Contemporary Conflict A~lysiS in Perspective 23
goals, anticipate consequences of their actions and eventually conceptualise
possible outcomes of their actions and interactions with other parties in con-
flict. Conflict groups also vary immensely in the resources they have at their
disposal to use coercive, rewarding, or persuasive inducements.
Finally, another major variant in the relations between conflict groups is
the social system that they constitute or to which they belong. The social con-
text in which the parties to a conflict exist is not only a source of their dis-
content but also helps provide the criteria for evaluating conditions and pos-
sible changes. The formulation of goals is channelled by the contexts within
which the contending parties exist. Within the group's context, an important
aspect characterising relations between antagonists is the degree to which
conflict regulation is institutionalised. Kriesberg highlights this in the follow-
ing way:
"... if there are generally supported and well-understood procedure for
handling disputes, matters of possible contention tend to he viewed as
competitive, and not conflicting, or as part of a larger exchange rela-
tionship, and not simply as a zero-sum relati~nship."'~~If the social context in which the parties to a conflict exist is both a source of
their discontent as well as the channel for their actions, it is important to
move up one level from the conflict group's level. Azar's "protracted social
conflict" concept emphasises that its sources lay predominantly within states
with four clusters of variables identified as preconditions for their transfor-
mation to high levels of intensity: communal content, deprivation of human
needs, governance and the state's role, and finally, international linkages."'
The need to consider various causes located at multiple levels of analysis is
clearly evident. While analysis focused in the first instance on identity
groups, moving a level up to the role of the state is necessary for "it is the
relationship between identity groups and states which is at the core of the
problem':'38
We must now turn to the state level in order to understand both the under-
lying as well as the proximate conditions underlying conflict occurrence.139
Consequently, the analysis of the conditions underlying conflict which are
variously termed in the literature as 'underlying causes'l*, Sandole's 'con-
flict-as-startup conditions', Goodhand et al's 'structural dimensions or
sources of latent/open ~onflict"~~, Charles King's 'structural component^""^
or Waltz's 'permissive or underlying causes of war', must be considered
jointly with the 'permissive' or 'proximate' causes and triggers causing con-
flict emergence, that is, the stage when parties become aware that they have
incompatible goals, thereby transforming what were underlying factors into
manifest issues. This is importance for while cleavages are at the basis of
group awareness and group formation, manifest conflict issues are funda-
mentally a product of group interaction and inter-group relations. Because