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To achieve an integrative and coherent approach to conflict prevention and peace building, a framework or infrastructure is needed. This framework should incorporate state and non-state actors and set out a clear division of labor, a precondition for effective action aimed at preventing violent conflict. A parallel infrastructure must also be established in conflict zones. The pillars below describe the infrastructure proposed.

This chapter examines the role of political recycling – the practice of repeated utilization of former high-level politicians in government – in forestalling or, at least, minimizing conflicts among political players. Drawing upon observations from recent political experiences of Japan, the chapter first demonstrates that political recycling in Japan is deeply embedded in the society's cultural practices rather than in the system of liberal democracy, which its leaders espouse. Political recycling in Japan, in fact, exhibits features that are antithetical to liberal democracy. The dynamic relationship between political recycling and conflict prevention in Japan are then analyzed as well as the implications of the analysis for places in Africa where political conflict has been rampant.

This chapter aims to present the implementation of the United Nations 1325 resolution about the rights of women, including their protection against violence. This resolution is the main international instrument which incorporates and mandates a gender perspective in all aspects of peace building, from prevention to conflict resolution. It is part of a necessary evolution of gender relations in peace building since 1975 and the Conference of Mexico. More broadly, this text would lead to improve the women’s representation presence in the social and economic sphere and their important role in development.

The importance of the security-political strategies of Africa's subregional organisations was accentuated in 2002 with the launching of the African Union's Common African Defence and Security Policy (CADSP), which will include, among other things, the establishment of a Continental Early Warning System and an African Standby Force. From that point on, subregional organisations were to be the building blocks of an all-African approach to security politics. The strategies of these organisations range from the top-down approach of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to the bottom-up approach of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Taking into account the particular characteristics of Africa's regional conflicts, this article examines the relevance for the CADSP of the approaches to conflict prevention and resolution of the latter two organisations. It analyses, first, the challenges facing the African Standby Force through an examination of ECOWAS's security-political strategy, and, second, the challenges facing the Continental Early Warning System through a look at IGAD's strategies. It suggests that two main issues are of critical relevance for the success of the CADSP. First is the lack of compatibility between the all-African strategy and the strategies of the various subregional organisations. Second is the lack of compatibility between formal processes of integration and trans-state regionalism within the continent. Although formal processes of integration are important, informal processes often play a much stronger role, undermining much of the progress made by the formal processes.

Two trends mark the contemporary international scholarship on conflict and resolution. The scholarship on conflict has begun to look systematically at intra-state conflicts and track the role of non-state actors, along with the more established trend of analysing inter-state conflict. Conflict resolution has also moved beyond looking at states and national and global-level NGOs to the role of local, non-state actors in preventing and/or minimising conflict. While the “mainstream” scholarly work emphasises a linear process of reaching resolutions in the aftermath of a conflict (e.g. Burton, 1990; Galtung, 1965), a range of “related” scholarship has begun to focus on factors that prevent conflict and their rapid diffusion over wider areas, as well as factors that contribute to longer term, peaceful, resolution (e.g. Das, Kleinman, Lock, Ramphele, & Reynolds, 2001; Sabet, 1998; Varshney, 2001). These related literature look beyond political solutions such as conflict management, boundary adjustments, and treaties, and the role of international and national formal bodies to resolve and manage conflict; their emphasis is on conflict prevention, the healing of conflict victims, and building and sustaining peace. With the recognition, in the 21st century, of the escalating production and spread of weaponry, the power of non-state actors to generate significant conflict, as well as the rapidly growing proportion of people who suffer from and cope with the aftermath of such conflict, the expanded frames for understanding conflict and resolution, requires further attention.

Cultural heritage destruction, acts that are carried out by both state and non-state actors, have accompanied violence towards people in all types of wars throughout human history. Used as a means to cause terror and to directly perpetuate harm on a particular group of people, heritage destruction ultimately erases the history of the people and denies them a future at the same time. Heritage destruction, as such, is a topic that is directly relevant for conflict and peace economics. Yet, economics literature on heritage destruction, especially during epochs of violence is scant at best. Presenting some examples of heritage destruction during mass atrocities, this chapter discusses how heritage destruction is related to causes, conduct, and consequences of violence. Doing so illustrates how heritage destruction could be incorporated in extant conflict and peace economics studies and their relevance for post-conflict reconstruction and violence prevention.

Thomas E. Boudreau graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude from Boston College. He completed his PhD in the Social Science Program in 1985 at the Maxwell School of Citizen and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. While at the Maxwell School, Boudreau was the research assistant for Donald T. Campbell, the Schweitzer Chair of the Humanities at Syracuse University. He also worked as Project Director of the Crisis Management and United Nations Research Projects at the Carnegie Council in New York City. He taught at the School of International Service at American University and the University of Pennsylvania before coming back to the Maxwell School where he currently teaches in the Political Science Department. He is also a research fellow at the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge, MA, where he has specialized in issues of global governance, global climate change, and nonproliferation. Boudreau has written two books: Sheathing the Sword: The U.N. Secretary-General and the Prevention of International Conflict and Universitas: The Social Restructuring of Undergraduate Education in the United States. He is currently working on a third book, The Law of Nations: Legal Order in a Violent World. He has a special interest in interdisciplinary inquiry, especially competing epistemologies and how they contribute to interpersonal, intergroup, and international conflict.

As Africa strives to catch up with the rest of the world at the economic, political and sociocultural fronts, there is an increasing coalescence around the need for backward integration and the revival of traditional business management practices as enablers in the global war for economic dominance. Unfortunately, a significant consequence of colonial rule was the systematic denigration and portrayal of traditional African institutions and knowledge systems as inferior to those of the West. Although the negative depiction of the African worldview has been extensively challenged in the academy, changes in their perception and adoption have remained slow. The ‘Igbo Apprenticeship System’ (IAS), widely recognised as the largest business incubator platform in the world today, is a great testament to the sophistication and resilience of indigenous African business models and the need to scale up their impact as a strategic step towards the economic emancipation of the continent. However, one fundamental aspect of IAS's success story that is hardly ever mentioned in the extant literature is its approach to conflict management. Understandably, business by its nature is competitive and conflict-prone. Nonetheless, the Igbos appear to have successfully managed different types of conflicts associated with their traditional business model without recourse to western methods or processes. Using a conceptual approach, this chapter attempts to examine the efficacy of the conflict transformation mechanisms in the ‘Igbo Traditional Business School’ (I-TBS) against the background of emerging challenges in the twenty-first-century business environments in Africa and around the world. From the prism of the Conflict Transformation Theory, the chapter argues that I-TBS can serve as a vehicle for the economic growth of the continent, but it must be prepared to deal with ‘new’ conflicts and demands arising from within and outside of its ecosystem.

The basis of the analysis carried out in this part of the work was the normative and advisory sources included in the system of Russian law in the sphere of corporate conflicts regulation.

For the purpose of a comprehensive study of the existing norms and the definition of promising trends in their development, the provisions of policy acts of a strategic nature, such as the concept of development of the legislation of the Russian Federation for the period 2008–2011 and the concept of 2016 to improve the legislation of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2021 were studied.

The study examined the provisions of industry-specific codified acts of both regulatory and advisory nature, such as the civil code of the Russian Federation, the code of corporate conduct (now invalid), and the code of corporate governance, approved by the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Russia from April 10, 2014.

Among the special Federal laws that form the basis of positive legal regulation of corporate conflicts are: Federal law No. 205-FL “On amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation”; Federal law No. 82-FL of May 19, 1995, “on public associations”; Federal law No. 193-FL of December 8, 1995, “on agricultural cooperation”; Federal law No. 7-FL of January 12, 1996, “on non-profit associations”; Federal law No. 79-FL of July 27, 2004, “on the state civil service of the Russian Federation”; Federal law No. 7-FL “on non-profit associations” of December 25, 2008, g. 273-FL “on combating corruption”; the Federal law of March 2, 2007 No. 25-FL “on municipal service in the Russian Federation.”

In the course of the study, the authors actively formed an empirical base and turned to judicial and arbitration practice, which were: the Decision of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation of July 18, 2003, No.14-P “in the case of verification of the constitutionality of the provisions of Article 35 of the Federal law “on joint stock companies,” Articles 61 and 99 of the civil code of the Russian Federation, Article 31 of the tax code of the Russian Federation, and Article 14 of the Arbitration procedural code of the Russian Federation; the Decision of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation of March 15, 2005. No.3-P “in the case of verification of the constitutionality of the provisions of paragraph 2 of Article 278 and Article 279 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and paragraph 2 of paragraph 4 of Article 69 of the Federal law” on joint stock companies; resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation of June 20, 2007, No. 40 “on some issues of practice of the provisions of the legislation on transactions with interest” ; resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of June 26, 2018, No.27 “on challenging major transactions and transactions in which there is an interest”; Resolution of the FAS of the Ural district of June 23, 2004, No. F09-1854/04-CL, etc.

The concept of “conflict” in terms of etymology, as well as social conflictology and social sciences is studied in the chapter on the example of the works of L. Coser, J. Von Neumann, N. Morgenstern, V. Yadov, T. V. Novikova, etc.

Studying corporate conflicts in legal doctrine, the authors turned to the works of D. I. Dedov and A. A. Kirillov.

The theory of interest and “legally protected interests” were studied thanks to the works of Rudolf von Ihering, who as the main idea behind the development of mechanisms for their balance. In the Russian doctrine, the issues of subjective and legitimate interests were developed in the works of Y. S. Gambarov, V. P. Gribanov, N. M. Korkunova, and G. F. Shershenevich.

The essence of socially significant interests that receive legal regulation from the state and become legal (legal) interests was studied on the basis of the works of N. V. Vitruka, R. E. Gukasyan, O. S. Ioffe, E. A. Krasheninnikova, and N. I. Matuzova.

The methodological basis of the study was a set of general and particular scientific research methods: observation, complex and diversified analysis, synthesis, analogy, comparison, explanation, proof, induction, deduction, reduction, elementalism, systematic approach, methods of comparative law, specific sociological research, historical, logical, statistical, etc.

The purpose of the research is to generalize the most perspective ideas of modern researchers and to form the authors’ position on the problem of the notion of legal conflict from the point of view of its application in the practice of legal conflicts management. The methodology of the research consists of structural and functional approach that allows studying legal conflict as a complex system, each element of which performed a certain function. During formulation of the notion “legal conflict,” the formal and logical method of dieresis is used, which allows differentiating legal conflicts from other social conflicts and differentiating the notion from adjacent categories. The authors study the main directions of legal conflict in the modern science. Tendencies of development of ideas of legal conflict are determined. Conclusion on the necessity for formation of “flexible” definitions of the notion “legal conflict,” oriented at their application in the practice of conflict management, is substantiated. Criticism is applied toward the researchers that try to use the methods of conflict research for analysis of purely legal phenomena (legal collisions, gaps, arguments on competence, etc.). Definition of legal conflict is formed and it is shown how it is possible to build a system of diagnostics of legal conflict on its basis. It is concluded that definition of legal conflict always sets main directions of study of the phenomenon, due to which there are different definitions of the corresponding notion, depending on researcher’s orientation at studying the conflict or means of its solution. The key sign of legal conflict is the possibility of its regulation with legal means, which is realized by the conflict participants. It is necessary to view conflict as a space of opportunities – for participants and for legal bodies. It is necessary to form and develop a system of diagnostics of legal conflicts.