities and lack the capacity to handle serious conflicts, their application of informal constraints in dispute resolution provides room for some optimism. Notably, the formation of ties and alliances between the studied groups, and the use of local norms and values to resolve disputes, are not new phenomena – they are reminiscent of historical patterns. Their persistence, particularly in the context of Kenya, indicates a form of historical continuity, which remains rather “undisturbed” despite the prevalence of ethnicised political economies. Indeed, the formation of alliances, which are driven by mutual pursuit of commodities (livestock, rental land, and agricultural produce), markets, and diversification, tends to override other identities. While the major thrust of social science literature in East Africa has focused on the search for root causes of violence, very little has been said about the conditions and practices of cooperation and non-violent conflict resolution. In addition, situations where prior violence turned into peaceful interaction have attracted little attention, though the analysis of such transitional phases holds the promise of contributing to applicable knowledge on conflict resolution. This study is part of a larger multidisciplinary project, “Resilience in East African Landscapes” (REAL), which is a Marie Curie Actions Innovative Training Networks (ITN) project. The principal focus of this multidisciplinary project is to study past, present, and future thresholds and sustainable trajectories in human-landscape interactions in East Africa over the last millennia. While other individual projects focus on long-term ecosystem dynamics and societal interactions, my project examines human-landscape interactions in the present and the very recent past (i.e. the period in which events and processes were witnessed or can still be recalled by today’s population). The transition from conflict to coexistence and from competition to cooperative use of previously violently contested land resources is understood here as enhancing adaptation in the face of social-political, economic, environmental, and climatic changes. This dissertation is therefore a contribution to new modes of resilience in human-landscape interactions after a collapse situation.

Between service and loyalty: chancery and chancellors of Portugal in the 14th century

Estudo dos perfis e carreiras dos chancelares que serviram os reis portugueses ao longo do século XIV. Procura-se, com este estudo, reflectir sobre a evolução do papel dos eclesiásticos na construção da realeza e estabelecer tendências para a evolução dos perfis dos protagonistas do serviço régio.