Faculty Bibliography

Each of the predominate approaches to negotiation and conflict resolution—interest-based bargaining, basic human needs approaches, and narrative approaches—is grounded in a particular worldview with embedded assumptions about why and how parties experience conflict, the building blocks available to construct a solution to their conflict, and the proper design goals and methods for assembling those building blocks. When an approach to negotiation and conflict resolution is misaligned with the worldview(s) inhabited by one or more of the conflict parties, this mismatch may partially explain why a conflict resists resolution. Scholars and practitioners in our field should develop greater fluency in and capacity to work within and across disparate worldviews, so we and those we seek to assist are able to negotiate across worldviews more effectively.

Conflict resolution scholars and practitioners are increasingly focused on possibilities for broader representation of unofficial stakeholders within peace and national dialogue processes, an idea referred to as “inclusion of civil society” actors. Religious actors are among those eligible to participate, according to those contributing to the discourse on inclusion of civil society. This article considers possibilities for inclusion of religious actors as stakeholder-participants in peace and national dialogue processes, arguing that there are contexts in which religious actors should be involved in ways that differ from those in which others are involved.