Intrastate Conflict

Research depart­ment IV examines peace and conflict at the intra­state level. Its particular concern is with the relation­ship between the orga­nization and trans­formation of political rule, on the one hand, and the violent escalation or peace­ful re­so­lution of intra­state conflicts, on the other. This includes the socio­economic embedded­ness of political rule and intra­state peace as well as external influences on intra­state conflicts and trans­formation processes. The over­all aim is to identify the conditions and options for peace­fully resolving intra­state conflict. Central research topics are civil wars and peace­building, dynamics and causes of political violence, political orders and their trans­for­mation, and inter­national demo­cracy promotion and humanitarian military inter­ventions. The depart­ment’s empirical focus is on countries of the Global South, including the post-Soviet space.

According to the new research program Coercion and Peace (2018), research depart­ment IV studies the ambivalent role of coercion in creating, main­taining, and under­mining intrastate peace. More specifically, the depart­ment looks at coercion at the intra­state level (internal coercion) and coercion as exercised by external actors (external coercion) with a view to both, the re­pro­duction or under­mining of intra­state peace (coercion in peace) as well as the establish­ment and consolidation of intra­state peace (coercion to peace).

In context of the research program Just Peace Governance (2011-2017), research depart­ment IV analyzed intra­state forms and conditions for a just peace, and national and inter­national processes for negotiating competing con­ceptions of a just and peaceful political order.

Head of Research Department
Visiting Fellows
  • Xie, Peixuan
  • Zhou, Yiqi
Secretariat
Student Assistants
  • Bruhn, Milene
  • Dressler, Elena
  • Feldeisen, Deborah
  • Görtz, Vivien
  • Moncada, Santiago
  • Strunk, Julius
  • Wintz, Charlotte
  • Zeggay, Nazareth