Sharing the State for Peace? Advances and Challenges in the Study of Territorial Self-Governance as a Tool of Conflict Management

Abstract

After decades of scholarship, it remains contested amongst academics and policy-makers alike how useful territorial self-governance can be in reducing the risk of territory-centered civil wars. This is problematic, including from a policy perspective, as – according to the most recent UCDP/PRIO data – territory-centered conflicts account for approximately 63% of all violent conflicts between 2008 and 2018, and we know that they are generally long-lasting, costly in their impact on human lives and livelihoods, and hard to resolve sustainably. In this Panel we reflect upon the current state of the art on territorial self-governance as a tool of conflict management, by focussing on advances and challenges in the following areas: i.) conceptual issues in the definition of different forms of territorial self-governance, conflict, peace and violence; ii.) theoretical assumptions in the study of institutional design as a tool of conflict management; iii.) methodological considerations in data collection and analysis; and iv.) knowledge exchange between academic and non-academic communities.

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