17 Comparten mercado de interés
IMPLANTACIÓN DE UN SISTEMA DE INDICADORES
2.3. Cuadro de mando integral
While there was no formal field of "conflict research" until well after the Second World War, earlier views of conflict seem to reflect three fundamental assumptions. In the first place, a distinction was made between what one might call interpersonal conflict and inter-state conflict. The former was regarded as not necessarily rational, and could to some extent be understood in terms of what social psychologists have called "individual differences". The latter was regarded as inherently rational. In other words, conflict at the inter-state level was assumed to be based upon a "win-lose" calculation of interests and cost-benefits.
A second assumption was that conflict was inherent in human nature.
Although 18th and 19th century philosophers from Locke, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx as well as the utilitarian such as Mills and Owen had assumed the eventual "perfectibility" of mankind, human beings as they
existed in their present state were for all intents and purposes essentially Hobbseian.
Finally there was an issue of perceived legitimacy that separated inter- state conflict from intra-state conflict. Scholars accepted that there were
"just" and "unjust" inter-state conflicts, or, wars, but legitimacy had not until relatively recently been extended to the sort of intra-state conflict that stemmed from ethnic, religious and economic oppression. One might argue that since the Treaty of Westphalia, that concept of sovereignty – with all its presumptions of legitimacy and inviolability – was regarded for almost four centuries as a right equivalent and, more often than not, surpassing that of so-called "human rights".
The growth of the social sciences such as psychology and sociology, the calamities that triggered substantial interest in the behaviour of states at a broad systemic level of analysis and a slowly emerging sense of global interdependence began to challenge the three assumptions. Non- rationality or indeed irrationality was regarded as perhaps as relevant an explanatory factor for state behaviour as it was for personal behaviour.
Human behaviour could not necessarily be explained from solely Lockeian or Hobbseian perspectives, but could be analysed and could possibly even be tested based upon a complex set of inter-active variables and conditions. And the natural legitimacy of states and even the concept of sovereignty began to be called into question as the state- centric system moved from a small, relatively homogenous "club" to a more diverse, heterogeneous collection of accidents and impositions.
Since the early 1960s, the conventional assumptions about power, rationality and sovereignty were increasingly challenged. Fundamental to such challenges was the emergence of a profound discourse on the very nature of knowledge itself. This endeavour to explain "how we know what we know" was led by scholars such as Popper, Ravetz, Lakatos and Kuhn. Hand in hand with this epistemological debate emerged a group of scholars ready to go well beyond the traditional disciplines of history, the classics and moral philosophy to explore the roots and dynamics of conflict. Rapaport, Brickman, Gunn and Lorenz, for example, introduced a range of social scientific disciplines into the study of conflict, including psychology, sociology and anthropology. In addition, Boulding, Nicholson and Runciman were among a growing group of conflict analysts who were using relatively sophisticated social science methodology, methodology that perhaps might open the way to testable hypotheses about conflict.
Ironically, the state-centric school of rational power-politics was challenged by an event that ostensibly reflected all the traditional rules of power calculations, namely, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The
complexities of world politics were becoming more evident at the same time they seemed to become more inter-dependent. Regime issues – be they concerned with the law of the seas, patents and copy rights or the environment – could no longer be regulated by the manipulation of conventional power alone. More and more actors were affecting what increasingly became referred to as the world, or global system.
Multinational corporations, multilateral organisations, religious and ethnic groupings, non-governmental organisations were all directly impacting upon what heretofore had been seen as a system of sovereign, holistic state actors.
The challenge for policy-makers as well as scholars was to explain the dynamics of this emerging global order and the threats facing it. Allison, Halperin, Jervis, Steinbruner and Wohlstetter were among the growing number of analysts who saw that the Cuban Missile threat – and conflict in general – could be interpreted in terms of the ways in which organisations functioned internally the interactions between organisations the interplay between domestic and inter-state politics and, indeed, in terms of the very processes by which human beings make decisions. Not only was the rational actor model that underpinned classical conflict analysis ripe for a major rethink, but perhaps even more worrying for many was that the very mechanisms designed to make rational decisions [e.g. ministries of foreign affairs, defence departments] could be themselves the inadvertent, non-rational source of conflict.
To what extent were, for example, the factors that led up to the super power stand-off over Cuba unique? Could they explain the sorts of potential confrontations one might face in the future, or even the conflicts that one had suffered in the past? And in posing such questions, to what extent could one generalise about the nature of conflict not only over time, but also at various levels of the system – within communities, within the state, between and among states?
Eventually, as these questions were posed, intricately related issues emerged. If one understood the nature of conflict, could one also resolve or prevent it? In a world in which there seemed to be an increasing belief that one could understand the complexities of human-beings and those forces that led to violence, could one in turn transpose such understandings to other types of structures and systems? In so doing, could conflict be prevented? To what extent could one generalise about the nature of conflict, conflict prevention and resolution, and to what extent could such generalisations serve a practical use?
As a major “conflict researcher” note:
…conflict researchers continue to employ a wide variety of approaches but hold to a common belief that a general understanding (if not a general theory) of all social conflicts is possible. It can be attained by seeking common patterns and processes in conflicts in all social arenas, from the local community to the international system, and transferring findings between different areas (or levels) to increase understanding of this complex and universal phenomenon.