Intergovernmental relations: meaning and relevance for conflict management

The overall aim of the two workshops was to identify, discuss and evaluate mechanisms of conflict management in different states and debate options for how these could be improved, specifically focusing on relations between different government levels. In doing so, the first part of the workshop focused on the definition of inter-governmental relations, a discussion on why they are important and a wider input session on common problems and issues with intergovernmental relations in the countries represented in the workshop. The second part focused on possibilities to increase the functionality of intergovernmental relations and overcome some of the identified problems. A short input presentation was followed by a discussion amongst the participants in order to identify what works in some countries and how some of the identified problems could be overcome