Governance and Conflict: A Case of Mali

Conflict and governance are directly related.The relationship plays out along several attributable parameters such as economic development, resource scarcity, widespread poverty and inadequate access to participation of political decision making. Whereas conflicts are bound to occur in any society in the course of interaction between different conflicting social identities and beliefs, such conflicts cannot escalate into civil War, unless the country's current governance institutions, policies, and ideologies are not sufficiently receptive to the different social identities and instead, tend to promote social disintegration rather than social solidity. In such a case, the democratic culture of acceptance of social disparities and beliefs is also likely to be lacking. This kind of social framework then becomes a fertile ground that can easily be manipulated and provoked by the existing political leadership into a civil war, which only serves the hegemonic elite interests, rather than the interests of the state. Mali is a nation that enjoys diverse heritage albeit with a rather sharp divide between the northern population and the southern population. This paper attempts to address the relationship between conflict and governance through the lens of a nation such as Mali which has a history of the two sides, antagonistic in ideals, philosophies and ways of life trying to strike an accord on several occasions as well as an analysis of the government’s actions towards trying to mend the divide. The paper also attempts to address the aspect of marginalization of one side over the other and the roles that various actors had, as well as possible solutions to the same, all in a bid towards not only understanding the complexities of human interaction in general, but more specifically in Mali, whether a better approach may be necessary to resolve the conflict