Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 394
Consensus needs a test of refusal
Customary legitimacy can resolve conflict and sustain compliance, but local jirga and national loya jirga differ in authority, membership, and the risks hidden by the word consensus.
Premise
Jirga shows executives and institutional actors that dispute resolution can depend as much on social authority, narrative, and continuing relationships as on formal procedure. In Pashtun-rooted customary practice, accepted mediators hear accounts, work through local norms, and seek a settlement the parties and community can sustain. That embedded legitimacy can make outcomes workable where state institutions are distant or distrusted. It also makes unequal voice, social pressure, and informal power central governance questions rather than secondary caveats.
What the model is: Jirga and Loya Jirga in Knowledge →
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- The essential model
- Why this matters
- Risks and limits
- Executive takeaway
- Key questions
- Selected sources
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- FamilyTool
- CategoryGovernance Institutions & Procedures
- DomainConflict & Negotiation
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Tool
In this series, Tool names the editorial family primarily used to act on, examine, measure or organize communication. It includes instruments, methods, practices, protocols, codes and institutional arrangements. Membership does not certify effectiveness, portability or safe use in every setting.
Editorial orientation · Category
Governance Institutions & Procedures
Organizes authority, representation, participation, deliberation, collective decision or institutional resolution of conflict. Its contribution concerns who may act, speak, decide or challenge, and under what arrangements.
- KnowledgeJirga and Loya Jirga