Where Knowledge Becomes Powerful in Conflict Resolution Policymaking

Christopher Timura

Christopher Timura

Conflict resolution is both an area of academic research and an area of policymaking. While most anthropologists are familiar with the power dynamics that shape how research is conducted and conveyed in academia, they may be less familiar with the power dynamics of policymaking. Understanding the latter is critical for anthropologists who are interested in participating in the policymaking that impacts the conflict zones where many of us work.

Policy Forums and Workshops
A key challenge in understanding the relationship between conflict resolution scholarship and policymaking is figuring out how the context-rich knowledge of conflict settings frequently produced by scholars is incorporated into the analytical frameworks used by policymakers. I examined this process as part of a larger research project focused on the globalization of international conflict resolution expertise.

Among the most productive sites for observing this process of incorporation of knowledge were the many policy forums and workshops convened by NGOs, academic programs and think tanks. “Forums” were frequently 2–3 hour panel discussions with audience participation, “workshops” were several day affairs with multiple panels, break-out sessions and plenary panels or talks. These events offered a singular vantage point for the participant observer as well as for others in the field to observe what their peers were doing.

They were unique because they were attended not just by representatives of the civil society organizations that were active in particular regions or specialties, (so long as such individuals happened to be in London, DC, or elsewhere, of course), but also because decision makers, sometimes highly placed ones, would make it a point to attend them or at least send a proxy.

Policy forums and workshops also served as opportunities to observe the kinds of knowledge that circulated among those in attendance. In addition they allowed me to identify who was active in the conflict resolution efforts in particular regions or areas of the field. Perhaps not surprisingly, policy knowledge, or the knowledge that is used in policymaking decisions, is not the same as the deeply contextual and local knowledges that are the bread and butter of anthropological monographs or areas studies courses.

Reframing Anthropological Knowledge
Occasionally, an anthropologist or other scholar would be invited to be a panel participant, but the kinds of knowledges they would share would frequently fail to hit the mark; eyes would glaze over, note-taking hands would stop scribbling, and rarely would this knowledge form the premise of a follow-on question from the audience.

Even though the information was arguably the most accurate and complete knowledge of a conflict’s context, it was out of place at these events. Thus detailed analyses of the impacts of violence on local populations, on the histories of inter-ethnic or other group relations in an area, of the meaning of particular tactics of warfare, on the social and political organization of non-state-level constituencies were simply not modal at these events.

As these forums helped to make apparent, this kind of knowledge needed to be reframed in order for it to become actionable knowledge for those gathered. For instance, one hallmark of this reframing is that the many individuals and groups involved in conflicts are identified and renamed according to the lexicon of policy: as “stakeholders,” “civil society organizations” and “the grassroots,” and other terms that are the stock in trade of the international development and security communities.

Similarly, specialists would put developments in the history of a given conflict into “policy time,” to sort them into specific phases such as “latent conflict” or “open conflict,” in a “conflict cycle.” Through the reframing process, conflict resolution specialists also objectified the conflict in the terms of science, often borrowing terminology and graphic techniques from the physical and social sciences to the make the conflict appear tractable and to make effective interventions more plausible.

The way that conflict resolution specialists reframed this local knowledge into policy knowledge made it more user friendly for institutions poised to make interventions in conflict settings. Thus, for example, in a situation where, for political reasons, the UN Security Council could not deem a conflict a threat to international security, the UN might instead be able to authorize the disbursement of development aid for “conflict prevention” at an early stage of a conflict. This might include conflict resolution training for civil society leaders.

Similarly, the World Bank might not be able to authorize money to support political reconciliation projects between government and rebel leaders, but it could support “post-conflict” reconstruction lending in Sri Lanka. The best CR specialists could read developments in any given conflict, translate them to fit within particular analytical and institutional policy frameworks and then recommend the best mode of intervention.

What Makes an Expert?
Observing the creation and use of policy knowledge at these events also gave me keen insight into what it took to become an effective conflict resolution expert. Out of the many people that would gather at these events, there were several, more expert specialists that regularly participated as audience members, as conveners and as panelists. I learned through interviews with them that they shared a set of specific skills and traits that enabled them to become precisely the kinds of specialists that decision-makers liked to call upon for advice on conflict interventions.

First and foremost, they are “multilingual,” fluent in the policymaking vernaculars of the several institutions that form the context of conflict-related policymaking. This fluency is critical. Those sympathetic to the promise of conflict resolution work now occupy positions in most national agencies and institutions. However, each individual agency within these respective institutions is constrained by institutional policy statements, various kinds of auditing requirements, institutional structures, and by the demands of their respective constituencies—lawmakers, NGO observers, taxpayers, donors. Those on the inside of these institutions with ready access to the funding proposals, the policy memoranda and the country reports of conflict resolution specialists gained the right language to enable them to effectively leverage political and economic resources within their institutions.

Second, they have Rolodex power. Many of these individuals have amassed large lists of contacts through years of attending forums and workshops, their own professional training, their employment history, and their mentoring and cultivation of junior members in the field. Their ability to quickly locate or reference and identify other players in the field (“Oh, you need to talk to so-and-so…”), or to be available for a brief call or consultation on negotiating or conflict dynamics (say, a three minute debriefing on the Israeli-Palestinian relations), makes them central to policymaking in specific conflict regions or subject matter areas of the field.

And third, they tend to share specific kinds of sentiments regarding what is possible in conflict situations. These shared sentiments are cultivated and made apparent to participants in the field in several specific ways, and are frequently articulated in generational terms, or with reference to specific political movements and canons of scholarship. More interestingly, these sentiments are also often explicit conversation topics among specialists with individuals casting themselves and others as children of the 60s or realpolitik, as peace studies- or conflict management-types, or as true believers or résumé builders.

The power of these shared sentiments cannot be overstated. With time always short and the information environment always supersaturated, policymakers are inclined to place their trust in experts they know to share their own sentimental attachments, much more so than in the advice of those unknown to them, even if that information is better premised on experience in a specific region.

The Value of Ethnographic Snapshots
Like a Kodak moment, participant observation at these conflict resolution policy forums made for ethnographic moments par excellence. They certainly revealed many of the most important players in conflict-related policymaking. Closer examination of the work that is accomplished at these events later also revealed some of the more specific professional and social dynamics in the field, and highlighted the power of ethnographic approaches to studies of policymaking.

Of course not all policy knowledge is exchanged in forums like those described here. In other areas of policymaking, knowledge is far more likely to be discussed behind closed doors, or produced and shared by well compensated lobbyists. However, rather than proceed deductively from the premise that policymaking is always a domain of the political elites, or from assumptions that money or political power will determine policy outcomes, beginning inductively with questions such as: “what kinds of knowledge are valued,” “why is it valued,” and “who participates in its reframing” can provide empirical and accurate understanding of these processes. Exploring the answers to these questions can also provide a roadmap for anthropologists interested in using their various kinds of local knowledge to affect policy changes.

Christopher Timura received his anthropology PhD and law degree at the University of Michigan, and currently works as an international trade and commercial litigation attorney in Washington DC. This commentary is based on research supported by the University of Michigan International Institute and Wenner-Gren Foundation and published as “Negotiating Expertise: The Globalizing Cultures of British and American Conflict Resolution Experts” in PoLAR in 2004.