William J. Long and Peter
Brecke
Reconciliation and Social Order
A fundamental political question is how groups of individual actors
maintain social order despite competition and conflict among themselves.
The most important puzzle for social scientists is the explanation for
sociality itself and how it is
maintained. 1
Formal and informal observation of many levels of social
organization acknowledge the tension between aggressive behavior and
societal harmony and point to the importance of reconciliation as integral
to mitigating future violence and maintaining societal relationships.
Consider four descriptions of the role of reconciliation in very different
"societies."
In primate society, Frans de Waal describes a fight in the
chimpanzee colony of the Arnhem
Zoo:
It was the winter of 1975 and the colony was kept indoors. In the
course of a charging display, the dominant male attacked a female, which
caused screaming chaos as other chimpanzees came to her defense. When the
group finally calmed down, an unusual silence followed, with nobody moving,
as if the apes were waiting for something. Suddenly the entire colony
burst out hooting, while one male worked the large metal drums in the
corner of the hall. In the midst of the pandemonium I saw two chimpanzees
kiss and embrace . . . the embracing individuals had been the same male and
female of the initial fight.2
In sub-national or tribal relations, a second observation comes
from the seventeenth century letters of author Samuel Sewall. He captured
the following ceremony of native Americans of the northeast colonies in
1680:
Meeting with the Sachem they came to an agreement and buried two
axes in the ground . . . which ceremony to them is more significant and
binding than all the Articles of Peace, the hatchet being a principle
weapon.3
In the national society of South Africa today, Archbishop Desmond
Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission collected testimony from the
victims and perpetrators of apartheid. The goal of the Commission, in
Tutu's words, was
"The promotion of national unity and reconciliation . . . the
healing of a traumatized, divided,
wounded, polarized people."4
In the realm of international politics, contemporary historian
Hendrick Smith described the signing of a peace treaty and the public
joining of hands between President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Prime Minister
Menachem Begin of Israel, and
President Jimmy Carter of the United States:
The elusive, unprecedented peace treaty that Egypt and Israel
signed today has enormous symbolic importance and the potential for
fundamentally transforming the map and history of the entire region . . .
the best diplomatic estimate here is that the treaty has markedly reduced
the risk of a major war in the
Middle East for a considerable time . . .5
Remarkably, each description contains the implicit or explicit hypothesis
that future violence is less likely to occur, and "societal" order more
likely to be restored, if the parties to a conflict engage in a formal,
public process of reconciliation.
Is there empirical support for this suggestion, and, if so, how
does reconciliation operate to restore order and affinity in relations? As
international relations scholars, we have investigated the role and reach
of reconciliation between states, to understand its impact in international
society.6
Reconciliation and Interstate
Relations
Although many disciplines and public perception recognize
reconciliation as a powerful force in reestablishing social order following
conflict, reconciliation's role in international society-restoring amity
between countries following a war or a series of wars-has attracted little
direct attention from international relations scholars. This study
remedies this shortcoming with a methodologically rigorous, comparative
case study examining the role
of reconciliation in international relations.
Initially, we conducted a broad survey that examined the relations between
parties to a reconciliation event. We define a "reconciliation event" as
one that includes the following elements: (1) direct physical contact or
proximity between opponents, usually the senior representatives of the
respective states; (2) a public ceremony accompanied by substantial
publicity or media attention that relays the event to the wider national
societies; and, (3) ritualistic or symbolic behavior that indicates the
parties consider the dispute resolved and that more amicable relations are
expected to follow. That research indicated that a reconciliation event
between states after a war appears to lead to a measurable improvement in
subsequent bilateral relations.7
Specifically, our empirical investigation produced eight workable
cases where we can see the results of an international reconciliation:
four cases where a reconciliation event marked a subsequent improvement in
bilateral relations, and four cases where the results show no discernible
improvement. The cases are listed in Table 1 and presented graphically in
Figures 1-8.8
TABLE 1
Reconciliation with visual evidence of Reconciliation without visual evidence
subsequent improvement in bilateral of subsequent improvement in bilateral
relations relations
_ USSR - West Germany _ UK - Argentina
_ India - China _ Cambodia - Vietnam
_ Egypt - Israel _ Honduras - El Salvador
_ China - Vietnam _ Poland -
West Germany
As can be seen from the table and figures, this evidence provides
enticing support for the suggestion that reconciliation can, but does not
inevitably, lead to an improvement in relations between former
belligerents. This finding merits further investigation. Our initial
study also provides a set of cases that vary with regard to the dependent
variable of our research-bilateral relations between former belligerents
following a reconciliation.
[Figures 1-8 here]
Having found that a reconciliation event marks a change towards
more cooperative and less conflictual bilateral relations between former
belligerents in some cases, this study investigates the following
questions: (1) Under what conditions is reconciliation more or less likely
to achieve a reduction in future conflict; and (2) What is the mechanism by
which reconciliation has this effect? The answers to those questions could
contribute significantly to the literature on international conflict and
its resolution and to rethinking fundamental assumptions underlying much
social theory.
Method of Investigation
Comparative Case Study
This study builds on these empirical results through a detailed,
theoretically-informed comparative case study analysis that explores the
questions enumerated above. An in-depth study of a small number of cases
provides an opportunity to subtly yet systematically explore those
questions. However, comparative case study analysis also presents certain
methodological challenges. The major challenge, of course, is the problem
of complex, multiple determinants of social phenomenon and the risk of
spurious or invalid inferences being drawn from a few cases where multiple
causal factors may be at play-in
short, the problem of "over-determinancy."9
To control for this problem, the case study investigation is
defined by the systematic use of theory and a within-case process tracing
procedure. Two hypotheses, one drawn from rational choice and game theory
and the second grounded in several behavioral and social sciences and
linked to natural science are used to establish the relevant independent
variables, and within-case process tracing identifies the intervening steps
or cause-and-effect links between the independent variables and the
outcomes. To explore our research questions, we use the above-named eight
cases. As noted, these cases provide a substantial range of outcomes on
the dependent variable (subsequent bilateral relations between former
belligerents) and are relatively
free of selection bias.
Theoretical Framework for Case
Analyses
Despite pervasive references to reconciliation in popular discussions of
intra and international conflicts, the notion that reconciliation is an
important determinant of subsequent relations between states is a powerful
assumption, yet one wholly unexamined in international relations theory.
Those international relations scholars focusing on the systemic level do
not, by definition, recognize reconciliation events-symbolic and purposeful
acts by agents representing states-as important to understanding interstate
relations and interstate conflict.
Even those analysts who look for the origins of interstate behavior
and conflict in individuals, and from this point of departure draw
inferences to the behavior of groups (such as states), have not directly
considered the role of reconciliation in international relations.
Nonetheless, two different explanations for why reconciliation might reduce
the subsequent level of conflict between former belligerents and lead to an
improvement in bilateral relations can be developed from existing
literature.
Rational Choice
The first hypothesis derives from rational choice and game
theoretic approaches to explaining cooperative outcomes. Game theorists
specify possible outcomes from the interaction of rational actors seeking
to "win," i.e., achieve desired strategies and goals. This approach
stresses that the best strategy for breaking a pattern of hostile
interactions is through the sending of signals that provide a measure of
commitment to the pursuit of improved relations. Reconciliation events or
gestures are particularly effective forms of this type of signal because
reconciliation is costly to the participants, and costly signals are more
reliable determinants of a state's true intentions than low-cost or
cost-free signals.10
Reconciliation events impose costs because of their "audience
effect."11 Leaders do not conduct foreign policy in isolation, but before
domestic and international audiences. Concern with adverse domestic
political reaction to a reconciliation event with a former adversary or
with domestic political humiliation should a leader subsequently decide to
back down from an agreement, or should it fail to produce the intended
effects are important domestic audience costs associated with a
reconciliation. Likewise, risking opprobrium from third states that may
disapprove of the reconciliation or, facing the loss of international
reputation should the party to a reconciliation event retreat from the
agreement or the possibility that it would be exploited by its efforts
impose significant international audience costs associated with a
reconciliation.
In sum, a reconciliation event is a costly (or potentially costly)
signal that the other party is more likely to interpret as a genuine offer
to improve relations and thus may break a deadlocked conflictual situation.
Because of the associated costs of backing away from the reconciliation, it
may also buttress initial attempts of the parties at cooperative
interaction. Social science, since the work of J. David Singer, has argued
that for one state to perceive another as a threat it must see the latter
as having both the capability and the intent to block the attainment of
one's desired strategies and goals.12 Thus, by making costly (and
therefore trustworthy) signals indicating a less hostile intent,
reconciliation reduces the threat perception between states (other things
being equal) and permits an improvement
in relations.
Therefore, game theory and rational choice theory instructs us to
investigate the case studies for factors that increase or decrease costs to
the parties-domestically and internationally-of participating in a
reconciliation event.13 Factors that increase the costs of a
reconciliation event would presumably enhance the chances for a subsequent
improvement in bilateral relations while those that reduce costs would
reduce the likelihood of reconciliation having a positive impact on dyadic
relations. For example, a reconciliation attempt made despite domestic
opposition would send a stronger signal to a former adversary than one with
little domestic consequence and hence should be more likely to change the
adversary's threat perception. Likewise, factors that clarify or obsfucate
the signal-sending effect of a reconciliation should be important
determinants of its success or failure. The signal-sending hypothesis and
its operationalization are addressed
in greater detail in the next chapter.
Cognitive/Behavioral Assumptions
of Rational Choice
Most works on signaling are consistent with a general rationality
assumption about decision-making. An individual (or an individual acting
on behalf of a collective), chooses an action from an array of potential
actions that maximizers its interest or utility. Donald Green and Ian
Shapiro catalogue the assumptions
of general rationality:
that people always act rationally (according to the specified definition);
that people base their actions on certain types of information, sometimes
"perfect information," that people update their beliefs in accordance with
Bayes' Rule; that people evaluate their options on the basis of values
specified in the theory (usually nonaltruistic values or utility schedules
that exhibit such mathematical properties as transitivity, ordinality,
etc.); that the relevant political "commodities" are homogeneous and
infinitely divisible; and that preferences remain fixed for the duration of
the time frame in question.14
These assumptions apply with
equal force for all persons.
These assumptions, in turn, rest on a theory of human cognitive
mechanisms that generate this expected behavior. The mind is assumed to be
essentially "content independent"-it takes its cues from the
environment-and "domain general," that is, its rational processes operate
on all domains of human activity. The expected behavior of universal or
general rationality-all individuals always act to maximize their well-being
as they understand it, based on their preferences and strategic
opportunities-and its assumptions about the human mind as a general purpose
calculator, are stringent.
An Integrated Causal Model
The second hypothesis is founded on underlying psychological
principles of individual and group behavior and represents a very different
explanation. This approach argues that important social practices like
reconciliation are direct outgrowths or manifestations of deep human
passions or emotions, not merely rational calculations. A general
rationality assumption may fail to fully account for this patterned
behavior. Reconciliation events, instead, can be understood as the
culmination of a particular mental process, a process of forgiveness-the
overcoming certain psychological attitudes (mainly overcoming cycles of
anger, resentment, and vengeance and their accompanying emotions of fear
and guilt). They represent a change of attitude about oneself and toward a
formerly perceived wrongdoer that opens the possibility of new, beneficial
relations. Forgiveness is not the condoning of the former belligerent's
action; it is a revision in judgment of the former belligerent itself. The
parties to a reconciliation come to understand themselves as something
other than those incidents or
traits which they do not approve.
According to this hypothesis, although cognitive judgments and
strategy are involved in the process of reconciliation, the process
fundamentally represents the overcoming of collective emotions and is
assisted by specific problem-solving mechanisms that help us restore
relations in our societal group rather than general rational calculation.
Reconciliation requires: (1) recognition of a wrong; (2) breaking the
cycle of injury through forbearance; (3) regaining confidence in one's own
worth despite the actions (aggression) that may have challenged it and
repudiating emotions of resentment toward the other and seeing the other as
someone other than "the one that hurt me;"15 and, (4) offering a
reestablishment of relations.
Clearly, the process takes many years to consummate, and where
collectivities are involved, the issue of forgiveness becomes much more
complicated than in the one-on-one model of an injured person and a
wrongdoer.16 Nonetheless, forgiveness and reconciliation have a clear
social function-restoring a neutral or more positive relationship following
a transgression and reestablishing membership or affiliation in a larger
society-and can occur between individuals, between an individual and a
group, or between groups.17 Reconciliation involving groups may have many
unique and problematic dimensions. One complicating factor is that
forgiveness and reconciliation between political collectives is generally
thought to require the active intervention of a principal, an authoritative
deputy who represents the collectivity because, however real and powerful a
collective entity, it cannot
speak or act on its own.18
Such deputies serve not primarily as autonomous individuals, but as
agents or emissaries of a larger group who, by virtue of their
institutional office or position, are both empowered to speak for the many
and circumscribed by collective goals and interests.19 In affecting
reconciliation, the role of such a deputy is less the sincere expression of
personal views and more the public acknowledgment of the conflict, the
promise that similar acts will not be repeated (forsaking revenge), and the
commitment on behalf of the many to the future of the relationship. Still,
"leaders" in articulating and affecting the pattern of inter-group
relations, also have the power to shape the beliefs of the group they
represent as part of an iterated
process of change.
Unlike rational choice, this approach includes a role for emotion,
not just calculation, in understanding human and group motivation and
action. "Emotion," is an term subject to multiple definitions and
connotations, but it is generally thought to include physiological arousal,
sensations of pleasure and/or unpleasure, and ideas or cognitive appraisals
regarding the source of the arousal.20 "Neither the pleasure-unpleasure
sensation nor the idea alone constitute an affect or emotion as a feature
of mental life."21
Specifically, anger, a much studied emotion, which often leads to
aggression or a desire for revenge, is replaced by a degree of empathy and
a desire for affiliation as evidenced through reconciliation. Although
each of these terms is the topic of much debate in psychology and in other
fields, for our purposes, "anger" can be understood as a strong emotion or
experiential state-ranging from irritation to fury-that occurs in response
to a real or imagined frustration, threat, or injustice whereas
"aggression" is an impulse to hurt as a possible response to anger, and
"revenge" is a more deliberate form of aggression. "Empathy" implies a
realistic understanding resulting from "feeling with" (not for) another and
"affiliation" is a basic human motivation, a desire for belonging with
another, even if only to enhance
one's own chances for survival.
Psychological and Biological
Foundations of an Integrated Causal Model
What "theory of the mind" (motivational assumptions) and behavioral
expectations can account for the forgiveness approach to understanding
reconciliation, an approach that includes an obvious emotive dimension?
Evolutionary psychology22 with its biological foundation offers an
alternative framework for explaining the reconciliation process that
connects social theory with the natural sciences. This approach begins by
assuming that theories of human motivations and behavior must be consistent
with the fact of evolution, the
cornerstone of modern biology.
The approach rests on a different understanding of the human mind
than that of rational choice theory which sees the mind as a general
purpose computer that embodies "rational" decision rules. As noted,
according to rational choice assumptions the same mechanisms and principles
operate regardless of content to address all challenges in one's
environment: "how one acquires a language, how one learns to recognize
emotional expressions, . . . how one acquires ideas and attitudes about
friends and reciprocity-everything but perception."23 With the exception
of certain basic drives like hunger or thirst, the human mind is content
free, not designed to recognize, structure, or solve certain problems
rather than others, but flexible, capable of applying rational rules
equally well, in any domain.
Work in cognitive psychology, biology, and neuroscience, call this
model of the mind into question. Alternatively, the human mind, like other
organisms, can be understood as an evolved structure that includes a large
collection of functionally-specialized, domain-specific computational
mechanisms. These specific problem solving capabilities, or "circuits" to
use the popular metaphor, are adaptations, constructed by natural selection
and other evolutionary processes over evolutionary time to cope with
regularly occurring, reproductive-threatening problems (so-called
"adaptive" problems). Form followed
function.
According to this view, all normal human minds reliably develop a
collection of functionally-integrated reasoning abilities that interpret
experience by providing frames for understanding events in our environment
such as the actions and intentions of others, that inject motivations, and
that shape behavior. The human mind possesses "privileged hypotheses" or
"crib sheets" about how the world works, a fact that has been documented on
human subjects ranging from infants as young as a few hours old to adults
at every age and in every walk of life. This circuitry, which may embody
rational methods or may have other inference procedures that are not
universally logical, helps humans solve particular problems ranging from
acquiring language, to recognizing faces and emotions, to understanding
physical principles, to diagnosing reciprocity and cheating, faster and
more reliably than a content-free "rational" computation device could
because a general-purpose computer is constrained to apply the same
problem-solving methods to every problem and can make no special
assumptions about the problem to be solved.24 Embedded knowledge about
specific problems allows the mind to "frame" problems in otherwise
incomprehensible world. A frame, akin to a software program in a computer,
"carves the world into defined categories of entities and properties,
defines how these categories are related to each other, suggests operations
that might be performed, defines
what goals might be achieved . . ."25
In short, the human mind has developed reliable, specialized
mechanisms that are pre-equipped to know many things about social
interactions such as exchanges and threats, emotions, language, expression,
among others.26 The flexibility and power displayed by the human mind
results from the large number of specific problem solving capabilities not
from absence of specific content
and general rationality.
This understanding of the human mind can incorporate emotion as
well as rationality because emotions may be products of an evolutionary
process: the results of functional adaptation.27 Specifically, emotions,
it is suggested, solve regulatory problems in a mind filled with
functionally-specialized mechanisms. In ways not yet fully understood,
emotions help coordinate among problem solving techniques and their
appropriate application to situations.28
As applied to this study, a unified causal explanation suggests
that a ubiquitous, enduring, adaptive problem that humans have encountered
for several million years (since they first lived in groups), is the
problem of sociality-how to restore social order and the benefits of
affiliation despite inevitable conflicts. In response, the often-witnessed
and variously-documented ability to forgive and the process of
reconciliation is, hypothetically, one modern manifestation of a
functionally-specialized human29 problem solving capability that we possess
to explicate ourselves from this recurrent dilemma. Without such a
mechanism, Hannah Arendt supposed, "our capacity to act would, as it were,
be confined to one single deed [conflict] from which we could never
recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not
unlikethe sorcerer's apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the
spell."30
The universality of a problem, like sociality, or the evidence of
ubiquitous problem-solving mechanism, like reconciliation, is not proof of
an evolved human capability, but it does allow for the generating of
hypotheses about social phenomenon and the design of observations and tests
that are plausibly consistent with psychology and biology and otherwise
would not have been thought of. This model of the human mind generates a
different set of predictions about human behavior and decision making than
those of rational choice. In this instance, it can account for the
"forgiveness hypothesis," in
distinction to the "signaling hypothesis."
Procedurally, the method of deriving and examining social science
hypotheses from this integrated causal perspective can begin by noting the
existence of a complexly-articulated and recurrent behavioral trait, in
this case reconciliation events. Second, one can ask, deductively, whether
the trait could reasonably be the expression of an adaptation, that is, a
response to a species typical problem encountered over several million
years of human evolution. If so, we might be witnessing a contemporary
manifestation of an evolutionary engineered problem-solving capability
rather than simply the exercise of general rationality. There may be
latent dimension to human behavior that must be accounted for, not just our
rationalizations. Third, armed with a plausible hypothesis, the posited
behavioral characteristic must be linked with and understood in its
cultural, social, or political
system.
Examining the case studies from this approach would involve a
search for evidence of a change of self-perception or "identity" from one
who was wronged to one of autonomy and equivalence in the bilateral
relationship. Likewise, evidence of a change to a more holistic view of
the other, expressed either rhetorically or in action, could reveal this
phenomenon. Indicia of such changes-what is described as the forgiveness
process in the next chapter-should contribute to a successful
reconciliation attempt.
A Closer Look at the Cases
Up to this point, in-depth studies have been conducted on six of
the eight cases presented earlier in Table 1.31 The six cases provided
evidence in support of the rational choice, interest-based hypothesis. All
of the cases contained signs that the interactions and decision-making
processes up to, as well as subsequent to, the reconciliation event were
essentially driven by calculations of the domestic or international costs
and benefits of pursuing a reconciliation. In most cases there was little
or no evidence of a past or ongoing process of forgiveness. Elements of a
forgiveness process appear in the Egypt-Israel, Poland-West Germany, and
United Kingdom-Argentina cases, but each of these cases is best understood
as an effort to align interests
through a signalling process.
Indeed, two or three of the cases may be "false positives," where
the parties did not meaningfully reconcile. For example, it is unclear
whether the United Kingdom and Argentina have reconciled even though they
reached an agreement to normalize relations in 1990 and the Argentine
President, Carlos Menem, visited London in 1998 and expressed "regret" for
the Malvinas War. Relations remain frosty in many areas such as the
possibility of Argentine visits to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands and
fishing rights in the waters surrounding the islands. On the other hand,
British investment in, and trade with, Argentina has grown markedly since
1990 and is now approaching prewar levels (adjusted for inflation and
economic growth).
A very different situation, the ostensible reconciliation between
West Germany and Poland in 1970, appears to have been less than fully
voluntary on the part of the Poles. The Warsaw Treaty was apparently a
consequence of the earlier reconciliation between West Germany and the
Soviet Union and subsequent Soviet pressure on the Polish government. The
modest, technical nature of the accords reached by the Polish and West
German governments after the Warsaw Treaty and the stagnation of relations
in the 1980s support this interpretation. Only since 1990, when a
Polish-German treaty established the permanence of the current borders does
it appear that a true reconciliation
is occurring.
A questionable reconciliation also occurred in the El
Salvador-Honduras case. The treaty signed in October 1980 resulted in
large part from pressure applied by the United States government, which was
concerned about Salvadoran rebels using the disputed border zones. Because
of lingering hostilities after the Soccer War, those zones had been
designated demilitarized zones in 1976 and thus were effectively havens for
the rebels. Although some normalization between the former belligerents
occurred-border and diplomatic consular missions were reopened, for
example-both countries remained focused on internal unrest, particularly on
reconciliation within their own societies, and there has been little
attention given to bilateral
relations.
The reader may note that all three of these cases are those from
the right side of Table 1, where a reconciliation event occurred but was
not followed by a subsequent improvement in bilateral relations. At one
level it can be argued that in these cases a reconciliation did not really
occur even though there was a reconciliation event. As such, determining a
causal explanation for the reconciliation becomes moot. Alternatively, one
can accept that a reconciliation occurred but then make two inferences.
The first is that reconciliations vary greatly in their nature and the
degree to which they change (especially improve) relations between the
former belligerents. The second is that these cases support the rational
choice hypothesis rather than the integrated causal hypothesis. The fact
that two of the cases appear to be primarily the result of external
pressure and the third response to economic opportunities (trade and
investment) indicates the countries made "rational choices" to sign
treaties and moderately improve relations without undergoing a fundamental
re-evaluation of themselves and their former opponents and truly attempting
to put the past conflict behind
them.
If we move our focus to the cases in Table 1 in which a
reconciliation appeared to have a positive effect on relations, we find
that two cases, China-India and China-Vietnam, unambigously support the
rational choice hypothesis while the Egypt-Israel case lends modest support
for the integrated causal hypothesis even as it is consistent with the
rational choice explanation. For example, in neither of the two cases
involving China was there a re-evaluation of the opponent or oneself. Nor
was there a discussion or debate within the societies regarding a
reconciliation. Perhaps most importantly, none of the actors perceived
themselves as creating or reconstituting a different relationship between
themselves.
The Egypt-Israel case differs somewhat from the others. To be
sure, the Israeli and Egyptian leadership, especially Begin and Sadat,
could be considered to be making rational decisions given their
circumstances and signaling their positions and intent as per the
expectations of the rational choice hypothesis. However, this case also
found the actors performing some of the actions expected from the
integrated causal hypothesis. The former belligerents pledged to forego
the option of revenge for past acts. They also attempted to construct a
fundamentally different relationship in which the interaction was not
overtly hostile (even though it could not be considered to be warm or
friendly). More debatable is whether Egypt and Israel underwent a change
in terms of their self-identity and their fundamental recognition of the
other party. It is not evident that Israel experienced significant change,
but it appears that Egypt made a fundamental reevaluation of Israel and its
relationship to Israel. Egypt no longer could formally ignore the
existence of Israel and expect or hope it to disappear through conquest.
Egypt acknowledged that it had acknowledge Israel and establish a more
complete relationship.
Conclusions and Implications
for Further Research
What can we conclude about the applicability of the rational choice
and integrated causal hypotheses from this assessment of international
reconciliation? From these cases we must infer that in the international
arena, reconciliation is rare and appears to proceed along, rational
decision making lines. The rational choice hypothesis provides a superior
explanation.
What does this say about the integrated causal hypothesis? We do
not think this hypothesis has been invalidated by our study. The fact that
elements of it appear in the Egypt-Israel case and more tenuously in other
cases argues for an alternative conclusion. Instead of invalidating the
hypothesis, we believe this study defines the limits of the hypothesis's
scope or purvue. At the international level, which is often described as
an essentially anarchic system, the weakness of the "societal" links and
the lack of adherence to ideas and norms associated with society precludes
interactions appropriate to the integrated causal hypothesis. Given that
the bonds that make up a society are so tenuous at the international level,
the interactions within the international system may be different from
those within states or groups.
In particular, we expect that the interdependent and enduring
nature-and hence the salience-of relationships between groups within states
may motivate different strategies and behaviors to deal with societal
conflicts. Strategies and behaviors employed by intra-national groups may
in some instances be better explained by the integrated causal hypothesis
as opposed to the rational choice
hypothesis.
Our future work on this project aims to explore that conjecture.
We initiated research that will examine instances of reconciliation between
major social groups within countries to determine whether and when
reconciliations within "true" societies exhibit traits congruent with the
integrated causal hypothesis
and the rational signally model.
1 Pierre L. van denBerghe, The Ethnic Phenomenon (New York: Elsevier,
1981), p. 6.
2 Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1989), p. 5.
3 Robert Hendrikson, Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (London:
MacMillan Press, Ltd., 1987), p. 90.
4"How Can Past Sins Be Absolved," World Press Review, February 1997, pp. 6-9.
5 Hendrick Smith, "Treaty Impact Still Unknown," The New York Times, March
17, 1979, p. A1.
6 The notion of international society (or society of states) we take from
Hedley Bull. According to Bull, international society "exists when a group
of states , conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a
society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common
set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the workings
of common institutions." Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 13.
7 For a complete explanation of how these results were obtained, see Peter
Brecke and William J. Long, "War and Reconciliation," International
Interactions, vol. , no. , Spring 1999, pp. __.
8 The Figures are plots of the interactions between countries for the
period stated in each figure. In the Figures, each dark vertical bar
portrays a measure of the behavior of one country towards another for one
month during the period indicated in the figure. A tall bar indicates a
conflictual month. A short bar indicates a month with relatively less
conflict. A bar that extends below zero indicates a month in which the
cooperative acts outweigh the conflictual acts. A horizontal gap between
vertical bars (except for an extremely narrow gap) indicates a month or
months in which there was no recorded act (or the quite unlikely
possibility that the conflictual acts were precisely counterbalanced by the
cooperative acts). The very long vertical bar demarcates the time of a
reconciliation event. These plots enable us to easily visualize the basic
dynamics of the behavior of one country towards another over a significant
period of time. (On request, the authors can provide a complete discussion
of the methodology used to generate these time series graphs.)
9 The controlled comparative method has certain distinct advantages as
well: The problem of reliability and validity may be smaller than in large
N studies because the analyst has a small number of cases to thoroughly
consider and is less dependent on data s/he cannot properly evaluate.
Arend Lijhart, "The Compable-Case Strategy in Comparative Research,"
Comparative Political Studies, vol. 8, July 1975, pp. 157-77.
10 Tony Armstrong, Breaking the Ice (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of
Peace, 1993), pp. 21-24; S.S. Komorita, "Concession-Making and Conflict
Resolution," Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 17, no. 4, December 1973,
pp. 745-63.
11 James D. Fearon, "Deterrence and the Spiral Model: The Role of Costly
Signals in Crisis Bargaining," paper presented at the 1990 Annual
Convention of The American Political Science Association, San Francisco,
California, August 30-September 2.
12 J. David Singer, "Threat Perception and National Decision-Makers," in
Dean G. Pruitt and Richard C. Snyder, editors, Theory and Research on the
Causes of War (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), pp. 39-42.
13 Social psychology-the study of intergroup relations including intergroup
conflict and its de-escalation or resolution-has identified several factors
that improve recognition of a reconciliation signal and encourage
reciprocation. Factors that facilitate successful (conflict reducing)
signals between individuals and groups include: costliness; vulnerability;
novelty; voluntariness; and, irrevocability or non-contingency.
14 Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 30.
15 Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 34.
16 Joseph W. Elder, "Expanding our Options: The Challenge of Forgiveness,"
in Exploring Forgiveness, p. 161.
17 On this point see Michelle Beth Estrada-Hollenbeck, Forgiving in a World
of Rights and Wrongs, pp. 98-117.
18 Ibid., p. 99. See also Donald W. Shriver, Jr., An Ethic for Enemies, p.
221; Felicidad Oberholzer, The Transformation of Evil, pp. 266, 275-76.
19 Nicolas Tavuchis, Mea Culpa, pp. 100-101.
20 Stanley Schachter, "The Interaction of Cognitive and Physiological
Determinants of Emotional State," in Advances in Social Psychology, vol. 1,
L. Berkowitz, ed. (New York: Academic Press, 1964).
21 Brenner (1992) cited in Martha A. Gabriel and Gail W. Monaco, "Getting
Even: Clinical Consideration of Adaptive and Maladaptive Vengeance,"
Clinical Social Work Journal, vol. 22, no. 2, Summer 1994, pp. 165-178, at
p. 166.
22 Evolutionary psychology is psychology informed by evolutionary biology.
23 Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer,
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.htm
24 Cosmides and Tooby explain that machines limited to rational procedures
are computationally weak relative to those with particular problem-solving
mechanisms. "The difference between domain-specific methods and
domain-independent ones is akin to the difference between experts and
novices: experts can solve problems faster and more efficiently than
novices because they already know a lot about the problem domain." Leda
Cosmides and John Tooby, Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer, p. 11. Having
no privileged hypotheses, general rationality is quickly overtaken by
"combinatorial explosion." "Combinatorial explosion is the terms for the
fact that with each dimension of potential variation added, or with each
new successive choice in a chain of decisions, the total number of
alternative possibilities faced by a computational system grows with
devastating rapidity."
25 John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, "The Psychological Foundations of
Culture," p. 102, p. 166.
26 Ibid., p. 89.
27 See, for example, M.B. Arnold, Emotion and Personality (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1960); The Nature of Emotion (London: Penguin
Books, 1968); I. Eibl-Eibesfelft, Ethology: The Biology of Behavior, 2nd
ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1975).
28 John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, "The Psychological Foundations of
Culture," p. 99.
29 The capability to solve the sociality problem through reconciliation is
not necessarily limited to humans. Frans deWaal and Filippo Aureli argue
that following conflict, "nonhuman primates engage in nonaggressive
reunions . . . now widely known as reconciliations." Reconciliation, they
suggest restores valuable relationships disturbed by the conflict.
"Conflict Resolution and Distress Alleviation in Monkeys and Apes," in The
Integrative Neurobiology of Affiliation, C. Sue Carter, Izja Lederhendler,
and Brian Kirkpatrick, eds. (New York: New York Academy of Sciences,
1997), pp. 317-28, at p. 317.
30 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 237.
31 The findings reported in this section are derived in part from research
conducted by graduate students at the Sam Nunn School of International
Affairs. The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of Joy Bennett,
Wei Ding, Sean Eudaily, Nicole Galiger, Sara Glasgow, Jonathon Griffiths,
Sunny Kaniyathu, Mark Lowman, Tate Nurkin, Triona O'Conner, Gene Parker,
Danielle Phillips, Steve Smith, and Hong Wills.