Evaluating the Efficiency of Social Conflict Management Based on the Institutional Capacity of the Government: A Cross-National Approach

Abstract

This study conducted a two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess governments’ efficiency in promoting the social conflict management necessary to develop and maintain a state, the human rights of its citizens, and the common prosperity of humanity. We conducted a two-stage DEA, given the multifaceted nature of conflict and conflict resolution. This method facilitates the analysis of the relationship between government policies and social conflicts by separating the exploration of inputs and outputs into two stages. The efficiency values derived from each stage of the DEA were used in the cluster analysis, and the characteristics of efficiency scores across countries were used to exhaustively measure the conflict management capabilities of these nations. The DEA findings indicated that the average social stability efficiency, average social equity efficiency, and average overall social conflict management efficiency of the 53 Country Policy and Institutional Assessments countries examined were 0.8671, 0.9152, and 0.8036, respectively. On these bases, the core policy contribution of this research is the provision of a methodology for segmenting developing countries worldwide and targeting strategies for the future direction of the conflict management policies enacted by international organizations and governments.