PEACEW RKS

PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

Lauren Van Metre and Jason Calder

[ [

HOW SOCIETY RESPONDS TO VIOLENCE
Cover photo: Teenage schoolchildren protesting gun 

violence march in a festival parade in Quetzaltenango, 

Guatemala. Photo by Paul Liebhardt/Getty Images.

The views expressed in this report are those of the 

authors alone. They do not necessarily reflect the 

views of the United States Institute of Peace.

United States Institute of Peace

2301 Constitution Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20037

Phone: 202.457.1700

Fax: 202.429.6063

E-mail: usip_requests@usip.org

Web: www.usip.org

Peaceworks No. 121 First published 2016.

ISBN: 978-1-60127-614-8

© 2016 by the United States Institute of Peace

About the Report

Based on research and a series of working group 

meetings hosted by the United States Institute of Peace 

(USIP), this report explores the concept of resilience in 

the context of peacebuilding and conflict-affected states 

and how socioecological systems respond to violence. 

About the Authors

Lauren Van Metre, PhD, led the Applied Research Center 

at USIP and currently conducts research and writing on 

community resilience to violence in Ukraine and Kenya. 

Jason Calder is an international peacebuilding and 

development expert and is currently the Carter Center’s 

country director in Guyana. 
PEACEWORKS • SEPTEMBER 2016 • NO. 121

CONTENTS

Introduction ... 5

Resilience: Societal Response to Stressors and Shocks ... 5

Case Studies ... 10

Socioecological Systems ... 16

Resilience of States and Societies, Communities, and Individuals ... 18

Resilience and Peacebuilding ... 20

Challenges ... 22

Operationalization ... 23

Conclusions and Recommendations ... 25

[The sense is growing that strengthening a society’s 

capacity to overcome violent shock and communal 

stressors could play a key role in preventing conflict and 

achieving a more sustainable postconflict recovery.]

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PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

Summary

■ Resilience refers to a socioecological system’s (community, society, state) response to violence and capacity to both maintain peace in the event of a violent shock or long-term 

stressor and resist the pernicious impacts of violence on societal norms and relationships.

■ Considerable research has been done on societal resilience and resistance to hegemonic 

threats, which can inform how the peacebuilding field thinks about resilience to violence.

■ Increasingly, researchers and practitioners are exploring together how social systems 

respond to violent conflict, creating a rich foundation for understanding their resilience.

■ Resilience is an attribute of a social system to respond to long-term stressors or shock and 

has neither a negative nor a positive quality. Societies can be resilient to violence, and 

systems of violence can be resilient to positive change.

■ Responses to violence—adaptation, absorption, and transformation—can differ in scale 

and approach. The peacebuilding field focuses on transformation, when perhaps absorption 

and adaptation may be more realistic.

■ A resilient response to violence involves actors that self-organize and learn within the 

system and institutions and norms (a regime) that support absorption, adaptation, and 

transformation.

■ A crucial aspect of resilience is response diversity, or the ability of a system to respond in 

different ways to a violent shock or stressors, which increases the odds that a successful 

response will emerge.

■ Resilience is not the same as invulnerability; even highly resilient social systems can be 

propelled into violence as a result of severe stress or an overwhelming shock.

■ Supporting a society to become more resilient could play a key role in preventing conflict 

and achieving a more sustainable postconflict recovery.

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Introduction

Colleagues in the fields of humanitarian and development assistance have long been using the 

concept of resilience to better integrate their work and to make it more sustainable by ensuring that communities that have experienced a natural or man-made disaster are equipped to 

withstand possible future shocks. With emphasis on the strength and capabilities of local communities, prevention planning and early warning, and future risk and community response, the 

concept is also gaining sway in the peacebuilding community. Researchers and practitioners 

in the fields of peacebuilding and conflict resolution have begun to work together to test the 

concept’s utility for their work.1

The sense is growing that strengthening a society’s capacity to overcome violent shock 

and communal stressors could play a key role in preventing conflict and achieving a more 

sustainable postconflict recovery. Resilience helps focus attention on the positive attributes and 

capacities of communities, thus helping outside actors become more driven by community-led 

efforts than by their own institutional capacities and perspectives. It puts human agency at the 

center of efforts to manage social tensions and conflict, which, in turn, creates new pathways 

for communities to learn. Taking a systems approach—relationships and feedback loops—to 

solving complex societal problems also allows for better measurement of causality and impact. 

The concept’s recent adoption by the peacebuilding field provides an opportunity for critical 

evaluation and scrutiny: can its application, in analysis and implementation, fundamentally 

change peacebuilding practices?

This report draws on recent research on societal and state resilience and the findings of a 

literature review on the concept’s utility in the peacebuilding field. The United States Institute 

of Peace (USIP) also hosted a series of working group meetings with academics, practitioners, 

and policymakers from the conflict resolution field to explore their perspectives on incorporating resilience into practice.

Resilience: Societal Response to Stressors and Shocks

Resilience, as a term, connotes flexibility and adaptability. As a concept, resilience has proven 

equally flexible and adaptable in its use by various professional fields. For example, the disciplines of engineering, psychology, sociology, and ecology have interpreted and used resilience 

thinking to yield new insights, approaches, and measurements. Yet each has defined resilience 

quite differently. In the field of engineering, resilience means maintaining the status quo or 

experiencing a shock and returning to an original state. In the field of psychology, resilience 

means having personality traits that allow an individual to respond effectively to stress and 

catastrophic events—that is, resilience is an innate attribute of an individual or system.

Ecologists study the resilience of complex, adaptive systems, and it is this conceptualization 

that has the most promise in its applicability to socioecological systems and violence because 

it captures the interaction among and between the structures of a system and the actors and 

communities within it (see table 1, socioecological community). An ecosystem consists of a 

community of species inhabiting and interacting with each other and with the environmental 

basin it inhabits; the unique qualities of the external environment (clear water or turgid water; 

prairie or tundra) structure that basin. The interaction between the community and the environmental structure constitutes the ecosystem’s regime; it is affected by the types of interactions 

within a community of species (ecosystem) but also by changes in the basin’s structure (see table 

1, regime). In the case of a shock or long-term stressor, community (species) interactions or constellations might change, or the shock or long-term stressor might affect the structural elements 
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of the basin, tipping the ecosystem into a different basin or environmental state. The distinctive 

interactions between the ecosystem and the basin’s structure constitute a regime.2

Resilience is characterized by a system’s (ecological or socioecological) response to a shock 

or long-term stressors in order to maintain the same regime (see table 1, resilience). A system 

can be drawn to multiple residual or latent states, called basins of attraction (see table 1, multiple 

attractors). These are alternate states that a socioecological system is predisposed or attracted 

to within a larger stability landscape. The analogy of a ball and basin for a regime is useful 

for explaining the flexibility and endurance, or resilience, of certain regimes and how rapidly 

regime shifts can occur. Any socioecological system (group, neighborhood, or government) 

inhabiting a shallow basin—one without deep, broad parameters—can easily tip into another 

existing basin of attraction when experiencing a shock or long-term stressor. The new interactions of a community with a different set of structural factors (basin) represents a regime shift 

(see table 1, regime shift). Analysts were surprised by the rapid fall of the Soviet Union and the 

communist regime but had long acknowledged the existence of long-term stressors (demographics, ethnic separatism, exposure to the West with détente, a growing educated class) that 

were eroding the contours of communism’s socioecological system and the rapid emergence of 

new and latent basins of attraction, such as ethnic nationalism, democratization, and authoritarianism (see table 1, stability landscape).

Based on resilience, the field of ecology is shifting from controlling disturbance (shocks 

and stressors) to shoring up the ability of an ecosystem for self-repair, which requires both 

species and response diversity. Different species ensure that important functions in a healthy 

ecosystem are maintained (for example, decomposers, predators). However, most important 

for resilience is response diversity, or the ability of different species to respond in different 

ways to a shock, which increases the odds that a successful response or set of behaviors will 

emerge. Thus, adaptation, transformation, and self-organization are the central attributes of a 

complex system’s approach to resilience.3

The peacebuilding community has found in complex systems a useful body of theory for 

understanding violence and complex emergencies.4 Scholars have developed systemic perspectives on chronic violence, sectarian conflict, and political violence. 5 It is important to note here 

that resilience, from a systems perspective, is normatively neutral—a point that will be explored 

later in greater depth. A violent or authoritarian system can be just as resilient as a peaceful 

one. Because the ideas of violence and peace are not normatively neutral, this report will refer 

to a resilient nonviolent system as positive and a resilient violent system as negative. Drawing 

on theory and concepts from the study of resilience in socioecological systems, and adopting a 

peacebuilding (positive) perspective, this report defines a resilient system as one that is able to 

absorb, adapt, or transform itself through self-organization and learning to maintain its basic 

function (peace) in response to violent shocks and long-term stressors buffeting the system. 

The resilience of a peaceful socioecosystem is also the product of its regime—the structure and 

variables that shape the contours of the basin (societal structures), and the system’s interactions 

with it, and which are characterized by nonviolence.

Long-Term Stressors

Absorption and adaptation involve the ability of actors to resist and adapt to various threats to or 

within the ecosystem. Transformation involves the capacity of actors to bring about a regime shift 

in which the ecosystem moves from one regime to another (for example, from authoritarian to 

democratic or civil peace to civil war). This definition accounts for the imperfect peace that often 

Resilience is characterized 

by a system’s response to a 

shock or long-term stressors.
Socioecological System Terms Definition1 Analogy in Conflict Studies

Multiple attractors (states) and 

alternative system regimes

The alternative regimes that a complex 

system can tend toward. Perturbations can 

bring a system over a threshold that defines 

a given regime and causes the system to be 

attracted to a contrasting regime.

The alternative regimes that a complex 

social system can tend toward; for example, 

from (a) peaceful coexistence, to (b) intergroup conflict, to (c) systemic violence and 

oppression, to (d) a failed state/society that 

are defined by characteristic behaviors and 

maintained by mutually reinforced processes 

and feedbacks.

Example: The Soviet Union’s fall was rapid 

because of the emergence of other, alternate 

regimes, such as Russian nationalism and 

liberal democracy, that societal actors were 

attracted to.

Regime (basins of attraction) The characteristic behavior of a system, 

maintained by mutually reinforced processes 

or feedbacks. These behaviors have threshold levels beyond which the system enters a 

new regime.

The contours, dimensions, and thresholds 

that define one of the alternative regimes of 

a social system on a peace-to-violence spectrum. Tolerance and coexistence, intergroup 

violence, or state-sponsored killings are 

behaviors that mark the boundaries of these 

separate, alternative system regimes.

Example: According to Tani Adams, relationships in Guatemala are structured by a 

regime of chronic violence, where violence is 

reproduced at every level of the system.2

Regime shift A change in a system regime from one 

regime or basin of attraction to another. 

A sharp shift that stands out from normal 

fluctuations. 

(A) A change in a societal system from one 

regime or pattern of behavior to another. (B) 

The regime shift can be caused by long-term 

stressors that erode the system’s resilience 

and can push the societal system into a 

new stability basin, such as from peaceful 

coexistence to inter-group violence. (C) An 

intense shock can also push a system to a 

new regime.

Example: The shock of the invasion of Iraq 

resulted in a regime shift in Baghdad, where 

the system moved from a multiethnic polity 

to a patchwork of ethnic enclaves.3

Resilience The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially 

the same function, structure, identity, and 

feedbacks.

The capacity of a social system to mitigate 

or recover from a violent shock or long-term 

stressors to maintain peaceful function.

Example: In the aftermath of widespread 

election violence in 2007, Kenya forced 

changes in political structures (devolution) 

and societal behavior (civil society action) to 

prevent another violent election shock.4

Shocks A sudden perturbation of 

large magnitude of a system.

A violent event.

Example: Varshney identified the destruction 

of the Babri Mosque in India as a shock to 

Hindu-Muslim relations that triggered countrywide ethnic riots.5

Table 1. Key Terms and Concepts
1. Carl Folke, Stephen R. Carpenter, Brian Walker, Martin Scheffer, Terry Chapen, and Johan Rockström, “Resilience Thinking: Integrating Resilience, Adaptability and 

Transformability,” Ecology and Society 15, no. 4 (2010): art. 20.

2. Tani Marilena Adams, Chronic Violence and Non-conventional Armed Actors: A Systemic Approach (Oslo: Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, 2014), 7.

3. Ami Carpenter, Community Resilience to Sectarian Violence in Baghdad, Peace Psychology Book Series (New York: Springer, 2014), 13.

4 Brian Kennedy and Lauren Bieniek, Moving Forward with Constitutional Reform in Kenya: A Report of the CSIS Africa Program (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and 

International Studies, 2010), 7.

5. Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 142.

6 Valerie Rosoux, “Is Reconciliation Negotiable?” International Negotiation 18, no. 3 (2013): 471–93.

7. Gëzim Visoka, “Three Levels of Hybridisation Practices in Post-conflict Kosovo,” Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 7, no. 2 (2012): 23–36.

8. Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life, 220–37.

Socioecological System Terms Definition1 Analogy in Conflict Studies

Socioecological community Individuals in a community interact to 

determine community structure. Following perturbations, the community, if it has 

resilience, returns to the same configuration, 

while large perturbations may induce a shift 

to another configuration. The community 

perspective requires the existence of alternative stable states. Because communities have 

some level of resistance to change, they will 

stay in their domain of attraction (or stable 

state) until the perturbation is large enough 

to force the community into another regime.

A community that experiences violent 

conflict and learns from and adapts to the 

experience in order to preserve its social and 

political relationships and the structural factors that define that community.

Example: After World War II, the socioecological communities of France and Germany 

recreated relations within and between their 

communities and created new institutions to 

structure these new relationship patterns that 

emphasized negotiation and dialogue and 

created the basis for a new socioecological 

community—a unified Europe.6

Stability landscape The extent of the possible states of system space in which alternate regimes are 

embedded. 

A “peaceful society” stability landscape would 

be defined as the absence of armed internal 

conflict (e.g., civil war, insurgency, counterinsurgency, violent state repression). Across this 

landscape are alternative regimes (valleys) representing varying degrees of “peace” defined 

by variation in the control variables important 

to maintaining a peaceful society: effective 

borders, basic security, government services, 

legitimacy/acceptability of government, social 

tolerance, a functioning economy, etc. The 

contours of these regimes differ based on the 

values associated with the different variables. 

For example, more “democratic, inclusive” 

regimes and more “authoritarian, unfair but 

still peaceful” regimes can exist within this 

broader landscape. The value of these control 

variables will experience change over time, 

and this will impact the shape (e.g., depth, 

width, aperture) of the regimes in a stability 

landscape.

Example: The intervention in Kosovo resulted 

in a system that was between regimes, 

partially progressive liberal and partially war 

economy.7

Stressors A sustained perturbation of a system that 

causes gradual change over time.

An ethnic group within a society receives 

favored treatment by the state over time, 

which results in increasing ethnic mistrust and 

declining confidence in the state.

Example: Varshney identified the erosive 

power of slow processes on communal peace 

in the cities of Ahmedabab and Surat, where 

politicians in the Congress Party stopped mobilizing and organizing members across ethnic 

lines. This slow deterioration in ethnic association resulted in urban riots in these two cities.8
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exists in fragile states and communities, allowing for both positive and negative adaptations and 

transformations to take place. Although major shocks to the system (for example, rebellions, coup

d’etats, invasions) are obvious threats to a peaceful order, the movement of slow variables over time 

(for example, erosion of rights, dissolving associational bonds, accumulating grievances) are equally 

important to understanding what causes regime shifts (see table 1, stressors).

In a comparative study of three pairs of cities in India—some experienced riots and others 

did not—Ashutosh Varshney notes the erosive power of slow processes on communal peace. 

Certain cities, such as Ahmedabad and Surat, approached national independence as examples 

of institutionalized peace systems but, over decades, experienced increased ethnic rioting as 

the nature of their communal relationships changed. Politicians, interested in acquiring greater 

personal power, captured the Congress Party and stopped engaging the party’s mass organization through mobilization and organizational work: “The more the party prospered in power, 

the more its civic vigor weakened.” Another political party, Bharatiya Janata (BJP), continued 

to mobilize citizens and civic life in many of these cities, but sought primarily to establish 

relations between Hindu castes and not between Hindu and Muslim groups. Thus, the BJP 

reinforced intra-ethnic bonding, contributing to the higher rates of ethnic rioting in those 

communities experiencing the slow, degenerative effects to their interethnic associational life.6

The World Bank’s Development Report 2011 recognizes the interplay of internal and external stressors on conflict dynamics.7

 The legacies of violence and trauma felt by a domestic 

population can be exacerbated by external support for violent actors within a country. Other 

examples of how internal and external “slow” processes can interact and push a societal regime 

from peace to violence include global economic downturns that increase group inequalities in 

a country or transnational terrorist recruitments that manipulate local grievances.

Violent Shocks

Other authors have outlined the impact of a violent event or shock on socioecological systems 

that, at regime equilibrium, are characterized by generally peaceful interaction among societal 

groups (see table 1, shocks). Beatrice Pouligny describes from a community perspective the 

impact of individual trauma on a system’s social ecology. Violence both destroys and transforms 

relationship networks. It tears down the trust that is essential for collective action and allegiance 

to political leaders. Identity groups forge new solidarities with armed groups and gangs for 

self-protection or to advance group interests.8 Yet violence also transforms social identities in 

ways that are not always destructive: the status of youth and women changes as a result of the 

leadership roles they assumed during the violence, which can create new opportunities but also 

family and social tensions. In these ways, violent shock changes group perceptions and behavior, 

breaking down the normative function and cooperative structure of nonviolent regimes.

Based on an analysis of the response of Baghdad communities to rising sectarian violence, 

Ami Carpenter describes from a systemic viewpoint how the norms and structure of a nonviolent regime break down. First is a shift in psychological perspectives: the blaming of others for 

negative experiences, the interpretation of ambiguous behavior as threatening, the diminishing 

of inhibitions against aggressive behavior, reduced empathy, zero-sum thinking, and the deindividuation and dehumanization of the Other.9

 Once these changed psychological perceptions 

take hold, group dynamics change. Groups see their safety and identity in zero-sum terms—

“if they exist, we are not safe”—and intra-group cohesion becomes more pronounced. When 

social groups more tightly bond, they can develop contentious group goals and feel empowered through a strong sense of intergroup righteousness and justice to aggressively pursue those 
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goals.10 Predation, fear, violence, and war signify a systemic shift from nonviolence to violence. 

The breakdown in intergroup cooperation is confirmed by Monty Marshall in a large N study 

of the most fragile states—partial democracies with high group factionalism.11 Marshall’s study 

shows that when a social system has been exposed to prolonged social conflict or incidents 

of violence, individuals will leave a cooperative core or groups favoring noncoercive political 

action. This changes norms and behaviors, such as deference to authority or the adoption of 

individual self-defense strategies, which buttress emerging regimes of authoritarianism or social 

atomization, respectively. Regimes that are resilient to violence, on the other hand, have certain 

characteristics that provide buffer capacity: “Organizations, resources, and community processes 

are set up in ways that build and increase the collective capacity for learning, adaptation and 

self-organization.”12

Between chronic violence and stable peace, socioecological systems are situated along a 

spectrum of equilibria regimes (for example, factionalism; systematic discrimination; discrete, 

localized violence; high levels of criminal violence). The ability of a social system to absorb 

or adapt to a violent shock and maintain its identity and function peacefully is dependent on 

where it falls on that violence-to-peace spectrum. Resilience capacity is also highly relational 

to the size of the violent shock and the tenacity of long-term stressors. Analysis of resilience 

needs to focus on both sides of the correlation—that is, at what magnitude of violence or stress 

does a socioecological system stop being resilient?

Case Studies in the Resilience of Socioecological Systems

Societal resilience varies, of course, with context and with capacity. The examples in the discussion that follows are grouped by type: absorption, adaptation, and transformation.

Absorption

Nepal. How socioecological systems respond to violence can have both positive and negative 

features and depends on both the scale of the shock or stressor and the ability of a regime to 

foster adaptation and learning. At the community level, Nightingale and Sharma studied the 

resilience of Nepal’s Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) amid the violent conflict of 

the decade-long Maoist insurgency. They define resilience as “the ability of CFUGs to respond 

to conflict conditions, to negotiate difficulties, and to return to regular functioning after a 

period of pressure.”13 The authors conclude that both the institutional design and community self-organization and agency, expressed through strategies and tactics adopted by the user 

groups, contributed to resilience, with the latter being the more decisive factor.

Control and capture of development resources fueled the insurgency and was an important 

variable in the struggle for economic and political control in many local areas. In areas they 

controlled, the Maoists sought to destroy symbols of the state, rendering development programs such as the community forestry program a potential target. The income generated from 

the program was attractive to insurgents or corrupt army officials. For the government army, 

the forest also hid insurgent forces and thus represented a security concern. The community 

forestry program became a central element of the local struggle for survival for many communities, who found themselves host to the armies of one side of the conflict or the other or 

simultaneously caught between them.

By the start of the insurgency, the program was an established success and a model for community conservation and development that supported hundreds of thousands of households. 

At what magnitude of 

violence or stress does 

a socioecological system 

stop being resilient?
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PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

The authors find that several characteristics of the program’s institutional structure helped enable 

community resilience. First, legal ownership and control over the forests was vested with 

community user groups, thus giving villagers a compelling stake in the program with an economically valuable asset. User groups were formal and inclusive, bringing in marginalized groups 

(for example, women, Dalits, tribal groups). Their meetings were bound by clear rules and held 

regularly; and decisions, especially related to income and expenditures, were made transparently 

and by consensus and noted in written records. Critically, the user groups were constituted as 

community institutions, not arms of the state, giving villagers an independent and impartial 

identity in the conflict. These design characteristics produced mutually reinforcing feedbacks 

among economic empowerment, transparent governance, community competence, social cohesion, and a conflict-impartial identity.

Vulnerable, less resilient communities were those that were structurally compromised in 

some way, either through corruption or the lack of transparency and inclusiveness of their 

decision making. Such groups were often undermined by their own members. They lacked the 

moral authority to negotiate effectively, particularly with the Maoists, who could exploit grievances rooted in social exclusion. These groups were forced to compromise more with armed 

groups that reduced their resilience. Recovery during the postconflict period for such groups 

was much more difficult.14

Within this overall framework, many user groups were able to resist armed groups through 

self-organization, adaptation, and the creative and flexible use of resources. First, user groups 

successfully engaged both the insurgents and the army in dialogue about respecting their autonomy and operations. Members cited the negotiation skills and self-confidence gained through 

the community forestry program as being beneficial in this dialogue. Among the other common 

tactics, groups changed the location and timing of meetings to maintain privacy and inclusivity. In some instances, decision-making processes were changed to include all group members 

to ensure full consensus, limiting the potential for debilitating internal grievances to develop. 

Although the groups were forced to pay donations to the Maoists, they successfully negotiated 

these payments downward from what others were forced to pay. In one instance, groups of 

CFUGs organized collectively to pay a significantly lower tax to the Maoists.15 To travel and 

maintain access to their forests, user groups developed systems of identification cards they used 

with both the insurgents and the army. In some circumstances, groups mandated that members 

deliberately travel in politically and socially mixed groupings; if stopped, they could assert a neutral identity and draw on the various social or political linkages represented in the group. Some 

groups even thinned their forests, stockpiling the wood for future use, to reduce the security risk 

that a thick forest might represent to the army, which was wary of insurgent ambushes.

All these actions reflect the CFUGs’ ability to learn and adapt to extraordinary pressures. 

The community was able to absorb the shocks and stresses and maintain its structure and core 

function as a source of development and livelihood amid the changing conflict around them—

a demonstration of absorptive resilience. Although groups were sometimes forced to give up 

some of the control over their resources to maintain autonomy and the space to operate, they 

fared better than other local economic actors and development projects, which were often 

taken over by insurgents.

Iraq. Unfortunately, many social systems have been unable to weather a violent shock—not 

necessarily because of a lack of capacity to maintain peace, but instead because of the magnitude 

of the shock. In some instances, simmering tensions among communities have been unleashed 

by a transformative event.
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The U.S. invasion of Iraq is a vivid example of a shock that not only removed a political regime but also sent repercussions throughout a society and overwhelmed capacities in 

many areas to maintain local peace. Although Saddam Hussein maintained a brutal regime 

that privileged Sunni elements of the country’s sectarian divide, Baghdad nevertheless had 

the capacity to function as a multiethnic center for commerce and culture for centuries. As 

noted earlier, Ami Carpenter provides compelling case studies of communities in Baghdad 

that countered the pressures of sectarian polarization and conflict escalation by adapting to the 

changes brought on by the conflict. Despite the adaptive capacity of some of these communities, she maintains that Baghdad as a whole demonstrates how failure to absorb a shock can 

often lead to transformation. In 2006, Baghdad changed from an integrated whole, marked by 

sectarian coexistence, to a patchwork of ethnic enclaves. The city remained intact as a center 

of people and commerce, but its inability to completely absorb the intensity and duration of 

violent shock fundamentally changed its identity as a multiethnic polity.16

Adaptation

Kenya. Kenya’s response to the aftermath of the 2007 elections provides an example of how violence forced political structures and societal behavior to change to maintain a peaceful regime. 

The widespread ethnic violence that followed the contested election resulted in 1,500 deaths 

and the displacement of a half million people. The electoral violence quickly overwhelmed the 

country’s capacity to manage the conflict. However, Kenyan civil society at local and national 

levels responded quickly to intervene in multiple areas to stop the killing and prevent further 

cycles of violence. Former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan headed the diplomatic effort that eventually forged a political agreement between the elected president and his 

main electoral rival and led to the National Accord and Reconciliation Act of 2008. The accord 

established a unity government and mandated a constitutional reform process to address the 

underlying drivers of the violence, which were centered around the distribution of power among 

Kenya’s ethnic groups.

Kenya’s constitution of 1969 underwent several rounds of reform in the postcolonial era, 

but the fundamental grievances of Kenya’s major ethnic groups were never resolved. The 

political system was highly centralized, largely run by a powerful executive presidency. The electoral system encouraged mobilization along ethnic lines, not across them. The financial system 

reinforced the corrupt and divisive tendencies of the political and electoral systems and perpetuated significant inequalities across ethnic groups. The 2007 postelection violence was rooted in 

these grievances; to address them, reforms were instituted to devolve governing power down to 

the local level. The reforms included the creation of directly elected county councils as a new 

level of democratic local government; an upper house of the legislature to strengthen this branch 

of government in relation to the executive; constitutional limitations on the size of the cabinet to 

reduce the potential for patronage; mechanisms to increase citizen participation in governance 

through means that enhanced the autonomy of some smaller ethnic groups; and the transfer of 

major public finance functions from the executive to the legislature.17

Collective action networks comprising key elites and civil society groups that helped quell 

the electoral violence also helped shepherd the constitutional reform process through to a 

successful referendum, despite controversy and political resistance. Adaptive capacity helped 

these networks to shift their attention from managing direct violence to supporting structural 

reforms to address the root political causes of violence. Although the general elections of 2013 

were largely peaceful, conflicts over tribal access to political power, land, and water are still of 

The electoral system 

encouraged mobilization 

along ethnic lines, not 

across them.
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PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

great concern, as is the growing problem of public corruption. Meanwhile, the devolution of 

central power, which helped address conflict in 2007 at the national level when Kenya’s political 

parties struggled violently for control of the structure and assets of the national government, 

is now seen as a possible driver of conflict at the local level. With government resources now 

devolved to counties and municipalities, political and tribal violence may have simply been 

pushed to that level. It is a healthy reminder of the persistence of different types of conflict 

within systems and the ongoing need to strengthen resilience capacities.

Guatemala. A perverse resilience in Guatemala is a reminder of the nonlinearity of postconflict transitions where, despite the emergence of communities and institutions that promote 

peace, the overall identity of a regime—that of violence—stays the same, as violent actors and 

systems also adapt. A decades-long civil war in Guatemala that killed two hundred thousand 

people finally came to an end in 1996 with the Guatemalan Peace Accords. The accords helped 

usher a regime shift within the conflict landscape, but the adaptive resilience of key sections of 

society (for example, the military, militias, gangs), external shocks (deportation by the United 

States of gang members), and long-running social stressors (such as social exclusion, crime, 

corruption, high poverty and inequality, weak state) have created a situation in which violence 

levels today are higher than they were during the war.

Two models are helpful in understanding the changes that have occurred in Guatemalan 

society. One is Tani Adams’s model of chronic violence, a self-reproducing system with effects 

that can be traced across the full arc of human development—from the maternal-child bond of 

early life to the attitudes and behaviors underpinning the citizenship practices necessary for a 

democracy.18 The other is John Bailey’s notion of a security trap, a negative equilibrium in which 

violence, criminality, and corruption have penetrated the security complex, state administration, and elements of politics and civil society, ultimately eroding the democratic regime.19

Both models acknowledge the multigenerational legacies of structural and direct violence from 

the precolonial era and the increasingly hybrid nature of violence spanning the criminal, political, and social realms.

In Bailey’s security trap, the corrosive effects of crime, violence, and corruption dominate and 

overpower any corrective efforts by civil society and government. The trap may have existed to 

some degree during the war, but it deepened during the postwar period, fueled by the surge in 

drug trafficking through Central America. Already affected by high poverty, inequality, social 

polarization, and a weak state (with the exception of the army), Guatemala was unequipped to 

handle the influx of sophisticated urban gangs, violence, public corruption, and the breakdown 

of law and order that accompanied increased drug trafficking. Gang violence was markedly 

exacerbated by the influx of deported gang members from the United States. Levels of both organized and ordinary crime exploded. Lack of citizen security and ineffective or heavy-handed 

policing led to a rise in vigilantism in some areas. In other areas, communities entered into protective alliances with local gangs. Public corruption in the police, judiciary, and political system 

increased. The rise in both public and private forms of illegality, informality, and corruption has 

fed growing public distrust in formal law and the legitimacy of the democratic regime—hallmarks of the security trap and current state of affairs in Guatemala.

Adams’s model of chronic violence puts the widespread social violence plaguing states like 

Guatemala in the context of the role that unaddressed trauma has on human development 

and functioning. The capacity for violence is passed on to younger generations, when children 

experience and are habituated to violence (criminal, gang, domestic) at an early age. This has 

profound implications for the future and all levels of the social system: “Traumatization in 
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childhood in particular contributes to a higher incidence of lifelong physical and mental illness 

and destructive behavior. Left untreated, it affects all aspects of human behavior, undermines 

how individuals see themselves in relation to others—including the capacity of parents to 

raise their children constructively, and the cohesion and functioning of communities—and 

enables more violent social patterns to take root and become normalized, stimulating further 

polarization and conflict.”20 Unbroken links between the violence of the past and present create 

reinforcing feedback loops that undermine the ability of a societal system to make a peaceful 

regime shift while violent actors learn and adapt.

Transformation

Transitions from armed societal violence to peace or from authoritarian systems to democratic regimes are examples of transformative regime shifts where community and systemic 

responses to the shock or long-term stress of violence drive changes in characteristic behaviors and the regime’s feedback loops. When they occur, they deservedly garner overwhelming 

attention and consideration in the peacebuilding field and by others struggling to find peace. 

The examples of South Africa and Northern Ireland are cases in point. The high relapse rate 

of civil conflicts requires caution in ascribing finality to any transition.21 For example, Mozambique, long heralded as the African peacebuilding success of the 1990s, is currently experiencing renewed armed violence against the state despite two decades of strong economic growth 

and democratic elections deemed largely credible by the international community. Countries 

like Guatemala and El Salvador benefited from transformative peace accords but today suffer 

from levels of social violence that are higher than during their civil wars. A systems perspective 

does not see these cases as an indication of backsliding but rather as the resilience of conflict 

systems to regenerate in new ways if the structures, institutions, and actors responsible for 

deepening the basins of peaceful regimes are unable to thrive over those that seek to use violence to pursue their interests.

France and Germany. A system demonstrates transformational resilience when actors within 

the system or structural conditions outside it bring about a regime shift. The reconciliation of 

France and Germany after World War II represents a violence-to-peace regime shift and demonstrates the complex interplay and feedback between structural changes driven by external factors and changes to the socioecological system driven by actors within. Valerie Rosoux’s parsing 

of the different forms of reconciliation between France and Germany underlines these mutually reinforcing processes.22 After the war, the governments of France and Germany established 

“structural and institutional mechanisms to reduce the general perception of the threat and to 

resolve any possible disagreement” that might reignite hostilities. One mechanism—an economic 

union for coal and steel—established joint institutions to drive economic and political interdependence, while cultural exchanges and informal and formal political, economic, and education 

consultations reinforced new patterns of interrelating based on negotiation. Rosoux notes that, 

in this case, and in reconciliation processes in general, structural shifts, based on negotiated peace 

settlements and the interests of the political elite, often occur first. Transformations in relationships (the community perspective)—the psychological shifts in attitudes and beliefs about the 

Other—take longer, but can, as in this case, be moved along by shifts in structural factors. The 

establishment of multiple, layered negotiations and high levels of people-to-people exchanges 

between the two countries restructured relationships with and psychological perceptions of the 

Other that have led to reconciliation and regime transformation. Rosoux points out the centrality of negotiated processes to transformation and notes that reconciliation attempts that are not 

Countries like Guatemala 

and El Salvador benefited 

from transformative 

peace accords but today 

suffer from levels of social 

violence that are higher 

than during their civil wars.
USIP.ORG 15

PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

negotiated—government- or internationally-driven reconciliation programs—fail because they 

result in resistance to an imposed model and undermine the agency of socioecological communities to define their postviolence relationships and structures.

India. A regime shift causes the basic nature of a system to change for the better, as in the 

case of French-German relations, or for the worse, as in some of the cases covered by Varshney’s 

seminal study of ethnic conflict and peace in India.23 The slow change in variables over time usually proves decisive in bringing about regime shifts. Varshney undertook comparisons of cities 

where sectarian violence was endemic and where peace was maintained. Controlling for other 

factors, he determined that interethnic civic ties were a central factor in demonstrating resilience 

to violence. First, regular contact and social familiarity between Hindu and Muslim communities enabled communication. This allowed for organizations to emerge (for example, peace 

committees) from the bottom up to manage crises. Such groups “policed neighborhoods, killed 

rumors, provided information to local administration, and facilitated communication between 

communities in times of tension.” Second, associational civil society relationships organized 

around business (small and large), trade unionism, politics, and social and educational interests. 

When interethnic, these bridging ties provided a foundation that would hold up against polarization and provocations. The state could play an important role in preventing ethnic violence, 

but it was not determinative; it was the nature of civic relations that determined whether the 

local authorities and police could manage ethnic shocks or stressors, not the other way around. 

Endemic ethnic rioting in India occurred where there was a nexus between politicians and 

criminals who could manipulate the potential for violence. Politicians who could benefit from 

exploiting tensions would not do so in the face of strong interethnic civic ties (or were unsuccessful when they tried). These ties ultimately constrained politicians’ strategic behavior.24

The Gujarati textile cities of Ahmedabad and Surat are the best example of how a regime 

shift is brought about over time. These cities were the base of Gandhi’s movement and where 

the social and political organizations he built prior to India’s independence were strongest. 

Their symbolic significance made them targets of sectarian agitation. Nevertheless, at a time 

when Hindu-Muslim rioting was increasing across the country, these cities had long periods of 

unbroken peace. Small flashes of violence did not become citywide conflagrations as elsewhere. 

These cities endured as “institutionalized peace systems” for several decades.25

The cornerstones of intercommunal civic life in these cities were social and educational 

organizations, the Congress Party, textile trade unions, and the business associations that 

Gandhi helped found in the 1920s. All were committed to Hindu-Muslim unity and engaged 

both communities in their organization and activity implementation. Even if the participation 

of Hindus and Muslims was unbalanced numerically in certain organizations, Varshney documents that the ideological commitment to communal peace was strong enough for them to 

be effective at keeping the peace.26 Whenever violence occurred, or had the potential to occur, 

these institutions mobilized for prevention or to check its spread.

However, both cities eventually succumbed to ethnic polarization and Hindu-Muslim 

rioting—Ahmedabad after 1969 and Surat following the shockwaves of the Babri mosque 

destruction by Hindu militants. The transformation of these peace systems was the result 

of slowly changing variables that eroded the quotidian and associational civic ties between 

Hindus and Muslims. None of these institutions was spared. The state-level Congress Party, 

which had for decades provided leadership for communal peace, was hollowed out over time. 

Its unchallenged success in government allowed it to become a patronage machine, where 

opportunistic politicians who were far less committed to Gandhi’s ideology, especially that 
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of Hindu-Muslim unity, increasingly made up party ranks. The party’s weakness helped 

open space for the Hindu nationalist BJP, which deliberately exploited ethnic tensions. 

Social organizations such as schools and social enterprises, traditionally financed through 

charity fundraising and member campaigns, were sapped of their drive and integrity when successive Congress governments showered them with state financial support. Hindu nationalist 

social organizations (and others) rose in their place. Economic forces shaped by immigration and 

industrialization had perhaps the greatest impact on civic life. These factors eroded the traditional 

civic ties between Hindus and Muslims, resulting in ethnically separated work spaces and residential communities. The impact of this growing communal separation on business associations 

and trade unions—bastions of intercommunalism in the past—was devastating; membership 

declined substantially, particularly among Muslims and lower-caste Hindus.27

The virtuous feedbacks among intercommunal civic ties, integrated civic institutions, and 

violence prevention initiatives eventually broke down and were replaced by vicious cycles 

of polarization, alienation, and tit-for-tat violence that neither the state nor the old civic 

institutions could contain. Tellingly, when riots erupted in Surat after the 1992 Babri mosque 

destruction, the Old City section was spared. This part of the city had been able to maintain 

interethnic ties through its business associations, which mobilized their membership to keep 

the peace.

Resilience to violence is not the same as invulnerability. Even resilient social systems, such 

as those in Ahmedabad and Surat, can be propelled into less desirable regimes, or basins of 

attraction, as a result of persistent and severe stress or, in the case of Iraq, an overwhelming 

shock. Thus, resilience is highly correlated to the intensity and duration of the shock or stressor. 

These case studies also illustrate that a regime’s resilience to violence depends on the ability 

of actors within a socioecological system to adapt and learn and on the nature of the system’s 

structure, which can impede or enable adaptation and learning. For example, in Nepal, less 

resilient communities were structurally compromised by corruption, which thrives in opacity and undermines effective, collective decision making based on a clear assessment of the 

situation. In the case of French-German reconciliation, formal, structured negotiations and 

exchanges transformed psychological perceptions of the Other, which, in turn, deepened the 

structural contours of a regime (basin) of coexistence and integration. The resilience of emerging nonviolent regimes is also affected by the attractiveness and latent, persistent regimes of 

violence, which explains the high relapse rates of civil conflicts, the phenomena of negative 

peace, the ability of different types of violence to mutate, and the existence of societies that are 

neither at peace, nor at war.

Socioecological Systems: Resistance, Neutrality, and Redundancy

If resilience in a peacebuilding context is about the ability of communities to withstand various 

forms of external pressure on their integrity and functioning, and still survive or thrive, then 

literature on the evolution of the state-society relationship and the impact of international 

interventions on society provides interesting insights. Social scientists have done extensive 

research on how societies have responded to disruption (for example, societal-state negotiation, 

class resistance), using terms that correspond to resilience, such as resistance, mediated states, 

and hybridity.28 A key insight from the literature is that resilience is normatively neutral.

When faced with attempts to shape or alter their existence, subaltern (ordinary or powerless) classes in a society use everyday resistance to confront state authority. James Scott, in 

Resilience to violence 

is not the same as 

invulnerability.
USIP.ORG 17

PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

his observation of peasant life in a Malaysian village, describes the ordinary weapons peasants used to resist the introduction of large combines: pilfering, foot dragging, sabotage, and 

feigned ignorance. To openly and collectively confront the state is suicidal; self-marginalization, while not heroic, has historically been highly effective.29 This type of resistance, which 

maintains the outward appearances of conformity and does not directly threaten the state, 

reflects, from a systems perspective, a socioecological system deeply embedded in a basin of 

attraction. History is littered with the failed efforts of states to reform the underclasses; the 

tenacity of their resistance is largely due to the absence of alternative regimes historically 

(latent regimes) and the depth of their interrelationships (not mediated by other institutions 

or actors). Resistance then is a regime with a “deep basin” and high threshold for regime shift, 

exhibiting a high degree of resilience. In fact, deep societal resistance can erode or controvert 

the source of shock or stress; it can contribute to the overthrow of the state regime. In Poland, 

everyday worker resistance to the Soviet political order coalesced into a successful nonviolent 

civil resistance movement, namely Solidarity.

Hybridity, where international peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts interact with local 

forces to produce hybrid forms of peace and governance, also describes a form of nonviolent 

social resistance. In this context, as seen in Kosovo, peacebuilding interventions face a continuous struggle in which local agents are resilient and employ tactical participation and resistance 

in their interaction with larger, international hegemonic forces: tax avoidance, engagement 

with illicit economies, electoral boycotts, and nonparticipation in peacebuilding projects.30 This 

struggle does not controvert the shock or stressor but interacts with it to form a hybridized 

regime that is neither liberal nor traditional but rather a mix of both.

Violent, oppressive socioecological systems can also be resilient in many of the same ways 

as peaceful ones, employing similar capacities and strategies to maintain their regimes of predation and violence. The authoritarian political regimes headed by Central Asian leaders have 

remained resilient to several social uprisings in recent years: the revolution in Kyrgyzstan that 

led to the ousting of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April 2010; the interethnic riots in 

southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010; the violence in Tajikistan’s Pamir mountains in July 2012; 

the clashes between police and demonstrators in western Kazakhstan in December 2011; and 

a series of explosions and shootings ascribed to radical Islamist organizations in Kazakhstan, 

Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The sources of their resilience are the same as democratic or progressive regimes: a social contract with the people (for example, in Central Asia, 

the tacit agreement that if society remains self-regulated, the state will not resort to employing 

detention, torture, and abuse) and congruence between state institutions (informal, negotiated, 

and fluid power agreements with local leaders and institutions).31 This underlines that resilience is an attribute of a social system to respond to long-term stressors or shock and is neither 

a negative nor a positive quality. That is, resilience is normatively neutral. Understanding this 

requires a consciousness about attributing moral value to an individual or group’s agency and 

response to a dominant hegemony. Is one group’s resilience another group’s rebellion?

Systems thinking also affirms an emerging tenet of peacebuilding: inclusivity secures 

more durable peace. In a study on women’s participation in the Northern Ireland Peace Process, Monica McWilliams finds that engaging more actors in the peace process, especially 

those most affected by the war, increased buy-in for peace and societal cohesion.32 However, 

response redundancy was also critical.33 While politicians negotiated a new political order, 

the women of Northern Ireland elevated social issues to the negotiation table, specifically 

community-based peace initiatives for young people, particularly young fighters reintegrating 

Is one group’s resilience 

another group’s rebellion?
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with their communities. Different groups and individuals approach peace in different ways, 

thereby increasing the odds that some form of peace will stick. Inclusivity also ensures redundancy so that failures at different localities or levels might be counteracted with a resilience 

response elsewhere within the social system.

Resilience of States and Societies, Communities, and Individuals

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the 

resilience of a state depends on its ability to absorb, adapt, or transform in response to a shock 

or long-term stressors and retain agreement between the state and society on their respective 

and mutual roles and responsibilities. In other words, resilience is the maintenance of the social 

contract and the ability to reconcile citizen and state expectations of that contract in the midst 

of sudden change or long-term stressors. There are several constituent factors of a social contract, 

all of which must be managed through political processes to achieve resilience: the expectations 

that society has of the state; the ability of the state to ensure basic provisions (for example, security, services); and the determination of leaders to manage state resources and capacity in ways 

that meet societal expectations. The OECD notes that the resilience of a state is often hard to 

assess because these factors are multiple and interactive.34 While the OECD notes that the 

state-society relationship is critical to resilience, it focuses primarily on the technical capacity of 

the state—only one particular variable that defines a socioecological regime. The other variables 

that shape the basin—the nature of state-society interactions and relations—are also crucial for 

assessing resilience. How societies hold together (horizontal relationships) during shocks and 

the ability of the state to create the conditions for societal convergence are other factors that 

would create a broader systems’ understanding of state fragility.35

In her assessment of the sectarian conflict in Baghdad, Ami Carpenter identified a two-part 

framework for conflict resilience, consisting of both system and community perspectives: regime 

characteristics—“the strengths and abilities of a regime that enable a socioecological system to 

respond adaptively to change” and community competence—“the ability of a system to modify 

or change characteristics or behavior to cope better with actual or anticipated stresses.” The 

regime characteristics that allowed Iraqi communities to be resilient to sectarian violence 

included the following: 36

• Political and social structures: salient norms, social institutions and networks, and the 

political system. For example, state actors, like police and district officials, were often 

viewed as irrelevant to Baghdad neighborhoods, while tribes, and their ties to alQaeda, played a large role in Shia-dominated neighborhoods and enabled al-Qaeda 

to infiltrate urban areas.

• Economic resources: economic resources to sustain community well-being, capacity to 

adapt to the changing environment through access to diversified economic assets, and 

proximity to strategically important economic assets (transportation hubs, trade 

routes, infrastructure). Carpenter finds that, in the case of Baghdad neighborhoods, 

access to diverse economic assets was not as much of a factor as trade networks with 

rural tribes that transmitted al-Qaeda into urban neighborhoods.

• Information and communication: sources of information, spaces for sharing information, 

and interpretation of events by and communicative ability of leaders. Carpenter finds 

that leadership structures that articulated narratives of inclusion and belonging were a 

significant factor in enabling communities to resist the entry of sectarian groups.

Resilience is the 

maintenance of the social 

contract and the ability 

to reconcile citizen and 

state expectations.
USIP.ORG 19

PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

• Social capital: sense of community, citizen participation, and community attachment 

that enable people to work together for a common purpose. Carpenter finds that 

neighborhoods in Baghdad had significant cross-cutting ties between Shia and 

Sunni, but these deteriorated rapidly when communities and leaders did not intentionally nurture them through a violent shock.37

When citizens had the capacities to self-organize, their communities were able to resist 

sectarian groups. Carpenter calls this organized action community competence (a shared belief 

in the collective power to achieve desired results), which has both psychological and behavioral 

components. The psychological aspects of resilience included collective efficacy—or the willingness of neighbors to intervene on behalf of the common good based on a belief of their own 

agency and inward orientation—a perspective on community security that motivates residents 

to protect neighborhood boundaries (as opposed to competitive strategies against perceived adversaries that would lead to a spiral of attacks and counterattacks).38 The behavioral components 

of community competence that Carpenter identifies were the specific strategies communities 

adopted in the face of sectarian violence:

• Organizing nonsectarian security groups that in resilient neighborhoods had an 

inward defensive orientation; they patrolled borders and did not organize attacks 

outside the neighborhood.

• Preventing neighborhood security groups from adopting sectarian identities that 

were exclusionary and challenged state authority.

• Advocating violence prevention by third-party actors who do not take sides but 

advocate an alternative way—nonviolence.39

An underlying theme of Carpenter’s work is “the relationship of resilience to brittleness, 

which highlights that flexibility is often a key quality of resilience,” whereas rigidity or hardening of perspectives occurs as conflict escalates, especially in relation to how groups or individuals 

begin to perceive the other.40 Group changes, such as evaluating interactions with the Other 

in zero-sum terms, are driven by a cognitive and emotional stiffening (for example, dehumanization, reduced empathy, deindividuation) as a result of exposure to violence. For example, 

during the Rwanda genocide, Hutus dehumanized the Tutsis, referring to them as inyenzi, or 

cockroaches, making it easier to commit atrocities against them.

Marshall Wallace and Mary Anderson’s comparative case study of bright spots—communities that should have succumbed to violence due to proximity or characteristics (for example, 

demography, economic status) shared with warring neighbors but did not—identifies a set of 

common capacities and strategies that enabled these “ecosystems” to opt out of war. Their analysis studied collective action; communities that were resilient to violence analyzed, strategized, 

and responded using inclusive and transparent processes. There was no denial or prevarication. 

These communities conducted a collective calculation of the costs of violence versus nonviolence, developed options, adopted a pragmatic nonwar identity that resonated with their culture 

and history, and communicated group values that distanced them from war and violence. This 

nonwar narrative supported a set of activities that maintained their nonwar status, such as the 

establishment of an early warning system, the organization of community activities based on 

relative risk, the establishment of community cohesion in the face of threat, the effort to keep 

community life normal, and the emphasis on security measures that maintained community 

solidarity and survival. According to Wallace and Anderson, the key factor in a community’s 

capacity to opt out of war was the existence of legitimate leadership. Leaders who had already 

established extensive networks in the community, regularly engaged with residents, and valued 
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brainstorming and problem solving with community members were critical to resisting war.41

Whereas Carpenter’s work highlights both ecosystem (the ball) and regime (the ball and the 

basin) resilience, Wallace and Anderson provide deep insights into how community ecosystems 

self-organize, adapt, and learn in response to violence.

Throughout their lifetimes, individuals develop and evolve through formative relationships 

at different levels of a social system: family and friends; local institutions, such as schools and 

churches; and state institutions and national identity groups, such as political parties and ethnic 

affiliations. Yet, what if violence is produced and reproduced throughout a social ecosystem from 

the micro to the macro levels? When violence is a facet of everyday life, a person’s ability to develop relationships throughout the system is disrupted. Family members cannot bond when one 

or more members experiences trauma from violence. Little trust or cohesion exists to engage in 

political activities, and civic relations decline. Looking at the impacts of chronic violence from 

a multidisciplinary perspective, Tani Adams suggests that interventions that focus on violence 

reduction are not enough. Human security programs that guarantee access to jobs, education, 

and so on without fear of violence or intimidation are too limited. The field of peacebuilding 

needs to focus on strengthening the capacity of socioecological systems for self-repair. This means 

supporting, amid violence, individuals’ and communities’ abilities to generate and replicate 

creative mechanisms for living together that establish reciprocal cycles of healing and thriving. 

Human development, not just human security, is crucial to systemic transformation.42

Resilience and Peacebuilding

Approaching peacebuilding with the intent to support and sustain resilience capacities offers 

the potential for fundamental change by shifting the focus, changing the level of intervention, 

and bridging communities of practice.

Shifting the Focus

The conceptualization of resilience as the adaptation of socioecological systems to violent shock 

is increasingly resonating with the peacebuilding field because of its explanatory power for 

why and how the field must evolve. The experiences of the last decade of war have exposed 

the chronic weaknesses of international intervention models that used institutional capacities, 

rather than the realities of those communities affected by conflict, to drive programming, largely 

overlooking the complex interplay of community risk and capacity. Resilience thinking provides 

an important heuristic shift. It refocuses attention on the positive attributes of communities 

(systems) and the microdynamics of local conflict, potentially making outside interveners more 

demand driven than supply driven.43

Resilience also refocuses attention on human agency, recognizing that conflict-affected 

societies are in a constant state of flux and embrace various adaptive strategies in preventing and 

managing violence. This approach not only opens space for engaging with local communities, it 

makes them the focal point. Anderson and Wallace conducted a study of the tactics of so-called 

nonwar communities. Their thesis is that traditional conflict prevention efforts are rooted in 

bringing something external to bear on the conflict and that these efforts often discount the existing capacities people are already using to prevent violence and achieve peace. Some communities will always make a conscious decision not to engage in violent conflict. Those communities 

examined in the study took the same three steps: they assessed what the cost of war would be to 

their communities, they calculated their options, and they chose a nonwar identity.44 Anderson 

Interventions that focus 

on violence reduction 

are not enough.
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PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

and Wallace’s communities demonstrate the powerful effects of local prevention strategies amid 

the firestorm of violence. A more systematic analysis of community resilience could lead to 

evidence-based prevention strategies and programming and more fine-tuned approaches: For 

example, how specifically are communities resilient in different contexts of violence? That is, 

why is a community resilient to violent extremism but not to electoral violence? Which system 

capacities are relevant to responding to specific types of violence that preserve a system’s peaceful 

function and identity?

Changing the Level of Intervention

After the intervention experiences of the past decade, there is a new openness among intervenors in conflict-affected and fragile states to societal dynamics and complexities and to the 

unintended consequences of international interventions. Rob Ricigliano promotes systems analyses and system-level theories of change as a way to move beyond project-based peacebuilding 

interventions, which never add up to “peace writ large” or, from a resilience perspective, a regime 

transformation from conflict and violence to peace and nonviolence. Systems thinking brings the 

larger system into focus, allowing practitioners to explore the interactive dynamism of different 

parts of the system and how those parts are elements of a larger whole.45 Interpeace recently 

experimented with a resilience approach in Guatemala, organizing inclusive community groups 

in eleven regional departments and identifying and building on successful community-driven, 

socioeconomic strategies for combatting chronic violence (which, in Guatemala, stem from the 

pernicious ties among corruption, crime, and political power). During the April 2015 political 

crisis in Guatemala, which was a result of the uncovering of government corruption, Interpeace 

community groups held meetings to review the effectiveness of citizen response to the crisis, 

forming a broad-based social movement on transforming the regime.46 In this sense, sustainability, the holy grail of peacebuilding practitioners, is the cumulative effect of multiple resiliencies of 

a social system. Bringing the entire societal system into focus in this way moves the peacebuilding 

field away from its current emphasis on discrete conflict problems and project-based responses. 

The key question becomes what intervention or accumulation of interventions will tip the conflict system to a nonviolent system that is improving over time; this requires a systems-level, not 

a project-level, theory of change.47

Bridging Communities of Practice

Increasingly, fields related to peacebuilding are incorporating resilience thinking and approaches 

into their work. Humanitarian, development, and security programs are closely examining which 

capacities and strategies protect societies and communities from natural and man-made disasters 

and what helps them rebound. Interestingly, consensus is growing in these fields that social cohesion, collective action, and conflict management—the core of peacebuilding work—are critical to 

disaster and development resilience, suggesting that resilience offers avenues for both collaboration 

and integration. A key aspect of societal resilience to humanitarian shock is collective action and 

decision making and adaptive mechanisms that seek to protect all members of a society. Dialogue, 

strategic listening, and conflict resolution ease the effects of natural disasters and support a more 

rapid recovery at the community level. That is, they make a community more resilient. A recent 

Mercy Corps research study of food security in the Horn of Africa found that strengthening, institutionalizing, and bringing together informal and formal conflict management systems directly 

affected a community’s ability to more effectively manage the impact of a drought.48
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Similarly, development programs have begun to incorporate efforts to build social cohesion 

and trust to counterbalance long-term stressors and economic shocks and the effects of state 

and societal fragility. In a World Bank multicountry study, social groups identified convergence 

as the key to a country’s overall development. Convergence across society and between the society and government occurs when groups see the collective utility in working together rather 

than competing and when agreed-on norms for their interaction exist. In this way, the development process should be seen as facilitating the cumulative effects of convergence in society and 

strengthening trusted frameworks for group collaboration.49

In the context of nonviolent action against repressive states, resilience “refers to the capacity 

of contentious actors to continue to mobilize collective action despite the actions of opponents 

aimed at constraining and inhibiting their activities. This concept emphasizes the iterative 

interactions between challengers and opponents over time.” It is closely related to the idea of 

leverage, which refers to the ability of the same actors to “mobilize the withdrawal of support 

from opponents or invoke pressure against them through the networks upon which opponents 

depend for their power.”50 Oliver Kaplan, in a study on community response to violent groups 

in Syria and Colombia, finds that with community collective action, civilians could convince 

some members of armed groups of the importance of nonviolence, sowing disunity among 

them. The key to a norm shift was citizen collective action; strong social systems changed 

armed groups’ behavior and perspectives where individual resistance often failed. This suggests 

that coalitions and factions within armed groups were attracted to a regime of nonviolence 

when they encountered it in meetings with the community; these factions ingested nonviolence in ways that disrupted the armed group’s regime of violence.51 The idea that communities 

have leverage and can mobilize defections within armed groups establishes an important link 

between peacebuilding and nonviolent civil resistance and calls for an increased emphasis in 

the peacebuilding field on nonviolent social movement and network formation.

A critical capacity of resilient communities is self-organizing for security and protection, but 

in particular ways. Carpenter, analyzing communities that did not engage in sectarian violence 

following the fall of Baghdad, recognizes a common approach: inward orientation. Community 

security groups in resilient communities limited their activities to defense, protecting community 

members and assets and refraining from taking the fight outward.52 Nonwar communities, which 

Marshall and Wallace studied, also engaged actively in their own security: co-opting and confronting armed groups and negotiating with them.53 The importance of a community’s capacity to 

cope with violence has drawn the attention of the peacekeeping community. Over the last decade, 

civilian protection mandates have become an increasingly common aspect of UN peacekeeping 

operations, and more attention is now being paid to how to enhance the resilience of communities. Communities are the first line of defense for populations facing violence, notwithstanding the 

limitations that peacekeeping missions face in addressing the structural conditions feeding violent 

conflict. Research is helping document the many strategies that communities employ in different 

threat circumstances, develop typologies of self-protection measures, and understand the ways in 

which external support can help or harm.54

Challenges

Several challenges exist in applying the resilience concept to peacebuilding. Like social capital, 

resilience is normatively neutral in that it is the measure of the absorptive capacity of socioecological systems along a spectrum from violence to peace. Some sources of resilience in a 

system—such as community coping mechanisms involving illicit economies and relationships 

The idea that communities 

have leverage and can 

mobilize defections within 

armed groups establishes 

an important link between 

peacebuilding and 

nonviolent civil resistance.
USIP.ORG 23

PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

with armed actors—may contradict national and international rule of law and prove challenging for international peacebuilding actors to tolerate or ignore. Furthermore, within any social 

system, there are equilibrium trade-offs regarding acceptable violence. In certain socioecological 

systems, women are forced into interclan marriages to ensure broader social peace, but these 

marriages have high percentages of domestic violence. There are also equilibrium trade-offs 

among microsystems, such as peace and governance. For example, in Kenya, in Wajir Province, 

the state decided not to extend its influence and institutions and allowed tribal groups to govern 

to maintain peace.55 These equilibria trade-offs are not necessarily bad but often reflect the state 

of a system’s transition. Some trade-offs may be uncomfortable to outsiders but acceptable to 

a society looking at the prospects of violence or greater levels of violence. These compromises, 

however, if not addressed over the long term, become stressors or tipping points (where the 

system changes from a regime of peace to one of violence) or nodes of vulnerability to shock.

Although resilience may prove to be a unifying framework for cooperation among various 

actors, it can also support business as usual. At issue is whether resilience thinking is simply the 

latest new packaging for established peacebuilding practice. Recent resilience assessments and 

dialogues led by Interpeace and USIP in violence-affected communities indicate that the equivalency framing offered by resilience (looking at gain versus loss) is certainly powerful and engages 

and empowers communities weary of a focus on conflict dynamics and vulnerability and risk. 

Like redesigning and reframing a house, the new framing opened new vistas. A resilience focus 

also increases community cognizance of their individual but comparable everyday resistances to 

violent actors and the potential for collective action. This moves peacebuilding from a focus on 

discrete conflict problems and the application of multiple, narrow solutions to a focus on harnessing the dynamics of socioecological systems and relationships and community capacity. Resilience 

also has the potential to steer intervenors away from the impulse to simplify conflict dynamics in 

order to “projectize” the problem, ignoring the dynamic equilibrium and ecology of socioecological 

systems. The peacebuilding field may recognize that a focus on resilience is an antidote to many 

of the breakdowns of recent, large-scale interventions. However, without making basic structural 

reforms to the field or engaging local personnel and structures, resilience practice is subject to the 

same constraints as peacebuilding in general and therefore to the same implementation challenges. 

Similarly, without careful delineations, such as a clearly articulated theory of change and distinct 

practice for resilience, any conflict management method (for example, dialogue, mediation, negotiation) could be placed under resilience.

Part of the appeal of resilience for the peacebuilding field is that the concept appears 

intuitively obvious and easy to implement. Instead of heavy-handed, protracted, and costly 

interventions, conflict prevention and recovery becomes a matter of activating latent or supporting functioning capacity in a community. The emphasis, however, on community response and 

responsibility could provide a convenient justification for international disengagement from the 

long-term investments of political capital and capacity building that conflict-affected societies 

require—already a significant international response.

Operationalization

In January and February 2015, USIP conducted a series of working group meetings on resilience with peacebuilding practitioners. A central concern was whether resilience in practice 

looked any different from peacebuilding in practice. Was resilience a concept du jour or a new 

way to sell standard practice? Or, does resilience fundamentally alter the way we intervene to 

resolve violent conflict?

Does resilience 

fundamentally alter the 

way we intervene to 

resolve violent conflict?
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PEACEWORKS 121

Adaptive Governance

Those who manage an ecosystem recognize that building the resilience of complex, dynamic 

systems requires adaptive governance and resilience thinking.56 This involves using frameworks 

and approaches for collaboration and collective action that bring together various actors on multiple levels to shape and implement a change agenda. Such processes work best when they focus 

on experimentation and learning, drawing on data and experience from formal and informal 

knowledge systems and on social memory in all parts of the system. They stimulate wide-ranging 

creative experimentation that feeds back into the collective search for solutions. These processes 

recognize the roles of individuals, relationships, and networks. Leadership is critical in providing a 

vision, building trust, and shaping meaning. Bridging organizations play a crucial role in making 

new network connections and resolving differences that impede processes. Adaptive governance 

has the capacity to respond to change and even to transform systems to new regimes when a crisis 

creates opportunity.

Does the peacebuilding field have an analog of adaptive governance in its toolkit? Certainly 

not at the level of the international system. Hopes that the UN Peacebuilding Architecture 

would provide a framework for nimble and creative collective action have yet to bear fruit. The 

country-level processes that have emerged under the framework of the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States have so far proven unable to overcome the long-standing limitations of 

the aid-recipient relationship.

Nevertheless, the peacebuilding community has collaborative action approaches in its 

toolkit. Fisher began with the simple problem-solving workshop that has been embedded 

in many peacebuilding processes.57 Conceptually, Lederach’s idea of process structures that 

bring webs of leaders and actors together in the iterative search for transformational solutions 

to conflict has provided a vision and template for many in the field.58 For several decades, 

peacebuilding and development practitioners have experimented with multilevel dialogue 

and vision-planning initiatives to build consensus around frameworks for collective action. 

The movement for more participatory and inclusive peace processes has brought in new actors 

from civil society to highlight root causes of crisis and advocate forgotten and marginalized 

groups.59 However, all of these approaches and tools in practice have suffered from a common set of shortcomings. They tend to support episodic, time-bound, and centrally managed 

efforts that end with the peace agreement and do not extend into long-standing governance 

processes. Can the obstacles to embedding these efforts be overcome?

System Approaches and Strategies

Some are experimenting with more flexible and adaptive approaches that recognize the need 

to build systemic resilience to violence from within country systems. One such approach, used 

by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Infrastructures of Peace (IfP) initiative, helps 

strengthen a kind of bridging organization that it refers to as insider mediators.60

Recent developments at UNDP illustrate how elements of resilience thinking have taken 

hold. Although not using a systems approach explicitly, IfP recognizes that a set of structures, 

processes, and relationships work together to manage conflict. Vulnerable societies are often 

characterized by rolling turbulence and multiple, overlapping crises, with mainly endogenous 

causes but also international links. IfP grew out of a recognition that UNDP’s traditional 

response to conflict was rigid, using technical assistance tools that were sectoral rather than 

focusing on building capacity for experimentation, learning, and innovation. In fast-moving, 
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PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

dynamic situations, the response must be embedded within the system, and there must be capacity 

to activate mediators laterally across humanitarian, conflict, and development contexts.

The IfP approach focuses on political transitions and realizes that the critical moments 

around regime shifts are when certain engagements are most apt to get a society to a new equilibrium state. Strategic accompaniment is the preferred modus operandi. The focus is therefore 

on domestic leadership and institutions that are prepositioned in the role of intermediaries (inside mediators) who can help communities and societies manage the shocks and stressors that 

threaten peace and promote positive social cohesion. These institutions are the blood vessels, and 

the individuals are the white blood cells that respond in crisis. This is another way of saying the 

focus is on the absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities of these societies to be resilient 

to violence and promote social cohesion. This has forced UNDP to identify—under conditions of 

rapid change—these inside mediators (individual and institutional) and how they are organized 

and linked with key actors in a crisis in order to understand the nodes and networks embedded 

in the complex system.

Social Movements, Adaptability, and Challenges to the Aid System

Supporting and expanding on such promising experiments requires the international community to face up to some thorny questions. Does the current system that funds, implements, and 

evaluates peacebuilding encourage flexible, timely, and creative multilevel crisis prevention and 

response? We are not yet there. The system remains largely structured around rigid, projectized 

agendas and deliverables set by top-down actors and delivered by downstream implementing 

organizations. This is a largely unidirectional process of communication that is a far cry from the 

ideal of networked learning and experimentation at the heart of adaptive governance.

The projectization of complex social change processes, often with power issues at their core, 

has long bedeviled the international aid system. New thinking is beginning to emerge from a 

corner of the peacebuilding community that has to date operated largely outside this system. Social 

movements exhibit many of the characteristics sought in adaptive systems. Collective action is the 

central objective. The movements adopt a systemic lens on the problems they seek to address. Their 

goals are change oriented and directed at power systems. They involve multilevel webs of actors 

and individuals that take on novel organizational forms that are fit to purpose. Experimentation 

and learning are not just ideals; they are central to survival.61

The international community faces many challenges in supporting movements that are 

fluid and often leaderless. The movements’ tactics are often confrontational and can have an 

impact on stability. Their need for flexibility to change course and tactics, and sometimes objectives, does not sit comfortably within a project log frame. Movements require both financial 

and in-kind or knowledge-based support. Recent dialogue between peacebuilding or social 

movement actors and the donor community may shed light on how we make the international 

system more supportive of flexible and adaptive approaches.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Using a socioecological lens can help us focus on processes of complex social change and 

violence, which have implications for the peacebuilding field.

Peacebuilding, as a field, focuses primarily on transformation—changing the norms, 

behaviors, and structures of a regime of violence—and less on system adaptation and absorption. From a socioecological perspective, this has important implications.
26 USIP.ORG

PEACEWORKS 121

• Peacebuilders have to accept that some regime variables cannot be changed (such as 

deepening or broadening the basin of socioecological systems or changing the stability 

landscape).

• The absorption and adaptation approaches may be more relevant to the conflict situation and regime type, recognizing that each approach has consequences (that is, 

equilibrium trade-offs, such as accepting violence against women in Afghanistan in 

exchange for stability between tribes or accepting a status quo that preserves a system’s conflict dynamics) and there may be disagreement among different groups 

experiencing or striving for different resilience responses.

• Transformative resilience is built on the foundation of a system’s absorptive and adaptive capacities. Peacebuilding practitioners at all levels can recognize the contribution 

that investments in absorption and adaptation make to potential transformation.

Transformative approaches, which may have noble intentions, do have negative effects:

• Regimes of violence can be highly resilient to positive change. This suggests that an 

equal focus is needed on eroding the resilience of violent regimes and on creating a 

peace regime (for example, manipulate factions in authoritarian regimes, create 

awareness of patterns of organized violence using social media, reject fear through 

humor as a form of civil resistance).

• A common outcome of transformation, as seen in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Afghanistan, 

is a socioecological system in partial transition or caught between emergent and latent 

regimes (hybridization). The peacebuilding field needs to more systematically assess 

how regime transformations are completed and how to manage partial regimes to 

prevent backsliding.

The peacebuilding field focuses primarily on the risk of violent shocks; slow processes 

remain hidden and less understood. Resilience thinking requires an understanding of slow 

variables that, over time, can create critical thresholds and trigger regime shifts.

• The field should build on conflict research that is beginning to identify which variables drive slow processes and the magnitude of their role in system transformations.

• The field should increasingly use regular public opinion polling to help signal rising 

stressors or the erosion of social cohesion, which can help actors at multiple levels 

shape effective responses.

• Other ways of monitoring slowly changing variables can be rooted in specialized 

networks established to regularly collect and disseminate qualitative and quantitative 

data on social conditions. The Philippine Social Weather Stations have done this for 

more than thirty years.

• Resilience requires response diversity, especially to counter the deterioration of slow 

variables (for example, that threaten social cohesion) or to help anticipate (provide 

early warning) and mitigate the impact of system shocks. Nonviolent resistance 

scholars understand the importance of redundancy to the resilience of social movements. International actors can strengthen a system’s response frequency and diversity 

by supporting a disparate, vibrant, and networked civil society.

Transformative approaches require positive feedback loops among the actors and relationships that constitute a socioecological system and the structural factors that shape its 

contours. Often peacebuilding projects focus on actors and relationships (through dialogue 

Transformative 

approaches, which may 

have noble intentions, do 

have negative effects.
USIP.ORG 27

PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

and mediation) or structural factors (through addressing issues related to the police, courts, 

and education systems) without establishing mutually reinforcing processes.

• The ability and roles of international actors and institutions in shaping the political, 

social, and economic rules and norms so as to reshape or entirely transform the stability landscape should be explored.

• There should be a greater emphasis on peacebuilding approaches that mediate the 

space between socioecological systems (for example, actors and relationships) and 

structures (for example, institutions and norms) to ensure that institutional reforms 

incorporate approaches to change perceptions and attitudes and actor-oriented programs incorporate ways to engage with and change structural factors.

• The lessons learned from civil resistance movements in withdrawing popular support 

from oppressive governments to invoke pressure against them should be integrated 

into peacebuilding. Such approaches institute mutually reinforcing, iterative processes 

that reshape societal perceptions and actions, reorganize relationships within a socioecological system by transforming dispersed networks into organized civil resistance 

movements, and erode oppressive structures in order to adapt and transform regimes 

of violence.

• The parallels between nonviolent civil resistance and community resilience to nonviolent actors, which have the attributes of resilient socioecological systems, should 

also be explored: maintain diversity and redundancy, manage connectivity and 

feedbacks, encourage learning, broaden participation, and establish dispersed governance and leadership capacities throughout the system.

• Longitudinal research should be conducted on the role of movements in transformative resilience (regime shifts) and the role of international inputs over time to 

understand the increase in or erosion of a movement’s effectiveness.

Resilience to hegemonic power may have important lessons. Collective resistance is an 

effective absorptive response to an external shock or stressor. Can lessons from civil resistance 

and social movements be incorporated into peacebuilding to ensure that everyday resistances to 

violent groups are harnessed for collective action? How do we broaden the peacebuilding focus 

on individuals, groups, and sectors to identifying latent or emergent peace systems or regimes 

that can be reinforced or expanded?

USIP.ORG 29

PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

Notes

1. Lauren Van Metre, “Resilience as a Peacebuilding Practice: To Realism from Idealism,” U.S. Institute of 

Peace Summer 2014 Insights Newsletter, www.usip.org/insights-newsletter/resilience-peacebuilding-practice-realism-idealism; Oliver Jutersonke and Moncef Kartas, “Resilience: Conceptual Reflections,” Geneva 

Peacebuilding Platform Brief no. 6 (Geneva: The Graduate Institute, 2012); Jennifer Milliken, “From 

Metaphor to an Action Plan for Use in the Peacebuilding Field,” Geneva Peacebuilding Platform Paper no. 

7 (Geneva: The Graduate Institute, 2013).

2. This is distinct from the way the term is commonly used (to mean a government) or from how it is used in 

political science, where it is defined as the formal and informal structure and nature of political power in a 

country, often including the degree to which the system involves ultimate accountability to the citizenry. 

The concept of a regime in socioecological systems centers on the broader (not just political) set of relationships among structures, actors, and groups, which ultimately define the system.

3. Thomas Elmqvist, Carl Folke, Marcus Nyström, Garry Peterson, Jan Bengtsson, Brian Walker, and Jon 

Norberg, “Response Diversity, Ecosystem Change, and Resilience,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 

1, no. 9 (2003): 488–94.

4. Robert Ricigliano, Making Peace Last: A Toolbox for Sustainable Peacebuilding (Boulder, CO: Paradigm 

Publishers, 2011).

5. Tani Marilena Adams, Chronic Violence and Non-Conventional Armed Actors: A Systemic Approach (Oslo: 

Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, 2014); Ami Carpenter, Community Resilience to Sectarian 

Violence in Baghdad, Peace Psychology Book Series (New York: Springer, 2014); Monty Marshall and 

Benjamin Cole, Global Report 2014: Conflict, Governance, and State Fragility (Vienna, VA: Center for 

Systemic Peace, 2014).

6. Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven, CT: Yale 

University Press, 2002), 241–45.

7. The World Bank, World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security, and Development (Washington, DC: 

The World Bank, 2011), 20.

8. Beatrice Pouligny, “Civil Society and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Ambiguities of International 

Programmes Aimed at Building ‘New’ Societies” (Boston, MA: Center for International Studies and 

Research Resilience, 2005), 12.

9. Carpenter, Community Resilience, 55.

10. Ibid., 29.

11. Marshall and Cole, Global Report 2014, 8–9.

12. Ibid.

13. Andrea Nightingale and Jeevan Raj Sharma, “Conflict Resilience Among Community Forestry User 

Groups: Experiences in Nepal,” Disasters 38, no. 3 (2014): 517–39, 521.

14. Ibid., 533–34.

15. Ibid., 525.

16. Carpenter, Community Resilience, 13–18, 71.

17. Brian Kennedy and Lauren Bieniek, Moving Forward with Constitutional Reform in Kenya: A Report of the 

CSIS Africa Program (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2010), 7.

18. Adams, Chronic Violence, 8.

19. John Bailey, “‘Security Traps’ and Democratic Governability in Latin America: Dynamics of Crime, 

Violence, Corruption, Regime, and State,” in Criminality, Public Security, and the Challenge to Democracy in 

Latin America, ed. Marcelo Bergman and Laurence Whitehead (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre 

Dame Press, 2009).

20. Adams, Chronic Violence, 4.

21. Barbara Walter, “Conflict Relapse and the Sustainability of Post-Conflict Peace,” World Development 

Report 2011 Background Paper (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2010).

22. Valerie Rosoux, “Is Reconciliation Negotiable?” International Negotiation 18, no. 3 (2013): 471–93.

23. Varshney, Ethnic Conflict.

24. Ibid., 19, 9–10.

25. Ibid., 229.

26. Ibid., 225–26.

27. Ibid., 246–48, 252.

28. The work of scholars such as James Scott, who examined peasant rebellions and the historic struggle 

between the weak and the powerful in various historical contexts; and Joel Migdal, author of the state-insociety approach to state theory, is relevant. In these literatures, the interaction of modern state and traditional social forces, often with the former attempting to assert its hegemony over the latter, is the interface 

of a process of social negotiation that sees communities resisting, struggling, adapting, or perishing in their 
30 USIP.ORG

PEACEWORKS 121

attempts to maintain existence on their own terms. Menkhaus documents examples of mediated states that 

have formally conceded part of their core functions to local groups with greater legitimacy and capacity, 

demonstrating the enduring ability of communities and traditional social forces to exercise authority on 

behalf of local groups. See James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland 

Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009); James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of 

Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); Joel S. Migdal, State in Society: 

Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another (Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press, 2001); Joel S. Migdal, Atul Kohli, and Vivienne Shue, State Power and Social Forces: Domination and 

Transformation in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Kenneth Menkhaus, 

“The Rise of a Mediated State in Northern Kenya: The Wajir Story and Its Implications for State-Building,” 

Afrika Focus 21, no. 2 (2008): 23–38.

29. James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University 

Press, 2008), xvi–xvii.

30. Roger MacGinty and Gurchathen Sanghera, “Hybridity in Peacebuilding and Development: An 

Introduction,” Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 7, no. 2 (2012): 3–8.

31. Alessandro Frigerio and Nargis Kassenova, “Central Asia: Contemporary Security: Challenges and Sources 

of State Resilience,” Security and Human Rights 24, no. 2 (2014): 12–13.

32. Monica McWilliams, “Women at the Peace Table: The Gender Dynamics of Peace Negotiations,” in Gender 

and Peacebuilding, ed. Maureen Flaherty (Lexington, MA: Lexington Press, 2015).

33. Elmqvist et al., “Response Diversity.”

34. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Concepts and Dilemmas of State Building in 

Fragile Situations: From Fragility to Resilience,” Journal on Development 9, no. 3 (2008): 15–20. 

35. Seth Kaplan, “What the OECD Does Not Understand About Fragile States,” Fragile States Blog, January 

29, 2013, www.fragilestates.org/2013/01/29/what-the-oecd-does-not-understand-about-fragile-states/. 

36. Carpenter, Community Resilience, 76; Carpenter defines regime as the component parts of a social system (64).

37. Ibid., 75–76.

38. Ibid., 120–24.

39. Ibid., 124–26.

40. Ibid., 64. 

41. Mary Anderson and Marshall Wallace, Opting Out of War: Strategies to Prevent Violent Conflict (Boulder, 

CO: Lynne Reiner, 2013).

42. Adams, Chronic Violence, 9.

43. Van Metre, “Resilience as a Peacebuilding Practice,” 1.

44. Anderson and Wallace, Opting Out of War.

45. Ricigliano, Making Peace Last, 184.

46. Marial Aguilar, “Resilience and Peacebuilding: The Project in Guatemala,” Interpeace, November 2015, 

www.interpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015_10_Resilience_Peacebuilding_Guatemala.pdf. 

47. Ricigliano, Making Peace Last, 188.

48. MercyCorps, “Pathways from Peace to Resilience,” www.mercycorps.org/research-resources/pathwaysfor-peace.

49. Alexandre Marc, Societal Dynamics and Fragility: Engaging Societies in Responding to Fragile Situations 

(Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2013), 40–41.

50. Kurt Schock, Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies (Minneapolis: University of 

Minnesota Press, 2005), 142–43.

51. Oliver Kaplan, “Nudging Armed Groups: How Civilians Transmit Norms of Protection,” Stability 

International Journal of Security and Development 2, no. 3 (2013): 10.

52. Carpenter, Community Resilience, 123.

53. Anderson and Wallace, Opting Out of War, 68–72.

54. Paul D. Williams, “Protection, Resilience and Empowerment: United Nations Peacekeeping and Violence 

Against Civilians in Contemporary War Zones,” Politics 33, no. 4 (2013): 287–98.

55. Ken Menkhaus, “Resilience in Wajir and Kenya,” U.S. Institute of Peace Summer 2014 Insights Newsletter, 

www.usip.org/insights-newsletter/resilience-in-wajir-and-kenya.

56. Carl Folke, Steve Carpenter, Brian Walker, Marten Scheffer, Thomas Elmqvist, Lance Gunderson, and C. 

S. Holling, “Regime Shifts, Resilience, and Biodiversity in Ecosystem Management,” Annual Review of 

Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 35 (2004): 557–81. 

57. Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (New York: Random 

House, 1997).

58. John Paul Lederach, “Conflict Transformation,” in Beyond Intractability, ed. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess 

(Boulder: Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, 2013). 
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PEACEBUILDING AND RESILIENCE

59. Catherine Barnes, “Owning the Process: Public Participation in Peacemaking” (London: Conciliation 

Resources, 2002).

60. Chetan Kumar, Supporting Insider Mediation: Strengthening Resilience to Conflict and Turbulence (New York: 

United Nations Development Programme, 2014).

61. Maria J. Stephan, Sadaf Lakhani, and Nadia Naviwala, “Aid to Civil Society: A Movement Mindset,” 

Special Report no. 361 (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2015).

 5

About the Institute

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan 

institution established and funded by Congress. Its goals are to 

help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, promote postconflict 

peacebuilding, and increase conflict-management tools, capacity, and 

intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering 

others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by its direct 

involvement in conflict zones around the globe.

Chairman of the Board: Steven J. Hadley

Vice Chairman: George E. Moose

President: Nancy Lindborg

Chief Financial Officer: Michael Graham

Board of Directors

Stephen J. Hadley (Chair), Principal, RiceHadleyGates, LLC, Washington, 

D.C.• George E. Moose (Vice Chair), Adjunct Professor of Practice, The 

George Washington University, Washington, D.C. • Judy Ansley, Former 

Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor under 

George W. Bush, Washington, D.C. • Eric Edelman, Hertog Distinguished 

Practitioner in Residence, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced 

International Studies, Washington, D.C. • Joseph Eldridge, University 

Chaplain and Senior Adjunct Professorial Lecturer, School of International 

Service, American University • Kerry Kennedy, President, Robert F. 

Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, Washington, D.C. • Ikram 

U. Khan, President, Quality Care Consultants, LLC, Las Vegas, Nev. • 

Stephen D. Krasner, Graham H. Stuart Professor of International 

Relations, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif. • John A. Lancaster, 

Former Executive Director, International Council on Independent Living, 

Potsdam, N.Y. • Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor of Law, George Mason 

University, Fairfax, Va. • J. Robinson West, Chairman, PFC Energy, 

Washington, D.C. • Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice President, Leadership 

Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Washington, D.C.

Members Ex Officio

John Kerry, Secretary of State • Ashton Carter, Secretary of Defense 

• Gregg F. Martin, Major General, U.S. Army; President, National 

Defense University • Nancy Lindborg, President, 

United States Institute of Peace (nonvoting)
2 Looking for Justice

The sense is growing that strengthening a society’s capacity 

to overcome violent shock and communal stressors could 

play a key role in preventing conflict and achieving a more 

sustainable postconflict recovery. Thus, researchers and 

practitioners in the fields of peacebuilding and conflict resolution have begun to work together to test the concept of 

resilience. This report defines the concept and, using a 

socioecological lens, examines its potential application in 

peacebuilding practice. Case studies are explored to identify the challenges and opportunities in changing a regime 

of violence to a regime of peace. The analysis shows that for 

a successful transformation to occur, peacebuilding 

approaches need to focus on building a socioecological system’s capacity to absorb and adapt to violence and mitigate 

the effects of slow, long-term stressors.

Other USIP Publications

■ UNSCR 1325 in the Middle East and North Africa: Women and Security by 

Paula M. Rayman, Seth Izen, and Emily Parker (Special Report, May 

2016)

■ Resources over Reform in Afghanistan by Anna Larson and Noah Coburn 

(Special Report, February 2016)

■ Afghanistan Post-2014 by David Mansfield (Peaceworks, November 2015)

■ Reconciliation in Practice by Kelly McKone (Peaceworks, August 2015)

■ UN Peacekeeping in the Sahel: Overcoming New Challenges by Robert M. 

Perito (Special Report, March 2015)

PEACEWORKS • SEPTEMBER 2016 • NO. 121

UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE • 2301 CONSTITUTION AVE., NW • WASHINGTON, DC 20037 • USIP.ORG 

@ usip