Frozen conflicts, situations in which war ended yet stable peace did not materialize, trouble both Asia and Europe. Despite the clear policy relevance of this problem, the notion of frozen conflicts remains surprisingly blurred in peace and conflict studies literature. In this paper, we seek to provide a rigorous conceptualization of frozen conflicts. We situate frozen conflicts into a broader debate about enduring rivalries in international politics and demonstrate the theoretical relevance of the term vis-à-vis existing concepts. Furthermore, we outline a theoretical model of frozen conflict dynamics, which portrays frozen conflicts as dynamic configurations undergoing a periodical “thawing” in relations between the opposing sides: either toward diplomatic negotiations (“peaceful thawing”) or re-escalation toward use of armed force (“violent thawing”). We illustrate the usefulness of our model with empirical observations from other articles in this special issue and conclude with possible avenues for further research.

中文翻译：

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在战争与和平之间：“冻结冲突”的动态重新概念化

冻结的冲突，战争结束但没有实现稳定和平的局面，困扰着亚洲和欧洲。尽管这个问题具有明确的政策相关性，但在和平与冲突研究文献中，冻结冲突的概念仍然令人惊讶地模糊不清。在本文中，我们试图提供冻结冲突的严格概念化。我们将冻结的冲突置于关于国际政治中持久对抗的更广泛辩论中，并展示了该术语相对于现有概念的理论相关性。此外，我们概述了冻结冲突动态的理论模型，将冻结冲突描述为动态配置，在对立双方的关系中经历周期性“解冻”：要么转向外交谈判（“和平解冻”），要么重新升级为使用武力（“暴力解冻”）。我们通过本特刊中其他文章的经验观察来说明我们模型的有用性，并总结出进一步研究的可能途径。