Cole, E. A., & Firchow, P. (2019) - Reconciliation Barometers - Tools For Postconflict Policy Design.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, 2019, 0, 1–24
doi: 10.1093/ijtj/ijz024
Article
Reconciliation Barometers: Tools for
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Postconflict Policy Design
Elizabeth A. Cole* and Pamina Firchow†
A BS TR A C T 1
This article provides a comprehensive overview of several efforts at creating reconcili-
ation barometers in 10 countries worldwide. The discussion is based on reflections
from the originators of the barometers themselves convened in a workshop in 2016
about methodology, definitions, challenges and outcomes of these efforts to longitu-
dinally measure reconciliation in postconflict contexts. We conduct a cross-barometer
comparison and conclude that the different barometers have many more similarities
than differences – a surprising finding considering the variety of contexts they repre-
sent. With the proliferation of efforts to develop reconciliation barometers in the past
decade, we propose a new research agenda to contribute to a growing need to better
understand the consumption of these tools by policy makers and implementers, as well
as how they are best developed and disseminated.
K E Y W O R D S : reconciliation barometers, peacebuilding, peace processes
I N TRO D UC T IO N
A common element of peacebuilding strategies that focus on repairing relations – be-
tween state and society and also at the intergroup, intracommunal and interpersonal
levels – is the adoption of reconciliation as a main objective. Reconciliation has fea-
tured prominently on domestic and international agendas for more than 30 years,
arising as a topic of attention in diverse settings spanning every region of the world,
including North America. Governments and intergovernmental bodies have played
an influential role in advancing the promotion of reconciliation, particularly in post-
World War Two Western Europe, but civil society has always been a major player,
and is increasingly at the forefront of articulating reconciliation as a fundamental,
pressing need in conflict-affected societies. As a consequence, reconciliation has been
* Senior Manager for Programs and Publications, Duihua Foundation, San Francisco, USA. Email: lilicole@
earthlink.net
†
Associate Professor, Heller School for Social Policy, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA.
Email: pfirchow@brandeis.edu
1
We thank the US Institute of Peace for hosting and supporting the workshop on reconciliation barometers,
as well as the representatives of the barometers whose participation enabled this article; David Backer and
Anu Kulkarni, who helped to plan and co-organize the workshop and contributed to initial drafts of this
manuscript; Jan Hofmeyr, of the South African Reconciliation Barometer; and Alexandros Lordos, of
SCORE, for their helpful feedback on drafts of this article.
C The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
V
For permissions, please email journals.permissions@oup.com
1
2 E.A. Cole and P. Firchow
elevated as a key marker of progress in tackling the sources and impact of conflict
and diminishing the potential for recurring violence.
This article discusses an emergent set of tools that have been or are being used in
at least 10 countries, spanning several continents, which have sought to address the

needs and challenges of measuring reconciliation through the collection and analysis
of primary empirical data. We group the tools under the banner of reconciliation bar-
ometers, since most of them, including one of the earliest and best known, explicitly
use this label.1 The term ‘barometer’ as a social science tool preexists its metaphoric
use as a measurement for reconciliation, and is most known for being used for four
longitudinal regional political and socioeconomic public opinion survey studies: the
Eurobarometer (since 1973),2 the Latinobarómetro (since 1995),3 the Afrobarometer
(since 1999)4 and the AmericasBarometer Survey (since 2004).5 It also influenced
the founders of the earliest reconciliation barometer, based in South Africa. A defining
feature these measurement tools share is a reliance on the collection of perception-
based data at an individual level, primarily using household surveys. Included in
these barometers are an array of indicators of perceptions, attitudes, behaviors,
relationships and interactions, as well as personal experiences and the political,
social and economic contexts, including continued conflict and violence of various
kinds.6 Reconciliation barometers, like the broader regional tools, are intended to
be longitudinal, showing trends over time through repeated waves of data gathering
and analysis.
Temporally, the use of a reconciliation barometer can precede, be contemporan-
eous with or follow a transition from conflict. Depending on the design of the re-
search, the results can represent cross-sectional snapshots, capturing a point in time,
or reveal an evolving picture. The findings may be used to inform decisions about
the development and implementation of measures, or to assess their impact. More
specifically, reconciliation barometers are intended to assist citizens, policy makers
and practitioners in documenting conditions, identifying issues, understanding con-
tributing factors, informing strategy, designing policies and interventions, and navi-
gating the assessment of progress in peacebuilding contexts. These tools are
significant because they claim to afford vital evidence that can be used to illuminate
the circumstances of peacebuilding from a societal perspective.
This article argues that more research is necessary in order to understand the im-
pact and importance of these barometers. It consolidates experiences and lessons
from the deployment of several reconciliation barometers whose representatives con-
vened for a meeting at the US Institute of Peace in September 2016 to discuss com-
mon challenges and efforts at measuring reconciliation. First, we give an overview of
1 This article is partially based on information collected in an international workshop convened at the US
Institute of Peace (USIP) in September 2016, which brought together representatives from barometer ini-
tiatives in South Africa, Cyprus, Nepal, Ukraine, Australia, Israel, Colombia, Liberia and the Balkans
region.
2 See, http://ec.europa.eu/COMMFrontOffice/publicopinion/index.cfm (accessed 21 January 2019).
3 See, http://www.latinobarometro.org/lat.jsp (accessed 21 January 2019).
4 See, http://www.afrobarometer.org/about (accessed 21 January 2019).
5 See, https://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/about-americasbarometer.php (accessed 24 January 2019).
6 Indicators here refer to the specific tools used to measure reconciliation that provide the basis for the sur-
vey questions in the barometers.
Reconciliation Barometers: Tools for Postconflict Policy Design 3
the barometers that were included in this study. We then offer more details about
the approach of reconciliation barometers and summarize the orientation and meth-
ods of existing barometers, as well as the challenges they have encountered. Third,
we distill and discuss key insights that these barometers have yielded. Finally, we

identify some unanswered questions about the barometers and suggest some promis-
ing areas for future research on measuring reconciliation.
R EC ON C IL I A TI ON BA R OM ET ER S
A reconciliation barometer is a composite gauge of observable indicators collected
through surveys. This is usually done through longitudinal instruments to measure
change in public opinion over time regarding the legacy of the conflict and changes
in the most critical relationships affected by the conflict. The primary task of recon-
ciliation barometers is not to track violent incidents or to chart and analyze negative
peace, but rather to gather and assess attitudes towards the conflict and continuing
challenges arising from it that undermine peace over the long term. In this sense, rec-
onciliation barometers serve as regular reports on the state of positive peace, or a
peace that goes beyond an absence of violence.7
The intended purposes of a reconciliation barometer are critical to its design and
strategy. They affect all aspects of how the barometer carries out its work, the form
or product the results of that work will take or produce, and the intended audiences
or consumers of these products. Like definitions of reconciliation, the existing bar-
ometers’ targeted audiences and products, and the dissemination and uses of these
products, have many areas of overlap, although they are not identical. In general, a
common purpose for all the barometers is to give voice to the voiceless or the un-
heard via public opinion surveys.
In what follows, we give an overview of the barometer efforts we studied, their
purposes, intended audiences and products, starting with the South African
Reconciliation Barometer (SARB) launched in 2002 and ending with the most re-
cent efforts started in Moldova in 2018. The continuing trend to fund and create rec-
onciliation barometers attests to the attraction of the concept as a tool for national
peacebuilding, as well as the evolution of the concept to meet the needs of distinct
contexts.
South African Reconciliation Barometer

The SARB, launched in 2002, has the distinction of being the first such effort at
measuring national reconciliation. It was conceived as a civil society-led follow-on to
the state-led South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It has
been housed since its founding at the nongovernmental Institute for Justice and
Reconciliation. The primary purpose in creating the SARB is to track public percep-
tion and sentiment on socioeconomic and political transformation in post-apartheid,
transitional South Africa.8
The SARB was developed to meet the need to understand the social, as opposed
to solely political, transition needs of the country, and to be a tool for both diagnosis
7 Johan Galtung, ‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,’ Journal of Peace Research 6(3) (1969): 167–191.
8 See, https://reconciliationbarometer.org/ (accessed 29 January 2019).
and the anticipation of events. As a tool to amplify the voices of ordinary citizens
that are typically drowned out by elite narratives, one of the SARB’s primary goals is
to ensure that opinions of all South Africans reach those that have the power to
transform society.

Specific targeted audiences include those working in local, provincial and national
government, civil society organizations, faith-based communities, academia and cor-
porate social responsibility initiatives. Methods of outreach have included targeted
media strategies and engagement with influential individuals and agencies with a role
in policy making. Data from the surveys are released regularly throughout the year,
via the publication of briefing papers and coordinated media and communications
initiatives. The SARB is broadly consumed in government and has been used by the
national departments of Arts and Culture, Justice, Performance Monitoring and
Evaluation, as well as Education. In publicity campaigns, efforts are made to translate
the results of the data collection and analysis into language ordinary people, even
those with limited education, can understand, despite the difficulty of reaching all of
these groups.
Australian Reconciliation Barometer

The Australian Reconciliation Barometer, dating from 2008, is a national project of
Reconciliation Australia to promote reconciliation between the wider Australian
community and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.9 The biennial barometer’s
original purpose was to learn more about awareness, attitudes, perceptions and
actions as they affect reconciliation.10 It has gone on to focus on five interrelated
dimensions of reconciliation: race relations, equality and equity, institutional integ-
rity, unity, and historical acceptance.11 In its 2018 survey, the barometer surveyed
497 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and 1,995 Australians in the
general community across all states and territories.
Although the Australian Reconciliation Barometer was formed to gather data on
attitudes and perceptions towards reconciliation between Indigenous and non-
Indigenous Australians, the purpose expanded to using data to produce powerful nar-
ratives from which to communicate and ‘market’ the concept of reconciliation across
sectors of Australian society. This barometer is strongly institutionalized, and was
developed with communications goals in mind. Findings and recommendations are
made available to the public as full reports, summaries and communications prod-
ucts, targeting a wide range of audiences representing government, nonprofits and
the private sector. The fact that the surveys are online, a decision originally made for
budgetary reasons and to provide privacy to survey takers, especially non-Aboriginal
Australians who might find some of the questions uncomfortable, has made it easy
to communicate news about them through social media. The national barometer has
inspired a shorter and more granular index, the Workplace Barometers, which have
9 The barometer was originally government-led and is now its own nonprofit. For more, see, https://www.
reconciliation.org.au/ (accessed 28 January 2019).
10 See, https://www.reconciliation.org.au/resources/ (accessed 22 August 2019).
11 See, https://www.reconciliation.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/RA_ARB-2016_Overview-brochu
re_web.pdf (accessed 22 August 2019).
existed since 2012 and collect data biennially from a group of organizations that have
developed their own Reconciliation Action Plans (RAPs) and participate voluntarily.
These barometers can be said to function as outreach for the national barometer, as
they bring the exercise to a more targeted audience and highlight the RAPs to articu-

late and implement a vision of reconciliation.
Social Cohesion and Reconciliation Index

Reconciliation barometers in Cyprus, Nepal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine,
Liberia, Eastern Ukraine (as a distinct barometer), Moldova, Malaysia and, most re-
cently, Armenia and South Sudan (with several more in discussion or early planning
stages), are based at one research institution, the Cyprus-based Centre for
Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development (SeeD). SeeD’s barometer projects
are collectively known as the Social Cohesion and Reconciliation Index (SCORE).12
Despite using the term ‘index,’ SCORE instruments are very similar in intent and
methodology to the other instruments discussed in this article. Dating from 2013,
when it was launched with a barometer for Cyprus,13 SCORE is a research tool to
measure the state of reconciliation in multiethnic societies around the world. Its
broad goals are to map and monitor reconciliation and to identify the elements that
have to be in place to reach a desired peace outcome, defined by each conflict con-
text.14 Some of SCORE’s barometers have been short-lived, such as Nepal’s, which
was only implemented for one year, but most other, currently active barometers vary
in age from one (Malaysia, Moldova), three (Ukraine) to six years (Cyprus) and are
intended to continue as multiyear longitudinal research instruments.
The Liberian barometer, founded in 2016, like the South African one, is closely
related to Liberia’s Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, and has been housed
in a university-based research institute. It was created by Liberia’s Peacebuilding
Commission and the Peacebuilding Office of the Minister of the Interior, with strong
support from the various international organizations involved in Liberia’s peace plan,
particularly the UN. While several institutions and experts, both domestic and inter-
national, advised on the conception and design of the Liberian barometer, it uses
SCORE methodology and is part of the SCORE family of barometers.
The SCORE indices’ purpose is to map and monitor public opinion on
reconciliation-related issues, to identify elements of reconciliation most needed in
order to build peace, and to measure the impact of and improve reconciliation inter-
ventions. SCORE’s utility is meant to lie not only in its analytical and evaluative cap-
acity, but also its predictive potential. In addition to other purposes, the SCORE
12 See, http://www.scoreforpeace.org/ (accessed 22 August 2019).

13 Maria Ioannou, Giorgos Filippou and Alexandros Lordos, ‘The Cyprus SCORE: Finding New Ways to
Resolve a Frozen Conflict,’ in UNDP, Predicting Peace: The Social Cohesion and Reconciliation Index as a
Tool for Conflict Transformation (2015).
14 Although the development of a reconciliation barometer was conceived as early as 2014 by the
Peacebuilding Commission, the 20 March 2017 UN Peacebuilding Plan for Liberia called for the use of a
‘barometer of progress,’ an instrument to measure ‘progress towards restoring social cohesion and advanc-
ing reconciliation as two critical elements of conflict transformation and sustaining peace.’ See, https://
www.un.org/peacebuilding/sites/www.un.org.peacebuilding/files/documents/040417_sg_letter_of_4_
april_liberia.pdf (accessed 22 August 2019), pp. 22, 21.
team see their surveys as tools for early warning. SCORE barometers produce
reports and presentations targeted at international and national stakeholders, and
SCORE’s key outreach tool is its online platform.15 The SCORE barometers’ par-
ticular goal is to reach and involve local actors through a participatory process, car-

ried out in facilitated meetings and dialogues, to generate interpretation of SCORE’s
findings. For example, the Liberian barometer’s data and analysis are intended to be
used by the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) and other international stakeholders
supporting Liberia’s peace plan, as well as the government of Liberia. The first wave
of data it gathered was used in recommendations by UNMIL. Finally, in a book on
SCORE’s work in Cyprus and Bosnia and Herzegovina, SCORE researchers envi-
sioned an additional use for SCORE’s data-gathering methodologies – evaluation of
the impact of specific interventions.16
Colombian Index for the Conditions for National Reconciliation and the
Colombian Index for Reconciliation
The Colombian Index for the Conditions for National Reconciliation (Índice de
Condiciones para la Reconciliación Nacional, or ICRN), which was piloted in three
municipalities and gathered data in one wave in 2016, was a project of two Colombian
government agencies, the Victims Unit and the Colombian Agency for
Reintegration.17 It was directly connected to the official Colombian peace process, and
began its work in the context of continuing violence during national-level negotiations.
The barometer was conceived as a tool both to support the peace process and to chart
conditions that were changing as the process evolved, and eventually to support the
implementation of the peace agreement and long-term peacebuilding.18 The ICRN’s
primary purpose was to track and measure the conditions necessary for Colombia’s
peace process to succeed. Its main audience was regional and local government officials
(governors and mayors), and its main use was intended to be as a planning tool for
policies linked to implementing the peace process and advancing reconciliation.
In 2017, another barometer was created by the international nongovernmental or-
ganization (NGO) ACDI VOCA, with funding from USAID. The Colombian Index
for Reconciliation emerged from the Instrument for Measuring Reconciliation
(Instrumento de Medición de Reconciliación, or IMR), a tool created by these actors.19
Two waves of data collection for the Colombian Index for Reconciliation have been
completed, one in 2017 and the second in 2019. This new Colombian index was also
supported by research conducted by Colombian scholars at the Universidad de Los
Andes and the Universidad de Rosario.20
15 See, www.scoreforpeace.org (accessed 22 August 2019).

16 SeeD and UNDP, Predicting Peace: The Social Cohesion and Reconciliation Index as a Tool for Conflict
Transformation (2015).
17 The data for one of the pilots can be found at https://repository.oim.org.co/handle/20.500.11788/803
(accessed 24 January 2019). Data for the entire project was published in Manual de Cálculo, Índice de
Condiciones para la Reconciliación Nacional (ICRN) (Bogotá: Cifras and Conceptos S.A., 2016).
18 Angelika Rettberg and Juan E. Ugarriza, ‘Reconciliation: A Comprehensive Framework for Empirical
Analysis,’ Security Dialogue 47(6) (2016): 517–540.
19 More information on the IMR and barometer can be found at confio.com.co (accessed 22 August 2019).
20 Rettberg and Ugarriza, supra n 18.
Table 1. Reconciliation barometers’ purposes, intended audiences and products
Barometer Purpose Intended audience Products
South Africa Track reconciliation process Policy makers, opinion makers, the public Online reports, briefing papers,
publicity and outreach to
media
Australia Gather baseline data; track reconcili- Public, policy makers, government, nonprof- Full reports, summary resour-
ation process; socialize and ‘market’ its, private-sector employers (via ces and communications
concept of reconciliation as a realiz- Workplace Barometers and RAPs) products
able, concrete goal; use for program-
planning purposes
Index of Arab–Jewish Track intergroup views and trends of NGOs working for coexistence, and policy Research reports, academic
Relations in Israel change in intergroup relations makers and academics focused on the publications, conferences/
Arab minority in Israel briefings
SCORE (as a group: Diagnostic and predictive; ‘to inform Local actors, decision makers and peace Online platform (www.scorefor
Cyprus, Nepal, the design of practical peacebuild- activists, international stakeholders (UN peace.org) with charts,
Bosnia, ing and development interventions’; Development Programme [UNDP], graphs, maps; reports by year
Ukraine, Liberia, early warning, identify subnational UNMIL, USAID, etc.) on specific issues from specif-
Eastern Ukraine, hotspots; potentially assess ic barometers; briefings;
Moldova, interventions facilitated dialogues
Malaysia, from ear-
liest to most
recent)
Colombia Inform peace process and peacebuild- Local government policy makers, mayors Reports and press releases
Reconciliation Barometers: Tools for Postconflict Policy Design
ing policy and governors (ICRN) and international (ICRN); online platform

community, national policy makers with preliminary findings

7
(Index) (confio.com.co)

Index of Arab–Jewish Relations in Israel

Finally, the Index of Arab–Jewish Relations in Israel, established in 2003, is only
slightly younger than the SARB. This barometer does not measure reconciliation as
such, since the Arab–Israeli conflict is not in a reconciliation phase. Rather, for more

than 15 years it has measured changes annually in attitudes of Arab and Jewish citi-
zens of Israel towards key issues in the largely nonviolent but conflictive relationship
between these two groups, both composed of citizens of the State of Israel, which in
turn is part of, but distinct from, the broader, and violent, Israeli–Palestinian conflict
(i.e. involving the Israeli State and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza). While
the purpose of this barometer is not to assess the state of postconflict peacebuilding,
its concerns and methods substantially overlap with those of the reconciliation
barometers.21
The general purposes of the Index of Arab–Jewish Relations in Israel are to pro-
vide up-to-date intergroup views and trends of change. More specifically, its purpose
is to test the dominant narrative in Israel that Israeli Arabs and Jews are becoming in-
creasingly alienated from each other and heading towards inevitable violent conflict.
The Index of Arab–Jewish Relations in Israel has two main sets of stakeholders:
NGOs working for coexistence, and policy makers and academics focused on the
Arab minority in Israel. The index produces research reports and academic publica-
tions, and convenes conferences and briefings. As a small project with no institution-
al home or regular funding base, however, its reach is limited.
D EF I N ITI O NS OF R EC O NC I LI A TI ON
Discussions of reconciliation inevitably raise questions of what is meant by the term,
and one of the first challenges for a barometer is to define the term in such a way
that it fits within the broad understanding of the concept, is appropriate for the spe-
cific context and is measurable. In this section, we first give a brief overview of the
term and its use in the context of conflict, and then discuss how each of the barome-
ters has chosen to define it.
Defining Reconciliation: Overview

Reconciliation is a concept with philosophical, religious and cultural foundations that
are deeply connected to relational aspects of human experience. It is an idea that is
relevant in the context of conflicts that adversely affect the quality of relationships,
whether they are spiritual, familial, inter- or intraclan or community, or between a
citizen and the state. Although scholars are divided on what the concept means, it is
fundamentally one that encompasses the idea of repairing and reviving relationships
that have been particularly harmed by the actions of one or more of the parties
involved.22 Reconciliation is not seen as a means of eliminating differences, but as a
21 See, for example, Sammy Smooha, ‘Index of Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel 2003–2009,’ Jewish–Arab
Center, University of Haifa (2010).
22 John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: US
Institute of Peace Press, 1997); Hizkias Assefa, ‘Coexistence and Reconciliation in the Northern Region
of Ghana,’ in Reconciliation, Justice and Coexistence: Theory and Practice, ed. Mohammed Abu-Nimer
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001); Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, ed., From Conflict Resolution to
Reconciliation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Valerie Rosoux, ‘Reconciliation as a Peace-
process of working through contention and living with differences. Although recon-
ciliation has a rich religious and philosophical history, its incorporation into the dis-
course of transitional justice and conflict transformation in the context of ending
wars and building peace is significantly more recent.23

The term ‘reconciliation’ in a postconflict context entered political policy most
prominently in the 20th century with the transformation of French–German rela-
tions after World War Two, and broadened, especially in the1960s and onwards, in
Germany’s search for reckoning with the war and the Holocaust and its relations
with other countries, including Poland, the Czech Republic and Israel. Significantly,
the German language has two terms for reconciliation, both used in this historical
context, in which interstate, not intrastate, relations were at stake: Versöhnung, refer-
ring to philosophical and emotional dimensions, and Aussöhnung, to practical and
material dimensions. Both terms have been used consistently in German foreign pol-
icy since 1949.24 This has allowed the language to specify different facets of the con-
cept in ways the English language, among others, cannot, and perhaps allowed
disagreements about the term to be postponed until the rise of its use in other
contexts.
Beyond the European, post-World War Two context, contemporary attention to
reconciliation as a topic in the context of conflict-affected settings can be traced
most prominently to the Chilean National Commission on Truth and
Reconciliation. This commission was established by President Patricio Aylwin in
1990 to investigate the extensive abuses of human rights that occurred during the
1973–1989 military dictatorship of Aylwin’s predecessor, General Augusto Pinochet.
When initially considered, the vision for the commission was limited to a narrow
truth-seeking function, similar to a conventional legal inquiry. Due to advocacy from
civil society activists and families of those who had been disappeared, reconciliation
was added to the name of the commission, effectively broadening its mandate. The
addition reflected an acknowledgement of the need to confront the wide rifts created
by the Pinochet regime between those in power and those targeted for their alleged
involvement in opposition activities.25 Profound issues about truth were at the heart
of the rift, with pervasive connotations for politics and society, not to mention the
affected families. Part of the worry was that an inquiry framed in technical terms
would fall short of engaging these surrounding issues – and another similar oppor-
tunity, bolstered by the weight of a formal institution created by the state, might
never be available.
The South African TRC, established by Parliament in 1995 following the 1994
transition to multiracial democracy, embraced the concept of reconciliation even
Building Process: Scope and Limits,’ in The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Resolution, ed. Jacob Bercovitch,
Victor Kremenyuk and Ira William Zartman (Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2009).
23 Joanna R. Quinn, ed., Reconciliation(s): Transitional Justice in Postconflict Societies (Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2009).
24 Lily Gardner Feldman, ‘The Principle and Practice of “Reconciliation” in German Foreign Policy:
Relations with France, Israel, Poland and the Czech Republic,’ International Affairs 75(2) (1999): 333–
356.
25 José Zalaquett, ‘Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation: Lessons for the International Community,’ in
Comparative Peace Processes in Latin America, ed. Cynthia J. Arnson (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1999).
more robustly. Advocates of this approach looked to the Chilean example and saw
parallels with their own situation, including the challenge of reconvivencia, ‘getting
used to living together again,’ arguing strongly for the need to pursue reconciliation
through an unflinching examination of the historical record.26 In South Africa, recon-

ciliation was promoted by then president Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond
Tutu and other leading figures and stakeholders as a transcendent ideal that should
animate national discourse as an essential response to the divisions embedded by
long-standing divisive racial ideologies that infused politics, society and the econ-
omy.27 The TRC’s mandate was concentrated on the era marked by violence, from
1960–1994, and its hearings focused on gross human rights violations that were com-
mitted during this period. Although conditions in South Africa varied considerably
from those in Chile, the same essential concerns about relationships between state
and society and among groups, communities and individuals in connection with lega-
cies of conflict were high on the agenda in both settings.
In Chile and South Africa, reconciliation was conceived of as something that
could not be separated from truth – the exposure of harms and what lay behind
them that had previously been hidden – and truth commissions were the institutional
vehicles that emerged for pursuing both these objectives. However, other mecha-
nisms that promoted reconciliation, apart from the formal investigation of atrocities
committed, also emerged. In some contexts, such as in Northern Ireland, reconcili-
ation became part of a decentralized process of ‘moving beyond sectarianism’
through its promotion – often under other names, since the term ‘reconciliation’ is
rejected by many in Northern Ireland – via a variety of programs addressing a range
of social and economic concerns, including economic development and intercommu-
nal dialogue and social inclusion.28 Thousands of programs were seeded by the
European Union, British government and the US, which bolstered even more invest-
ment in programs with a range of emphases envisioned to work in concert with a col-
lective ultimate objective of reconciliation.29 By the late 1990s and into the new
millennium, reconciliation – interpersonal, social and political – became associated
less with individual spiritual notions and came to embrace the practical challenges
and applied work of bridging communal and sectarian divides, as well as addressing
the economic, social and psychological needs of victims, perpetrators and societies
that inherited the varied and complex legacies of the conflicts that forged them.
Far from being confined to these select situations, these concerns resonated uni-
versally in different contexts exposed to harrowing conflict. The processes discussed
above became comparative examples from which other countries grappling with simi-
lar challenges could draw. Since the mid-1990s, the reconciliation concept began to
be widely incorporated into the discourse among civil society, political leaders and
policy makers, as an attribute of postconflict stability that could possibly support
26 Kader Asmal, Louise Asmal and Ronald Suresh Roberts, Reconciliation through Truth: A Reckoning of
Apartheid’s Criminal Governance (Cape Town: Mayibuye Books, 1997).
27 Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 2009).
28 Cecelia Clegg and Joseph Liechty, Moving beyond Sectarianism: Religion, Conflict, and Reconciliation in
Northern Ireland (Dublin: Columba Press, 2001).
29 Brandon Hamber and Gráinne Kelly, A Place for Reconciliation? Conflict and Locality in Northern Ireland
(Belfast: Democratic Dialogue, 2005).
continued progress toward a deeper peace guarding against the recurrence of violent
conflict. This resulted in the wider adoption over the past 20 years of reconciliation
as a policy objective in postwar situations as diverse as Colombia, Nepal and Liberia,
as well as in cases of historical injustice under contemporary examination, such as in

Canada and Australia, with respect to the harms suffered by Indigenous peoples.
Definitions of Reconciliation in the Barometers

The reconciliation barometers draw on a set of definitions for reconciliation that
share many elements of the definitions in what has been discussed above and all of
the barometers measure reconciliation as both a process and an outcome, as they are
longitudinally measuring progress toward a goal. All of the barometer efforts use
indicators related to social cohesion and coexistence to capture reconciliation. Only
the South African barometer, however, uses indicators related to economic wellbeing.
Therefore, the definition guiding the first of the reconciliation barometers, the
SARB, is perhaps the most open, attempting to span the most common definitions
of reconciliation, as well as including economic wellbeing in its measurement. In its
early phase (2002–2013), instead of a stated definition, the barometer employed six
guiding hypotheses about what could bring about reconciliation, or a vision of recon-
ciliation: the need for human security; the desirability of a legitimate political culture;
political relationships that cut across racial boundaries to achieve national unity; the
acknowledgement of past injustices and a resulting willingness to forgive; interracial
contacts between individuals for greater tolerance; and commitment to civil dialogue.
Adjustments to the barometer in 2013 inspired the addition of socioeconomic justice
as an additional critical factor, since economic disparity has become a major conse-
quence of apartheid.
The Australian barometer draws on four conditions for reconciliation: positive
two-way relations built on trust and respect; equal life outcomes; respect for the dis-
tinctive individual and collective rights and cultures of the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islanders; and commitment by all major institutions to progress towards this
vision. Indicators for measurement fall within these four categories in order to meas-
ure what is understood by the barometer as reconciliation.
The SCORE indices are distinct from the other barometers in that they are a set
of instruments produced by one research corpus, with an underlying, coherent con-
ceptual and methodological approach. They all utilize two overarching, core con-
cepts: social cohesion and reconciliation, conceived of as distinct but intrinsically
linked desired outcomes for divided societies, involving, respectively, the transform-
ation of political institutions and the propensity for adversarial groups to move closer
to one another. These two concepts are then adjusted for each context via ‘inclusive
consultations with a broad cross-section of national stakeholders such as civil society,
academia, government, business leadership and grassroots communities,’ to inform a
rigorous ‘calibration’ process before data-gathering begins.30
For example, based on in-country discussions during the design phase of the
Liberian barometer, the Liberian conception of reconciliation that emerged was
30 Methodology for the SCORE Social Cohesion and Reconciliation Index for Liberia, on the SCORE web-
site, https://www.scoreforpeace.org/en/liberia/methodology (accessed 22 January 2019).
linked to conceptions of truth, justice, and personal recovery and healing.31 The indi-
cators derived for these concepts are fairly stable across countries, although they are
localized by being specified further in subindicators. For reconciliation, they are the
strength of negative stereotypes; intergroup anxiety about interactions with ‘other’

groups; social distance; and the perception of social threats. For coexistence, indica-
tors focus on interactions with and trust in institutions and beliefs about the state’s
legitimacy. Overall, differences in indicators developed as a part of the calibration
process emerge mainly in choice of words – for example, in Nepal, ‘reconciliation’
was referred to as ‘intercommunity peace.’
The Colombian barometer’s definition of reconciliation shared many characteris-
tics with barometers that preceded it, as it was based on peaceful coexistence and the
establishment of trust between citizens and state institutions, as outlined by the
National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation.32 Specifically, reconcili-
ation was also envisioned both as a long process and an outcome, a new social con-
tract, whose main components revolved around the issues of democracy, land, trust
and the rights of victims. ACDI VOCA’s Colombian index organized indicators
around four main dimensions – empowerment, trust, dialogue and respect – with
variables related to each. For example, variables for ‘respect’ are recognition and tol-
erance, with individual-related questions linked to each concept, such as: ‘In an argu-
ment, are you able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes?’33
Occasioned by its own context, the Index of Arab–Jewish Relations in Israel does
not define reconciliation, but draws on the closely related concept of coexistence,
defined as a continuum from minimal to greater acceptance by Arab and Jewish
Israelis of one another, of one common state and of democracy.
M ET HO D OL OGY A ND D A TA C OL LE C TI ON
The reconciliation barometers distinguish themselves as a group in that they all draw
on surveys and quantitative methods; most use mixed methods and all gather their
own original survey data.34 As in definitions of reconciliation, however, there are var-
iations among the methodological approaches that reflect differing contexts, pur-
poses and resource levels. Not surprisingly, the SCORE group of barometers, or
indices in their terminology, share a carefully developed methodology.
31 Comment at USIP reconciliation barometers workshop, September 2016.

32 The definition of reconciliation expressed in the Colombian Reconciliation Barometer draws on the work
of Pablo de Greiff, ‘The Role of Apologies in National Reconciliation Processes: On Making Trustworthy
Institutions Trusted,’ in The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past, ed. Mark Gibney, Rhoda E. Howard-
Hassmann, Jean-Marc Coicaud and Niklaus Steiner (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2008).
34 As compared, for example, to the Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, which uses publicly avail-
able data, including statistical data from several different jurisdictions, the Republic of Ireland, England,
Wales and Scotland in addition to Northern Ireland, which means that it is not based on a standard
model. See, Ann Marie Gray, Jennifer Hamilton, Gráinne Kelly, Brendan Lynn, Martin Melaugh and
Gillian Robinson, ‘Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report Number Five,’ October 2018, https://
www.community-relations.org.uk/sites/crc/files/media-files/NIPMR%205%20%282%29%20new%20ver
sion.pdf (accessed 6 September 2019).
The major data in the SARB come from annual, longitudinal, face-to-face nation-
wide surveys that cover all the main ethnic groups. Prior to 2017, the survey was con-
ducted using a two-stage stratified random sample design based on a sampling frame
obtained from Statistics South Africa (StatsSA), and, beginning in 2017, multistage

stratified sampling design taking province, race and geographic area as the explicit
stratification variables, with the final sample weighted using 2017 mid-year popula-
tion estimates from StatsSA to provide a probability sample of adults in the coun-
try.35 The surveys are based on a sample size of 2,400, with closed-ended responses
and the majority of questions posed in the form of a five-point Likert scale. The sur-
vey is based on the SARB’s conception of reconciliation, fleshed out in seven hypoth-
eses (discussed above), and further broken down into three to five indicators for
each hypothesis.36 SARB researchers also monitor and analyze data from other na-
tional sources about violent incidents, and the barometer makes use of expert opin-
ions, tracks the media and international research on reconciliation, and uses surveys
and empirical data gathered by other institutions. In 2001 and 2013 only, as part of
the creation and later the adjustment of survey questions, qualitative data from na-
tional focus groups were also used.
The Australian barometer draws on a sample size that ranged from 1,007 non-
Aboriginal Australians and 516 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the 2012
survey, to 1,995 and 497, respectively, for the 2018 survey. The general community
sample was selected and weighted to be representative in terms of age, gender and
location (state, urban versus rural). Participants were recruited from a professional
market and social research panel. Obtaining a truly representative sample of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, however, has represented a special
challenge, due to geographical and socioeconomic factors in these populations, as
well as a lower level of familiarity with surveys. While the sample may not be truly
representative, it was selected and weighted to be representative in terms of age, gen-
der and location (state and urban/regional splits), as per Australian Bureau of
Statistics 2006 Census data, for greater accuracy. The surveys are publicized to this
population through Indigenous networks. The Australian Reconciliation Barometer
surveys are online only, due to concerns over interviewer bias and sensitive ques-
tions, as well as budgetary considerations.37
SCORE indices have aimed to develop a model that can be highly flexible by con-
text, but comparable and meaningful across multiple contexts. All use focus groups
and key informant interviews to develop distinct, highly context-dependent question-
naires for their national and regional surveys, which are always carried out by or in
close collaboration with local research companies. In addition to surveys, SCORE
methodologies can include text mining, expert assessments and secondary analysis of
published national statistics.38 Sample sizes vary, from 6,200 in Liberia to 10,600 in
35 Elnari Potgieter, South African Reconciliation Barometer Survey: 2017 Report (Cape Town: Institute for
Justice and Reconciliation, 2017).
36 Ibid.
37 Reconciliation Australia, ‘2018 Australian Reconciliation Barometer,’ https://www.reconciliation.org.au/
wp-content/uploads/2019/02/final_full_arb-full-report-2018.pdf (accessed 22 August 2019).
38 Conversation with Alexandros Lordos, Research Director, SeeD, 5 February 2019.
Ukraine (2016–2017) to 2,791 in Moldova (2018) to 5,300 and 6,000 in Eastern

Ukraine in 2017 and 2018, respectively. The SCORE indices are not intended to be
static, and after the initial calibration for local contexts, the indicators are recalibrated
each year, based each time on consultations with multiple stakeholders. The process

involves a careful identification of both the primary (those that represent the main
actors in the conflict) and secondary (influential but not directly involved in the con-
flict) groups from which survey subjects are to be recruited. Similarly, the geograph-
ical locations for the surveying have to be carefully selected, depending on whether
all parts of the country are to be surveyed equally, or certain subnational locations
are to be compared, for example, to study the effects or future intended effects of
peacebuilding interventions. In Ukraine, SCORE has two distinct, geographically
focused barometer initiatives: an earlier one (2016 onwards) covering specific sec-
tions of the country as a whole (excluding two rebel-held oblasts and Crimea), with
a focus on those that are hosting internally displaced people (using telephone inter-
views only for the Donbas region, reflecting security concerns); and a more recent
initiative (2017 onwards, face-to-face only), focused only on five government-
controlled oblasts in Eastern Ukraine.39 Most of the SCORE surveys are face-to-face,
but sensitive questions on intergroup relations are filled in by the participants them-
selves and, if security concerns necessitate it, SCORE uses telephone interviews, as
in Ukraine. For interpretation and potential implementation of the results of their
data, SCORE uses participatory principles to engage local and international stake-
holders in the design phase, through discussing with societal, civic and political stake-
holders their implicit theories of change to jointly construct the study’s hypotheses,
and, at the interpretation phase, through presenting the findings to stakeholders and
holding policy design workshops at both national and local levels.40
The Colombian barometer drew on specific groups in several priority municipal-
ities, victims, local leaders and demobilized people in the process of reintegration, to
create indicators. It also integrated data from other databases created by relevant
agencies. Seventy-four indicators were identified and distilled into scores for attitudes
in four key dimensions: trust, democracy, victims’ rights, and land. Indicators were
divided into those used in original survey research (26 indicators) and those deriving
from secondary sources (48 indicators). Pilot research was carried out in Bogotá,
Medellı́n and San Carlos, and data gathering, with a sample of 6,606, took place in
48 municipalities in 2016, with the intention of an expansion to result in a total of
113 municipalities. Respondents were drawn from three groups – victims, local lead-
ers, and former armed actors in the process of reintegration – as identified via the
databases of the Victims’ Unit, and were interviewed by telephone. The original in-
tent of the barometer was to gather data every four years after the complete first
wave, but the barometer was discontinued after the pilot and first wave of data gath-
ering. The more recent Colombian index surveyed 11,966 Colombians in 44 munici-
palities in 2017. In 2019, it surveyed a slightly smaller sample of 10,904 in a stratified
39 SCORE Social Cohesion and Reconciliation Index, Eastern Ukraine, https://www.scoreforpeace.org/en/

use/methodology, and https://www.scoreforpeace.org/en/ukraine/methodology (both accessed 23 January
2019).
40 Email communication with Alexandros Lordos, Research Director, SeeD, 13 February 2019.
sample of 41 municipalities. The index was based on research conducted with 1,843
Colombians on their understandings of reconciliation, which found that they priori-
tized psychological and political concerns over related justice issues when conceptu-
alizing reconciliation.41

The Index of Arab–Jewish Relations in Israel uses annual surveys of 1,400 Israeli
Arabs and Jews, 700 from each group, and does not use focus groups. Subjects from
each group are interviewed face-to-face in their own languages (Arabic or Hebrew)
by interviewers from their own ethnic group, a recognition of the sensitivity of asking
questions about intergroup relations and subjects’ possible fear or discomfort with
being surveyed.
L ON GI TU D IN A L ME A S UR EM EN T
Given that the barometers are intended to produce data and insights longitudinally,
each barometer has had to grapple with how it approaches social, economic and pol-
itical change over time, including changing levels and understandings of reconcili-
ation itself. Balancing consistency with change over time can be critical for designing
research instruments that adequately reflect the long-term, nonlinear dimensions of
the reconciliation process, as well as the effects that external factors, whether eco-
nomic, social or political, have on reconciliation processes after past violence.
For example, the oldest of the reconciliation barometers, the SARB, has periodic-
ally made modifications to the survey instrument that was first developed with the
help of national and international social scientists in 2001/2002. In general, about 30
percent of the questions are changed every three years. In 2014, the survey was sus-
pended so that the barometer could undergo a major review and overhaul, based on
focus group interviews, expert workshops, and a psychometric validation process of
the questionnaire itself. The major changes made to the barometer reflect the
increasing importance of human security and socioeconomic issues, particularly the
rising salience of inequality as an issue whose importance to all sectors of the country
seemed to be overtaking that of race. As a result, the questionnaire underwent signifi-
cant changes in both hypotheses and indicators.
The Australian barometer changes some of its questions regularly, and in 2013
underwent a review, resulting in several major changes: more focus on respondents’
‘lived experience’ as opposed to perceptions; replacing some questions that appeared
to speak too much to a non-Indigenous audience; and closer alignment with the five
dimensions of reconciliation they developed in order to inform a broader narrative.
Reconciliation Australia acknowledges that, beginning in 2014, the changes in the
questions, in addition to improved outreach to and ‘random’ sampling approaches
for the Indigenous community, have made changes in attitudes difficult to track dir-
ectly from the barometer’s beginnings through the post-2014 barometers.42
As noted, the SCORE indices are designed to be maximally flexible, more so than
earlier barometers such as the SARB, and thus undergo regular (annual) calibration
of indicators. The SCORE scientists increasingly do not see the indices as tools
focused on tracking for the sake of tracking. Instead, they are considered dynamic

42 Comment at 2016 workshop.
16
Table 2. Reconciliation barometers: Summary of conceptual dimensions and methodology

Barometer Reconciliation dimensions Methodology Longitudinal measurement/major

changes over time
South Africa 1. Human security Annual face-to-face surveys; Review in 2014, adjustment of
2. Desirability of a legitimate political N2,400; three indicators for hypotheses and indicators; add-
culture each key hypothesis (18 total); ition of economic wellbeing,
3. Political relationships that cut across ra- two-stage stratified random sam- more human security questions,
cial boundaries to achieve national unity ple design, 2017 changed to rising salience of inequality as a
E.A. Cole and P. Firchow
4. Acknowledgement of past injustices and multistate stratified sampling de- concern

a resulting willingness to forgive sign (province, race, geographic
5. Interracial contacts between individuals area); survey personnel also
for greater tolerance monitor secondary data, media,
6. Commitment to civil dialogue etc.; panels used in 2013 review
7. Socioeconomic justice process
Australia 1. Positive two-way relations built on trust Bi-yearly from 2008; online sur- Some questions changed regularly;
and respect veys; N range 1,523–2,492; major review in 2013; more
2. Equal life outcomes stratified by age, gender, loca- focus on respondents’ lived
3. Respect for the distinctive individual and tion, rural–urban, state for experiences, less on perceptions,
collective rights and cultures of the Aboriginals, Torres Strait closer alignment with dimen-
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Islanders sions of reconciliation; creation
4. Commitment by all major institutions to of new instrument in 2012, bar-
progress towards this vision ometer based on surveys in insti-
tutions that have committed to
RAPs
(Continued)

Table 2. (continued)
Barometer Reconciliation dimensions Methodology Longitudinal measurement/major
changes over time
Index of Arab–Jewish 1. Coexistence, degrees of acceptance by Annual face-to-face surveys of Annually, about 80% of questions
Relations in Israel Arab and Jewish Israelis of one another, a 1,400 Jewish and Arab Israelis; stable, about 20% changed to in-
common state, democracy no panels clude topical questions
SCORE (as a group): 1. Social cohesion (intergroup: four subca- Mainly annual face-to-face surveys; Not intended to be static; annual
Cyprus; Nepal and tegories: strength of negative stereo- also text mining, secondary ana- validation of indicators via con-
Bosnia (one year types; anxiety about others; social lysis of national data; N range sultations with multiple stake-
only); Ukraine; distance; perception of social threats) 5,300–10,600 depending on holders, calibration; highly
Liberia; Eastern 2. Reconciliation (political institutions: two country; surveys can be national flexible nature of the instru-
Ukraine; Moldova; subcategories: trust in institutions; state’s or subnational; telephone sur- ments means variations accord-
Malaysia legitimacy) – then adapted to each con- veys where security demands ing to national situation, security
text via additional subindicators concerns
Colombia (ICRN) (ICRN) N=6,606; by telephone Original vision was to gather data
1. peaceful coexistence and secondary data; 74 indicators every four years after initial pilot,
2. citizen–state trust; with four key subcom- total; first survey
ponents: trust, democracy, victims’ (ACDI VOCA index) 11,966
rights, land issues; respondents (2017) and 10,904
(ACDI VOCA index) (2019); 104 questions total
1. empowerment
2. trust
3. dialogue
4. respect
Reconciliation Barometers: Tools for Postconflict Policy Design
17

instruments that, rather than providing a snapshot of a society at a certain point in a

conflict, explain what the drivers of conflict and peace are and serve as better sources
for theories of change. Accordingly, the indices have undergone some key changes
since 2015, in response to new insights about the characteristics of societies that may

reflect propensities for reconciliation and social cohesion. In particular, dimensions
have been added, especially with regard to measuring in-group cohesion, economic
and civic opportunities, human capabilities, psychosocial functioning, and choices
available to citizens.
The Colombian index made some adjustments to questions in its 2019 survey,
but these were primarily for clarity rather than conceptual changes. For the most
part, the original survey’s four dimensions and variables remained the same in the se-
cond wave of data gathering.
The Index of Arab–Jewish Relations in Israel keeps about 80 percent of its ques-
tions stable from year to year, changing around 20 percent to add in topical ques-
tions on current issues, but it has not undergone a major review or changes since its
founding.
RE CO N CI L IA TI O N B A RO ME TE R C H A L LE NG ES
Certain elements of peacebuilding strategies (e.g. refugee repatriation, democratic
elections, economic development) are relatively straightforward to prescribe and as-
sess, because they invoke specific, discrete phenomena with indicators that can be
readily observed. In contrast, the pursuit and evaluation of reconciliation tends to be
elusive, for several reasons. To start, the term ‘reconciliation’ has a variety of inter-
pretations which are embedded in distinctive personal perspectives, conflict histories,
and surrounding political, social and economic contexts. Critics therefore claim that
reconciliation can be easily misused because the concept is essentially empty43 given
that conceptual clarity and construction for measurement purposes have been so
contested and uncertain. A lack of clear normative standards can allow anyone to
claim they are pursuing reconciliation.44 Reconciliation thus remains a relatively
amorphous, malleable concept and objective, rendering progress hard to gauge
definitively.
Consequently, many social scientists use proxy concepts to capture reconciliation,
such as social cohesion, trust or coexistence, for conceptual clarity and measurement
purposes. However, these concepts themselves can be difficult to define and apply
universally. It can also be problematic as it is unclear whether these proxies are clear
manifestations of reconciliation in different contexts or historical moments. This
results in another conceptual challenge because reconciliation is regularly linked to
other potential aspects of peacebuilding processes, such as forgiveness, justice and
development. In conjunction, these aspects may be included as part of the justifica-
tion and measurement of the concept, whether the logic is to reflect precursors, pre-
requisites or expected implications. Absent clear exposition and empirical evidence
that establishes how such aspects are material to evaluations of the likelihood, quality
43 Edward N. Zalta, Uri Nodelman, Colin Allen and John Perry, eds., Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 2010).
44 Andrew Schaap, ‘Reconciliation as Ideology and Politics,’ Constellations 15(2) (2008): 249–264.
and significance of reconciliation, the utility of the concept can be muddied.

Reconciliation has to mean something beyond what the concept is related to, as
cause or effect.
Reconciliation also presents complexities due to the prospect of measurement at

multiple levels of analysis and across multiple types of units, which may not syn-
chronize. For example, what is observed at the level of political institutions may devi-
ate from what is observed among groups and individuals. Improvements observed
among a subset of actors may marginalize other subsets or introduce and magnify
cleavages within the population. In addition, different actors can have disparate views
on how to achieve reconciliation, as well as whether reconciliation is a desirable ob-
jective that warrants resource allocations and the sacrifices that may be necessary to
achieve it. Therefore, the perspective and power dynamics surrounding the inherent
choices made in measuring this difficult-to-define concept can make measurement a
political project. In other words, who gets to decide whether these proxies actually
mean reconciliation for a particular community, society or culture during a specific
moment of time? Finally, reconciliation is fragile and exhibits asymmetric properties
– hard to build but easily undermined, and it appears not to develop in a linear fash-
ion but to be either temporarily or even permanently reversible, depending on ex-
ogenous factors.
All the barometers have faced these challenges. In addition to the basic challenge
of trying to conceptualize and implement abstract concepts like reconciliation and
closely related terms like ‘social cohesion’ so that they can be measured, the barome-
ters as projects face the challenges of attracting funding and other kinds of support
over sustained time periods, and of having impacts that can be documented. For
projects whose very definition is linked to longitudinal functions, sustainability over
time is particularly important, and difficult. At the practical level, funding is a chal-
lenge for all the reconciliation barometers, given that they are long-term projects
with continuing costs, and many incur high expenses due to multiple language needs,
variation in conflict across large countries, etc. Given that the South African and
Australian barometers are currently funded as either major projects of key institu-
tions or national projects, a shift in public priorities is always a danger. Furthermore,
staffing has been an issue in South Africa – the SARB staff report a lack of enough
trained quantitative analysts willing to work in the nonprofit sector.
SeeD is the host institution for the SCORE barometers, and while it has been
able to raise funds from a number of major donors (e.g. UNDP, USAID), it has no
pool of funding to implement the barometer across multiple countries. Each project
is a stand-alone agreement, which makes it difficult to plan ahead in terms of human
resource allocation or strategically select the countries and regions in which SCORE
is to be implemented. In addition, given that SCORE is being implemented in a
number of countries, the search for indicators that are comparable across different
contexts yet sensitive to local specificity is an ongoing challenge.
The Colombian barometer benefited from the national and international atten-
tion being paid to the peace process and was funded by several international donors
and the Presidential Agency for International Cooperation of Colombia, but was ul-
timately discontinued. Current efforts are funded by USAID and are used internally
by ACDI VOCA, the nonprofit responsible for implementing USAID reconciliation
programming in Colombia. An obvious challenge is the public release of information

for national reconciliation purposes and the political constraints of releasing data
that may not look favorably upon changes in reconciliation since the peace accord
was signed in 2016.

The Index of Arab–Jewish Relations in Israel, which is not institutionalized, strug-
gles to raise funding for its annual research from a variety of foundations. Despite
the fact that it is the only barometer in existence that regularly gauges the public
opinion of Arabs and Jews in Israel on many aspects of their relations, its sustainabil-
ity is not guaranteed. Interest by international funders in supporting it may be com-
promised by the perception that the ‘real’ conflict is between Israelis and
Palestinians, because it is a violent conflict with a higher media profile than the con-
flict between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel, and that resources should therefore
focus on Israel–Gaza/West Bank Palestinian relations. Additionally, without an insti-
tutional base and more personnel, it is limited in its ability to communicate its find-
ings beyond a small academic audience, which, of course, limits its ability to attract
attention from funders.
I N S IGH TS F R OM M EA S UR IN G RE CO NC I L IA TI ON
The first meeting of the main existing reconciliation barometers revealed a number
of insights about reconciliation both within and across cases. Perhaps most strikingly,
given the notorious difficulty of the concept of reconciliation and the culture- and
context-dependent nature of the understanding of the term, many commonalities
emerged across the barometers. Among all the barometers (which represent work in
at least 10 states), reconciliation is implicitly defined as a composite idea. Among the
subcomponents of reconciliation, the principle concepts informing all the barometers
are, albeit to different extents: coexistence; social trust; social cohesion; willingness
for, number and quality of intergroup contacts; and levels of stereotypes, discrimin-
ation and prejudices. In addition, all the barometers have included from inception, or
increasingly recognized, the importance of economic issues as concerns inextricably
linked in the minds of citizens with basic postconflict recovery and wellbeing. The
barometers’ conceptions of reconciliation all recognize the process as a complex
multilevel one, functioning at the levels of interpersonal, intergroup and state–
society relations, also known as horizontal and vertical reconciliation.
A common challenge across cases reflected in the findings of the barometers has
been the presence of different narratives in many contexts, for example the starkly
different conceptions of what reconciliation would mean to Israeli Arabs and Israeli
Jews in the pre-reconciliation Index of Arab–Jewish Relations in Israel. This context
is one in which the two different visions of what reconciliation would mean are pre-
cisely what create the greatest barrier to some kind of broad transformation in the re-
lationship between the two groups, towards one based more on accommodation and
compromise and, especially, the State of Israel. Similarly, in Australia, a leading in-
sight of the barometer was the gap between the narratives of the two groups,
Indigenous and non-Indigenous. No evidence was presented by any of the barometer
teams of divergent narratives moving closer together over the period studied.
The findings of the barometers all show the importance of change over time in
conceptions of reconciliation and conditions related to it depending on the context
and topic. The SARB shows movement from an early (immediately post-transition)
political understanding of reconciliation to a greater concern with economic issues.

The issue of change over time can be one that barometer surveys reveal, or one that
barometers must account for in their indicators as the change is revealed via other
methods of research. More generally, change or stasis over time in intergroup atti-
tudes appears to be highly varied, both between countries (cases) and also within
societies. For example, the Australian barometer from 2007 to 2018 revealed stability
and very low levels of change towards greater reconciliation, but small positive devel-
opments in several categories, including improvement in perceptions of relations
with the police and a drop in the experience of racist incidents between 2016 and
2018. In Israel, the index found that Israeli Arabs’ attitudes towards Israeli Jews have
shown a greater change for the worse compared to those of Israeli Jews towards
Israeli Arabs, which have proven to be fairly stable.
In general, it can be said that the reconciliation barometer has evolved to have
twin aims. One, of course, is to be able to measure what the public thinks about rec-
onciliation and to see whether or not there is change over time; this is the basic
meaning of a barometer. But beyond the issue of public opinion, the barometers also
recognize the importance of gauging public opinion of what reconciliation is and
what should be measured as a way to ‘ensure greater currency for the term,’ that is,
research not only as a way to illuminate and measure what the public thinks in order
to see change, but also as a tool to get buy-in for a commonly understood concep-
tion of reconciliation and its constitutive parts.45 In relation to this function of bar-
ometer research, all the barometers increasingly recognize the importance of ‘lived
experience,’ or everyday habits, which can help shape effective questions if the re-
searcher can grasp them. For example, asking citizens who they have coffee with,
under what circumstances and how often, can be a powerful proxy for social trust
and contact. At the broadest level, all the barometer researchers endorsed the goal of
moving towards more inclusive research rather than relying on elite conceptions of
reconciliation. This in turn is linked to the increasing perception of a need to create
or empower local stakeholders for better peacebuilding interventions from policy
makers. This is also one of the aims of the Everyday Peace Indicators (EPI) project,
an effort that uses participatory processes to create bottom-up, community-generated
indicators of difficult-to-define concepts such as reconciliation.46
The development of the barometer concept since the creation of the SARB
reveals the increasing value of subnational research, the calibration of issues and indi-
cators to reflect local differences and experiences of conflict. This trend is most clear-
ly evident in the development of the SCORE barometers, especially in Nepal and
Ukraine, and other even more recent barometers, and extends to the EPI project,
which demonstrates not just calibration to reflect subnational differences but also
those between different kinds of populations, or the displaced, returnees, etc.
45 Comment at USIP reconciliation barometers workshop, September 2016.

46 Pamina Firchow, Reclaiming Everyday Peace: Local Voices in Measurement and Evaluation after War
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Finally, it is noteworthy that the reconciliation barometers all conceive of them-

selves and their missions as an active part of peacebuilding. While several barometers
are tied to specific action plans or interventions (South Africa, Australia), all aim to
offer guidance for policy and interventions. None has a vision of itself as predomin-

antly academic, with research and measurement as end goals. They conceive of their
missions as: fighting stereotypes, promoting coexistence and democracy (Israel);
messaging and program development for reconciliation (Australia); offering predict-
ive capacity as well as policy guidance (SCORE and Colombia); or intervention
guidance (South Africa).
Several individual barometers have had findings within their own contexts that are
original and striking, and may serve as the basis for mutual learning across barometer
design and implementation in the future. For example, from its inception the
Australian barometer has focused on prejudices and stereotypes as one of its critical
areas of investigation. It includes questions on both, but also, consistent with its
focus on action, has asked about what kind of action people feel they should take to
counter stereotypes. The findings show that there is not only a consistently high
level of prejudice, but also a widespread lack of awareness about what kind of action
to take to resolve the problem. In addition, a unique innovation in the Australian bar-
ometer has been the addition, from 2012, of the Workplace Barometers. These are
used to measure progress in institutions which have signed on to the RAPs. The
RAPs are voluntary plans that workplaces and schools can sign on to, involving com-
mitment to a framework to support reconciliation, which can include participation in
a variety of activities. There are four types of plans, labeled Reflect, Innovate, Stretch,
and Elevate, keyed to the institution’s level of commitment and attainments.47 The
questions in the Workplace Barometers generally mirror those in the national barom-
eter, although the RAP survey is slightly shorter, with the addition that it asks about
individuals’ participation in activities offered within the workplaces that have made
and committed to RAPs. The Australian Workplace Barometer, held in 2012, 2014,
2016 and 2018, is the only barometer to identify a sector within society where the
survey results were better than in society in general, perhaps an indication of the
positive effect of the RAPs. Results from one survey to another in the Workplace
Barometers have either held steady or improved. The RAP’s 2018 Workplace
Barometer (whose sample size grew from 4,612 in 2012 to 8,768 in 2014) reports
that employees who have participated in at least one RAP activity with their current
organization are more likely to hold very high trust (33%) for Indigenous colleagues,
compared with those who have not (18%). The existence of two linked barometers,
both longitudinal, means that Australia has the possibility not only of comparing
overall changes over time between two main population groups, but also between
the Australian public at large as reflected in the national barometer, and a subgroup,
employees or students in Australian institutions that have explicitly committed to
reconciliation as a goal and have supported voluntary activities for their employees.
The SARB has charted perhaps the greatest degree of instability in national
understandings of reconciliation. Since its inception in the wake of the TRC, recon-
ciliation as a concept has come to be seen as so complex that surveys cannot really
47 See, https://www.reconciliation.org.au/reconciliation-action-plans/ (accessed 1 March 2019).

claim to capture it fully. In retrospect, the purpose of the SARB is, according to one
of its leaders,48 even more about assessing the general health of society than about
interracial relations. Over the years since the political transition, even the public dis-
course has changed, with a move away from ‘reconciliation’ overall. Since the TRC,

reconciliation has shifted from being a concept linked to ‘redemption’ and the
achievement of cross-cutting political relations, to one more closely linked to trust,
especially in institutions. At the same time, economic issues have shown rising sali-
ence in surveys, especially dissatisfaction over growing inequality among members of
all ethnic groups. In response, survey questions have evolved to focus more on inter-
racial contact, both real and desired, the opportunities for contact, and the relation-
ship between the number, quality and effects of interracial contacts to economic
class – which in South Africa, at least, turns out to be quite complex.
An insight of the Index of Arab–Jewish Relations in Israel has been that the nuan-
ces of findings are very important and salient, much more so than any rapid or large-
scale longitudinal changes in attitudes. The survey instruments can and do reveal
these, but the policy and media establishments either do not understand or may ig-
nore or distort the findings. It has proven to be a challenge to communicate these
findings beyond a limited audience of institutions and individuals specifically focused
on Arab–Israeli peacebuilding, as well as interested academics, especially without the
support of a major institution, which, besides resources, could offer assistance in mar-
keting and publicity. The experience of the index suggests as well that misunder-
standing or misuse of barometer data, whether intentional or not, could be a
potential challenge for other, similar social scientific tools when they operate in a
tense conflict or postconflict context.
C O NC L US IO N S
With the development since 2016 of several new barometers, and others being
planned or discussed, it is apparent that the barometer concept as a tool for long-
term peacebuilding is growing in appeal. The regular gathering of opinion-based
research, combined with other sources of data, appears not only to provide reliable
information over time on the state of intergroup relations in the aftermath of con-
flict, or in a state of high tensions, but also to have the potential to make active con-
tributions to reconciliation, among them normalizing and socializing the concept or
providing predictions for possible changes in relations. Scholarly research on various
aspects of these barometers, however, has been absent. The lack thus far of compara-
tive or evaluative studies of reconciliation barometers means that the promise of rec-
onciliation barometers remains a hunch, and best practices, if they are known,
remain confined to the teams working on country-specific instruments. To become
stronger and more broadly recognized tools for peacebuilding, barometers could
benefit from more comparative research to assess their achievements and limitations,
including in which conflict and postconflict contexts they are most effective, which
institutional and financial arrangements are most likely to foster long-term sustain-
ability, and which methodologies are most effective.
48 Comment at 2016 workshop.

From our overview, this article has provided an analytical framework as a basis for
a new research agenda on how to proceed with research on reconciliation barome-
ters. We have demonstrated that the challenges and structures of the barometers
across multiple and diverse contexts are more alike than they are different. Among

all the barometers, reconciliation is implicitly defined as a composite idea that is
both a process and an outcome, and has at its core the rebuilding of trust and rela-
tionships. The barometers’ conceptions of reconciliation all recognize the process as
a complex, multilevel one functioning at the levels of interpersonal, intergroup and
state–society relations, also known as horizontal and vertical reconciliation.
In addition to the value of cross-institutional and evaluative research, this over-
view has demonstrated the need to better understand the consumption of these tools
at the level of policy makers and implementers, and what their real needs are in
terms of information, methods of delivery and form of communication with barom-
eter designers and researchers. A research agenda on reconciliation barometers
should include questions to better understand how effective barometers could be,
not just in designing interventions but also in assessing them. How can barometers
better capture and bring into the peacebuilding field the everyday experiences of
those who must live the peace and what are the most effective partnerships for bar-
ometer projects, both for effectiveness and for sustainability? The last is an especially
important question, given the proliferation of SCORE indices. The trend is apparent-
ly shifting away from barometers that are the offspring of government projects, as in
South Africa and Australia, towards the creation of barometers via international part-
nerships, with both practical and, in the case of SCORE instruments, ethical inten-
tions (increasing local involvement and ownership), and with multiple domestic and
international stakeholders. This leads to a need for deeper understanding about the
differences between nationally organized, implemented and utilized barometers ver-
sus barometers such as the rapidly proliferating SCORE indices, which are increas-
ingly international projects conducted by private actors. In addition to studying the
actors involved in the barometer creation, of critical importance are questions about
the politics of the indicators and dimensions in barometers and what is included and
omitted in their construction. Tensions between context-sensitive indicator design
versus indicator design based on global research will remain important, but can be a
source of creative inspiration for more robust reconciliation barometers, if navigated
carefully. A systematic study of the barometer tools themselves could allow for a bet-
ter understanding of these underlying dynamics across contexts.
In sum, many efforts exist at creating systematic tools to measure reconciliation,
but until now little has been known about the overlapping details of these barome-
ters. This article is an initial effort to consolidate lessons learned from several major
reconciliation barometers active in postconflict contexts, in order to suggest a way
forward for a research agenda on these important and ubiquitous tools in conflict-
affected contexts.

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International Journal of Transitional Justice, 2019, 0, 1–24

Reconciliation Barometers: Tools for

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South African Reconciliation Barometer

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Australian Reconciliation Barometer

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Social Cohesion and Reconciliation Index

12 See, http://www.scoreforpeace.org/ (accessed 22 August 2019).

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15 See, www.scoreforpeace.org (accessed 22 August 2019).

community, national policy makers with preliminary ﬁndings

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Index of Arab–Jewish Relations in Israel

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Defining Reconciliation: Overview

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Definitions of Reconciliation in the Barometers

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31 Comment at USIP reconciliation barometers workshop, September 2016.

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Ukraine (2016–2017) to 2,791 in Moldova (2018) to 5,300 and 6,000 in Eastern

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39 SCORE Social Cohesion and Reconciliation Index, Eastern Ukraine, https://www.scoreforpeace.org/en/

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41 Rettberg and Ugarriza, supra n 18.

Table 2. Reconciliation barometers: Summary of conceptual dimensions and methodology

Barometer Reconciliation dimensions Methodology Longitudinal measurement/major

4. Acknowledgement of past injustices and multistate stratiﬁed sampling de- concern

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instruments that, rather than providing a snapshot of a society at a certain point in a

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and significance of reconciliation, the utility of the concept can be muddied.

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programming in Colombia. An obvious challenge is the public release of information

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45 Comment at USIP reconciliation barometers workshop, September 2016.

Finally, it is noteworthy that the reconciliation barometers all conceive of them-

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47 See, https://www.reconciliation.org.au/reconciliation-action-plans/ (accessed 1 March 2019).

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48 Comment at 2016 workshop.

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