Enduring Conflict offers an insightful criticism of the relationship between conflict and democracy that Adrian Little argues predominates in conflict resolution and reconciliation. Democracy is typically viewed as the “solution” to conflict, because peace is the natural state of any democratic government or society. Where conflict continues and peace is absent, politics is inherently non-democratic because the existence of conflict is understood as antithetical to our ontological understanding of democracy. In the book’s opening theoretical move, Little contends that conflict should not be seen as “pathological” but rather as a constitutive aspect of democracy, suggesting that “continuing conflict is actually a resilient feature of most complex, contemporary societies” and democracy should not be viewed as an “antidote to the existence of conflict” (p. 11). The core concept animating this work is the idea that conflict is enduring. By enduring Little means two things: “on the one hand, that conflict endures in ‘post-conflict’ societies and, on the other, that the quality of endurance is something that is demanded of the people who live within post-conflict societies” (p. 11).

Little builds upon these twin insights in important and intriguing ways. Reading peace and democracy through the concept of Giorgio Agamben’s “signature,” he argues, “the pursuit of the signature themes of peace and democracy is a major obstacle…rather than a panacea to the problem of political conflict” (p. 9). Bringing insights from post-structuralist theory to his analysis of conflict’s role in democracy, much of the book is devoted to demonstrating the complexity and representational limits of these received understandings and argues that continuing to accept them will cripple progress towards reducing conflict and the suffering it causes.

In addition to the interpretivist approach and self-consciously discursive focus, part of what makes Little’s offering novel and useful is that he combines it with insights from scholars working at the intersection of complexity theory and social science. He utilizes this intersection to demonstrate that the “complicatedness” we all accept as endemic to political inquiry insufficiently captures the fundamental dynamics of politics, and that one must turn to complexity theory to appreciate the “non-linearity, unforeseen consequences, emergent properties, and path dependence” inherent to politics (p. 30). He utilizes these insights in the empirical sections of the book—which address post-conflict transformation and reconciliation—to develop a “narrative” approach and emphasize the role of contingency within each and every element of the process.

This move in particular, the bringing together of scientific innovations like complexity theory and post-structuralist theory and the linking of it to direct political engagement, is laudable and noteworthy on its own. It is difficult work that many resist at least in part due to critical skepticism toward positivism and scientific approaches, but in this case, the argument benefits greatly from this move. As well, the engagement with agonistic political theory in combination with the conflict resolution literature is important, and highlighting the role complexity plays here is helpful and meaningful for conflict resolution scholars, practitioners, as well as political theorists working on agonistic theory. Along these lines, the book is particularly good at showing how the conceptual claims advanced in the book operate in the political sphere empirically—invoking political practices in South Africa, Cambodia, Northern Ireland, and India. Indeed, Little offers a wealth of empirical backup for ideas like the call to move from a “rhetoric designed to resolve conflicts” to “a more systematic rhetoric of conflict” (p. 104). The empirical examples offer a welcome bulwark against those who dismiss the manner in which societies conceptualize a problem (the narratives of conflict) as mere “rhetoric.”

Finally, the use of the concept of contingency is deft in execution overall, especially because it takes the implications of contingency seriously. Accepting the radical implications of contingency, Little argues that rethinking the conception of peace and democracy in light of the “sub-optimal environment in which conflict endures and characterizes everyday life in society” forces a reorientation of goals to the politically possible and acceptance of those things that the ideals of political theory may resist (p. 139).

At times, however, the book sometimes falls prey to its own ambition. Issues—such as complexity theory’s challenge to political science, narratives as an alternative reconciliation approach, and insights from a diverse set of conflict situations—are raised that valuably challenge received understandings, but could be developed even further. In particular, the analysis of the implications this argument has for post-conflict areas could be more specifically fleshed out and identified, as some readers will wish to know what this looks like before accepting Little’s critique. Moreover, this need for further development warns of potential complications beyond the horizon of the book. For instance, in rejecting the agonistic move, which he articulates as domesticating conflictual relationships away from more violent and dangerous manifestations toward “political common ground,” Little highlights the value of narrative approaches as an alternative. He identifies the power of narrative approaches in that they accept “conflict” as “part of the ontological condition of political life” (p. 105).

One question that arises is the issue of defining conflict in precise terms. Defining this concept is a complicated question, but equally important for Little’s work is the problem of who gets to decide what is and is not a conflict. Enduring Conflict addresses this at one point by stating, “[o]f course, there are conflicts and there are conflicts and this book” does not reduce “all conflicts to the same common denominator” (p. 14). Nevertheless, this raises the issue of conflict’s definition. The expansive reading of conflict as something that endures and manifests throughout the fabric of society is one that will produce a great deal of sympathy among individuals who find his initial insight valuable, but it leaves open the question of how and where we draw those lines between acceptable and unacceptable manifestations of conflict. I read his claim as one that is against the existence of political violence and ultimately motivated by the laudable desire to ameliorate the real human suffering that occurs in situations where there are outbreaks of violence. But given the deep structural understanding of conflict he articulates, one wonders what types of conflict are acceptable as inevitable and which are not? Structural violence manifests in many different, sometimes unappreciated ways, and identifying which conflicts are acceptable as an ontological given, and what can be eliminated by moving in the direction Little points toward, remains an important and contestable issue. In some ways, this is an unfair concern, as the book goes to great pains to highlight the inevitable incompleteness and reflexivity intrinsic to direct political engagement advanced from a post-structuralist perspective. The book’s claim that new “political orders will be open to exactly the same processes of analysis and deconstruction” self-professedly applies to his own intervention as well (p. 16). However, the intervention is an important one overall as it forces us to recognize the inevitable incompleteness and distinctions between the lived experience of conflict and the signatures used to address them like “peace” and “democracy.”

Enduring Conflict is a valuable intervention into theories of democracy, post-conflict transformation and reconciliation. Operating at the intersection of these areas of inquiry, scholars in each field will find the substantive insights, as well as the demonstration of Agamben’s “signature” as a methodological tool, useful and valuable. As a concept, understanding conflict as something to be “endured” will improve scholarly appreciation of the temporality and lived experience of conflict in ways that move well beyond conceptual implications to better inform empirical investigations as well.