Raymond Shonholtz, President, Partners for Democratic Change, 823 Ulloa St., San Francisco, California

Abstract

In the past several years, the profession of conflict and change management has emerged in former communist countries. Three different types of conflict have surfaced: those long suppressed or fostered by the repressive arm of the communist state; those that emerged as part of the transition process from one political and economy order to the present one; and, those that are inherent to democracy and market economies. This article focuses on the management of these conflicts and the incorporation of conflict management methodologies as a factor in building democratic institutions with examples from Partners for Democratic Change’s National Center in Hungary.

In the past several years, the profession of conflict and change management has emerged in former communist countries. Once considered by communist government officials and party leaders as a taboo subject associated with dissidents and regime detractors, conflict and its management have emerged as a central feature of the new democracies and market economies. Three different types of conflict have surfaced: those long suppressed or fostered by the repressive arm of the communist state; those that emerged as part of the transition process from one political and economic order to the present one; and, those that are inherent to democracy and market economies. This article focuses on the management of these conflicts and the incorporation of conflict management methodologies as a factor in building democratic institutions and stable market economies in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Certainly in the recent past, the world has seen a rare sight: the peaceful transformation of an empire’s authoritarian political order and ideology into democratic ideologies and democratically elected and controlled governments. The control exercised throughout the former Soviet system was comprehensive, subsuming the economic, social, and institutional sectors under the political apparatus of the state. While the Soviet Republics were more tightly controlled than the countries within the Eastern Bloc, the dynamics of central planning, centralization of decision-making, one-party rule, and avoidance of conflict through control and repression were common throughout the Soviet empire.

Less than eight years ago, the open expression of conflict was a state crime resulting in severe penalties. Conflict with state policy brought one outside the accepted ideological order of the socialist society, and made one a dissident with respect to established government policy. From this perspective, the state had no conflicts, only enemies who sought to undermine the well being of its citizens. By explicitly avoiding dissent and conflict, the state had no need to develop non-coercive, transparent negotiating or mediating modalities within the society for the expression and resolution of differences. Accordingly, whatever mechanisms might have existed in pre-1945 Central and Eastern European societies for the participatory management of conflict atrophied during the 50 years of communist rule. By creating a set of norms that disavowed the value, utility, and healing power of conflict, the former communist regimes failed to create cultural, institutional, or psychological foundations for constructive engagement in conflict.

The emergence of former communist states into the democratic, political and economic orbit portended transformations beyond those envisioned by the dissidents. The latter had been operating in an enemy mode, with the authoritarian state being immoral, illegitimate, and fraudulent. The dissident movement was not about the construction of the new state order, but the destruction of the old. It reflected the political and social yearnings within these societies and the moral antecedents of the great changes of 1989. It did not, however, seek to create a “negotiating” table that would result in the liberalization of state policy. Rather, dissidents, denying the state’s moral legitimacy, sought its demise. Consequently, the dissent movement per se did not create new institutional structures or the acceptance of a “mediating” philosophy in its effort to change communist society. Authoritarian regimes and dissident movements necessarily saw one another as mortal threats and applied an enemy psychology and strategy to their initiatives. Accordingly, dissidents turned democratic leaders in post-1989, were ill-prepared for the onslaught of change brought forth by the introduction of democracy and market systems. The changes in the Solidarity-oriented governments in the early 1990’s speak to these realities.

In March, 1990, Partners for Democratic Change conducted a training in Poland which reflected the complexity of the interaction between the tactics associated with an enemy psychology and strategy and one required within the context of democratically elected government. On the second day of a five-day negotiation training program for 25 senior Solidarity labor leaders from the Warsaw District, one of the participants, who had been active in negotiating the demise of Poland’s communist government in the Fall of 1989, derided the training, declaring little need for a course on negotiation when Solidarity had “negotiated” the communists out of power. When pressed as to why then he felt it necessary to come to the training program, the union leader acknowledged that the actions, general strikes, and broad forms of civil disobedience, which were effective tactics against an enemy State, could not be used against their “Solidarity friends” who now controlled the government. Solidarity was not going to call a general strike against its own government. Although, it learned a set of skills relevant to overthrowing an enemy, Solidarity labor had few tools to negotiate with friends. Lacking an enemy context deprived Solidarity of a significant range of well developed anti-state strategies. Partners’ training program was about negotiating from the context of reciprocity and exchange within a democratic framework that legitimated differences, disagreements, differing objectives, and diverse outcomes among disputants. The training program continued with a very ardent Solidarity supporter. Partners’ training program and the reality of the new political conditions in Poland required the formation of new normative values that transformed conflict from an enemy interaction into a negotiation process.

Democracy legitimates conflicts that are peacefully expressed and resolved. With the emergence of democratic ideology, the expression of conflict became ideologically acceptable within the transitioning democracies. In democratic society, conflict has the potential to bring the need to adopt new normative rules for social functioning into consciousness, not only the consciousness of the disputing parties but of the society as a whole. “Those who engage in antagonistic behavior bring into consciousness basic norms governing rights and duties of citizens. Conflict thus intensifies participation in social life.” (Coser, 1956, p. 127.) By adopting a democratic ideology as the foundation for the new republics, the former communist countries were embracing a new set of normative rules for how to address and manage disputes and transformative societal issues.

The new normative values are enabling conflicts associated with the past, the transition, and the new society to be expressed in new ways. Contrary to the fear of conflict engendered by the old regimes, many citizens and leaders, especially minority group activists, independent media advocates, and non-government leaders, understand democracy as setting the normative rules for utilizing conflict to effect orderly change. In democratic society, conflict expression promotes debate, the affirmation of political rights, and the psychological validity for the value of differences. Conflict resolution training and practice can serve as a vehicle for achieving this new consciousness and the realignment of rights and duties with the concomitant increase in participation by citizens in civic activities and governmental decision-making.

The inter-relationship between democracy, transition, and conflict frame the conceptual base for Partners for Democratic Change’s (Partners) work in Central and Eastern Europe. Partners, an international organization of indigenous national Centers dedicated to advancing a culture of conflict and change management and civil society in emerging democracies and market economies, has established conflict and change management training, application, and academic Centers in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia.

Recognizing that conflict could serve as a constructive transformative vehicle for transitioning democracies, Partners began in 1990 to experiment with a set of training programs designed to provide government and NGO leaders with a deeper appreciation for: the value of conflict in democratic society; the structural forms needed to manage conflict and change; and, the skills to implement and practice cooperative negotiations and problem-solving methodologies.

Partners first set of trainings in Moscow and Warsaw in March of 1990, and those that followed during that year, were experiments in assessing the value, significance, barriers, and cultural limitations of North American negotiation models and training programs in transitional societies. Following the first negotiation training program for 100 Soviets in Moscow and 65 Solidarity labor and education leaders in Poland in March of 1990, Partners concluded that building a democratic culture for conflict and change management was an indigenous responsibility. To achieve this goal required training in-country trainers in the North American methodologies, and encouraging the in-country trainers to adapt the models, materials, and concepts to comport with the cultural needs, social conditions, and historical methods used within that country for resolving differences. From the dozen of Partners’ annual training programs conducted by Americans from 1990-1993, each of Partners’ Centers by early 1994 had a number of trainers able to train government and non-government leaders in communication, negotiation, effective meetings, facilitation, cooperative planning, problem-solving, and mediation and to apply these methodologies to specific ethnic, environmental, labor-management, and economic transformation needs and problems.
Today, Partners’ Central and Eastern European Center trainers train each year over 5,000 political leaders, social activists, and market sector managers.

The changes and adaptations made by trainers from Partners’ Centers in Bulgaria, Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovak trainers enabled the organization to begin in 1994 a new phase of development: the East-to-East training program which brings forth the best trainers from each of the Centers into teams designed to train trainers in other countries. Using this model, Partners in 1994 developed the Lithuanian Center with trainers from Poland and Slovakia and is currently doing the same with its newest Center in Georgia with trainers from Bulgaria and Hungary training Georgian trainers. Partners’ East-to-East training program has enabled conflict and change management training to be implemented in the region by trainers culturally conscious of their domestic and regional political and social needs.

Training in-country leaders and trainers define two components of each Center’s five part program. The third components includes encouraging legislation that creates mediating structures in civil society. In addition, since 1990, Partners has promoted the Centers’ fourth component: the development of academic courses at major universities that would provide to present and future leaders an intellectual foundation for the role and function of conflict management in democratic society. Today, over 50 courses in six academic disciplines (education, law, business, sociology, environmental science, and psychology) are being taught in Central and Eastern European universities.

Finally, each Center has been applying mediating methodologies as the fifth domain of their work. The Centers are applying mediating methodologies in the contexts of ethnic conflict, non-government organizations, environmental problem-solving, corporate and market sector disputes, and cooperative planning for social, political, and economic change. The fastest growing sector of Partners’ work ironically is not the field of formal mediation as known in North America, but the discipline of cooperative planning represented by facilitators engaging multiple parties working on complex and diverse issues. Facilitation, as the discipline is referred to, seems less threatening to formal entities in the new democracies than “mediation”, which is associated with compromise, power imbalances, and third party power tactics. While drawing on negotiation and mediation techniques during the course of a cooperative planning or problem-solving process, facilitation strengthens the imagery of responsible parties as decision-makers and reduces the impression that the “third party” is authorized to promote any resolution of differences. The examples set forth below highlight the application during training sessions of facilitation processes to achieve a new set of outcomes by the participating parties.

Any serious training or application initiative within the transitioning democracies of Central and Eastern Europe needs to take into account the historical conditioning of the participants and the larger reality that open speech, expression, dialogue, communication, and transparency were under-developed, if not categorically opposed, domains of activity for most citizens. Thus the very act of training, not to mention utilizing training as a conflict resolution or management vehicle, in such domains presents a challenge between “old” and “new” communication values and requires innovative forms of interaction between disputing parties. The old goal of domination and suppression of the other is reframed in the democratic context to promote a constructive interaction that enhances communication, clarifies differences and common concerns, and builds the relationship sufficiently to motivate the parties to seek some common frames of reference and resolution.

Partners has been building the capacity of the Centers to develop and lead complex, multi-party facilitations and citizen participation processes. In July, 1996, Susan Carpenter, a well know American trainer and practitioner in cooperative planning and citizen participation design, conducted an advanced training for 13 trainers from Partners’ Centers.
The training included: identification of stakeholders in a specific situation, stakeholders’ needs assessment, process of designing a multi-party facilitation, role definition of participants, implementation design strategies, managing difficult situations, and, managing difficult participants.

Also 1996, Partners-Hungary initiated a series of cooperative planning training/facilitations designed to “create action plans for addressing actual concerns of public officials and their communities.” (Report, prepared by Kinga Goncz, Sandor Gesko, and Istvan Herbai, Partners-Hungary Center, May 1997.) A three step process was initiated to promote an interactive training leading to an agreement among diverse parties on how to proceed with different types of public issues. The three steps include: (1) assessing the needs and interests of the diverse parties; (2) conducting a skill building training; and, (3) conducting an interactive facilitation process that trained parties in facilitation skills while they cooperatively designed an agreement to address the outstanding social or economic issues.

Partners-Hungary has been involved in assisting municipalities in establishing local taxes. Under the new Hungarian constitution, municipalities can create local taxes and manage tax collection responsibility.

Partners-Hungary has been sensitive to the obstacles and difficulties relative to introducing cooperative planning and decision-making processes in municipalities from its extensive local government and NGO training programs. Some specific obstacles identified by the Center as relates to bringing people together to mutually resolve differences include:

• Limited understanding of democratic mechanisms and their relevancy to problem-solving.
  
• Commitment by the Center of substantial time to educate stakeholders and key community persons of the value of citizen participation and cooperative planning processes.
  
• Lack of familiarity by potential stakeholders of the importance and value of conducting pre-meeting needs assessments.
  
• The fear by non-government stakeholders of the power of the municipality and the lack of power of the facilitator.
  
• The limited relationship, if any, between government and non-government leaders and the need to build and improve relationships.
  
• The limited time available to leaders to participate in training and facilitation processes.

Following the 3-day residential training, in May, 1996 the Center trainers conducted a series of interviews with the 12 participants in the training program to ascertain their perception of municipal needs and to discuss the scope of the cooperative planning process. Interviews revealed that the participants’ most important issue concerned the inclusion of all city leaders in the decision-making process regarding new municipal taxes. The municipality sought legitimacy and support by business and civic leaders for creating a municipal tax structure and the non-government leaders wanted to be included in the decision-making processes that would determine the type of transaction to tax, at what rate, and how the tax was to be administered.

Following the assessment period, the Center organized a second residential training, this time in cooperative planning processes with the same persons that had taken the April training and participated in the May stakeholder analysis. The cooperative planning training in June, 1996, integrated skill building with direct application to Nagykanizsa’s local tax issue. The Center trainers built an eight-step program in which the participants articulated their interests and outlined approaches for addressing conflicts related to the local tax issues. The step process was used generically as a training device and specifically as a vehicle for building consensus for a new local tax. Stakeholders collaboratively identified the questions and most pertinent issues regarding the development of local taxes and the appropriate decision-making model, including addressing the following:

1. Exploration and expression of parties’ interests: what are my interests? What are the other party’s interests?
   
2. How can I assert my interests? How can the other party assert theirs?
   
3. Description of the situation: sketch of the local taxation decision-making process and how a tax system functions.
   
4. What are the limitations of the decision-making process?
   
5. What are the causes of these limitations?
   
6. What would an ideal process look like?
   
7. How would an ideal decision-making process function?
   
8. How can a new system be established and implemented?
   
9. Who would be responsible for the implementation?

Throughout the meeting, participants were underscoring the value of collaboration and the importance of being a participant in the decision-making process for determining new local taxes. At the conclusion of the cooperative planning session, the participants agreed on the following:

• Establishment of a new local tax system with one local tax.
  
• The Mayor’s office would be responsible for implementing the new tax system.
  
• Design of a dispute resolution process for tax issues.
  
• Establishment of a council of local representative organizations to foster improved communication between business, civic, and governmental entities.
  
• Publication of an evaluation report by December, 1996.

1. Decision-Making Process: The municipality agreed that the draft 1997 budget would be followed by a reconciliation meeting with NGOs and association representatives for comment. The opinions of the non-government participants were to be submitted to the municipal council.
   
2. Tax Proposal: A detailed proposal was submitted to the municipality, NGOs and associations for comment on whether to create a communal or industry tax.
   
3. Purpose of Tax: The proposal detailed how the municipal taxes would be used.
   
4. Dispute Resolution System: The Chamber of Commerce and Industry agreed to establish a tax reconciliation program for the settlement of tax disputes.

1. involving interest groups in the decision-making process,
   
2. focusing on specific transactions to be taxed,
   
3. creating a system for reconciling tax disputes,
   
4. identifying how taxes raised are to be used, especially regarding business training apprentices, and,
   
5. creating an organization to continue to promote dialogue and understanding between government, business, and NGOs.
   

1. correlates plans made during the interactive training with final outcomes,
   
2. determines the changes in perception and attitude by participants in the training/facilitation with their actual activity and decision-making, and,
   
3. identifies and describes role and activity of all stakeholders.

Consequently, local leaders have devised new processes that promote cooperation, define spheres of authority, and determine how social services are to be distributed. Invited by national authorities and local minority leaders, Partners-Hungary has been actively working with minority governments to improve communication and cooperation with municipal governments and to apply training as a methodology to improve skills, build relationships, and focus on concrete issues and concerns between them. Specifically, Partners-Hungary has been involved in developing relationships and decision-making processes between Hungary’s Roma Minority Government and majority municipal government in Kiskunhalas, a city of 32,000 inhabitants. Like many Hungarian cities, Kiskunhalas has a significant Roma (preferred term of reference by Gypsy leaders and groups) population that is stratified: older assimilated Roma, who do not speak Romany, the Roma language; a younger population that is partially assimilated; and, a group that is completely outside the Hungarian culture. Assimilation through education or other social control mechanisms is strongly resisted by the latter group of Romany, who understand that the success of assimilating their children to Hungarian society will be the loss of this generation to Roma culture, language, and traditions. In part, it is this resistance that results in Roma families taking their children out of school after primary grades are completed, which in turn contributes to the unemployment, dependency on social services, and, for some, eventual criminal activity common within the Roma community.

At the request of both the municipality and minority government in Kiskunhalas, Partners-Hungry conducted a needs assessment on dominant issues between the two entities. The Roma minority government had set up a social service system, and, invited by the municipality, participated in the organization of public employment for long term unemployed people, many of whom are Roma. Partners-Hungary trainers conducted an extensive set of interviews with representatives of organizations dealing with social, cultural, educational, and employment issues that relate to Romani. Representatives from the Mayor’s office, Center for Family Services, Civil Guard, Institute for Children and Youth Protection, and Labor office officials participated in the interviews. Nearly everyone agreed that there were serious social, education, and labor issues confronting the Roma minority.

Following the needs assessment, Partners-Hungary conducted a 2-day communication and negotiation skill training for 14 government and minority government leaders. The participants included two representatives from the Mayor’s Office, the President and three elected officials of the Roma Minority Government, Directors from the Labor and Family Service Centers, and a representative from the County’s Minority Office.

Tensions within the city are high. The Roma groups represent three different sections of the city and have leadership, status, and resource with one another. The different groups have different attitudes about the minority government and difficulties with the majority government. Moreover, the Roma community is ill prepared for the task of managing local government affairs and the lack of precise definition of duties and functions complicates the situation between the two governments. Within the municipal “town halls” cooperation is based on relationships, which are frequently non-existent between the majority and minority governments. Finally, within the minority government, Roma leaders are often competing for limited resources, which come from the majority government, instead of building coalitions.

Given the level of tension within the different Roma groups in the city and between municipal officials, the communication training was designed to prepare an open atmosphere before the cooperative planning session began and to reveal the underlying concerns among the participants. The training program focused on the different communication styles of participants and the development of new communication and negotiation skills.

Working in diverse teams, the participants listed the characteristics of “ideal” and “bad” negotiating partners and the obstacles to any negotiation process. A significant range of issues emerged that reflected the suspicion and disagreements held by the different parties with one another. The majority government representatives had little experience in relating to Romany leaders as equals and were wary of any commitments or promises made by the minority government officials. Nearly all the Roma leaders were dissatisfied with the majority government’s attitude toward Romany, their needs, concerns, and problems. Education, discrimination, employment, and the media’s presentation of Romany were issues of concern for the minority representatives. These issues surfaced during the communication and negotiation training and provided both sides with an opportunity to hear in a neutral environment the real concerns of their counterparts.

Following the training in communication and negotiation skills, the participants began an interactive training in cooperative planning, which was designed to develop proposals for improving local Roma-Hungarian relationships and the delivery of social and employment services to the Roma community. Initially, the Roma and Hungarian participants formulated their own group needs in relation to co-existence. This exercise revealed that both groups were quite organized and both the majority and minority government representatives and other participating Roma leaders were able to present clear working proposals focused on their respective common needs. The sense of being in comparable bargaining positions necessitating collaboration and cooperation between the different stakeholder participants to achieve a set of commonly identified goals.

The trainers then formed three mixed focus groups that worked on social, educational, and labor issues with the instruction to formulate short and long term objectives and responsibilities. The focus groups then reported their recommendations to the whole group, and working together the stakeholders formulated a set of objectives in the areas of employment, housing, public safety, media, education, health, and culture and sports. Each category had a list of specific recommendations and persons responsible for carrying them out.

A lobbying group was organized composed of the stakeholders to further the implementation of the recommendations. The cooperative planning process produced impressive results:

• The City’s Labor Office and Roma Minority Government agreed to a three year employment program with a special emphasis on minority student drop outs.
  
• The Roma Minority Government concluded agreements with the two primary schools focusing on improving the education of Roma youth at risk.
  
• The Roma Minority Government and Municipality agreed to a plan to reduce discrimination against Roma people by: promoting Roma ethnic study in the schools; and, presenting in the media Roma families as models for the community.
  
• The Roma Minority Government agreed to promote more Roma involvement in city cultural and sports events.
  
• Local electronic and print media favorably covered the training sessions and the outcomes that followed.
  In addition, out of the cooperative planning process, a set of on-going issues were identified which both Minority and Municipal authorities agreed required further work, including:
  
• Investigating discrimination complaints against employers.
  
• Promoting of exceptionally talented Roma youth as employees.
  
• Labor Office and Roma Minority Government sponsoring a forum for employers on minority issues and problems.
  
• Providing entrepreneurial courses for Roma business people.

One of the long term outcomes of the Center’s work has been the modeling of cooperative process and its power to align political, social and economic interests behind a set of common goals. The demonstration of cooperation, the articulation of common goals and objectives, and the building of a new set of relationships between minority and majority groups and institutions have all been outcomes of the interactive conflict resolution training process.

Conclusion:

All cultures generate a set of pre-conditions for the expression and resolution of differences. In repressive societies, where conflict management is suppressed, conditions emerge that force potential disputants to avoid communication or seek avenues that by-pass the instruments of the state. The transformation of conflict from a suppressed activity to one directly related to the strengthening of democratic society, requires an entirely new orientation to conflict, its expression and management.

The new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe entered the final decade of the 20th Century without many of the basic elements of democracy that Western societies assume are essential for survival. Conditioned by totalitarian regimes’ hostility to opposing ideas and use of repression as a vehicle for managing conflict, a set of conditions were developed within the general citizenry that made conflict and its expression suspect, dangerous, and to be avoided. As such, conflict became associated with negative psychological responses that equated dialogue with dissent, and compromise with unprincipled acquiescence to an enemy. These learned conditions can only be addressed through systematic educational efforts, skill training programs, and mediating structures that allow citizens to assert their democratic right to express and resolve differences.

Over time, the positive value of conflict within democratic society will be better understood and experienced. Conflict is one of democracy’s great engines and catalysts for change. It defines interest groups, inspires the expression of ideas, promotes organizing, and requires the construction of institutional structures and processes for addressing differences.

The work exemplified in the two cases studies highlight the interactive quality of training to achieve a set of agreements between diverse and conflicting parties. Indigenous trainers and practitioners can create the context for addressing the cultural impediments and obstacles confronting the democratic dimension of conflict and change management. Throughout Central and Eastern Europe, domestic trainers are building the capacity to:

• Bring diverse parties to negotiate through training sessions that apply skill development with concrete problem-solving.
  
• Promote a logical methodology for assessing needs and utilizing the information received to promote and design a cooperative training and application process.
  
• Link training as a dimension of problem-solving.
  
• Promote conflict and change management as an indigenous value and appropriate democratic methodology.
  
• Utilize outcomes of the facilitation process as a tool for evaluation and long-term success indicators.
  
• Embrace conflict as a positive societal force.
  
• Prepare decision-makers to respond democratically to conflicting positions.
  
• Apply processes that change the dynamic of dispute settlement from adversarial to participatory.
  
• Promote policies that create sustained mediating structures in civil society.

Interactive conflict resolution training and application processes relevant to the management of conflict and change in democratic society are valued methods to achieve these goals. Partners’ mission to advance a culture of conflict and change management in the emerging democracies is being realized by local professionals applying conflict management processes that are acculturated to the needs and conditions of the society. Over time, these professionals will inform the field of conflict and change management and provide an indigenous context for the application of new norms in societies transitioning toward democracy.

References:

Coser, Lewis (1956). The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: The Free Press.

Goncz, Kinga; Gesko, Sandor; Herbai, Istvan (1997). “Building the Capacity of Hungarian Municipalities to Cooperatively Resolve Local Public Issues.” Report, Partners-Hungary Center, May 1997.