Escalation and Negotiation in international
conflicts
Edited by
I. William zartman Guy Olivier Faure
Chapter 1
The Dynamics of Escalation and Negotiation
I. William Zariman and Guy Olivier Fame
Conflict is a roller coaster, with its ups and downs. The roller coaster is exhilarating because it is a simulation of danger: we have our hearts in our mouths in anticipation as-we go up and a scream in our mouths in excitement as we go down. But it is only a simulation (or we would not have bought the ticket), and not an accurate one at that. While we know where the top of the roller coaster is, we do not know how extreme the conflict is going to become before it starts to decline. It is that unknown and the dynamics of getting there that make for the deadly excitement of conflict.
Escalation is the dynamics of determining where the conflict peak is and if it has been reached. The conflict occasioned by apartheid in South Africa escalated from the repression of the Defiance Campaign in 1952 through the spontaneous Sharpeville demonstrations and massacre of 1960, the Rivonia Trial of Nelson Mandela of 1963, the intensified police measures, the Black Consciousness movement, the Soweto riots of 1976, and the Umkonto we Sizwe attacks that challenged surveillance and repression through the 1980s. But it also saw the constitutional changes of 1983, followed by attempts to talk with Mandela and others of the African National Congress, until finally the apartheid policy began to crumble in 1990 and negotiations began.
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When, after three decades of war, Ethiopia and Eritrea finally separated in 1991 (a separation confirmed by a referendum in 1993), their collaborative relationships immediately became strained, with expulsions in 1991 and 1992, border clashes in 1995, currency separation in 1997, and the border war in 1998, accompanied by a vicious demonization of old friends. The spiral seemed to be brought under control by a cease-fire and international mediation, but the pause only served as an occasion for both sides to launch massive armament programs and renew a war of unprecedented bloodshed in 1999, with repeated attacks and counterattacks. How long could this go on? Gradually, international efforts were able to bring the hostilities - but not the enmity - to a halt in 2000.
In the film The Magnificent Seven, the gunslinger and the knife thrower discuss who of the two is faster, a discussion that leads to taunts and then to a challenge for each to prove himself. Facing each other in a dry run, they both claim vindication in the contest. Where will it end? Their friends try to dissuade them, but the contest must be rerun, for real, and in the end the gunslinger crumbles with a knife in his chest.
Escalation is the mark of conflict in its dynamic form. Conflict occurs when parties who hold incompatible views seek to make their will prevail, "a situation in which the parties [holding incompatible views] are taking action against each other" (Wright 1965, pp. 434-435). Conflict actually begins when static incompatibility is turned into dynamic incompatibility. Escalation is a specific increase in conflict, a tactical step that marks a qualitative difference in conflict relations (Schelling 1960, 1966; Smoke 1977, p. 32; Rubin et al. 1994, p. 69).
Negotiation is a process by which the parties combine their divergent positions into a single agreed outcome (Zartman 1978, 1987; Pruitt 1981; Zartman and Berman 1982; Hopmann 1996; Faure 2003). Parties enter into a negotiation process because they believe there is a possibility of obtaining a better outcome than is offered by the status quo. Engaging oneself in a negotiation process does not imply the obligation to reach an agreement but rather the intention to aim at such a goal. It also implies that one has given up the project of subduing the other as the only way to resolve the conflict.
The negotiation activity refers to three successive phases, each with a distinct rationale (Zartman and Berman 1982). The pre-negotiation concerns the acceptance of the idea of meeting each other to discuss the issue. Such a stage can be reached, for instance, by work on reframing the problem. Even the most violent circumstances do not exclude such a possibility, as has been shown in cases of negotiation with terrorist groups (Faure 2004). The second phase consists in establishing a potential agreement formula, the overall architecture of the final package. The third stage addresses the discussion of the details and precise figures on each basic issue in order to find an acceptable balance.
Much of the study of escalation has been devoted to the ways conflict is conducted and to their implications (Kahn 1965; Smoke 1977; Zagare 1978; Brecher 1994; Geller and Singer 1998, pp. 70-92). Another important aspect of negotiation study has been the examination of mechanisms that find reconciliation points between the parties' positions, either along the flat plane of a zero-sum game through compromise, or, as more recent studies have highlighted, along a plane made convex through the search for positive-sum solutions or formulas (Ikld 1964; Walton and McKersie 1965; Young 1975; Raiffa 1982; Lax and Sebenius 1986). However, in focusing on the negotiation process - an advance over previous histories that paid attention only to outcomes - this scholarship tended to ignore the process of the conflict. Too little analysis has placed negotiation within the dynamic context of conflict and studied negotiation as an appropriate response to conflict movement.
Escalation and negotiation are not separate'topics more or less artfully combined. They are conceptually and practically related through such themes as competitive behavior and commitments. Escalation is a mutually coercive mechanism embedded in a conflict perspective (Schelling 1960,1966; Kahn 1965; Young 1968; Snyder 1972; Carlson 1995). Escalation within a conflict can produce, lead to, or provide an opportunity for negotiation under specific circumstances. These circumstances may be created by the actors involved in the situation or by a third party. One of the objectives of this book is to shed light on these contextual and structural variables. Escalation within a negotiation can be a bargaining strategy. The costs inflicted or that could be inflicted are a lever either to bring the other party back to the negotiation tabic or to obtain the concessions it was previously unwilling to make. Although an increasing trend of reciprocal concessions in a negotiation might also be considered a kind of "constructive escalation," the term thus used would lose its specificity and instrumentality. Structurally, negotiation is the end of escalation, even if within the negotiation process parties may still escalate. Conflict being what it is, negotiation is required to respond to dynamic conflict (Kriesberg and Thorson 1991; Kriesberg 2002). When and how to do so is what the chapters of this book seek to analyze.
To do so, the nature of escalation must first be investigated and its rationale brought to light. Then, the most appropriate times and means of negotiating its end will be determined. Patties are under pressure from the dynamics of the conflict to broaden it, moving the process from light to heavy, small to large, specific to general, few to many, winning to hurting (Rubin et al. 1994). These "transformations" of the conflict are part of the escalation process. Thus, parties to a conflict make a series of decisions to pursue the conflict, in response to both internal and external pressures; such decisions are imposed on them by the other party and by the conflict itself. Whether stated openly or not by the parties to the dispute, escalation as a process in itself introduces the idea of threat. The minimum threat conveyed
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by the escalatory mechanism is to continue with the logic of escalation, with the consequence that more resources are put into the process and/or that more costs must be paid at the end.
1.1   Dimensions and Structure
Seen as a dynamic exchange, conflict has a structure built upon escalation. Escalation is not just intensification, but a particular type of intensification by steps across time, as its very name indicates, a change in nature rather than simply a change in degree. Steps are made of a vertical and a horizontal component, and the escalatory aspect of this imaged structure is the riser, the vertical element - as distinguished from the treads, the horizontal part. To distinguish escalation from mere intensification, analysts have identified risers that cross a saliency (Schelling 1960; Smoke 1977) or have a distinct change in severity (Bonoma 1975; Brecher 1994; Rubin et ctl. 1994), although neither is always as clear and distinct as the image might suggest. On the other hand, even when conflict is characterized by gradual intensification, it is very likely that at some point "more and more" eventually (if not unequivocally) becomes "different," and thus also introduces a qualitative change.
As a result, the basic model of conflict escalation resembles two ladders with steps or treads of different heights (risers) set alongside each other, similar to the typical "life cycle of conflict" advanced by analysts (Bloomfield and Liess 1960; Lund 1996). This is admittedly a caricature and should be recognized as such, since risers and treads of different sizes and different relations between the two (or more) ladders can produce very different conflict models. Some of these are explored below. However, the duality (or plurality) of the ladders is important: conflict may escalate or be escalated unilaterally, either automatically or by decision, as discussed below, but more often it escalates as a responsive relation between the two or more parties (whether automatically or by decision). A conflict profile drawn with one line implies that the conflict rises and falls on its own, whereas a conflict profile with two lines or ladders side by side indicates a relation between the parties' separate escalations.
The ladder image is expressive in another sense, however: unlike the up side of the ladder, the down side often does not have steps. De-escalation may not be the lessening of conflict, but merely the lowering of its cost so as to prolong its duration. Negotiation can take place without de-escalation, while conflict is still high or deadlocked; de-escalation can take place without negotiation unless viewed as a tacit expression of negotiation; and both de-escalation and the lessening of conflict may or may not proceed by steps. Thus, de-escalation and negotiation are discussed later in this chapter as separate elements of the down side of the ladder.
The increase in stakes of various types through escalation takes place diachron-ically for each party, as well as synchronically between the two parties' positions and tactics. These dual dimensions refer to the current balance of costs in the process of escalation, but also to the anticipated balance of costs in case of compliance. The latter includes the costs of the resources required by the escalation process to induce negotiation and also the anticipated cost of concessions needed to restart the negotiation process.
Escalation, often thought of only as increases in one or two dimensions (Ikl6 1971, p. 39; George et al. 1991, p. 388; Leatherman et al. 1999, pp. 74-77), can take place along many other dimensions of conflict as well, including means, ends, space, price, parties, images, risks, costs, and commitments:
• Escalation of means or increasing efforts: for instance, a party starts with demands and offers, then resorts to threats, and then goes on with a fait accompli, as in the Nazi Anschluss of Austria in 1938
• Escalation of ends, or expanding related demands to cover the initial demand: for example, a party wants grievances redressed, then wants power-sharing to ensure that grievances are removed, and then wants to take over government entirely, as in the evolution of nationalist movements (Brown 1964)
• Escalation of space, or adding unrelated issues asymmetrically: for example, hostage-takers add to their original demand to free political prisoners the additional demand for extra resources, such as money or weapons (Hayes 2001)
• Escalation of price, or increasing trade-off asymmetrically (tracking): for instance, a union on strike for a salary increase now includes the strike costs in its new requirements for a settlement (Raskin 1987)
• Escalation of parties, or adding parties to the conflict (related to means, but also to ends, space, and price): for instance, the buildup of opposing alliances before the two World Wars or in the Cold War
• Escalation of images, or demonizing: for instance, the opponent may be considered an obstacle, then an opponent, then an enemy, then a force of evil, as occurred during the Cold War, but also during the security dilemma that characterizes the escalation of ethnic conflicts (White 1984; Posen 1993)
• Escalation of risk, or increase in dangerous uncertainties: for example, increasingly conflictual actions or tactics by one party can increase the danger that the other will increase its demands, then refuse to talk or simply take unilateral action directly (Avenhaus and Sjostedt forthcoming)
• Escalation of costs, or increasing either party's deprivations and outlays: for example, maintaining the conflict requires greater and greater expenditures and increasingly blocks other actions, as occurred in the Western Sahara where
8 I. William Zartman and Guy Olivier Faure
Mauritanian participation in four years of war bankrupted the country and finally brought down the government (Zartman 1989) • Escalation of commitment, or an increasingly firm resolution not to back down, but to continue escalating without subjecting ever-higher escalation to more and more cautious evaluations: for example, a party can consider carefully whether to embark on a course of costly competition, but then continue to raise its ante once engaged (Brockner and Rubin 1985)
In all cases, escalation raises the stakes, since more is now involved in the conflict and the parties have to climb down from a higher level to settle it. Escalation along any one of the dimensions listed above often brings escalation along other dimensions by the escalator, and invites counter-escalation by the other party along any dimension in response. "Higher" in some of these dimensions increases the risk of losing control, whereas in other dimensions - notably price, parties, risks, and costs - it decreases (or at least should decrease) that risk. In negotiating an end to the conflict, the types of escalations that characterize the pursuit of the conflict determine the types of solutions and tactics used to end it.
1.2   Nature and Causes
The previous discussion of escalation as a mutually coercive or bargaining strategy portrays escalation as a deliberate, purposeful action, but this is not the whole picture. To analyze the causes of escalation, it is necessary to distinguish between the transitive and intransitive forms of escalation, between the initiated decision and the consequential phenomenon (Smoke 1977; Rubin et al. 1994, p. 69; Brecher 1996). Conflict is escalated by a party, but it also escalates by itself. There is an inherent tendency for escalation to proceed on its own, dragging the parties along and making decisions for them, engulfing them in unintended and inescapable consequences. While the distinction is conceptually clear and useful, the two forms are not always easy to separate in reality; an escalation decision (transitive) is usually made under some pressure to escalate (intransitive), and conflict escalation (intransitive) results from decisions to escalate (transitive). Even when conscious decisions are involved, they are made under the pressure of stimuli and opportunities, and they tend to have unpredictable and unexpected implications. In this sense, the process itself is, indeed, coercive on both parties. Transitive escalation is powered by intransitive escalation, and vice versa. Recognizing this effect, rather than simply considering escalation as an autonomous decision out of context, enables de-escalatory or negotiation measures that counter its logic and pressures. This distinction is relevant to an understanding of escalation's causes.
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Parties escalate (transitively) for various reasons, some of them rational in the sense of being appropriate to a goal, and some of them emotional or even out of control, dysfunctional in terms of the ostensible goal. These reasons do not constitute exclusive categories, but rather tend to combine in unstable mixes (Stedman 1991, pp. 18-20).
Parties escalate conflict to
• win, in order to prevail;
• not lose, so as to stay in the conflict or bring about negotiations, or speed up the negotiation process, for instance by avoiding a deadlock;
• cover investments, sunk costs, or the costs of entrapment in the conflict (and from previous escalations);
• gain support, against the opponent or simply for oneself, at home or abroad;
• seize an advantage or target of opportunity to use now or later;
• feel like a king, to reward oneself, because "I deserve it," for affective reasons; and/or
• feel like a dragon slayer, to punish the other, because "he deserves it," for affective reasons.
In between the transitive decisions and the intransitive phenomenon lies a whole minefield of "inappropriate" or "irrational" decisions fed by cognitive problems, poor information, and the like, which produces an intransitive effect, even though specific decisions are involved. Much of the literature has been devoted to the intrapersonal aspect of escalation, taking it out of the realm of mere interactive conflict behavior and in the process giving escalation a bad name. The literature on escalation highlights the driving role of cognitive factors, notably judgmental and perceptional biases (Ebbessen and Konecni 1980; Bazerman 1994; see also Ikle' 1971, p. 40, for a discussion of why parties might not escalate).
Judgmental bias driven by losses from the original investment in escalation is the most common cause of further escalation. For instance, one party may believe it could recover its initial investment by mobilizing more resources. Overconfidence in the final outcome may just feed the escalation process if the other party does not behave as expected. This translates directly into entrapment, but also into related phenomena such as overcommitment, or the inability to escape from escalation because of a commitment made to followers, and lock-in, or personal overcommitment through self-fulfilling prophesies, rationalization (cognitive dissonance), demonization, and selective perception. Decision makers do not want to admit to an initial mistake or to having missed or underestimated later consequences. Pressure for consistency can be another explanatory factor of escalation, because the concern to maintain commitment and avoid indecisiveness may generate a vicious
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circle that leads to the opposite result of that intended (Cameron and Quinn 1988). Thus, pacifists turn into militants, and solutions become problems. Fear of failure resulting from social or psychological pressures may also explain a decision to escalate (Aronson 1968; Brockner 1992). Cognitive dissonance can produce escalation; once a course of action has been decided, negative feedback regarded as dissonant is rationalized away, and the party escalates with the thought that the next step is necessary to reach the goal and avoid the dissonance (Festinger 1957).
Perceptional biases function as a selective filter to maintain commitment to a course of action and lead the decision maker to seek out only the information that serves this commitment. Escalation is enhanced when the consequences of a decision are unclear, especially in the long term (Brockner and Rubin 1985; Bowen 1987). A related effect is impression management, which incites people to provide only information that confirms the Tightness of the initial commitment. Another cause of excessive risk taking is the underestimation of some elements of the situation (Whyte 1986; Janis 1972) or the capabilities of the decisionmakers themselves (Schwenk 1986; Staw and Ross 1987). Escalation may also occur when an initial failure is explained by the fact that it was impossible to predict the exogenous event that was the cause of the failure.
The two types of biases combine to produce competitive irrationality, one of the phenomena most commonly associated with escalation. The parties engage in an activity that is irrational in terms of the possible outcomes, as illustrated by the dollar auction game (Shubik 1971; Rubin 1980); they keep on bidding in the hope that the other will abandon the game, an action that may be rational from the individual perspective, but that becomes irrational as soon as several people start to bid. The desire to win takes on a life of its own, functioning as an additional motivation to launch an escalation process (Bazerman et al. 1984). A similar effect is produced by the use of bargaining chips, tactical items of exchange value only that then take on a life of their own and so become impossible to trade, such as the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine. Escalation may also be produced by playing out the tensions between parties, which entails a breakdown in rationality (Simonson and Staw 1992; Staw 1997). Overreaction, or responding to the other's last move in and of itself and losing sight of the goal, is a related phenomenon.
All of these elements contribute to the production of escalation (transitively or intransitively), which presumably would go on forever to the point of capitulation or elimination of one of the parties. Negotiation measures have to take into account these (and possibly other) features of intransitive conflict escalation, often before the core issues and interactions that ostensibly initiated the conflict can be tackled. Identification of the reason(s) for escalation can lead to effective measures of de-escalation and negotiation.
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1.3  De-escalation and Negotiation
Escalations change the conflict situation in a way that either worsens the conflict or leads to negotiations. They can act either in prospect or in retrospect to create moments for starting the negotiation process. In prospect, impending escalation serves as a threat, working on both parties, and so can produce preemptive negotiations. Escalation in prospect - like any threat - contains an element of risk or uncertainty about its actual occurrence, and the amount of risk can be used as a tactical element (Ikle 1971, pp. 42-58; Avenhaus and Sjostedt forthcoming). In retrospect, just-employed escalation can serve as an equalizer, a response, an assuagement, a bullying tactic, or another effect that can also be used to produce negotiations. The uncertainty inherent in the very occurrence of escalation can also be used as a tactical element.
Escalations, like negotiations, respond to a prior situation of symmetry or asymmetry. When the former obtains, a new escalation seeks to create a decisive edge for one party in order to win. In the second case, escalation can either seek to reverse the asymmetry in favor of the new escalating party (also to win) or aim to establish equality (symmetry) as a basis for negotiation. In poker terms, seeking to win can be called "escalation to raise" and equalizing can be termed "escalation to call" (Zartman and Aurik 1991). Distinguishing one from the other is key to seizing a moment for negotiation.
Like escalation, negotiation has a stepped or responsive structure. It involves the exchange of proposals with a view to arriving at a common decision from divergent positions, a process that is governed by an overarching ethos of reciprocity. As already noted, proposals can be exchanged for several purposes with regard to escalation. They can aim to confirm an asymmetrical result after several rounds of escalation, to work out an agreement that marks the predominance of one side over the other. While one party would "win" in such a situation, wins are usually not total and exchanges are made to induce the other party to accept the asymmetrical outcome (Faure 2004). Second, negotiations can also aim to halt escalation, presumably in a more symmetrical situation, to cut the costs of conflict, control its spread (further escalation), and break links between various dimensions. Such negotiations do not seek to solve the basic conflict, but merely to manage it in the hope that it will solve itself or be more amenable to resolution later on. Third, negotiations can seek solutions to the problem itself, also from a situation of escalation to symmetry. Such negotiations can bypass the conflict escalations or address them in the process of resolving the basic conflict.
A number of variables serve to dampen, interrupt, or reverse (brake or break) escalation and so allow negotiation and settlement of the dispute to take place; these are summarized here and are developed more fully in the following chapters:
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1. Fear and fatigue: Richardson's (1960) arms-race models predict that escalation would move off the chart and into war were it not for internal (fatigue) and interactive (fear) dampening effects that provide resting points (treads) and escalation slowdown, and allow for moments of negotiation (Smoker 1964). These effects wear out the parties as they try to keep up with the race and induce them to look for alternatives, as Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev did in meeting US President Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik in 1987.
2. Mutually hurting stalemates: Ripe moments for negotiation (mediated or direct) are provided by double escalations to the point where no more escalation is deemed worthwhile and the ensuing deadlock hurts both sides, the necessary if insufficient condition for negotiation (Zartman 2000a). Ripe moments can be created by escalations to call or by failed escalations to raise that end in stalemate, as happened in Angola in regard to the South West African negotiations in 1987-1988 (Crocker 1992).
3. Changes in stakes: New terms can be invented, so that the relationship between the parties takes a new direction, away from the items that motivate or fuel escalation of the conflict (Zartman 2001). The elements of escalation can be altered or the parties' perception of their value can be changed by reframing, as occurred in the Peru-Ecuador border negotiations in 1998 when the parties changed their focus from legal disputes over sovereign ownership to joint efforts to promote development (Simmons 1999).
4. Changes in parties: Internal changes in one or more parties' decision-making structures, the introduction of new parties, or the elimination of old ones can move the conflict from escalation to negotiation, as happened when Dwight D. Eisenhower succeeded Harry S. Truman as US president during the Korean War (Fan 2000), or when Joseph Kabila succeeded his father as leader of Congo in 2001.
5. Changes in attitudes: Escalation in the attitudes of the parties toward each other can be changed by one side's showing a willingness to negotiate, by de-demonizing, by occasions to cooperate on overarching goals, or by CSBMs [see (7) below] as second-track activities. For example, both Search for Common Ground and the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy have programs to accomplish in Israel, Burundi, Cyprus, and elsewhere.
6. Disengagements and breathing space: Truces and pauses (even rainy seasons) can allow for stocktaking and reappraisals so that the parties can cool their interaction and reevaluate their positions to see whether they are in over their heads, as occurred in Karabagh after the 1994 cease-fire or in Congo after the 1999 Lusaka Agreement. Such measures can break the momentum of escalation and push the choice between escalation and resolution toward a conscious decision (transitive) and away from the inherent dynamics (intransitive).
7. Confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs): Like periodic reappraisals, measures of transparency can remove the fear and ignorance that fuels escalation, contribute to accurate assessments, and create new relationships between parties, as the Stockholm Conference on Disarmament in Europe did in 1986 (Goodby 1988).
g. Learning processes: Dynamic information intake or learning is necessary if parties are to revise their initial assessments on such aspects of the conflict as the way the other party sees the problem, its degree of commitment to engage more deeply in the conflict, and the means considered as licit to be used to serve the cause. Authoritative inputs of new information through fact-finding missions can help coordinate parties' perceptions, confirm security points, clarify commitments, introduce a more realistic understanding of risk, reduce uncertainties, and thus dampen escalation so that negotiations can begin, as has been attempted on numerous occasions after clashes between the Israelis and Palestinians. Reassessed knowledge can serve as a progressive damper on the conflict's escalation.
9. Reaffirmed relationships: Community is a particularly important form of relationship that allows parties to handle conflict within established bonds of commonality and established institutions and regimes (Zartman 2000a, Zartman and Kremenyuk in press). Superordinate values contribute to building a strong sense of community and common interest (Sherif and Sherif 1969). While it is difficult to create community during conflict, pre-established relationships can create a larger setting within which the conflict can be subsumed, which can provide values, interdependencies, stakes, and also procedures and mediators to dampen conflict (Saunders 1999).
10. Mutually enticing opportunity (MEO): The prospect of future gains can be produced by using an alternative strategy to the continuation of escalation, as was used in the Sant'Egidio negotiations to end the civil war between Rename and Frelimo in Mozambique in 1990-1992 (Ohlson 1998).
11. Cultural values: Accepted notions of what is permissible and what is taboo with regard to the escalation process, its context, its appropriateness, and even morality can serve as either dampers or accelerators (Faure and Rubin 1993; Faure 2000, 2002). If escalation is assimilated to violence, some cultures may be more reluctant than others to trigger or enter an escalation process, while others, of course, may not countenance backing down, as explored in the cultures of negotiation in North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southern Africa (Zartman 1989).
These many mechanisms can be used or can exert themselves to provide openings to negotiation within the escalation process. This book explores that relationship
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and works through the various mechanics and dynamics of escalation to arrive at a better understanding of the appropriate times and methods of negotiation. The goals are to achieve a fuller analysis of these two important concepts and their interrelation, and to arrive at propositions for practitioners to improve their trade, focusing particularly on the subject of when parties do and should negotiate under escalation.
1.4   Themes and Chapters
The following two parts of this book seek to elucidate the relation between escalation and negotiation. The first contains chapters that address five forms and outcomes that escalation can take - deadlock, deterrence, arms races, entrapment, and vengeance. Although each is a distinct phenomenon, all are both processes and consequences in which the policy and the outcome are often referred to by the same name, and each bears some relationship to the others. Some of the outcomes are more desired than others, and some are more unintentional. Each chapter examines the hypothesis that its form of escalation can be conducive to negotiation under certain specified conditions.
Deadlock is the general outcome of conflict escalation that does not produce a winner and loser (except in the sense that each or both parties may suffer simply from the continuation of the conflict). In Chapter 2, Guy Olivier Faure addresses the question of deadlock, its forms and causes, its relation to both escalation and negotiation, and the incentives and strategies to move out of deadlock. Deterrence is a purposeful deadlock as a policy, the result of past escalation that leads to equality and threatened escalation that defines the future. In Chapter 3, Patrick Morgan examines the concept and practice of deterrence, showing the conditions under which it can lead to negotiation once it has been established. Arms races can grow out of deterrence efforts that break down, and they constitute a vicious circle of transitive and intransitive escalation with a logic that leads parties into ever-mounting conflict behaviors beyond their intended strategies. In Chapter 4, Rudolf Avenhaus, Juergen Beetz, and Marc Kilgour show how various characteristics of the escalating parties can favor stability in escalation or in accommodation. Entrapment also refers to an intransitive effect that carries transitive escalation beyond its intended purpose, an outbidding race that calls for strategies of closure. In Chapter 5, Paul Meerts analyzes ways to prevent entrapment from occurring, given its identifying characteristics, and shows how negotiation can provide an alternative policy, including both managing entrapment so as to bring the stronger party to negotiation and conflict management. In Chapter 6, at the end of Part n, vengeance is discussed as the motor of escalation, both its outcome and its motivation, the effective element behind other runaway races. Sung Hee Kim examines the dynamics of vengeance
and shows how its power can be broken so as to make negotiation possible; it is not only the mechanics of the process that must be mastered, but also its emotional impulsion.
Part III of the book turns to the core of the analysis in search of answers to the question of when, in the escalation, should and do parties negotiate. Each chapter addresses the hypothesis that certain moments in escalation, defined in particular analytical terms, are amenable to negotiation and can be used for that purpose. Different dynamics of the process of escalation produce opportunities to control the process by using breaks or weak points in its logic, whether seen from the point of view of structure or actors, to produce a shift in its direction and a negotiated relationship between the parties.
Four chapters place negotiation within different conceptualizations of the escalation process to find these answers. Since escalation is a stepped process, one set of answers can be acquired by directing the question to the treads and risers of the process. In Chapter 7,1. William Zartman shows how parties in notable recent conflicts have negotiated immediately after risers, whether the risers have failed, as shortfalls, or succeeded, as escalations to call. The decision to negotiate also represents a turning point in the escalation process and can be analyzed as such. In Chapter 8, Daniel Druckman illustrates that the decision to escalate has preceded and led to a decision to negotiate in various types of conflict-management processes. Crisis behavior is a different form of escalation in the conduct of conflict. In Chapter 9, Lisa Carlson shows that escalation and reciprocation tend to lead to negotiation under specific structural conditions, both by imposing costs on further conflict and by checking the other party in its pursuit. Conflict spirals are another way to pursue escalation and can lead to their own arrest through negotiation. In Chapter 10, Marc Kilgour uses categorizations of conflict spirals to show under which conditions demand escalation can further negotiations.
Two other chapters examine the conditions under which escalating parties are ready to negotiate. In Chapter 11, Dean Pruitt introduces communication chains and intermediaries to move parties from escalation to negotiation, and in Chapter 12, Karin Aggestam examines the role of substantive focal points and mediators in keeping negotiating parties from reverting to further escalation. The examination closes with two chapters by the editors on the implications for theories of the analysis of the juncture between the two processes of negotiation and escalation, and for practice in the use of the knowledge generated to improve negotiation effectiveness.
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MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA Falailra sociálních studií
Jošlova 10 _ tí02 Of) B R N O CIO
IS
I. William Zartman and Guy Olivier Fame
The Dynamics of Escalation and Negotiation
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Further reading
Agaestam K & Jonsson C (1997). (Un)ending conflict: Challenges in post-war bargaining.
Millennium: Journal of International Studies 26:771-794. Brams S & Kilgour D (1988). Games and National Security. New York, NY, USA: Basil
Blackwell.
Garland HG, Sandefur CA & Rogers AC (1990). De-escalation of commitment in oil exploration; When sunk costs and negative feedback coincide. Journal of Applied Psychology 75:721 -727.
leffrey C (1992). The relation of judgment, personal involvement and experience in the audit of bank loans. Accounting Review 67:802-819.
Mitchell C (1995). The right moment: Notes on four models of "ripeness" paradigms. Kent Journal of International Relations 9:38-52.
O'Neill B (1986). International escalation and the dollar auction. Journal of Conflict Resolution 30:33-50.
Patchen M (1988). Resolving Disputes between Nations. Chapel Hill, NC, USA: Duke University Press.
PruittDG (1997). Ripeness theory and the Oslo talks. InternationalNegotiaiion2:9\-WA.
Ross J (1998). Escalation theory in labor-management negotiations. In Advances in Qualitative Organization Research, Vol. I, ed. Wagner J III. Greenwich, CT, USA: JAI Press.
Singer MS & Singer AE (1986). Is there always escalation of commitment? Psychological Reports 56:816-818.
Staw BM & Ross J (1978). Commitment to a policy decision: A multi-theoretical perspective. Administrative Science Quarterly 23:40-64.
Teger AI (1980). Too Much Invested to Quit: The Psychology of the Escalation of Conflict. New York, NY, USA: Pergamon Press.
Zartman IW (2000b). Traditional Cures for Modern Conflicts. Boulder, CO, USA: Lynne Rienner.
Zartman IW & Rubin .IZ (2000). Power and Negotiation. Ann Arbor, MI, USA: University of Michigan Press.