Demanding the Impossible: War,Bargaining, and Honor

This article shows that honor concerns can influence war initiation and termination decisions. When bargaining implicates status or commitments to in-group members, moral nationalists may experience dishonor—and with it emotions like shame and humiliation—when they have to make concessions. These honor costs are different from other costs because they can sometimes be vindicated through costly action. Including these costs in a basic, complete information bargaining model demonstrates that honor concerns can give rise to a “fight, then agree” equilibrium. These influences of honor on war initiation and termination are illustrated with case studies of British decisions in the 1982 Falklands War and French decisions during the 1940 invasion of France.     

Fostering Constructive Action by Peers and Bystanders in Organizations and Communities

Peers and bystanders play important roles in organizational and community conflict management. Bystanders often learn relevant information and have opportunities to act in ways that can affect three of the basic functions of a conflict management system (CMS.) They can help (or not help) to identify, assess, and manage behaviors that the organization or community deems to be “unacceptable.” Examples in which bystanders play important roles include sexual and racial harassment, safety violations, unethical research, national security violations and insider threats, cyber‐bullying and cyber‐sabotage, violence, fraud, theft, intimidation and retaliation, and gross negligence. Bystanders often are a missing link in conflict systems. For the purposes of this article, I define peers and bystanders as people who observe or learn about unacceptable behavior by others, but who are not the relevant supervisors, or who knowingly engage in planning or executing that behavior. I define CMS managers as all those people, including line managers, who have responsibility for managing conflicts. Conflict managers face many challenges in fostering constructive behavior from bystanders. The interests of bystanders may or may not coincide with the interests of conflict systems managers in an organization or community. Bystanders often have multiple, idiosyncratic, and conflicting interests, and experience painful dilemmas. In addition, peers and bystanders, and their contexts – often differ greatly from each other. Blanket rules about how all bystanders should behave, such as requirements for mandatory reporting, are often ineffective or lead to perverse results. Bystanders are regularly equated with “do‐nothings,” in the popular press. In real life, however, helpful bystander actions are common. Many bystanders report a wide variety of constructive initiatives, including private, informal interventions. In this article, I report on forty‐five years of observations on bystanders in many milieus. I present what bystanders have said are the reasons that they did not – or did – take action, and what can be learned to help organizations and communities to support bystanders to be more effective when faced with unacceptable behavior.     

Thucydides and Deterrence

Thucydides describes ten attempts at deterrence and compellence. With one partial exception, the use of these strategies fail and generally help to provoke the behavior they were meant to prevent. The narrative and speeches in Thucydides' text indicate that leaders everywhere rely on deterrence and compellence and expect them to succeed. Targets of these strategies nevertheless downplay risks and costs when it is contrary to their desires or needs. When motivated by appetite, actors not infrequently indulge in wishful thinking. When motivated by honor, actors are risk accepting and may welcome threats as a means of demonstrating their courage. When motivated by fear, actors worry about the consequences of compliance, which they reason may be more costly than resistance. Thucydides is the first person to frame deterrence and compellence as a strategic interaction problem and to emphasize the determining importance of motives for the strategic calculus of actors. His analysis has important implications for contemporary conflict management.     

Rage of Honor: Entente Indignation and the Lost Chance for Peace in the First World War

Why the First World War ended in 1918 and not earlier remains a major puzzle. We propose a new theory that emphasizes how honor prolongs wars beyond what rationalist theories can explain. It argues that when honor is insulted, an affronted actor will strive to punish the offender. Absent an apology, the pursuit of a satisfactory punishment leads the affronted belligerent to ignore unfavorable battlefield information, hold logically irreconcilable beliefs, process information in emotional terms, and obsess over status. We predict that wars of prevention and territorial occupation are most likely to elicit honor considerations. We test our argument against an obscure episode in the war where Germany and the United States made peace overtures in December 1916. We demonstrate that honor concerns made Entente decision makers see German aggression as an affront to their honor that only the destruction of Germany's political regime could redress.     

Unforeseen and Unaccounted: the European Union,the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland,peacebuilding, and accountability

This article examines the case of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland's (CFNI) experience as a primary recipient of peacebuilding aid from the European Union (EU) under the Special EU Programmes Body Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland (SEUPB-EUSSPPR). The case serves as a lens into the tensions that such efforts create for community-based organizations as they seek both to honor their funder's accountability claims and their own needs to ensure legitimacy and efficacy with those with whom they interact so as to secure space and discretion to seek to catalyze social experimentation and learning. This paper argues the Foundation's experience and frustrations with EU accountability claims point up a difficulty with the SEUPB's comprehensive conceptualization of peacebuilding: It tends in practice to favor Union-prescribed aims and objectives over those its ‘partners’ derive from their daily efforts.     

Intimate yet dysfunctional? The relationship between governance and conflict resolution in India and the European Union

The rise of India and the EU as global actors has sparked growing interest in their peace-building approaches. This paper compares the objectives and effects of the EU's and India's engagement in different conflict contexts within and alongside their borders. It examines whether their practices of conflict resolution or peace-building strive for more than conflict management or ‘governmentality’. This article asks whether there is sufficient consistency across either actors' governance interventions to even speak of a distinct ‘strategy’ or ‘governance culture’. It illustrates the close relationship between governance and conflict response initiatives but finds that the relationship is often dysfunctional.     

Breaking the cycle of violence: applying conflict sensitivity to transitional justice

The legacies of mass violence can, if left unaddressed, fuel future conflicts. Transitional justice seeks to address the legacies of large-scale past abuses. Despite the sensitive nature of transitional justice and recognition that initiatives can adversely influence conflict-affected contexts, there has been limited attempt to extend the application of conflict sensitivity to transitional justice. Conflict sensitivity is an approach and tool to help aid actors to understand the unintended consequences of aid and to act to minimise harm and achieve positive outcomes. Transitional justice initiatives can exacerbate tensions by replicating existing tensions; introducing resources that become a struggle for control; or challenging power and vested interests. This article argues that conflict sensitivity should be applied to transitional justice; and identifies tools and factors that could contribute to conflict sensitive transitional justice. They include promoting: broad-based participation; resonance with local actors; social cohesion; public outreach; collaboration with other sectors; and appropriate sequencing.     

从荣誉谋杀看巴基斯坦妇女的“他者”地位

荣誉谋杀产生于前伊斯兰文化,但内化于巴基斯坦文化。其内化于伊斯兰教、封建土地制奠定的经济结构和以男性中心主义为核心的军人干政政治传统的过程深刻反映出巴基斯坦社会的父权统治思想,可从中解读出巴基斯坦妇女在＂男优女劣＂等级制社会中的＂他者＂地位。     

The Culture of Interest: A Proposed Addition and Revision of the Three‐Culture Model

Negotiation and conflict resolution theorists have classified world cultures according to three types for the purpose of describing and predicting some of the ways in which individuals and groups within broad, geographically based cultural groups behave in conflict and negotiation‐related situations. These three broad categories, called “cultural syndromes,” have described these cultures according to the relative value they place on these three concerns: honor, face, and dignity. Based on our examination of the literature on the cultural dimensions of negotiation and conflict management, our own practice, and an analysis of literature and practice pertaining to the place and utility of the honor, face, interest, and dignity attributes within and between cultural groups , we propose a reformulation of this typology. Our reformulation would replace the broad “dignity” category with a new category that we call “interest,” which we believe better characterizes Northern European and North American cultures. We also argue that a cultural orientation toward dignity is universal and not geographically unique and is thus shared by all three cultures. This new formulation, we believe, more accurately characterizes the global range of orientations toward negotiation and conflict resolution and would, if adopted, help scholars and practitioners better understand culturally divergent conflict orientations and behaviors as well as the ramifications of such differences for negotiation and conflict resolution practice.     

Understanding the needs and challenges of a Black community in South Africa

This article reports on a study conducted with an unemployed group of community members residing in the Gugulethu Township in South Africa. The study aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of their needs and challenges, and what they thought could be done to assist and empower them so that they could improve their lives. Their basic human needs were violated during apartheid and as a consequence, they are still battling poverty today. We offer suggestions on how Black communities in South Africa could be supported and empowered in order to become employable and self-reliant.     

Conflict resolution perspectives on civil wars in the Horn of Africa

Conclusion In conclusion, in order to find resolutions to the conflicts of the Horn of Africa, one needs to pay as much attention to the process as one does to content and substance.A paradoxical situation exists in civil wars, where there are no courts to declare who is right and wrong or where force cannot be the final arbiter. The paradox is that conflict parties need the cooperation of their adversaries in order to win. This means that refined argumentation to prove the rightness of a position (this is what I mean by content or substance) is not enough to get what one wants. People must be equally concerned about how to present their positions in a way that their adversaries can hear them, and become motivated to act in the manner they want. This is what I call process and this is what determines the success of negotiations, or for that matter, even discussions between various scholars who represent different sides of the conflict in the Horn. And this is where I feel the position versus interest distinction is helpful.Therefore, the challenge that this article poses to all conflict parties, citizens, nationals, and/or concerned participants is to focus on the common interests and overarching mutual goals that bind them, and allow such a focus to guide the route they take to handle the civil wars in the Horn of Africa. Hizkias Assefa, a native of the Horn of Africa, is Associate Professor of Management and International Affairs at La Roche College, Pittsburgh, Penn. 15237. His publications include:Mediation of Civil Wars (Westview, 1987) andExtremist Groups and Conflict Resolution (Praeger, 1988). During his forthcoming sabbatical year (1990–91) he will be working as a consultant on regional peacemaking initiatives in Eastern and Southern Africa.     

Legitimacy and post-conflict state-building: the undervalued role of performance legitimacy

Legitimacy is essential to state-building after conflict. Yet, the prescribed path to gaining legitimacy is often a narrow one that borrows heavily from the experiences of Western states. Elections are prescribed as an essential first step on the logic that this means gaining process legitimacy can rebuild a social contract between citizens and the state, a social contract that is rooted in democratic norms and values. This article proposes an alternative path, one that emphasises the critical role of performance legitimacy and its non-exclusive nature. Performance legitimacy is granted when citizens perceive that some or all of their basic needs are being met. The article offers a new analytical framework for understanding a state’s potential source of performance legitimacy, how non-state actors may vie with the state to seize this form of legitimacy, and what consequences this has for processes of state institution-building after conflict. In this respect, this article seeks to reorient theory and practice to a broader view of legitimacy and its critical role in post-conflict state-building.     

Analysis: Reconceptualising transitional justice: embedded and distanced justice

This article argues that transitional justice ranges from the very personal and local to the global and structural, spanning processes and outcomes, clear demands, compromises and contracts. It explores this diversity using the framework of ‘embedded justice’ and ‘distanced justice’, and the case studies of South Africa, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. The argument draws on Fletcher and Weinstein (2002) to argue that justice needs to be embedded within and to engage the communities, cultures and contexts of conflict. A recent article by Sieff and Vinjamuri (2002) is used to advocate decentralisation. Transitional justice debates have generally overlooked justice, and human rights, as manifest in political, economic and social processes whilst privileging the law, and dismissing the potential of locally generated and embedded justice. The article argues that achieving the correct balance requires a shedding of naïve faith in, and the transformation of, both local and international justice, and the contexts within which they operate, whilst seeking to build on their complementary capacities and legitimacies.     

A Bridge over Troubled Water: Managing Parties’ Mental Illness in Mediation

One in five individuals in society has or will have a mental illness at some point in his or her lifetime. Conflict resolution theory, however, largely assumes that all individuals operate within the range of behaviors considered mentally healthy. Evidence suggests that professionals who deal with conflict, however, may have to deal with individuals who have mental health problems more frequently than would be the statistical norm. Clearly then, new theories of practice and norms of mediator behavior are needed to respond to the distinctive challenges presented by engaging with those who face mental health difficulty. This paper surveys the research on how people with mental health challenges approach and respond to conflict and provides practical advice to conflict resolution professionals on how to recognize and tailor their approach to meet the needs of these individuals.     

Negotiated Exits from Organized Crime? Building Peace in Conflict and Crime‐affected Contexts

This article contributes to a growing discussion in peace mediation and peacebuilding circles about the issue of dialogue and negotiation with organized crime groups. The article seeks to demystify this issue by exploring the range of practice from confrontation to accommodation and transformation. The article argues that there is nothing unusual about engaging in dialogue and negotiation with organized crime groups and that those strategies have been used for decades in crime and violence reduction efforts in urban and civil war settings. In their quest to resolve conflict in violent and fragile contexts, mediators and negotiators can adapt existing peacebuilding practice to help structure dialogue processes with organized crime groups.     

Just the Two of Us? Civil Conflicts,Pro-State Militants,and the Violence Premium

Quantitative literature discussing violence in civil conflicts tends towards a typical model of engagement between governments and revolutionaries. Whilst recent work has shown the significant impact of multiple anti-government groups, a further feature remains understudied—the role of pro-state militants. This article theorizes a “violence premium” when such groups arise, which leads to all connected groups devoting greater energy to conflict than they would in isolation. Employing duration analysis and data from The Troubles in Northern Ireland, where Republicans act as revolutionary insurgents, Loyalists as pro-state militants, and the British Army as government forces, the violence premium is empirically confirmed. Both Loyalists and Republicans deviate from their underlying strategies to attack more frequently when violence by their rivals increases, with Republicans and the British Army engaging in the same way. An extended analysis, accounting for the status of the victim, shows that the violence premium resulting from interaction between Loyalists and Republicans targeted only the civilian population of Northern Ireland, elucidating the sectarian component of The Troubles. These results show that including all conflict parties and considering how they are linked are important features in studies that aim to determine the net level of violence in civil conflicts.     

The Great Disconnect: Global Governance and Localised Conflict in the Cases of India and the EU

Academic scholarship displays a curious disconnect between two trends, connecting peace and governance issues. At the same time when conflicts tended to shift inwards (from inter-state to civil wars), global governance approaches seemed to decentre the management of peace and conflict outwards (from the nation state to international forums). This paper investigates this disjuncture by examining the European Union and India's governance strategies in different conflict contexts. It studies whether their strategies operate close to the global governance model and/or whether they are able to connect with and effectively support local peace initiatives in conflict-ridden areas.     

For better? For worse? Humanitarian aid in conflict1

Humanitarian aid should be judged against international humanitarian law (IHL), which gives civilians certain basic rights, including protection in armed conflicts. Aid agencies should consider the various side-effects of their interventions, in order to assess the net impact and decide whether to work in any given situation. They have no responsibility to provide aid where the net impact is negative, or to those who violate international law. If governments fail in their responsibilities to protect civilians, this does not give aid agencies the responsibility of filling the vacuum; but it does mean that they should campaign for governments to act. Current Northern debate on support for the citizens of countries in conflict is usually expressed in terms of charity, rather than a response to what people are doing for themselves. Aid agencies should help to change this.     

Factors affecting access to primary health care services in Pakistan: a gender-based analysis

This article explores access to primary health care (PHC) services and associated factors in Pakistan. Data were collected from 302 respondents. The findings revealed that women accessed PHC services more than men due to their greater health needs. However, a large proportion of both genders did not access any PHC services. Besides general weaknesses, gender-related barriers were found in basic health unit locations, distance, transport, staff availability, income, service hours, and service organisation, confirming gender issues in access to PHC services. Policymakers are recommended to take measures to improve access to PHC services through the formulation of gender-responsive policies and strategies.     

Identifying and understanding African norms and values that support endogenous development in Africa

Contemporary development issues are not new. All groups of people, based on their worldviews and contexts, found ways of addressing these societal problems. By their nature, solutions were relevant, legitimate, and sustainable in their contexts. A prerequisite for effective development practice is to understand and respect the roots of African culture. There needs to be a “rootedness” to change and development. Exogenous ideas and practices of potential benefit to Africa must build from the inside out, not outside-in, as an imposition. This article illustrates how African societies have viewed and dealt with these socio-political issues from within.