Mac Ginty (2006:77): Sees many conflicts as chronic and overlapping, but the means deployed to resolve them as acute and focused on more immediate issues.
Mac Ginty (2006:86): Identifies five principles and assumptions guiding conflict assessments:
- conflict has multiple causes — therefore it requires a complex analytic framework.
- interaction effects between factors, and the way in which they may have a multiplicatory influence, matter
- it is necessary to prioritise conflict causation factors and decide which are most important
- flexible methodologies that account for local circumstances are required — there is no one-size-fits-all model, and the state may be more or less important as an actor in different contexts
- analyses need to account for both direct and indirect violence and look at structural impediments to peace
Mac Ginty (2006:90): In addition to adapting the five core principles, proposes three additional ones that must inform critical peace assessments:
- there can be no ‘sacred cows’ — individuals, institutions, or issues that cannot be criticised or reevaluated
- there needs to be a critical and deep examination of the impact of development and peace support activities
- it is necessary to identify positive factors preventing the reemergence of conflict.
Mac Ginty (2006:99):
Mac Ginty (2011:54):
Autesserre (2021:66): Effective peacebuilding is not built on outsider knowledge and ideas, transplanted from one conflict zone to another. Rather, it requires the expertise and insights of insiders.
Autesserre (2021:148): “Local people have the skills and knowledge necessary to promote peace and uphold the mechanisms, structures, and networks that help to perpetuate it. The resulting ‘peaceful’ societies may not be paradises; conflict is inherent to social life.”
Autesserre (2021:149): “an exclusively top-down strategy leads to disaster. By the same token, an exclusively bottom-up strategy can only produce a very fragile and temporary easement of violence, because manipulation by national leaders, or interference by neighboring armed groups, can jeopardize virtually any local peace. Furthermore, civilians cannot defeat armed groups single-handedly. Nor do ordinary people have the networks necessary to build peace over an entire country. Isolated local successes do not automatically translate into national peace: Certain villages, towns, or regions (like San José de Apartado, Idjwi, and Somaliland) may be peaceful for years while the neighboring areas, and the country itself, remain at war. “It is not that national and international tensions don’t matter — they do — or that national and international peacebuilding is unnecessary — it is. We need to convince the heads of states and rebellions to stop encouraging physical combat and fueling local tensions. We also have to address national and global issues that perpetuate war: discriminatory laws and institutions, arms trade and other economic interests, power struggles on the world stage, etc. In addition to any local initiative, top-down approaches are still very much needed to confront violence.”
Autesserre (2021:149): “only a combination of macro-level and micro-level initiatives can build a sustainable peace. Supporting bottom-up work should not take place at the expense of top-down efforts, precisely because they complement each other.”
Autesserre (2021:174): Some organisations are “briefcase NGOs,” set up to divert funding but not engaging in any meaningful reconciliation or peace work. Sees insiders as playing a role in identifying “which local groups are worth supporting: which ones are not briefcase NGOs, which ones have legitimate, trained, competent, and honest staff, which ones actually promote peace rather than hatred.”