ABSTRACT
This book focuses on challenging organizations that rely in significant measure on violent means of struggle in intrastate conflicts. Our goal is to better understand how these organizations shift away from violent forms of struggle, engage in politics, and then continue in non-violent relations with their former adversary. Such changes have become more common since the end of the 1980s, with violent conflicts more frequently ending through negotiations or by petering out than through the defeat of one side by the other (Human Security 2008). At the same time, a closer look at the data shows that those intrastate conflicts that ended through negotiation or by petering out had a higher probability of reemerging within five years than those conflicts that ended in victories. Non-violent forms of conflict termination may be on the increase, but nearly 40 percent of peace agreements fail within five years (Harbom et al. 2006). What explains these trends? What contributes to the movement of antagonists away from using violent methods of struggle? How are some processes of political engagement sustained while others are not? Each of the chapters in this book offers some clues to help answer these questions by providing new insights about the conditions and context that nurture and sustain constructive forms of conflict transformation.
