Conflict and Governance

From January 2011 PRIA commences a new research project that will bring together researchers from Europe and India working through a collaborative consortium on the role of governance in the resolution of socioeconomic and political conflicts in India and Europe. This EU funded consortium, coordinated by International Peace Research Institute (Oslo) will include researchers from Norway, Germany, Italy, U.K, Hungary and India. Dr. Sumona DasGupta, Senior Researcher, is the Scientific Contact for this research project.

The project envisages breaking new ground by exploring the interface between governance and conflict. This will be examined through a combination of fieldwork and statistical analysis leading to theory building. The arena of governance will be mapped through the state of democratic institutions, management of resources, human rights, rule of law, policing and civil society in selected conflict areas across India and Europe. The studies from Bihar, North East India, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus and Georgia, will be particularly attentive to issues around identity and culture and are expected to generate a repertoire of context sensitive case studies that will feed into subsequent policy making and theory building. Through the case studies the consortium seeks to foster a better understanding of the impact of governance initiative on conflict resolution among the various actors of the conflicts. The cases studied represent different types and concerns of conflict resolution and different regions India and Europe to get as nuanced a picture as possible.

The consortium envisages a variety of outputs, including a report series addressed for EU and Indian policy makers and the wider public; international conferences and stakeholder meetings, a database mapping key governance initiatives, scientific articles and working papers for the research community; several policy reports, a published project publication and a high profile web forum for enhanced communication between researchers, policy-makers, practitioners and the wider public.

For PRIA this project represents an exciting new opportunity for applying its long experience on governance work and participatory methodologies to conflict settings. It comes at a time when the interface between governance and conflict is increasingly being recognized as one that requires more research and engagement particularly as militarized conflicts involving state and non state actors as well as other forms of political and social violence assume new proportions in the contemporary world.