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45 J. Conflict Resol. 3 (2001)

handle is hein.journals/jcfltr45 and id is 1 raw text is: Conflict-Carrying Capacity, Political Crisis, and Reconstruction A FRAMEWORK FOR THE EARLY WARNING OF POLITICAL SYSTEM VULNERABILITY J. CRAIG JENKINS Department of Sociology Ohio State University DOUG BOND Program on Nonviolent Sanctions and Cultural Survival Harvard University Center of Excellence in Disaster Management & Humanitarian Assistance The early warning of protracted political violence needs firm empirical footing in dynamic indicators of the political processes leading to political crises. This study provides a conceptual framework for the analy- sis of conflict-carrying capacity (or CCC) defined as the ability of political systems to regulate intense inter- nal conflicts. CCC is indexed by the multiplicative interaction between the proportions of civil contention, state repression, and violence. The PANDA Project (1983-1994) is used to illustrate the usefulness of this CCC index in capturing system stability in an institutionalized democracy (the United States), a bureau- cratic-authoritarian regime (Mexico), an institutionalized Communist regime (China), and a peaceful demo- cratic transition (Poland). It provides early warning signals of civil war (Algeria, Sri Lanka) and moves toward political stability (Peru). Civil contention and state repression are not destabilizing per se. Rather it is the simultaneous combination of these with violent contention that leads to internal political crises and, alternatively, to political stabilization. There has been considerable discussion of the need for and the feasibility of early warning for political crises (Gurr and Harff 1996; Davies and Gurr 1998; Schmeidl and Jenkins 1998a; Tellis, Szayna, and Winnefeld 1997; Carnegie Commission on the Prevention of Deadly Conflicts 1998) and the monitoring of political reconstruction efforts (Crocker and Osler Hampson 1996), but limited progress in developing empiri- cally based dynamic indicators that capture the political processes leading to these cri- ses or their resolution. Drawing on the distinction between risk assessment, which focuses on the structural conditions leading to political tensions, and early warning, which identifies the dynamic factors leading to political crises (Davies and Gurr 1998, AUTHORS' NOTE: This research was supported by a grant to Jenkins from the National Science Foun- dation (No. SBR-971095) and to Bond from the Center of Excellence (ISS No. 12088). JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION, Vol. 45 No. 1, February 2001 3-31 @ 2001 Sage Publications, Inc. 3 from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

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