Indicators +: A proposal for everyday peace indicators

Evaluation and Program Planning 36 (2013) 56–63

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Indicators +: A proposal for everyday peace indicators Roger Mac Ginty * Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, and Department of Politics, University of Manchester, United Kingdom

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 24 November 2011 Received in revised form 16 May 2012 Accepted 7 July 2012 Available online 17 July 2012

Many of the approaches to measuring peace favoured by international organisations, INGOs and donor governments are deficient. Their level of analysis is often too broad or too narrow, and their aggregated statistical format often means that they represent the conflict-affected area in ways that are meaningless to local communities. This article takes the form of a proposal for a new generation of locally organised indicators that are based in everyday life. These indicators are inspired by practice from sustainable development in which indicators are crowd sourced. There is the potential for these to become ‘indicators +’ or part of a conflict transformation exercise as communities think about what peace might look like and how it could be realised. The article advocates a form of participatory action research that would be able to pick up the textured ‘hidden transcript’ found in many deeply divided societies and could allow for better targeted peacebuilding and development assistance. ß 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Peacebuilding Indicators Technocratic

1. Introduction This article seeks to go beyond critiques of top-down metrics of peace and peacebuilding to advocate for the construction of bottom-up indicators that could complement and add value to existing evaluation methods. It argues for a new generation of local-level peace indicators that are more accurate and locally meaningful than existing measures. Moreover, there is a capacity for the development of ‘indicators +’, or indicators that have the capacity to move beyond data capture in order to contribute to cross-community dialogue in peacebuilding contexts. As envisioned, the indicators would be bottom-up in that they would be proposed, defined and deployed by local communities. They would take the form of observations of local conditions and practices, and convey a richness and texture absent from many of the standard indicators used by international organisations. The indicators chosen may differ from locality to locality. Examples of locally defined indicators might include:  The resumption of cultural practices that declined during conflict  The health and adoption of stray dogs (certainty and additional food may encourage people to adopt/feed dogs)  Storeowners painting their storefronts  More luxury and imported goods in the market  A decline in sectarian graffiti

* Correspondence address: HCRI, Ellen Wilkinson Building, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0149-7189/$ – see front matter ß 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2012.07.001

Locating peace indicators within the lived experience of communities would be able to address a number of deficiencies often associated with macro and aggregate indicators used by international organisations and INGOs. It is hoped that the everyday peace indicators could more accurately reflect the onthe-ground situation in a textured way that is meaningful to local communities. For international organisations and donors, locally defined indicators would potentially offer forms of information that were more accurate and reflexive than existing measures. This may help with more targeted planning, but also help realise the often-stated goals of local participation and ownership of projects. The intention is not to dismiss the evaluation tools that are currently available. Instead it is to explore the possibility of the coproduction of indicators by donors, implementers and local communities. Everyday peace indicators could operate in tandem with existing indicators, awarding them additional value, accuracy and local meaning. The could also pass the ‘TURC test’ for social indicators by being technically sound, understandable, relevant and cost-effective (De Vries, 2001: 406). The article begins by locating orthodox approaches to peace evaluation in a wider context of the epistemology of peace and conflict. Specifically, it is argued that peacebuilding has experienced a ‘technocratic turn’ in recent decades and that this has had an impact on how peace is measured, The article then discusses existing evaluation tools and argues that many are problematic and risk giving a misleading picture of the conflict-affected society. In its final part, the article proposes guidelines for the construction of everyday peace indicators. Each context demands its own

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purpose-built peace indicators and so while this article recommends a process, it deliberately avoids providing a template or a model. In its current form, the article is an exercise in conceptual scoping although it is hoped that the researchers will have an opportunity to pilot the everyday peace indicators shortly. Interviews were conducted in late 2011 with peacebuilding policymakers and practitioners based in Washington. These interviews were for background purposes and are referred to in the article. 2. Technocracy and peace Before proceeding, it is important to locate current approaches to measuring peace within a wider epistemology and material culture. Crucial in this regard has been a ‘technocratic turn’ experienced by the peacebuilding sector that has facilitated standardisation in the ways in which conflicts are analysed and peace is measured. Technocracy is taken to mean the privileging of a bureaucratic imperative over other ways of making decisions or organising systems (Centeno, 1993: 314; 1994: 4; Riles, 2004: 393; Tinker & Lowe, 1984: 44). Arguments in favour of technocracy are that it is rational, efficient and neutral. The advantages of this are clear for deeply divided societies: potentially, decision-making or resource distribution along technocratic lines can avoid accusations of bias according to religion or identity. The peacebuilding sector is by no means unique in experiencing an increasing ‘technocratisation’. This process has been magnified, however, by the nature of contemporary peace-support interventions. The emphasis of many of these interventions has been on statebuilding and ‘good governance’ reforms. International interveners have placed faith in the conflict prevention and amelioration potential of ‘perfecting’ the state, encouraging accountability and transparency, and strengthening civil society. In short, international peacebuilding interventions have presented multiple opportunities for technocratic intrusion and enhancement in societies emerging from violent conflict. Also important to note is the transfer of technocratic norms and practices from the business world into the public and third sectors (Box, 1999: 19–43; Head, 2011). This has been particularly noticeable in the organisation and activities of the peacebuilding sector. Technocracy is prominent in contemporary peace-support interventions in at least three interlinked ways. Firstly, there has been standardisation of the ways that conflicts are analysed by international organisations and INGOs. This has involved the adoption of increasingly standardised conflict analysis tools and a specialist conflict analysis vernacular that labels conflicts in particular ways (Conflict Sensitivity Consortium, 2010: 15–40; GSDRC, 2009; World Bank, 2005). While standardised methodologies offer advantages, especially in allowing the categorisation and comparison of conflict, they can also be seen as the construction of new, and often exclusive, epistemologies. These epistemologies tend to order information by drawing on western assumptions and methodologies (Cramer, 2002). In many cases, conflicts are defined and described in ways that are alien to the societies that are experiencing the conflict (Donais, 2009: 8). The ways in which conflicts are framed have the potential to become another way in which inhabitants in the conflict zone are disempowered; their own experiences and observations are overlooked as external descriptive templates are used to categorise the conflict (Caddell & Yanacopulos, 2006). So, for example, external analysts may primarily see a conflict in terms of state weakness or state collapse. This Weberian view may seem intuitive to observers from the global north, but may not represent how those who experience and wage the conflict see it. These bureaucratic ways of ‘reading’ conflict have become institutionalised to the extent that they are regarded as routine, neutral and

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‘normal’. The danger is that orthodox ways of reading conflict have become hegemonic within the peacebuilding community and alternative ways of reading conflict are undervalued. The framing of conflict along technocratic and formulaic lines has important implications for the types of prescriptions recommended to ameliorate the conflict. Put simply, conflict analyses with an in-built focus on technocracy (the breakdown of the state, poor governance, the lack of mechanisms to ensure the fair distribution of resources, etc.) are likely to recommend peacesupport interventions that focus on technocracy. This is supplyside peacebuilding and helps explain why many peacebuilding interventions focus so heavily on statebuilding and good governance (Mac Ginty, 2012). The argument here is not that statebuilding, good governance or technocratic interventions are necessarily wrong-headed. It is, instead, that an over-emphasis on technocracy may leave unattended other elements of peacebuilding, particularly those linked with identity, relationships and perceptions of grievance (Brewer, 2010). In other words, technocratic interpretations of conflict may be predisposed to a noncritical problem-solving paradigm and avoid thornier issues normally confronted in the conflict transformation paradigm. A second way in which technocracy is prominent in peacebuilding is through the bureaucratic infrastructure and material culture that defines contemporary peacebuilding (Denskus, 2007; Goetschel & Hagmann, 2009). The peacebuilding sector is extremely varied and includes high numbers of individuals and organisations that act with the utmost professionalism. Over time, the sector has adopted increased technocracy. In part, this is to be welcomed as the ‘well-meaning amateur’ may do more harm than good, and because of the efficiencies that might derive from the standardisation of approaches, the professionalisation of personnel, and the adoption of ‘best practice’ (Slim, 1997). The political economy of peacebuilding, or more precisely the ability of donors to prescribe how peacebuilding should be conducted, has also had immense influence in shaping the sector in technocratic ways. Peacebuilding, particularly as conducted by formal organisations, has become increasingly ‘packaged’ through programmes, projects, log-frames, targets, budget cycles, and reporting mechanisms. In a sense, it is peacebuilding from IKEA (Mac Ginty, 2006). ‘Results based management discourse’ plays a prominent role (Denskus, 2010: 3). Many advantages accrue from the technocratisation of peacebuilding, not least in terms of transparency and accountability. Possible disadvantages come in the form of the development of a system that is unreflexive to local needs and that prioritises the perpetuation of a bureaucratic system above all else (Centeno, 1993: 312). The third factor that underscores the prominence of technocratic and bureaucratised approaches to peacebuilding has been the development of a select group of peacebuilding institutions and a cadre of ‘peacebuilding professionals’ who dominate contemporary peacebuilding. Despite the considerable size and variation within the peacebuilding sector, it is worth noting that the sources of power consistently lie in the global north. This is not to paint a picture of actors in the global south or in conflict-affected populations as being helpless or bereft of agency. Instead, it is to point our attention towards the sources of the programme design and direction, programme funding, and the discursive framing that comprise the sector. This means that many peacebuilding activities found in conflict-affected areas are heavily influenced, if not ultimately instigated, by actors in the global north (Scholey, 2006). With this comes the technocracy of quarterly reports, audit systems, and a compulsion to use a precise terminology. The purpose of this section has not been to criticise technocracy per se, nor to overlook the efficiency or neutrality that technocracy can offer. It is also important not to deny the creativity and innovation displayed by many individuals and institutions within

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the peacebuilding sector. Instead, this section aims to place standard approaches to peace indicators in a wider context of a peacebuilding infrastructure. This infrastructure takes the form of dominant institutions that orchestrate and conduct many peacesupport interventions. It also takes the form of norms and technologies of governance that shape these interventions. A major part of this infrastructure has been the construction of an increasingly standardised epistemology in which information is collected, organised and disseminated. 3. Critiquing existing peace indicators The case of Sri Lanka illustrates the failings of orthodox approaches to measuring peace. Between 2006 and 2008 the country descended into all-out war. Yet it is possible to find measures of peace from that time period that report success. At the project level, for example, peacebuilding projects report that they successfully met their objectives, despite a wider context of a militarised government, human rights abuses, and inter and intragroup enmity (European Commission, 2008; Swiss Contact, 2007). These evaluations were indeed accurate at the project level, but seem incongruous with on-the-ground experience. There are also problems with national level indicators. Economic and social development are often taken as proxy indicators for peace, and indeed an immense academic and policy literature stresses the correlation between conflict on the one hand and economic decline and bad governance on the other (World Bank, 2011: 2). United Nations Development Programme indicators show Sri Lanka experiencing a steady increase in its Human Development Index (HDI) score from 1980 onwards (Fig. 1; UNDP, 2011). This is despite war, poor foreign investment, and the 2004 tsunami that left an estimated 34,000 dead. At no stage, and despite these national traumas, does the HDI figure fall. The key point is that many orthodox indicators of peace and peacebuilding may be ‘precisely wrong’ in that they are technically correct but report a very misleading picture (De Vries, 2001: 321). The everyday peace indicator proposal takes the failings of existing measures of peace as its starting point. There is widespread recognition that the existing suite of peacerelated indicators in use by INGOs, international organisations and others is inadequate (De Vries, 2001: 315; Interviews 1–51). A number of organisations, including Catholic Relief Services, Alliance for Peacebuilding, and the State Department are investigating new ways of gathering information in societies emerging from violent conflict (Catholic Relief Services, 2010; Interview 2; Irmer, 2009; Kawano-Chiu, 2011). Despite a recognition of a need for change by many actors in the peacebuilding sector, important sources of inertia remain. Before outlining the everyday peace indicator proposal, it is worth reprising some of the main criticisms levelled at orthodox peace indicators currently in use by NGOs, INGOs and international organisations. Five criticisms are discussed. Firstly, it is not always clear that peace or peacebuilding indicators are measuring peace. In part this stems from the illusive nature of peace and the absence of an agreed definition (Anderson, 2004: 103). De Vries (2001: 316) notes in relation to development indicators that ‘GDP uses money, but there is no single agreed indicator for social phenomena’. There is no recognised and measurable ‘currency’ for peace. Many measures take, as their 1 Interview 1. Academic with expertise on evaluating peacebuilding. October 20, 2011. Interview 2. Employee at major international organisation, with expertise on evaluating peacebuilding. October 20, 2011. Interview 3. Employee at INGO 1, with expertise on evaluating peacebuilding. October 24, 2011. Interview 4. Employee at major donor government, with expertise on evaluating peacebuilding. October 24, 2011. Interview 5. Employee at INGO 2, with expertise on evaluating peacebuilding. October 25, 2011.

Fig. 1. Human development index, Sri Lanka, South Asia and global average, 1980– 2010.

starting point, peace as an absence of violence rather than as a condition in its own right. War recurrence, for example, is often taken as a primary indicator of peacebuilding success or failure (Call, 2008: 173). The academic discipline of Peace Studies has sought to counter this conflict-centric approach by making peace its foundational core. Thus far, however, it has remained marginal to dominant approaches to International Relations and Political Science that often take conflict or the state as their principal referents (Smoker, 1981; Sylvester, 1980: 305). Nor has it developed agreed indicators of peace. Many measures of peace focus on proxies that are believed to have a bearing on the extent of peace or peacefulness. For example, the Global Peace Index presents country-level data using 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators relating to domestic and international conflict, security within the society, and militarisation (Institute for Economics and Peace, 2011). Many of these proxies are defensible (for example, there is significant evidence linking militarism and military spending to war; Collier, 2006) but they tend to be proxy explanations for conflict, or the absence of conflict, rather than for peace. Secondly, many peace-related indicators are restricted to evaluating peacebuilding projects (Heathershaw, 2008: 338; Interview 3). They are an auditing and compliance tool (Rosga & Satterthwaite, 2009: 258). While such indicators may tell us much about a specific project, and offer comfort to donors, they may say very little about peace and peacefulness in the society. A further problem with the project-orientation of many indicator exercises is that they are restricted to the life-time of a project cycle. Peacebuilding, on the other hand, is generally regarded as a longterm process that will outlive the lifespan of individual projects (Kawano-Chiu, 2011: 18). The task facing peace indicators, therefore, is to capture the often incremental nature of a warto-peace transition, much of which occurs outside of formally organised peacebuilding programmes and projects. Thirdly, many current peace-related indicator exercises are topdown and originate from the global north. This reflects much wider power structures and donor-dynamics. The consequences of this are profound in that it means that exogenous actors initiate, organise and design surveys and other ways of ‘seeing’ the society. To the extent that local actors are involved in many peacebuilding indicators, they are survey enumerators or mere data. The framing of the research is usually conducted outside of the country with the result that external actors have the power to construct representations of a country or locality, and are empowered to label it as ‘conflict-affected’ or suffering from a particular type of conflict. This ability to ‘redefine’ localities, and possibly misread and distort

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them, applies to both qualitative and quantitative methodologies (Sasso, Bekdache, & Hassan 2010: 158–159). Fourthly, the subaltern position of the subjects of research may be reinforced by the ways indicators are represented and disseminated. The statistical rendering of data brings many advantages, but it is unlikely that this is the medium through which communities see themselves. Similar criticisms can be made of impenetrable postcolonial analyses. Pressure from some donors, particularly governments who are anxious to maximise transparency to taxpayers, is pushing recipients towards ever more econometric evaluation techniques (interviews 4 and 5). While such approaches can render very useful data for donors and academics, it can also be seen as a system of exclusion. The data is unlikely to be accessible to many of those living in the conflict-affected area. It may not connect with their lived experience or provide information in formats that help them access resources or improve security. Indeed, the representation of information in econometric formats may help perpetuate a dependency on external actors (consultants, governance officers, etc.) who can navigate their way around the administrative complexities of a statebuilding or post-war reconstruction context. A fifth criticism of many existing peace indicators is that they are unable to see the differences, often subtle, within and between communities. Different communities are likely to define peace in different ways; something that would entail measurement systems calibrated to see these differences in texture and nuance (Parkins, Stedman, & Varghese 2001: 44; Interview 1). These criticisms can be levelled at virtually all research techniques as they seek to find ways to manage large amounts of information. The criticism is particularly relevant to large n studies that, according to Denskus (2007: 657), have ‘served to erase the particularity of places and experiences through its inevitable generalisation’. Caddell and Yanacopulos (2006) note how knowledge about conflict (and presumably peace) is constructed, reconstructed, denied and silenced through complex processes that are not always reflexive and often write the personal and interpersonal out of the story (Mac Ginty & Williams, 2009: 4). This criticism is not to say that there cannot be universal and generalisible peace experiences. Indicators linked to human rights assume minimum standards that are universally applicable. The task facing peace indicators is to find ways to be meaningful at the exogenous and comparative levels, as well as at the local level (Kreutzmann, 2001: 135). 4. Everyday peace indicators—a proposal The article now shifts from a discussion of the challenges faced by orthodox approaches to measuring peace, to proposing guidelines of how peace could be measured at the local level. As already noted, the emphasis is on providing guidelines rather than a template. Given our interest in bottom-up indicators of peace, the imposition of a top-down template would negate the exercise. A suggested mechanism is advanced to help envisage what everyday peace indicators might look like, but the mechanism is likely to differ according to context. The suggested guidelines and mechanism are unlikely to satisfy quantitative methodological purists, yet methodological purity has often done little to connect with local populations and produce data that is locally relevant or meaningful. The intention instead is to propose a process that can be ‘robust enough’ so that it can report data that is accurate and meaningful to both local communities and actors at the national and international levels. The proposal argues that, in deeply divided society contexts, the development of peace indicators can be a cross-community endeavour and could contribute to conflict transformation.

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De Vries (2001: 406) proposes a ‘TURC test’ for social indicators: technically sound, understandable, relevant and cost-effective. The everyday peace indicators have been designed with this in mind as they are low-cost and embedded in the everyday lived experience of society. While they may not satisfy methodological purists, they are ‘robust enough’ in that the research process is designed in a transparent and defensible way. The everyday peace indicators are in keeping with participatory action research (Krimerman, 2001; McIntyre, 2008). They propose an activist form of research that has the potential to empower communities. Indeed, as Fals Borda (2001: 34) notes participatory action research often has a ‘political accent’. The everyday peace indicators are dependent on the consent of the researched, and are interested in the experiences and opinions generated by community members. The participants are both stakeholders in the community, and in the research process. Conversely to many orthodox forms of research, ‘expertise’ is held by the local community rather than by remote scholars or donors in the global north. The proposal draws particularly on the participatory indicators deployed in sustainable development projects, and on best practice currently used and being developed by peacebuilding practitioners. Four guidelines are identified for the development of everyday peace indicators. 4.1. Locally based It is envisaged that everyday peace indicators would best operate at the local (village or neighbourhood) levels. Conflict and insecurity, as well as improvements in situations, are experienced at many different levels, and often indirectly as well as directly. The local level, however, has an immediacy that other levels may lack, and participants in a peace indicator project would have the opportunity to report information that would be authentic and locally relevant. National level indicators risk subsuming particularised experiences into a generalised whole. One of the most noticeable aspects of societies experiencing conflict and peace processes is local-level variance (Barron, Smith, & Woolcock, 2004; Varashney, 2001). The diplomatic and ministerial compounds of Colombo, for example, were far removed from the very basic insecurities experienced in the north east of Sri Lanka. The experiences of individual localities can differ markedly, a nuance often masked by national-level statistics. A locally based peace indicator project would be more likely to engender a meaningful sense of ownership as local communities would be responsible for the design and administration of the project. The localism of the project may prevent direct and uniform comparison between localities, although some forms of comparison would be possible, for example in trends or if localities chose the same indicators. 4.2. Non-prescriptive The choice of indicators would be decided by the project participants and their informants (for example, family members or fellow residents in a locality). The great unknown, given that at this stage the project is an exercise in conceptual scoping, is the indicators that people would choose. Writing on poverty indicators, Strier (2005: 345) notes that ‘. . .the poor’s perceptions of their poverty are not entirely independent of the dominant discourses.’ The same concern applies to perceptions of conflict and peace. Project participants will likely have direct and personal experiences of conflict, but they will also operate in an environment in which peace and conflict are discursively framed in particular ways (Drake & Donohue, 1996). Influential family members, local and national political leaders, various types of media, international actors, and many others will contribute to the

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framing of the conflict and ensuing peace. A key question facing the project is the extent to which project participants reflect their lived experience in the choice of indicators, or the extent to which indicators are chosen according to the pre-formed narratives favoured by political or media elites. It may be that a hybrid is chosen. Given that the project will operate at the local level, it is to be expected that local level concerns will feature in the list of indicators. These are likely to include everyday issues such as observations about their locality, the provision of services (if any), and security. 4.3. Reflexive and open to change A common feature of standard indicators is an emphasis on the consistency of indicators. The advantage of this is that consistent datasets can be developed, and changes can be tracked longitudinally. This is not to say that orthodox indicators are time-bound and unreflexive. The Human Development Index, among many others, has modified its approach in an attempt to achieve greater accuracy (Klugman, Rodrı´guez, & Choi, 2011). As envisaged by the author, everyday peace indicators would change to suit changing circumstances. For example, if the survey was conducted biannually, then participants may be tempted to change some of their self-identified indicators to suit changing circumstances. New indicators might become apparent and others redundant. A changing security and political situation may facilitate greater cross-community interaction or a change in the number of visitors to the locality and participants may want to include this in the list of indicators. Over time, the identification of different indicators will tell a narrative. This narrative may be different from that ‘told’ internationally, nationally or in another locality (Scott, 1992). 4.4. Safeguarded against elite capture Given that the everyday peace indicators would be conducted in deeply divided or violence-prone contexts, they may face a problem of elite capture, or their domination by locally powerful actors. All contexts, whether they experience violent conflict or not, contain actors who feel empowered to act as gatekeepers and to perpetuate or construct narratives that they hope will become hegemonic. This often reflects wider power dynamics in society such as patriarchy or the way in which political parties organise. Such problems may be magnified in societies emerging from violent conflict. It may suit the agenda of some actors to promote narratives of escalating or de-escalating conflict. INGO or NGO actors may be tempted to usurp local voices and translate them into iterations that are more suited to other agendas. Western feminist discourses and agendas may not necessarily most accurately reflect local norms and aspirations in a developing world context, but it may be the case that an INGO feels empowered to act or speak on behalf of women in a particular locality (Abu-Lughod, 1990). In Northern Ireland, former militant prisoners have established NGOs to represent their members’ interests. These organisations jealously guard their preferred narrative of the conflict and perform a gatekeeping role that steers researchers in particular directions (Kelly, 2012: 84). There is no easy way around these problems of gatekeeping and elite capture. The suggested mechanisms of a questionnaire or suggestion box as a way of eliciting indicators may give some degree of anonymity. Moreover, as would befit participatory action research, the process would be voluntary and participants would be self-selecting. There is a danger that the process might be dominated by the ‘usual crowd’ of community activists and event-attenders, although the responses of each individual would have equal value. There is also a danger of populism whereby participants, perhaps coaxed by community elites, may be encouraged to identify indicators

associated with a particularly popular or controversial issue and perhaps overlook other, more telling, indicators (Miller, 2005: 423). 5. Operationalising the everyday peace indicators The following description of how everyday peace indicators could be operationalised is for illustrative purposes only. Each context may demand variations in the process, and participants will decide upon the relevance of indicators. A six stage process is envisaged, although stage two has the capacity to be expanded into a conflict transformation process if circumstances permit. Ideally, the everyday peace indicators could run in several localities in a conflict zone simultaneously, allowing for comparison across an area (Fig. 2). Stage one is the identification of the locality in which an everyday peace indicators project could run. Given the emphasis on localism and to minimise logistical issues, it is anticipated that everyday peace indicators would work best at the relatively small level of the village, small town, valley or neighbourhood. The choice of locality will depend on security considerations, and the more general political environment. The existence of a local civil society organisation adept at using participatory action research techniques would be essential for logistical purposes. Stage two involves the identification of indicators. Rather than the top-down imposition of indicators that have been designed outside the target area, bottom-up indicators would be identified by project participants. Through focus groups, town hall or banyan tree meetings, questionnaires or suggestion boxes, community members would be asked to submit a list of peace indicators. This would be an open-ended process without limitation on the number of indicators submitted or their type. It might include items such as: fewer military checkpoints, more tourists sighted, greater regularity in the mail service, or more people from an ethnic out-group using the market. The list of indicators may change from locality to locality, and over time. Through a focus group process, the open-ended list of indicators could be placed in categories, winnowed down into manageable numbers, and cases of repetition could be dealt with. It may be that only those involved in drawing up the lists of indicators are involved in the actual data collection and reporting, or it could be that a questionnaire survey is designed by a small group, and then distributed more broadly. This will, like many other aspects of the proposal, depend on practical circumstances. Verbal responses may be more suited to areas with low levels of literacy. For the purposes of the survey, questions on the indicators could be arranged according to a Likert

Fig. 2. Everyday peace indicators-suggested mechanism.

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scale. For example, if a focus group session identified the sighting of tourists in the area as an indicator of peace, the questionnaires could ask if respondents had seen a lot more tourists, some more tourists, no change in tourist numbers, less tourists, or a lot less tourists. The identification of indicators is useful in itself as it can be taken as a statement of community priorities and offers insights into this transcript (Miller, 2005: 417). A challenge associated with crowd-sourced indicators is that the identification of indicators could turn into a shopping list (Miller, 2005: 417). Participants may be tempted to list multiple indicators. In one sense, such a multiplicity of indicators is to be encouraged and would be a way of gaining a picture of the issues that are important to community members. Some of these issues might help reveal the ‘hidden transcript’ or the issues and dynamics of the community that are not obvious to external observers. By encouraging project participants to prioritise indicators (perhaps by identifying their top three issues), it may be possible to separate essential issues from ancillary ones. Interesting in this regard, would be the extent to which local or national level issues would be prioritised, and the extent to which participants would reflect the pre-formed narrative of political leaders or reflect a local narrative. It is also worth noting that there should be no expectation that project participants are trained social scientists (Kawano-Chiu, 2011: 17). The participatory and bottom-up nature of the research means that an emphasis is on accessibility. A possible pitfall of purely bottom-up indicators is that they are so locally oriented that they do not connect with external understandings of peace and conflict. In some sustainable development participatory surveys, a hybrid top-down and bottom-up survey model has been devised whereby locally identified indicators are selected in part (via workshops) according to how well they fit existing and internationally-recognised indicators (Parkins, Stedman, & Varghese, 2001: 49–50). Such hybrid models raise questions about the ownership and epistemology of research, but it may be that circumstances dictate that bottom-up indicators must piggyback on conventional survey platforms run by INGOs. Data collection constitutes stage three. This is probably best done over a relatively short time period (for example, one week), and the method of data collection will depend on the extent of survey. In the minimalist version it involves only participants in the design of the indicators through focus groups and workshops, while a maximalist version would include the distribution and collection of a survey questionnaire. This leads to questions of randomness and representativeness. Communities may be able to find ways to enhance the representativeness of the survey (encouraging participation by a cross section of society) but given that such surveys would be voluntary and participant-driven they would not meet the strictures of methodological purists. What is hoped for, however, is a process that is ‘robust enough’ to report reliably from a locality in terms that are meaningful to it and others. Stage four would be the collation and analysis of the survey results. Given that the surveys would be relatively small-scale and local, there is a possibility that this could be done locally and quickly. A local civil society organisation could facilitate this process. Stage five would be the reporting of the findings. Ideally this could be done in ways that would be accessible and meaningful to both local and non-local actors. The use of bottom-up indicators would mean that the condition of peace would be reported in ways that reflected the everyday experiences of people on-the-ground. Thus they might concentrate on the provision of public goods such as security or health care. While such information may be presented in ways that differ from the established reporting

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mechanisms of international organisations and INGOs, they should still be accessible to outsiders. The last stage would be a review of the process by the participants themselves so that amendments could be made before a repeat of the everyday peace indicator process. Perhaps the indicators could be repeated biannually, allowing a longitudinal narrative to develop that shows a worsening of the security situation, or a further embedding of the peace. 5.1. The possibility of a conflict transformation dimension Many orthodox evaluation processes are restricted to information gathering, having little meaningful engagement with the population under observation and often failing to report back findings to that population. The everyday peace indicators have the potential to become ‘indicators +’ or to move beyond information gathering to contribute to a conflict transformation process. Conflict transformation is more ambitious than conflict resolution and conflict management in that it seeks to target the structural drivers of conflict such as identity (Lederach, 1995). It places a strong emphasis on improving intra and inter-group relationships through education and the questioning of why individuals and groups hold the positions they do. The identification of everyday peace indicators has the possibility to contribute to a conflict transformation process by encouraging individuals and groups involved to interrogate the bases of conflict and to envisage what peace might look like. The dialogue involved in identifying everyday peace indicators might occur at the intra or inter-group levels. Given that the focus is on local peace indicators, there is the possibility that the dialogue might transcend conflict-reinforcing discussions, such as those that seek to blame the other side. It may also be that the identification of indicators of peace could act also as a way of identifying shared goals (De Rivera, 2004: 127). Opposing groups often differ on the causes and purposes of the conflict. Israelis and Palestinians, for example, tend to maintain very different explanations for the conflict between them. The former tend to use a discourse of security/terrorism and existentialist fears, while the latter tends to discuss the conflict in terms of land and displacement grievances. As a result, a shared conversation about the conflict is difficult and often reverts to a blame game, using well-known and often genuinely believed public transcripts. But a shared conversation about peace, or what peace might look like or how it might be measured, is a different prospect. It could be that if communities describe peace in everyday terms, such as getting food to market and kids to school, then shared cross-community conversations can be instigated (Mac Ginty, 2006). The indicator identification workshops and focus groups may provide a venue for cross-community discussion. While direct cross-community discussion may not be possible in all localities, the wide dissemination of the everyday peace indicator results may be useful in allowing communities to see that they share goals (often prosaic quality of life goals) and so may have more commonality than previously thought. Conflict escalation and perpetuation often depends on the subjectification of the out-group into a pejorative stereotype. A realisation that the in and out-group can agree on peace indicators, and that the survey results from opposing communities have similarities, may help interrupt this process of subjectification. 6. Concluding discussion The everyday peace indicators do not presume to romanticize or depoliticize local communities. The non-prescriptive nature of the indicator choice process means that participants are free to choose their own indicators, and these may not always fit the script favoured by international organisations and NGOs. They are a

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means of assessing the textured transcript of societies emerging from violent conflict. As such, they have the potential to be more authentic and representative than existing evaluation tools. Two key questions face the everyday peace indicators: what are they able to pick up that existing macro indicators do not, and what key elements of peace need to be captured in order to secure that peace? In answer to the first question, the everyday peace indicators promise added value in terms of their ability to pick up micro-level analyses from the lived experience of the conflictaffected community. Macro-level indicators, and indeed indicators restricted to the purview of projects, are unable to pick up the nuance and detail that the everyday peace indicators could pick up. Local level variance is a key part of conflict-affected societies, yet it is often masked by aggregated data. If circumstances allow, then the ‘indicators +’ model can be deployed. This allows the everyday peace indicators to move beyond data capture and play a more active role in stimulating intra and inter-group dialogue on what peace would be like and how it can be attained. The everyday peace indicators tackle the second question head on by empowering community members to identify what peace means to them. Thus ‘peace’ is not defined by outsiders. Instead, the perception of what constitutes peace emerges from the community itself and community members will be able to identify how that peace can be enhanced or secured. A common criticism of many internationally sponsored peacebuilding programmes is that they ‘impose’ a version of peace that is alien and brings few material benefits to its so-called beneficiaries (Richmond & Franks, 2009). The everyday peace indicators invert the orthodox model and allow communities to identify what peace looks like on the ground. The intention of this proposal is not to abandon existing tools. Instead, it is hoped that they can provide added value to the existing suite of indicators and evaluation tools. The co-production of research data, that is, the collaboration of researchers and the researched, has met with considerable success in the sustainable development sector and holds important lessons for the peacebuilding sector. Research projects on sustainable development have helped construct ‘new civic epistemologies’ or ways in which local communities can influence how they are represented and labelled (Miller, 2005: 406). Participative, bottom-up and reflexive methodologies may present problems in terms of defensible quantitative social science. Yet, many of the dominant epistemologies used to understand peace and conflict (both quantitative and qualitative) are exclusive to the communities we attempt to represent, and may actually misrepresent them. References Abu-Lughod, L. (1990). The romance of resistance: Tracing transformations of power through Bedouin women. American Ethnologist, 17, 41–55. Anderson, R. (2004). A definition of peace. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 10(2), 101–116. Barron, P., Smith, C. Q., & Woolcock, M. (2004). Understanding local level conflict in developing countries: Theory, evidence and implications from Indonesia. World Bank Development Papers, No. 19. Box, R. (1999). Running government like a business: Implications for public administration theory and practice. The American Review of Public Administration, 29(1), 19–43. Brewer, J. (2010). Peace processes: A sociological approach. Cambridge: Polity. Caddell, M., & Yanacopulos, H. (2006). Knowing but not knowing: Conflict, development and denial. Conflict, Security and Development, 6(4), 557–579. Catholic Relief Services. (2010). GAIN peacebuilding indicators. Baltimore: Catholic Relief Services. Call, C. (2008). Knowing peace when you see it: Setting standards for peacebuilding success. Civil Wars, 10(2), 173–194. Centeno, M. A. (1993). The New Leviathan: The dynamics and limits of technocracy. Theory and Society, 22(3), 307–335. Centeno, M. A. (1994). Democracy within reason: Technocratic revolution in Mexico. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.

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Roger Mac Ginty is professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, and the Department of Politics, University of Manchester. His latest book is International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance: Hybrid forms of peace. Along with Oliver Richmond, he edits the journal Peacebuilding. The author is grateful for a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame that allowed him to work on the Everyday Peace Indicators idea. He is also grateful to Dr Pamina Firchow for comments on an earlier draft.