Leadership and Reconciliation

In establishing peaceful social relations after launching a formal peace agreement, a transformation should be made in the attitudes of those in conflict with each other towards each other. Long lasting conflicts bring about hostile relations, and the groups involved in such conflicts are evidently separated in terms of identity, territory, security, and other possible aspects. Intractable conflicts emphasize a nation's political and cultural values as these are exhibited in the measures that the nation performs to deal with the conflict. While most writings regarding reconciliation and leadership make use of a bottom-up approach that concentrates on individual accounts, this chapter uses a topdown approach that looks into the role of national political leadership in reconciliation.