Conflict capability e mediazione: un approccio preventivo alla radicalizzazione e ai comportamenti antisociali in contesti familiari e microsociali

Understanding conflict dynamics among individuals and within society, and devising appropriate intervention strategies offer a relevant perspective for the prevention of radicalization processes. The article outlines an overview of some concrete instruments of analysis and intervention in microsocial conflicts, with special reference to family. We choose as a starting point the notion of “conflict capability”, the ability of human beings of appropriately handling conflict.The model presented here is based on a systemic understanding of social conflict and a transformative approach to foster human capabilities, and specifically women, of dealing with conflict. Friedrich Glasl’s “escalation model” offers a solid foundation in order to define conflict dynamics which is crucial for devising appropriate, context-specific interventions. For the family and microsocial context, we propose as intervention tools empathic communication and “problem solving without losers” proposed by Thomas Gordon, as well as a “systemic transformative” approach to mediation. The article also reflects on the importance of conflict capability in order to reinforce the practice of democracy, building on the contribution of authors such as Chantal Mouffe and Axel Honneth.

Theatre and Democracy: Building Democracy in Post-war and Post-democratic Contexts

Theatre and Democracy: Building Democracy in Post-war and Post-democratic Contexts is the outcome of a longstanding collaboration between two centers of applied theatre education and research in South-Africa and Norway, respectively (2017–2022). It presents knowledge, critical conversations and artistic work related to issues of democracy, both historical and contemporary. Within the global framework of our current (post)democracies, thirteen chapters contain stories and analyses from artists and researchers who all study, understand and facilitate theatre as a political-performative medium in dealing with community-specific democratic issues. The reader encounters studies and reports from specific cases of applied theatre, community culture development and performance activism in countries such as South-Africa, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Norway. There is a common interest in theatre as a platform for active citizenry, as well as several attempts to explore theatre as a platform for “political subjectivation” (Rancière).

Democratic Russia: Why it is not a contradiction in terms

Doubts about building a stable democracy in Russia are usually associated with the peculiarities of both the country’s history and the Russian people’s mentality. However, rather than being exclusively defined by a series of tyrants, Russian history is also marked by impressive attempts at democracy building. The long-standing battle continues to rage between those who advocate that Russia should be developed as a European country and those who adhere to the idea of Russia finding its own peculiar way, defined by autocracy. Indeed, we are witnessing a dramatic escalation of this battle. The specific features of the Russian nation have never been an obstacle to the proper operation of democratic institutions. In addition to sharing democratic values and being ready to implement them in real life, the younger generation of Russian citizens is also able to fight for them as they are now entering the political arena. What precludes democracy in Russia is not its history or the psyche of its citizens but its archaic and incompetent state. Russian society is thus now ready for democracy.

Does aid support democracy? A systematic review of the literature

This study draws on a rigorous systematic review—to our knowledge the first in this area—to take stock of the literature on aid and democracy. It asks: Does aid—especially democracy aid—have positive impact on democracy? How? What factors most influence its impact? In so doing, it considers studies that explicitly focus on ‘democracy aid’ as an aggregate category, its subcomponents (e.g. aid to elections), and ‘developmental aid’. Overall, the evidence suggests that i) democracy aid generally supports rather than hinders democracy building around the world; ii) aid modalities influence the effectiveness of democracy aid; and iii) democracy aid is more associated with positive impact on democracy than developmental aid, probably because it targets key institutions and agents of democratic change. The review presents a new analytical framework for considering the evidence, bringing together core theories of democratization with work on foreign aid effectiveness. Overall, the evidence is most consistent with institutional and agent-based theories of exogenous democratization, and least consistent with expectations drawn from structural theories that would imply stronger positive impact for developmental aid on democratization.

Morally motivated protest in the face of orthodoxy – environmental crisis and dissent in Australian democracy

The circumstances in which civil disobedience is appropriate are, in most theories of justice, circumscribed and subject to preconditions. In his justification of the role of ‘ambivalent dissidents’, Habermas emphasizes the role of civil disobedience as a corrective to inadequacies in deliberative democracies. Other commentators have bolstered his commentary by exploring the conditions of social power that would justify civil disobedience in a deliberative democracy. This article continues such reflection on the conditions under which civil disobedience are justifiable in complex modern societies, building in particular, on the mass protests of Extinction Rebellion, and exploring the role of communicative freedom as a necessary precondition to the validity of civil disobedience. Manifestations of modern protest appear to inhibit speech: both progressive and conservative interests utilize strategies with potentially censoring effects. ‘No-platforming’, social media pile-ons and online shaming are deployed to effectuate ‘moral education’ in the face of orthodoxy, and defamation suits and other forms of strategic litigation are deployed to leverage existing forms of power. This article will reconsider Habermas' discursive will formation and the place of ‘no-saying’ and mass protest in an established democracy. Building upon the idea of ambivalent dissidents, the article will use the Australian experience to critique mass protest as dissent, and in particular to consider the conditions of environmental crisis justifying a suspension of discursive mediation of norms.

Towards an Inclusive Conception of Best Practices in Peace and Conflict Initiatives: The Case of the South Caucasus

The field of peace and conflict studies has been maturing over the past few decades, not least thanks to the continual epistemological contestation between its philosophy and methodology. As a consequence, the methods of conflict resolution practice have been evolving. Dominated by realist approaches of conflict management during the Cold War, the field in the 1990s relied heavily on neo-liberal theories of economic interdependence, democracy building, and interest-based negotiations that can bring win-win outcomes. By the late 2000s, as the constructivist paradigm and critical theory started gaining ground in academia, the conceptual conversation shifted toward the possibilities of building inclusive societies and achieving structural and cultural peace via conflict transformation, rather than resolution, as the respective methodology.

Descriptive Representation and Conflict Reduction: Evidence from India's Maoist Rebellion

Can greater inclusion in democracy for historically disadvantaged groups reduce rebel violence? Democracy building is a common tool of modern counterinsurgencies, despite so far limited evidence about whether and how duringconflict institutional reforms mitigate violence. We evaluate whether quotas for Scheduled Tribes in local councils reduced rebel violence in two Maoist insurgencyaffected Indian states, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. We employ a geographic regression discontinuity design to study the effects of identical quotas in the two states, finding that reservations reduced Maoist violence in Chhattisgarh, but yield a precisely estimated null effect in neighboring Jharkhand. Based on qualitative evidence from Chhattisgarh, we argue that quotas reduce violence when they bring local elected officials closer to state security forces, providing a windfall of valuable information to counterinsurgents. Our study shows how institutional engineering can alter the political economy of information provision, which in turn can shape the trajectory of a conflict.