Chapter seven takes a closer look at the rebel group themselves, their make-up and propensity to project outward force and includes a focus on the individual participant in violent groups. Here we find that personal determinants and group behaviour shed a different light on escalation, serving an inner logic or social bonds rather than strategic concerns of the group. The cases used to illustrate the mechanisms are the Khalistan Movement in India, the German Rote Armee Fraktion and the Red Brigades in Italy. In the Indian case external pressure had clear repercussions for the internal dynamics of the Sikh movement. The German Rote Armee Fraktion showcases a personal extremity shift after the repression by the German state. The Italian case is notable for the role of individual ways out of violence to explain a de-escalation of the struggle. The chapter points to escalatory mechanisms focusing on extremity shifts within armed groups.

The term conflict management stands for a wide array of activities undertaken to prevent violent conflicts, to manage and end them once broken out, as well as to build peace and to avoid a recurrence of violence. Such activities include mediation between warring factions, military and civilian peacekeeping operations to oversee truces or peace agreements, peace enforcement, and post-conflict reconstruction, which comprises initiatives for state-building and socio-economic development amongst others. This chapter scrutinizes these activities and identifies factors that lead to peace. Itconcentrates on mediation and power-sharing as means to make peace, on military and civilian operations of international organizations as means to keep peace, as well as on the accommodation of spoilers, the design of peace operations, and transitional justice as means to build peace.