text: Stability Assessment Frameworks
  that energy into drivers of conflict. Mitigating factors represent the dynamic situation resulting from key
  actors’ mobilization of social groups around sources of social and institutional resilience. Mitigating factors
  can be understood as the energy produced when key actors mobilize the potential energy of social and
  institutional resilience.
  4-38. During the third step of conflict diagnosis, the team identifies the key actors central to producing,
  perpetuating, or profoundly changing the societal patterns or issues of institutional performance identified
  previously. The team determines whether key actors are motivated to mobilize constituencies toward
  inflaming or mitigating violent conflict and the means they have at their disposal. To perform the analysis
  required in this step, the team—
  * Identifies the key actors.
  * Identifies key actors’ constituencies.
  Identify the Key Actors
  4-39. The team identifies the people, organizations, or groups who have leadership abilities or power—
  such as political position, moral authority, charisma, wealth, and weapons. These key actors can affect
  societal patterns and institutional performance, shape perceptions and actions, and mobilize people around
  core grievances or social and institutional resilience.
  4-40. The team identifies the locations of key actors in leadership positions in governing, social, or
  professional organizations or networks (either within or external to a state or territory). They include
  private businesses, religious organizations, government positions, informal and illicit power structures,
  media, and academic institutions.
  4-41. The team identifies what motivates key actors to exert influence on each of the political, economic,
  social, and security systems within the host nation—such as commitment to a cause or a people, greed
  (money or notoriety), and religious beliefs. The team identifies the methods key actors use to exert their
  influence (leadership capability, moral authority, personal charisma, access to resources or weapons, or
  networks).
  Identify Key Actors’ Constituencies
  4-42. The team first identifies key actors’ supporting and opposing constituencies. Then the team identifies
  their core grievances or social or institutional resilience around which they are being mobilized. The team
  identifies the key actors’ critical motivations, means, and resources.
  4-43. Using this information, the team drafts brief narrative statements describing the methods and reasons
  that key actors mobilize specific constituencies around core grievances and sources of social and
  institutional resilience. Each statement relating to core grievances becomes an entry in the list of drivers of
  conflict. Each relating to sources of social and institutional resilience becomes an entry in the list of
  mitigating factors.
  Step 4—Describe Windows of Vulnerability and Windows of Opportunity
  4-44. In the final step of conflict diagnosis, the team—
  * Identifies potential situations that could contribute to an increase in violent conflict.
  * Identifies potential situations that might offer opportunities for mitigating violent conflict and
  promoting stability.
  4-45. The team should specify situations for increasing and decreasing conflict and describe those expected
  within the specific situation being assessed. These situations are described as windows of vulnerability and
  windows of opportunity. Windows of vulnerability are potential situations that may trigger conflict
  escalation. They often result from large-scale responses such as an increase of uncertainty during elections
  or following an assassination. They also result from an exclusion of parties from important events (such as
  negotiations or elections) or attempts to marginalize disenfranchised followers. Windows of vulnerability
  are moments when events threaten to rapidly and fundamentally alter the balance of political or economic
  power. Elections, devolution of power, and legislative changes illustrate possible windows of vulnerability.
  Key actors may seize, retain, and exploit the initiative during these moments to amplify the drivers of