ABSTRACT
This chapter explores several well-publicised cases, such as Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and Israel/Palestine, in which conflict resolution efforts were consciously aimed at restructuring political systems. International conflicts that prove unmanageable by the United Nations or other international organisations may present conflict resolvers with similar opportunities to assist in the creation of a new consensual order. Conflict resolvers working in the context of malfunctioning but arguably viable state systems frequently find their quest for problem-solving solutions hamstrung by alleged ‘political realities’: the intertwined structures and vested interests of the uncollapsed state. The technocrats tend to accept as ‘givens’ existing conflict management arrangements enshrined in state institutions, and the political, legal, and moral norms that are felt to legitimise them. The role of conflict resolution, as they see it, is not only to settle individual disputes but also to assist in the formation of the political will needed to make structural changes possible.
