Others attribute political instability to the 'nomadic culture' inherent in the Somali clan structure and the ineptness of its political leaders. Some observers have perceived contemporary politics in the former Ogaden as an example of 'internal colonization' by highland Ethiopians. In this article I propose an alternative interpretation of political disorder in Ethiopia's Somali Regional State since the rise to power of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in 1991. Findings, while varied, point to the importance of grass-roots participation in the negotiation process. The studies were designed to test, utilizing a comparative case-study framework, which dimension, if any, turns out to be most influential in a series of local violent ethnopolitical disputes. The interplay between these categories has a great deal to do with the prospects and outcomes of conflict management approaches and is the subject of the articles to follow. Factors such as the degree of preliminary dialogue and pre-bargaining, the involvement of officials versus civic representatives, concern about fear and distrust may be weighed against the more usual calculations of power balances, exhaustion, and stalemate in accounting for peaceful settlements. The role of two sets of factors in bringing about agreement and/or implementation is explored: grass-roots versus elite initiatives and the identity versus instrumental nature of the negotiations. The implementation of existing peace accords in countries troubled by domestic fighting turns out to be a knottier policy problem than expected and subject to lingering distrust and miscommunication. In this introduction to the special issue, the various dimensions of approaches to conflict resolution in identity disputes are explored.
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