The Origins of Contemporary Conflict : A Comparison of Violence in Three World Regions

Why do large-scale violent conflicts occur? Can specific causes of conflict be identified? The search for the origin of violent conflict has long occupied political scientists. Nowadays, the issue has also become relevant for policy-makers and the public at large, as diplomatic, humanitarian and military interventions into violent conflicts around the world bring those crises to everyone?s doorstep. To make such interventions successful, to prevent future outbursts of violence and to contribute to a peaceful reconstruction of society, accurate knowledge on the origin of these conflicts is indispensable.

This study unravels the causes of conflict from an empirical perspective and is based on the results of an international research programme by the Conflict Research Unit of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations ?Clingendael? and its counterparts in South Asia, West Africa and Central America. Twenty conflicts have been studied under this programme, including minority insurgencies, border wars and raw power struggles, as well as revolutionary uprisings and resource-related conflicts. The study discusses the main findings of these cases and aims to grasp the impact of different potential causes ? labelled as social, economic, political and external ? on the occurrence or absence of violent conflict. The research shows that conflicts cannot usually be accounted for by monocausal explanations, and describes the complex constellations of multicausal and context-specific realities that surround contemporary violent conflicts.

In contrast to many observers who have lately emphasized the importance of socio-economic factors such as poverty and inequality, this study reasserts the significance of political factors in the occurrence of conflict. The nature and functioning of the state, processes of political exclusion, the repression of minority groups and lack of adequate power-sharing are highlighted as central factors in the origin of conflict.