Background Questions
for IACM & NEGOCIA Conference sessions, 2005
Sanda Kaufman
Problem: we don’t
count – our input in public and international decisions is not deemed either
necessary or valuable;
We have not/rarely been able get
the attention of key players and give advice that will be followed:
ü
we are rarely among advisors to decision
makers
ü
our wisdom is rarely incorporated in
important decisions regarding public or international policies;
ü
our findings and skills are not seen as
relevant, and, with rare exceptions our language has not been adopted by
professionals (such as diplomats)
What could we do to make ourselves relevant to decision
makers, if we think we know something they don’t know?
Context:
international disputes
Some questions and symptoms:
What does it mean for the entire
membership of a profession to adhere to one ideology?
ü
Does that follow from the nature of the
profession or is it what attracts people to the profession?
ü
Does that have any consequences for our
effectiveness in dealing with conflicts (is it empowering or limiting for all
to hold very similar values and involve them in their research and
interventions)?
What can explain the profession’s
ü
fixation on the Middle East?
ü
lack of interest in conflicts such as
Darfour, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Tibet, Nepal, Kashmir, Indonesia, Spain, Yugoslavia,
Cyprus, Sierra Leone, Latin America, despite the difference in scale of
consequences along key dimensions such as degree of suffering or number of
deaths in time?
http://www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/services/cds/countries/
In general, the profession has failed
to:
§
make (accurate) predictions of outcome – no
better than chance or than other professions
ü
we do not predict, but are able to
explain any past event in terms of conflict theories, confusing hindsight with
insight
§
recognize past errors and change course
ü
we do not seek counterevidence to test
our prescriptions – instead, we identify actors and actions that we believe
foiled what would otherwise surely have worked (we blame, and with no evidence
at all, contend that other courses of action recommended by us would have
succeeded – we believe in ourselves against all evidence)
ü
although our various activities have
borne no fruit, we continue to recommend them
§
react to information and update theory and
recommendations – we tend to ignore
ü
scale
ü
sea changes that affect the reality and
incentives of key players
ü
evidence from those who were directly
involved in events, if it runs counter our beliefs and values (being
politically correct trumps other goals)
§
factor in anything but conflict management
explanations, while ignoring “rest-of-the-world factors related to
geopolitics, economy, etc.
§
differentiate in nuanced, meaningful ways
among parties
ü
we conflate fairness with symmetry: for
ex., “cycles of violence” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, regardless of
who is attacking and who is responding, and regardless of evidence that in the
absence of an attack there is an absence of response; or “extremists on both
sides” regardless of numbers or role in the political process, or the fact that
they are marginal on one side and heroes on the other.
ü
we have heroes and villains, who remain
heroes or villains despite any change in behavior: for ex., most people never
knew, got it wrong, or can’t remember why Sharon is “bad,” but he remains “bad”
even when he does what we have always recommended, such as withdraw from
occupied territories, with people then questioning whether he really means it
in his heart
ü
we treat everyone as if they were free
democratic actors at the negotiation table, as when we do workshops with, or
poll, people who either live in dictatorships or have no decision authority:
for ex. Iraqis, or Palestinians (who before Arafat’s death were at about 25-30%
for negotiations and are now at more than 60% for negotiations, suggesting that
something was stifling their self-expression…).
§
snap out of our own frames in the face of
contrary evidence
ü
we have framed power as inherently “bad,”
and weakness as inherently “virtuous” regardless of the reality of the interaction
so a powerful side is wrong by sheer fact of having more power
ü
having diagnosed a problem as being
rooted in identity, religion or interpersonal hatred, we keep “treating” these
ailments at the interpersonal level and ignoring the more salient and important
incentives inherent in the situation: when Oslo happened after the fall of the
Soviet Union, it was accounted for by the baking of bread.
ü
we have framed certain behaviors as
“extremist” to denote our lack of comfort with them rather than with
(verifiable) levels of popular support for them; we have also tended to frame
adherence to any religion as “extremist” behavior regardless of diversity of
content or of implied behaviors.
ü
we arrogantly ignore the parties’ own
rhetoric in favor of our own analyses, attributing to them attitudes and
motives they themselves deny.
ü perhaps
most worrisome, we tend to ignore scale and the uniqueness of public and
international conflicts which defeats any simple generalization or transfer of
wisdom from one case to the other.
Although such conflicts are sufficiently large, consequential and
different from each other to warrant a case study approach, we frame them in
groups/classes, which may obscure the very information necessary to resolve
them.
Hypotheses
§
Frames:
ü
Generative – getting attached to specific
accounts about how /when a conflict got started, and deriving explanations and
solutions rooted in these accounts
§
picking arbitrary moments as the origin on the time line:
“the Middle East conflict is 2000 years old” or “hundreds of years old” (even
though it is roughly 80 years old).
§
picking a salient difference among parties as the root of
the conflict: “it’s a religious conflict” (although it is ostensibly about
land); routinely calling the Israelis “Jews” and Israel “the Jewish state”
reinforces the religious war frame, although 1/6 of the Israeli population is
non-Jewish, a larger proportion than non-Catholics in Italy, Spain or Portugal,
which are never called “the Catholic states;” and although most Moslem states
are nearly 100% Moslem, none is called that.
Other conflicts are labeled “ethnic” because that difference is salient,
although it is likely that many involve tangible stakes and power sharing disputes,
as is the case in the former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland or Spain. The fact that, in time, ethnicity or
religion get actively used to rally constituencies reinforces the tendency of
these characteristics to appear generative.
§
confusing the passage of time with legitimacy – thus an old
land grab (before our lifetime) is framed as legitimate (e.g., some American
territories, Tibet, remaining French colonies), while a contemporary one is
framed as occupation, regardless of how the land acquisition occurred.
ü
Ideological frames – pegging parties and
outcomes as good and bad: we have preferences over how conflicts should be
resolved, that may differ from the preferences of the parties themselves;
§
we frame those whose motives we don’t understand as bad --
“extremist” or “irrational” -- and we reassure ourselves that they are in the
minority (since they are bad and we believe in the goodness of all) despite
evidence of broad-based popular support for some of them; the restrictive
labels limit our ability to understand the dynamics, predict what will happen
next, or generate solutions.
§
culture and identity frames have led to relativizing, and
therefore ignoring, the suffering of certain groups (women, Kurds) which often
exceed in number those whose pain we feel acutely: women are roughly half of most populations, and millions of them
are routinely subject to physical and psychological abuse in many countries;
Kurds number over 30 million (same or more than Canadians, Afghans or Iraqis),
with separate language, culture and identity, but few champion their quest for
independence; explanations for such indifference are usually couched in
geopolitical terms not invoked in other conflicts.
§
“Fashionable” and circular concepts central
to analyses:
ü
Identity: both the cause and the result
of observed behavior – currently it trumps even obvious incentives to behave in
certain ways (e.g., payments to families of suicide bombers)
ü
Power
ü
Unidisciplinary lenses for a
multidisciplinary subject – believing, for example, that communication problems
account for failure to settle (even while major international events and
incentives are being altered and can explain more readily observed outcomes),
or that “fixing” the communication pattern would lead to resolving the conflict
§
Applying interpersonal theories and
strategies to international contexts -- expecting
ü
interpersonal enmity and assuming it
ü
that treating problems at the
interpersonal level is necessary to resolve the conflict (witness accounts of
“workshop moments” or gestures of mutual kindness that are thought to be
unusual, or to signal something relevant to the larger conflict)
§
Ignorance of languages and of the history and
cultures about which we opine, with resulting oversimplification,
misunderstanding and prescriptions that do not fit
§
Access: it is easier to obtain funding,
and pleasanter to travel to certain places rather than others
Examples
of information that contradicts popular wisdom
http://www.ict.org.il/casualties_project/stats_page.cfm
Breakdown of Fatalities: 27
September 2000 through 1 May 2004
(compare to other international conflicts
such as Darfour, Cambodia, or East Timor, receiving far less media and
scholarly attention)
|
Palestinians |
2806 |
Israelis
|
921 |
|
No. of
whom were female |
126 |
No. of
whom were female |
285 |
|
Non-Combatants
killed by Opposite Side |
985 91 |
Non-Combatants
killed by Opposite Side |
715 |
|
Combatants
killed by Opposite Side |
1326 |
Combatants
killed by Opposite Side |
187 |
|
People
killed by actions of own side |
365 |
People
killed by actions of own side |
22 |
|
Non-Combatants
below age 12 |
80 |
Non-Combatants
below age 12 |
36 |
|
Non-Combatant
Males between ages 12-29 |
535 |
Non-Combatant
Males between ages 12-29 |
176 |
|
Non-Combatants
Aged >= 45 |
82 |
Non-Combatants
Aged >= 45 |
226 |
http://www.library.ubc.ca/poli/international.html
http://www.yale.edu/cgp/cgpintro.html
- Cambodia
The Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979,
in which approximately 1.7 million people lost their lives (21% of the
country's population), was one of the worst human tragedies of the last
century. As in the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian genocide, the Soviet
Union under Stalin, Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, and more recently in
East Timor, Guatemala, Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Khmer Rouge regime headed by
Pol Pot combined extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and a diabolical
disregard for human life to produce repression, misery, and murder on a massive
scale. In March 2003, the United Nations signed an agreement with Cambodia to
establish a tribunal to bring
the surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders to justice.
East Timor – 60,000-80,000 dead in 6 months; 120,000
since 1975
(http://www.gmu.edu/academic/ijps/vol4_1/bercovitch.htm)
|
Table 1 (Jacob Bercovitch and Patrick M. Regan, adapted from Geller
(1993) and Huth and Russett (1993)) |
|||
|
Enduring Conflicts and Number of
Conflict Management Efforts |
|||
|
|
Rivalry |
Year |
Conflict Management
Efforts (N) |
|
1. |
China-USA |
1949-1969 |
20 |
|
2. |
Greece-Turkey |
1955-1988 |
91 |
|
3. |
Iraq-Iran |
1953-1992 |
41 |
|
4. |
China-India |
1950-1992 |
41 |
|
5. |
Afghanistan-Pakistan |
1949-1992 |
18 |
|
6. |
Egypt-Israel |
1948-1979 |
75 |
|
7. |
Argentina-Chile |
1952-1984 |
22 |
|
8. |
Peru-Ecuador |
1951-1986 |
10 |
|
9. |
Jordan-Israel |
1948-1986 |
24 |
|
10. |
Syria-Israel |
1948-1992 |
38 |
|
11. |
India-Pakistan |
1947-1992 |
98 |
|
12. |
USSR-USA |
1945-1986 |
18 |
|
13. |
China-USSR |
1963-1988 |
60 |
|
14. |
Somalia-Ethiopia |
1960-1988 |
19 |
|
Total
number of conflict management efforts |
575 (197 or 34% involving Israel) |
||
ü
ü
Scale
