JOHN CABOT UNIVERSITY

COURSE CODE: "PL 321 H"
COURSE NAME: "War, Peace, and Conflict Resolution - HONORS (This course carries 4 semester hours of credits. A minimum CUM GPA of 3.5 is required)"
SEMESTER & YEAR: Spring 2024

SYLLABUS

INSTRUCTOR: Simone Tholens
EMAIL: [email protected]
HOURS: MW 3:00 PM 4:15 PM
TOTAL NO. OF CONTACT HOURS: 45
CREDITS: 3
PREREQUISITES: Prerequisite: PL 209; Recommended PL 223
OFFICE HOURS:

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course is an introduction to the study of War, Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies. The course will draw on classical and contemporary global political theory and introduce students to the methods, cases, data, and major theoretical debates that structure the study of war and peace in global politics.

SUMMARY OF COURSE CONTENT:

“War, Peace and Conflict Resolution” is a course that aims to introduce key concepts and analytical frameworks for analysing the various phases and facets of inter- and intra-state war and conflict, and to introduce the field of conflict resolution to students with diverse backgrounds. It focuses on the prevention, management and resolution of wars and conflict, and aims to give students a solid introduction to both the theory and practice of governing conflict in the international system. The course critically examines techniques that are introduced at various stages of conflict to halt escalation, minimize violence, and to move conflicts towards resolution. This includes an analysis of the prevention of violent conflicts, crisis management, negotiations to terminate violent conflict, the resolution and/or transformation of conflicts, and peacebuilding repertoires. Special emphasis will be placed on the role of third parties, such as international institutions, state governments, and NGOs in conflict management. We also engage in critical readings of what interventions in a ‘post-liberal’ era might imply, and discuss contemporary practices related to concepts such as resilience, capacity building, local ownership and complexity.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Students will finish this course able to understand the major causes and consequences of war, as well as critically analyse the role of states, international institutions and communities in a variety of conflict resolution practices. The course also aims to introduce students to the rich methodological universe produced by peace scholars over the last fifty years and their various strategies to analyse the roots and evolution of conflicts.

On successful completion, student will be able to:

Knowledge and understanding

Demonstrate theoretical understanding and practical applicability of key terminology, concepts, institutions and actors defining the field of Conflict Management
Recognize and evaluate the root causes, trajectory and termination of different types of violent conflict and war
Knowledge of historical and contemporary experiences of Conflict Management

Intellectual skills

Analyse crisis situations according to the potential for Conflict Management approaches
Critically reflect on international Conflict Management practices

Transferable skills

Debating and discussing different perspectives and positions in an academic environment
Analytical reasoning in oral and written form
Critically using existing written texts and resources
Critically using electronically available resources
Discussing audio-visual documentary work
Planning and managing group work and the presentation format

TEXTBOOK:

NONE

REQUIRED RESERVED READING:

NONE

RECOMMENDED RESERVED READING:

NONE

GRADING POLICY
-ASSESSMENT METHODS:

Assignment	Guidelines	Weight
Discussion paper	Week 8. Drafting a policy brief on the topic “What is Peace in 2024”	25
Class presentation	Week 10. Each student will be given 10 minutes to present their analysis of a case of conflict resolution. More details to be provided in the beginning of the course.	15
Final essay	The final essay covers the full range of materials, concepts, and ideas from the course. The final assessment consists of a 4500 word essay on a pre-defined essay question which will be made available in Week 12 and is due in Week 15.	40
Moderation of class debate	Preparation of material for students to read, and preparation for a class debate on a topic of choice.	10
Book review	Pick a biography by a person you consider as a 'peacemaker'. Read the book throughout the semester, and provide a verbal review of it in the lass class (Week 14).	10

-ASSESSMENT CRITERIA:
AWork of this quality directly addresses the question or problem raised and provides a coherent argument displaying an extensive knowledge of relevant information or content. This type of work demonstrates the ability to critically evaluate concepts and theory and has an element of novelty and originality. There is clear evidence of a significant amount of reading beyond that required for the course.
BThis is highly competent level of performance and directly addresses the question or problem raised.There is a demonstration of some ability to critically evaluatetheory and concepts and relate them to practice. Discussions reflect the student’s own arguments and are not simply a repetition of standard lecture andreference material. The work does not suffer from any major errors or omissions and provides evidence of reading beyond the required assignments.
CThis is an acceptable level of performance and provides answers that are clear but limited, reflecting the information offered in the lectures and reference readings.
DThis level of performances demonstrates that the student lacks a coherent grasp of the material.Important information is omitted and irrelevant points included.In effect, the student has barely done enough to persuade the instructor that s/he should not fail.
FThis work fails to show any knowledge or understanding of the issues raised in the question. Most of the material in the answer is irrelevant.

-ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS:
ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS AND EXAMINATION POLICY
You cannot make-up a major exam (midterm or final) without the permission of the Dean’s Office. The Dean’s Office will grant such permission only when the absence was caused by a serious impediment, such as a documented illness, hospitalization or death in the immediate family (in which you must attend the funeral) or other situations of similar gravity. Absences due to other meaningful conflicts, such as job interviews, family celebrations, travel difficulties, student misunderstandings or personal convenience, will not be excused. Students who will be absent from a major exam must notify the Dean’s Office prior to that exam. Absences from class due to the observance of a religious holiday will normally be excused. Individual students who will have to miss class to observe a religious holiday should notify the instructor by the end of the Add/Drop period to make prior arrangements for making up any work that will be missed. The final exam period runs until ____________

ACADEMIC HONESTY
As stated in the university catalog, any student who commits an act of academic dishonesty will receive a failing grade on the work in which the dishonesty occurred. In addition, acts of academic dishonesty, irrespective of the weight of the assignment, may result in the student receiving a failing grade in the course. Instances of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Dean of Academic Affairs. A student who is reported twice for academic dishonesty is subject to summary dismissal from the University. In such a case, the Academic Council will then make a recommendation to the President, who will make the final decision.

STUDENTS WITH LEARNING OR OTHER DISABILITIES
John Cabot University does not discriminate on the basis of disability or handicap. Students with approved accommodations must inform their professors at the beginning of the term. Please see the website for the complete policy.

SCHEDULE

COURSE SCHEDULE

PART I: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF WAR, PEACE AND CONFILCT RESOLUTION

Week 1

Class 1: Conflict Resolution as a field of study - Welcome & General Overview

Read the syllabus carefully and bring it with you to the session.

Class 2: Conflict Resolution as a field of study – Framing the debate

§ Required reading:

o Ramsbotham, Oliver, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall. 2016. Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management and Transformation of Deadly Conflicts. Polity. Chs. 1-2.

o Barash and Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, Ch. 2

Week 2

Class 3: The study of War

§ Required reading:

o Davies S, Pettersson T, Öberg M. (2022) “Organized violence 1989–2021 and drone warfare”, Journal of Peace Research. Volume 59, Issue 4, pp. 593-610

o Kaldor, Mary. 2013. “In Defence of New Wars.” Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 2(1).

o Barash and Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, Ch. 3

Class 4: The study of Peace

§ Required reading:

o Galtung, Johan (1969) ‘Violence, peace, and peace research’, Journal of Peace Research 6(3): 167-191

o Ramsbotham, Oliver, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall. 2016. Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management and Transformation of Deadly Conflicts. Polity. Ch. 3.

o Barash and Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, Ch. 1.

PART II: THEORY AND CONCEPTS OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Week 3

Class 5: Causes of conflict: why people fight

§ Required Reading:

o Barash and Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, Ch. 6

Class 6: Causes of conflict: societies and states

§ Required Reading:

o Barash and Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, Chs. 7 and 8

o Fearon, James D. and David D. Laitin (2000) “Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity.” International Organization, 54 (Autumn).

o Lebow, Richard Ned. 1981. Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Chs. 1-4 (pp. 1-97)

Week 4

Class 7: Causes of conflict: Ideological, Social, and Economic factors

§ Required reading:

o Crocker, Chester A, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela R Aall. 2007. Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press. Ch. 12 (Collier).

o Collier, Paul, and Anke Hoeffler. “Greed and Grievance in Civil War.” Oxford Economic Papers 56, no. 4 (2004): 563–95.

o Barash and Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, Chs. 10

Class 8: Conflict management: Preventive peacemaking

§ Required Reading:

o Anderson, Mary B. and Marshall Wallace. 2013. Opting Out of War: Strategies to Prevent Violent Conflict. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Ch. 1-2 (pp. 1-32)

o Lund, Michael S. 1996. Preventing Violent Conflicts: a Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press. Chs. 1-2 (pp. 3-49)

o Zartman, I. William. 2005. Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities to Prevent Deadly Conflict and State Collapse. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner. Ch. 1 (pp. 1-21).

Week 5

Class 9: Conflict management: escalation and brinkmanship

§ Required reading:

o Suzuki, Akisato and Neophytos Loizides. 2011. ‘Escalation of interstate crises of conflictual dyads: Greece–Turkey and India–Pakistan’, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 46, Issue 1, pp. 21-39

o Lauren, Paul Gordon, Gordon Alexander Craig, and Alexander L. George. 2007. Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Challenges of Our Time, 4^th edition, New York: Oxford University Press. Ch. 10 (pp. 198-219).

o Lebow, Richard Ned. 1981. Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Chs. 9-10 (pp. 309-337)

o Zartman, I. William, and Guy Olivier Faure, ed. 2005. Escalation and Negotiation in International Conflicts. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 1 (pp. 3-19).

Class 10: Peace making: Conflict Mediation theory

§ Required reading:

o Zartman, I. William. "Ripeness: The hurting stalemate and beyond." International conflict resolution after the Cold War 2 (2000): 225-250.

o Wallensteen, P., & Svensson, I. (2014). Talking peace: International mediation in armed conflicts. Journal of Peace Research, 51(2), 315-327.

Week 6

Class 11: Conflict Mediation and Negotiation in practice

§ Required reading:

o Barash and Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, Ch. 12

o Christopher Mitchell, 2021, “Mediation and the Ending of Conflicts” (Ch. 11), in Roger Mac Ginty and Anthony Wanis-St. John (eds.) Contemporary Peacemaking, Palgrave.

Class 12: Peace talks, inclusivity and secrecy

§ Required Reading:

o Suzanne Ghais, 2021, “Inclusivity in Peace Processes: Civil Society and Armed Groups”, (Ch. 13), in Roger Mac Ginty and Anthony Wanis-St. John (eds.) Contemporary Peacemaking, Palgrave.

o Niall Ó Dochartaigh, 2021, Negotiating Peace in the Shadows (Ch. 14), in Roger Mac Ginty and Anthony Wanis-St. John (eds.) Contemporary Peacemaking, Palgrave.

o Paffenholz, Thania (2014) “Civil society and peace negotiations: beyond the inclusion–exclusion dichotomy” Negotiation Journal 30 (1): 69-91.

Week 7

Class 13: Terrorism and the listing problem

§ Required reading:

o Federer, Julia Palmiano (2019) “We do negotiate with terrorists: navigating liberal and illiberal norms in peace mediation”, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 12 (1): 19-39.

o Haspeslagh, Sophie (2013) “Listing terrorists”: the impact of proscription on third-party efforts to engage armed groups in peace processes – a practitioner's perspective, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 6 (1): 189-208.

o Toros, H. (2008). “`We Don’t Negotiate with Terrorists!’: Legitimacy and Complexity in Terrorist Conflicts”, Security Dialogue, 39 (4), 407–426.

Class 14: Peacekeeping

§ Required reading:

o Bellamy, Alex J, Stuart Griffin, and Paul Williams. 2010. Understanding Peacekeeping. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press. Part II (pp. 69-153)

o Berdal, Mats and David H Ucko. 2015. ‘The Use of Force in UN Peacekeeping Operations: Problems and Prospects’, in The RUSI Journal, Vol. 160, Issue 1, pp. 6-12.

o Karlsrud, Jon. 2014. ‘The UN at war: examining the consequences of peace-enforcement mandates for the UN peacekeeping operations in the CAR, the DRC and Mali’, in Third World Quarterly, Vol, 46, Issue 1, pp. 40-54.

Week 8

Class 15: Peacebuilding

§ Required reading:

o Barnett, Michael, and Christoph Zürcher. 2008. “The Peacebuilder’s Contract: How External Statebuilding Reinforces Weak Statehood.” In The Dilemmas of Statebuilding, edited by Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk. New York: Routledge. pp. 23-53

o Andreas, Peter. 2008. Blue Helmets and Black Markets: the Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

o Ramsbotham, Oliver, Hugh Miall, and Tom Woodhouse, op. cit., Ch. 8-9

Class 16: Transitional Justice

§ Required reading:

o Hayner, Priscilla B. 2001. Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions. London: Routledge.

o Mironko, Charles and Ephrem Rurangwa, ‘Rwanda’, in Charles T.Call (ed), Constructing Justice and Security after War, Ch. 6 (pp. 193-227).

PART III: NEW ISSUES IN CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Week 9

Class 17: Digital Peacebuilding

§ Required reading:

o Andreas Timo Hirblinger, Julie Marie Hansen, Kristian Hoelscher, Åshild Kolås, Kristoffer Lidén, Bruno Oliveira Martins, Digital Peacebuilding: A Framework for Critical–Reflexive Engagement, International Studies Perspectives, Volume 24, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 265–284.

o Pamina Firchow, Charles Martin-Shields, Atalia Omer, Roger Mac Ginty, PeaceTech: The Liminal Spaces of Digital Technology in Peacebuilding, International Studies Perspectives, Volume 18, Issue 1, February 2017, Pages 4–42.

Class 18: Peace in the grayzone – hybrid warfare

§ Required Reading:

o Chiara Libiseller (2023) ‘Hybrid warfare’ as an academic fashion, Journal of Strategic Studies, 46:4, 858-880.

o Mälksoo, Maria. "Countering hybrid warfare as ontological security management: the emerging practices of the EU and NATO." Ontological Insecurity in the European Union. Routledge, 2020. 126-144.

Week 10

Class 19: Student presentations

Class 20: Student presentations

Week 11

Class 21: A return to great power politics – what role for peace?

§ Required reading:

o Waltz, Kenneth N. “The Politics of Peace.” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 3, 1967, pp. 199–211.

o Rodrik, Dani, and Stephen M. Walt. “How to Build a Better Order: Limiting Great Power Rivalry in an Anarchic World.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 101, no. 5, September/October 2022, pp. 142-155.

Class 22: Authoritarian peacemaking

§ Required reading:

o Lewis, D., Heathershaw, J., & Megoran, N. (2018). Illiberal peace? Authoritarian modes of conflict management. Cooperation and Conflict, 53(4), 486-506.

o Cheung, Harold. "The Rise of Illiberal Peacebuilding and Authoritarian Modes of Conflict Management." Cornell International Affairs Review 13.1 (2019): 4-41.

Week 12

Class 23: Post-liberal interventions and everywhere wars

§ Required reading:

o Abrahamsen, Rita, and Michael C. Williams. “Security Beyond the State: Global Security Assemblages in International Politics.” International Political Sociology 3, no. 1 (2009): 1–17.

o Chandler, David. 2016. “New narratives of international security governance: the shift from global interventionism to global self-policing”. Global Crime, 17 (3-4): 264-280.

o Gregory, Derek. 2011. “The everywhere war”, The Geographical Journal 177 (3): 238-250.

Class 24: Revisiting the war/peace dichotomy

§ Required reading:

o MacGinty, Roger. “Hybrid Peace: The Interaction Between Top-down and Bottom-up Peace.” Security Dialogue 41, no. 4 (2010): 391–412.

o Libiseller, Chiara, and Lukas Milewski. "War and Peace: Reaffirming the Distinction." Survival February–March 2021: A House Divided. Routledge, 2023. 101-111.

Week 13

Class 25: Conflict resolution and the environment

§ Required reading:

o Ramsbotham, Oliver, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall. 2016. Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management and Transformation of Deadly Conflicts. Polity. Ch. 12

o Barash and Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, Ch. 9

Class 26: Conflict resolution and gender

§ Required reading:

o Ramsbotham, Oliver, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall. 2016. Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management and Transformation of Deadly Conflicts. Polity. Ch. 13

o Jana Krause and Louise Olson, 2021, “Women’s Participation in Peace Processes”, (Ch. 6), in Roger Mac Ginty and Anthony Wanis-St. John (eds.) Contemporary Peacemaking, Palgrave.

Week 14

Class 27: The future of conflict resolution

§ Required reading:

o Ramsbotham, Oliver, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall. 2016. Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management and Transformation of Deadly Conflicts. Polity. Ch. 20

o Bargués, Pol. "Peacebuilding without peace? On how pragmatism complicates the practice of international intervention." Review of International Studies 46.2 (2020): 237-255.

o Randazzo, Elisa. "The local, the ‘indigenous’ and the limits of rethinking peacebuilding." Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 15.2 (2021): 141-160.

Class 28: Summing up the course