Dialogue is the essence of relationship; its goal is to create new human and political capacities for problem-solving. This chapter in the SAGE Handbook of Conflict Resolution focuses on the definition and practice of dialogue. How does one craft a space for dialogue to unfold? Can it shift attitudes from power politics to relationship building? Sustained dialogue affords new opportunities in conflict resolution, but its achievements are limited in a short-term time frame.
Rather than a discussion, where participants aim to ‘break up’ thoughts and ideas, dialogue is a probing, absorbing and engaging mode of interaction. Where political, social and economic exchanges are habitually confrontational and divisive, moving to a dialogue culture makes a valuable contribution to democratic practice and the peaceful resolution of difference.
This way of talking is a skill is in its own right. However, the ‘process’ of dialogue – where this approach to communication is practiced in a rigorous and carefully designed manner and sustained over a period of time – forms a specific instrument for conflict resolution, emphasising relating rather than problem-solving. ‘Relationships’ are conceptualised as holding five key elements (identity, interests, power, perceptions/misperceptions, and patterns of interaction) and form an analytical and operational tool in sustained dialogue.
Dialogue differs from other communication processes within conflict resolution in the following ways:
- Negotiation requires parties who are ready to reach agreement. Dialogue can help parties not yet ready to negotiate, but who want to change a conflictual, dysfunctional or destructive relationship.
- Dialogue can change relationships in ways that create new grounds for mutual respect and collaboration, rather than negotiating over territory, goods or rights.
- Dialogue seeks to allow the emergence of new content, common to both parties, rather than allow one party to prevail over another.
- Using dialogue organisers, designers and facilitators, a space is created that allows diverse elements of the conflict to be presented over time, and explored in a safe environment, which if otherwise examined might lead to open violence.
Sustained dialogue can become a systematic instrument for transformation. Depending on the nature of the conflict, some dialogue processes will be short term and quickly effective, others will be a lengthy challenge of beginning to transform deeply-rooted conflictual relationships. When dramatic system change is not evident, does this point to dialogue’s limitations, or reveal a need for more realistic definition of objectives?
- Practitioners of dialogue have broadened the definition of conflict and its actors, incorporating people at all levels of society who perceive themselves as oppressed or victimised.
- When dialogue is directed primarily by participants (not external facilitators) it is more fully owned; these parties must learn to engage themselves in the interest of peace.
- Legitimising dialogue as a conflict resolution instrument requires a cultural shift from the reliance on power (at state and government level) to a relational paradigm.
- A multi-level peace process framework – recognising the continuous interaction between government, business, civil society and grass roots – may be used to assess the effectiveness of dialogue in transforming relationship.
- Criteria for framework assessment include: whether participants have transformed their own relationships, built on that experience, influenced peacemaking, and contributed to preparing those outside the dialogue for possible compromises.
- Sustained dialogue is an open-ended political process, and the progression of achievements can be judged only as it unfolds.
For book details see publisher’s website.
