ABSTRACT
In the 1980s and 1990s, the idea of conflict prevention has become increasingly attractive to many of those concerned by issues of peace and conflict — regardless of whether they work as reseachers, in nongovernmental humanitarian organisations, within the United Nations system, in other inter-governmental organisations, or in governments. Long-term preventive policies are strategic approaches to social, economic and political development designed to build mechanisms that handle conflict with a minimum of violence. A commitment to being ready for short-term preventive intervention creates the need for understanding the processes of escalation and the roots of the conflict. Social science theories of the causes of armed conflict are most likely to concentrate on background conditions and long-range causes in order to develop general explanatory power. The contention for power between new and old political elites is a significant part of the explanation of the build-up to the war between Chechnya and Russia in 1994–96.
