Understanding how order emerges and breaks down challenges existing disciplinary divisions and demands better foundations. Studies of state formation, state failure, political and social polarization, nationalism, interstate and intrastate war and peace, ethnic strife and violence, class conflict, genocide, revolution, and the various forms of crime—and the institutions that regulate them, are usually undertaken in disciplinary isolation. The Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence at The MacMillan Center seeks to straddle existing boundaries by fostering pioneering and rigorous theoretical and empirical research on human conflict in all its dimensions.
The Program’s interests include the material and non-material origins and consequences of polarization; the political and social factors that affect the breakdown, emergence, and consolidation of local, national, or transnational political order; the determinants of strategies, types (e.g. class, ethnic, religious), and consequences of group conflict; and the likelihood of their escalation into violence.
The Program fosters an intellectual community at Yale through the interaction of students, faculty, and visiting fellows. Its activities include speaker series, workshops, and conferences.