Critiquing Government Participation in Conflict

Governments are usually imagined as neutral referees standing above the fray, stepping in to separate warring sides and restore order. The reality is messier. When conflicts erupt, especially ethnic or communal ones, the state is rarely a detached outsider. Its earlier policies, its electoral calculations, and the loyalties of those who run it often pull it into the dispute long before the first stone is thrown. This is the core of the critique of “participant government”: the idea that the state, far from being an impartial peacemaker, frequently becomes one more party to the conflict, and in doing so makes a bad situation worse.

What “participant government” actually means 🔗

The phrase describes a government that is not merely managing a conflict but is itself a stakeholder in its outcome. This participation happens in two broad ways. Sometimes it is inadvertent, where ordinary policies on land, jobs, language, or religious identity tilt the field in favour of one group without anyone explicitly intending violence. Sometimes it is intentional, where political actors actively back a faction for votes, resources, or ideological reasons.

The distinction matters less than the effect. Once a government is perceived as having a stake in who wins, it forfeits the one thing that makes effective conflict resolution possible: the trust of all sides that it will hold the ring fairly. Research on communal conflicts shows that government bias reduces the chances that disputing parties reach a peace agreement, because neither side can trust the state to guarantee or enforce whatever deal they strike.

How states get drawn in without “choosing” sides 🔗

It is tempting to think of biased governments as cartoonishly partisan. In practice, the slide into participation is gradual and often bureaucratic. State policies and electoral campaigning quietly politicise group identities and reshape the incentives for violence. A decision about who counts as an “indigenous” resident versus a “settler,” a quota for government jobs, or the recognition of one community’s land claim over another’s can convert a routine administrative act into a flashpoint.

Ethnic or religious ties between those who run the government and one of the groups in conflict further shape how the state responds when violence breaks out. The same research notes that the central government’s reaction is influenced by these ties as well as by its own interests in natural resources and other assets. In other words, the state’s response is not neutral physics; it is filtered through who benefits and who is connected to power.

Why participation makes conflicts worse 🔗

The critique rests on a simple chain of consequences. A government that is seen as biased loses legitimacy as an arbiter. Without a credible arbiter, the formal channels for settling disputes break down. And when formal channels collapse, raw force tends to fill the vacuum.

The collapse of trust and the commitment problem 🔗

Conflict resolution often fails not because parties want endless violence but because they cannot trust any settlement to hold. Scholars call this the commitment problem. A peace deal requires a guarantor, and the state is the obvious candidate. But if the state is itself partial, its guarantee is worthless to the side it disfavours. Comparative studies of communal conflict in Nigeria find that the perceived bias of government intervention makes such conflicts difficult to resolve, even though the state holds a monopoly on legitimate force and is in theory best placed to act as referee.

This is the cruel irony of participant government. The very institution with the authority and capacity to end a conflict becomes the reason the conflict cannot end.

Human rights abuses and selective policing 🔗

The most visible cost of biased state involvement is the conduct of the police and security forces. When the machinery of law enforcement absorbs the prejudices of those in power, policing stops being protection and becomes a weapon. This is not an abstract worry. After the 2020 Delhi violence, human rights investigators documented a pattern of police failures and bias in the investigation, with law enforcement accused of acting against critics rather than impartially pursuing those who incited the violence.

The Manipur conflict that began in 2023 offers another stark example. Clashes between the Meitei and Kuki communities left scores dead and tens of thousands displaced, and rights groups noted that allegations of partisan involvement by security forces deepened public distrust of the authorities. Once a community concludes that the people meant to protect everyone are protecting only some, the conflict acquires a self-perpetuating logic.

Selective justice after the violence ends 🔗

Participation does not stop when the streets go quiet. It continues into the realm of accountability, which is often where bias becomes most entrenched. A telling case is the Srikrishna Commission, set up to inquire into the 1992-93 Mumbai riots. It examined victims, witnesses, and alleged perpetrators over several years, and indicted politicians, police, and government officers. Yet successive state governments, regardless of party, did very little to act on its findings. When inquiry reports name powerful insiders and then gather dust, the message to victims is unmistakable: justice depends on which side you are on.

The deeper roots: policy as a source of grievance 🔗

Critics of participant government argue that focusing only on riots and policing misses the point. Violence is frequently the symptom of grievances that government policy has either created or ignored over decades. Communal conflict is rarely purely “traditional” or beyond the state’s reach; it tends to be deeply intertwined with national politics and the distribution of opportunity.

When inequality is built into governance 🔗

A recurring finding in comparative research is that conflict is far more likely where people are denied basic needs for identity, recognition, security, and participation, and where government policy is believed to favour one group over another. A study of ethnic conflict management contrasting Nigeria and South Africa argued precisely this, observing that conflict becomes almost inevitable where a government’s performance is seen as biased in favour of a certain ethnic group.

In the Indian setting, the Sachar Committee made a related point about structural disadvantage. Appointed in 2005 to study the social, economic, and educational condition of Muslims, it concluded that the community’s conditions were below those of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes on several measures, and it offered dozens of recommendations for inclusive development. The committee also recorded a sharper grievance about the state’s conduct during riots, describing the governmental inaction in punishing perpetrators of communal violence as a long-standing sore point. The lesson is that grievances accumulate not just from active hostility but from policies that fail, year after year, to deliver equal treatment.

The case for proactive, non-partisan conflict management 🔗

If participation is the disease, what is the cure? Critics do not argue that the government should withdraw from conflict altogether. A state that does nothing is as dangerous as one that takes sides. Instead, they call for a proactive but non-partisan role, one focused on the conditions that make peaceful coexistence possible rather than on protecting particular constituencies.

Equal security and impartial service delivery 🔗

The most direct corrective is the even-handed provision of protection. Research on communal violence repeatedly returns to the same prescription: governments need to support legitimate local peace initiatives and ensure equal provision of security and other services to all citizens to mitigate communal violence. When every community can count on the same police response and the same access to public goods, the incentive to organise for self-defence, or for pre-emptive attack, falls sharply.

Letting neutral third parties do what the state cannot 🔗

Part of the answer lies in recognising the state’s limits. Because governments are so often entangled in conflicts, neutral non-governmental actors sometimes have access and credibility that official bodies lack. Organisations like the Carter Center describe themselves as free of political or partisan positions, able to build relationships and provide mediation support where governmental engagement is too sensitive to be trusted. A wise government acknowledges this and creates space for civil society rather than crowding it out or treating mediators as adversaries.

Building cross-cutting ties before violence begins 🔗

The most ambitious version of non-partisan management works upstream, before conflict turns violent at all. Classic principles of conflict resolution warn that in a polarised society the formal routes for managing disputes break down, and raw violence takes their place. The remedy is to deliberately reduce polarisation by promoting overlapping interests and mobility, so that no single identity becomes the only line that divides society. This is preventive peacebuilding, which addresses the economic, social, and political root causes of violence and fosters reconciliation rather than waiting for the next eruption to manage.

Balancing security and rights 🔗

None of this means security concerns are illegitimate. Governments face genuine pressure to restore order quickly, and inaction during a riot can cost lives. The critique of participant government is really a critique of how that security power is exercised. The danger appears when, in the words of one Indian court reflecting on the response to protests, the state blurs the line between the right to protest and terrorist activity out of an anxiety to suppress dissent. When that line blurs, security becomes a pretext and rights become collateral damage.

Effective conflict management therefore requires holding two commitments at once: a firm response to violence and an equally firm respect for the rights and grievances of every community, including those the government finds inconvenient. The goal is a state that is strong enough to stop violence yet disciplined enough never to become its author.

What do you think? Can a government that depends on the votes of particular communities ever be a truly neutral arbiter in a communal conflict, or is some degree of participation unavoidable? And if the state cannot always be trusted to be impartial, how much of the work of peacebuilding should be handed to civil society instead?

References

1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0010414019830734
2. https://theconversation.com/how-government-bias-can-fuel-communal-conflicts-in-africa-121640
3. https://www.niujournals.ac.ug/ojs/index.php/niuhums/article/view/2352
4. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/17/indias-police-found-complicit-anti-muslim-mob-violence
5. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/30/india-investigate-police-bias-alleged-manipur-violence
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srikrishna_Commission
7. https://www.beyondintractability.org/casestudy/irobi-ethnic
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachar_Committee
9. https://www.cartercenter.org/programs/conflict-resolution/
10. https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/TJP.CHAP10.HTM
11. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/02/21/india-biased-investigations-2-years-after-delhi-riot