Although George W. Bush memorably declared, "I'm the decider," as president he was remarkably indecisive when it came to U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His administration's ...policymaking featured an ongoing clash between moderate realists and conservative hard-liners inspired by right-wing religious ideas and a vision of democracy as cure-all. Riven by these competing agendas, the Bush administration vacillated between recognizing the Palestinian right to self-determination and embracing Israeli leaders who often chose war over negotiations. Through the years, the administration erratically adopted and discarded successive approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The results of this irresolution included the stunning triumph of Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian elections, Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon, the 2008--2009 clash between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and, in the end, virtually no diplomatic progress toward lasting peace. InIndecision Points, Daniel Zoughbie examines the major assumptions underpinning U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East during the Bush years. Was there one policy or two? Was the Bush administration truly serious about peace? In a compelling account, Zoughbie offers original insights into these and other important questions. Drawing on the auhtor's own interviews with forty-five global leaders, including Condoleezza Rice, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Kofi Annan, Colin Powell, Tom DeLay, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, Shlomo Ben Ami, and Salam Fayyad,Indecision Pointsprovides the first comprehensive history of the Bush administration's attempt to reshape political order in a "New Middle East."
A Needs-Based Model of Reconciliation Shnabel, Nurit; Nadler, Arie
Journal of personality and social psychology,
01/2008, Letnik:
94, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The authors propose that conflict threatens different psychological resources of victims and perpetrators and that these threats contribute to the maintenance of conflict (
A. Nadler, 2002
;
A. ...Nadler & I. Liviatan, 2004
;
A. Nadler & N. Shnabel, in press
). On the basis of this general proposition, the authors developed a needs-based model of reconciliation that posits that being a victim is associated with a threat to one's status and power, whereas being a perpetrator threatens one's image as moral and socially acceptable. To counter these threats, victims must restore their sense of power, whereas perpetrators must restore their public moral image. A social exchange interaction in which these threats are removed should enhance the parties' willingness to reconcile. The results of 4 studies on interpersonal reconciliation support these hypotheses. Applied and theoretical implications of this model are discussed.
The article presents a conceptual framework that concerns the sociopsychological foundation and dynamics of intractable conflict. First, it defines and characterizes the nature of intractable ...conflict, and then it describes how societies involved in this reality adapt to the conditions of intractable conflict. This adaptation meets three fundamental challenges: satisfying the needs of the society members, coping with stress, and withstanding the rival. In trying to confront them successfully, societies develop appropriate sociopsychological infrastructure, which includes collective memory, ethos of conflict, and collective emotional orientations. This infrastructure fulfills important individual and collective level functions, including the important role of formation, maintenance, and strengthening of a social identity that reflects this conflict. Special attempts are made to disseminate this infrastructure via societal channels of communication and institutionalize it. The evolved sociopsychological infrastructure becomes a prism through which society members construe their reality, collect new information, interpret their experiences, and make decisions about their course of action. This infrastructure becomes hegemonic, rigid, and resistant to change as long as the intractable conflict continues. It ends up serving as a major factor fueling the continuation of the conflict, thus becoming part of a vicious cycle of intractable conflict.
Violent America Chebel d'Appollonia, Ariane
2023, 2023-01-15, 2023-02-15
eBook
In Violent America , Ariane Chebel d'Appollonia counterintuitively analyzes why and how various ethnoracial groups proactively and instrumentally use different forms of violence to achieve their ...goals. Combining a historical analysis spanning the centuries with an examination of contemporary problems, she considers how and why ethnoracial groups can be both perpetrators and victims of violence, why some minority groups react differently to violence in comparable situations, and what the consequences are today for politics in both America and Europe. Violent America thus explores the effects of physical and discursive violence on the ways in which ethnoracial groups define themselves. Chebel d'Appollonia argues that the use of ethnoracial violence has been and remains an effective identity strategy by which all ethnoracial groups are able to integrate themselves into the mainstream of American society. She provides an alternative way of understanding the complex relationship between migrant phobia, multiethnic grievances, and intergroup conflicts in America.
Does diplomacy affect the prospects of international conflict and cooperation? Systematic empirical assessment has been hindered by the inferential challenges of separating diplomacy from the ...distribution of power and interests that underlies its conduct. This paper addresses the question of diplomacy's efficacy by examining the intragovernmental politics of US foreign policy, and the varying influence of diplomatic personnel in the policy process. I claim that diplomats hold the strongest preferences for cooperative relations with their host countries, relative to other participants in the foreign policy process. They also exert substantial influence over the formation and implementation of US policies toward their host countries but their influence is intermittently weakened by the short-term shock of an ambassadorial turnover. As a result, when ambassadors are removed from post, diplomacy is more likely to be eschewed for more conflictual means of settling international disagreements, and opportunities for economic exchange are less likely to be realized. I test this theory using newly collected data on US diplomatic representation, for the global sample of countries from 1960 through 2014. To address concerns of diplomatic staffing being endogenous to political interests, I leverage a natural experiment arising from the State Department's three-year ambassadorial rotation system. The turnover of a US ambassador causes a decrease in US exports to the country experiencing the turnover, and heightens the risk of onset of a militarized dispute between that country and the US. These findings point to bureaucratic delegation as an important but overlooked determinant of macro-level international outcomes.
The Road to Forgiveness Fehr, Ryan; Gelfand, Michele J; Nag, Monisha
Psychological bulletin,
09/2010, Letnik:
136, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Forgiveness has received widespread attention among psychologists from social, personality, clinical, developmental, and organizational perspectives alike. Despite great progress, the forgiveness ...literature has witnessed few attempts at empirical integration. Toward this end, we meta-analyze results from 175 studies and 26,006 participants to examine the correlates of interpersonal forgiveness (i.e., forgiveness of a single offender by a single victim). A tripartite forgiveness typology is proposed, encompassing victims' (a) cognitions, (b) affect, and (c) constraints following offense, with each consisting of situational and dispositional components. We tested hypotheses with respect to 22 distinct constructs, as correlates of forgiveness, that have been measured across different fields within psychology. We also evaluated key sample and study characteristics, including gender, age, time, and methodology as main effects and moderators. Results highlight the multifaceted nature of forgiveness. Variables with particularly notable effects include intent (
= −.49), state empathy (
= .51), apology (
= .42), and state anger (
= −.41). Consistent with previous theory, situational constructs are shown to account for greater variance in forgiveness than victim dispositions, although within-category differences are considerable. Sample and study characteristics yielded negligible effects on forgiveness, despite previous theorizing to the contrary: The effect of gender was nonsignificant (
= .01), and the effect of age was negligible (
= .06). Preliminary evidence suggests that methodology may exhibit some moderating effects. Scenario methodologies led to enhanced effects for cognitions; recall methodologies led to enhanced effects for affect.
The Suffragist Peace Barnhart, Joslyn N.; Trager, Robert F.; Saunders, Elizabeth N. ...
International organization,
01/2020, Letnik:
74, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Preferences for conflict and cooperation are systematically different for men and women: across a variety of contexts, women generally prefer more peaceful options and are less supportive of making ...threats and initiating conflict. But how do these preferences affect states’ decisions for war and patterns of conflict at the international level, such as the democratic peace? Women have increasingly participated in political decision making over the last century because of suffragist movements. But although there is a large body of research on the democratic peace, the role of women's suffrage has gone unexplored. Drawing on theory, a meta-analysis of survey experiments in international relations, and analysis of crossnational conflict data, we show how features of women's preferences about the use of force translate into specific patterns of international conflict. When empowered by democratic institutions and suffrage, women's more pacific preferences generate a dyadic democratic peace (i.e., between democracies), as well as a monadic peace. Our analysis supports the view that the enfranchisement of women is essential for the democratic peace.
Ethnic groups and conflicts often transcend country borders, indicating that notions of relative strength and resolve may also surpass such borders. This study focuses on the association between ...ethnic polarization and conflict in a widened strategic environment, encapsulating each state that experiences ethnic conflict and its neighboring states, and involving contagion processes. Two claims are presented. First, when a state experiences ethnic conflict, neighboring states that are ethnically polarized are more likely to also experience ethnic conflict. Second, when a group involved in ethnic conflict has a kinship tie to a group in a neighboring state, the latter group is increasingly likely to be inspired to challenge the government and end up in ethnic conflict. This should be especially likely if the group resides in a state characterized by ethnic polarization. To evaluate these claims, this article employs logit regression on a global dataset covering the period from 1989 to 2004. The empirical analysis supports the first claim; polarized states are indeed associated with an increased likelihood of contagion processes. The findings also demonstrate that kinship links make contagion more likely; however, this effect is not conditioned by the level of ethnic polarization. The results are robust to a series of alternative specifications. In conclusion, these findings point to the importance of incorporating a widened strategic setting in the analysis when examining the association between ethnic polarization and civil conflict.
A broad literature on how oil wealth affects civil war onset argues that oil production engenders violent contests to capture a valuable prize from vulnerable governments. By contrast, research ...linking oil wealth to durable authoritarian regimes argues that oil-rich governments deter societal challenges by strategically allocating enormous revenues to enhance military capacity and to provide patronage. This article presents a unified formal model that evaluates how these competing mechanisms affect overall incentives for center-seeking civil wars. The model yields two key implications. First, large oil-generated revenues strengthen the government and exert an overall effect that decreases center-seeking civil war propensity. Second, oil revenues are less effective at preventing center-seeking civil war relative to other revenue sources, which distinguishes overall and relative effects. Revised statistical results test overall rather than relative effects by omitting the conventional but posttreatment covariate of income per capita, and demonstrate a consistent negative association between oil wealth and center-seeking civil war onset.
Contemporary studies of conflict have adopted approaches that minimize the importance of negotiation during war or treat it as a constant and mechanical activity. This is strongly related to the lack ...of systematic data that track and illustrate the complex nature of wartime diplomacy. I address these issues by creating and exploring a new daily-level data set of negotiations in all interstate wars from 1816 to the present. I find strong indications that post-1945 wars feature more frequent negotiations and that these negotiations are far less predictive of war termination. Evidence suggests that increased international pressures for peace and stability after World War II, especially emanating from nuclear weapons and international alliances, account for this trend. These original data and insights establish a dynamic research agenda that enables a more policy-relevant study of conflict management, highlights a historical angle to conflict resolution, and speaks to the utility of viewing diplomacy as an essential dimension to understanding war.
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