Post-independence Madagascar has been characterised by severe political instability and a series of deep political crises, with peaks in 1971–72, 1990–91, 2001–02 and 2009. Several of the conditions associated with armed conflict in quantitative research—such as a low level of economic development, soil degradation, political instability and multiethnicity—have characterised Madagascar during all of these crises.1 However, only the crisis in 1971 led to armed conflict. The definition of armed conflict used here is taken from Harbom and Wallensteen and the Uppsala dataset on armed conflict. According to Harbom and Wallensteen, an armed conflict is a ‘contested incompatibility, which concerns government or territory or both, where the use of armed force between two parties results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in a year’ and where ‘of these two parties, at least one has to be the government of a state’  In situations of political conflict and looming war, international attention is often drawn to the potential effects of preventive diplomacy and external intervention. However, this article turns the focus in a different direction—to the effects that the internal context and internal actors can have on the development of a crisis, either towards peace or transforming it into an armed conflict. The article seeks to identify the particular conditions that facilitate domestic capabilities for peaceful conflict management, defined as the abilities of national political, military and social actors to handle political conflict and crisis in a non-violent manner. It is assumed here that the actors’ capabilities are influenced by historical experiences, cultural context and the structural and institutional framework.